Former DHS head Tom Ridge’s new book has made headlines with the assertion that h was pressured to raise the national threat level prior to the 2004 elections.

His credibility on this point can be questioned since the matter has come up before, to which he’s responded “We don’t do politics” at the Department of Homeland Security. The standard question on cross-examination, as any third-year law student should be able to tell you, would be: Were you lyingthen, or are you lyingnow?

Either way, not a favorable impression of Secretary Ridge’s credibility. Let’s then put aside the question of the 2004 pre-election threat levels.

Paul Bedard at U.S. New & World Report reports that the book also contains the following assertions:

1. Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings;
2. was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him
3. found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored

Mr. Bedard is the author/editor of a feature at USN&WR called Washington Whispers, which we’ll be adding to our RSS feeds.

Assume what one wants about the 2004 elections and the threat levels. Bedard has spotted more troubling issues – (1) and (2) supra suggest that creating the Departmen of Homeland Security may have been a meaningless gesture, and that protestations of interagency cooperation were disingenuous; (3) suggests that someone may actually have spotted the problems with employing someone as FEMA head without any qualifications other than English fluency.

makes assertions