by Robert Igoe

Created on: February 11, 2009

WASHINGTON - While the road to organizing 22 agencies and 180,000 employees to work together for the same goal was an arduous, thankless and often frustrating one, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge says he leaves the post with confidence in its future and pride in its progress.

Ridge, who leaves office on February 1 (2005), held a conference call with several Pennsylvania reporters on Tuesday to discuss his term as Homeland Security secretary and director. He said that while much more work still needs to be done, he is pleased at the progress the department has made in its first two years of existance.

For Ridge, who resigned as Pennsylvania Governor and took over as the nation's first Director of Homeland Security in 2001, then as the first Secretary of Homeland Security when Congress approved it as part of the Cabinet in 2003, the next goal of the department is to further upgrade its information sharing and gathering ability.

"Our overall mission has been to prevent, deter and detect an attack, and if one occurs, to be able to respond to it and recover as soon as possible," he said. "We will never be finished refining what we've done. Do we get it all immediately when we want it? No. Are we getting more than we have ever been able to get before? Yes. Are there days we go back to the field units when we say we should have had this information last night as opposed to this morning? Yes. But the bottom line is that we've made great improvement, but that's a process that will continue as long as this department exists and this threat exists."

Ridge said he wants to see that network expanded to incorporate as many federal, state and local agencies as possible. Ridge said his creation of the color-coded terror alert system was designed primarily to do that. On an operational level, Ridge called the system a success and preferable to having no system or a system that only communicates warnings to law enforcement, though he says the general public may not understand it to his satisfaction.

"It is a very good system and law enforcement and security personnel understand the system," he said. "I do think we need to do a better job of explaining the system to the media or the general public."

Ridge fielded questions about Pennsylvania, including being asked for a response to current Governor Ed Rendell's performace. Ridge would not critique Rendell directly, but said he did not approve of Rendell's plan to introduce slot machines in Pennsylvania to help fund property

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>