Rachel Maddow Interviews Tom Ridge

Rachel Maddow interviewed former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, earlier this week on The Rachel Maddow Show. The interview covered Ridge's recent book release, in which he seems to claim that he was pressured to raise the color-coded terror alert system in order to give President Bush's approval ratings a boost prior to the 2004 election. In this three part interview with Maddow, Ridge backtracks on these claims as he tries to "clarify" what he meant.

Ridge and Maddow also discuss the impact that the Department of Homeland Security had on the government's lack of response to the citizens of New Orleans during the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005 and how Ridge was very vocal in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002 and 2003. As you will see, Ridge is still very adamant that invading Iraq was the correct thing to do and that the failure was one of faulty intelligence. Maddow presses him on the Iraq War being a war of choice in which the evidence was fixed around a political policy, but Ridge is adamant that this was not the case. The interview concludes with one of the more interesting exchanges of all three segments.

It is also worthy to note that Maddow's style and temperament are top-notch and, as Ridge even states, this turns out to be a very good discussion that allows for an open exchange of views. Maddow does a good job in pressing Ridge on various points and while there is much more that I would have liked to have seen covered, she does a good job given the time constraints. Below are all three segments:

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Continued Revelations About the Past

It is being reported that in the soon-to-be-released book by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, he is states that he was pressured to raise the warning level on the color-coded terrorism scale prior to the 2004 election for political reasons. Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic:

The news this morning that former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge believed that President Bush and his top advisers manipulated the terror threat alert system for their political gain is really -- and it ought to be -- a major story. Ridge was in a position to know, for certain, whether this was the case. And though he's hinted at it before, he now says, in his soon-to-be-released book, that he was pressured into raising the alert level before the 2004 election. Let's see what Ridge actually writes before making too many conclusions.

Ben Smith at Politico adds:

An abuse so gross -- if Ridge is right -- shows, among other things, what a powerful influence on the all-important tracking polls terror alerts must have had. And it suggests that Obama's efforts to keep terror arrests out of the national news are good politics too.

I am sure this is not surprising news to many people, especially those who were claiming that this was happening at the time, but it is still worthy of note.

Another interesting piece of information that has come out, is that the CIA apparently hired the private mercenary firm Blackwater (now Xe) to help carry out political assassinations. From Democracy Now:

The New York Times is reporting the CIA hired the private military firm Blackwater as part of a secret program to assassinate top operatives of al-Qaeda. Executives from Blackwater helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The CIA spent several million dollars on the program, which the Times claims did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.

I, for one, am hoping that Jeremy Scahill can get some more details on Blackwater's involvement in this program.