Tom Ridge on terror alerts

In an article for USA Today, former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge asserted that the color-coded terror alerts were raised against his wishes on many occasions. This raises the issue of why the alerts were raised when Ridge believed the intelligence did not justify it.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'"