Playing Politics with the Threat Level

The latest Bush Administration memoir, this one by the first Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, will soon come out with intimations of an effort by Administration heavyweights to raise the terrorism threat level on the eve of the 2004 election in an effort to arouse public fear and boost the President's re-election chances. Here you can see a synopsis in the New York Times, and go to the U.S. News & World Report "Washington Whisper" item that originally broke the story.

Sources say Ridge's soon-to-be-released book, The Test of our Times: America Under Siege and How We Can Be Safe Again, details strenuous efforts by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft to get Ridge to move the terror threat level up to "orange" the weekend before the November, 2004 election. This occurred despite unanimous opinion within the DHS that no intelligence existed to support such a finding, according to Ridge. He adds that the episode confirmed his inclination to resign immediately following the election rather than continue to be associated with those who played politics with the American people's security and fast and loose with the truth.

Ridge's book joins a growing list of tell-all revelations that have appeared from Bush Administration figures in the few months since he left office. Others have shed light on the case of the fired U.S. Attorneys, fabrications elucidated by former Press Secretary Scott McClellan and revelations that Ashcroft himself resisted pressure to approve unconstitutional actions from his sickbed in the hospital.

These confessions and accounts go far toward confirming what most on the left had been contending all along--that Bush and his team were a bunch of shamelessly manipulative liars who frequently subordinated constitutional and ethical standards to the exigencies of political gain. That is all to the good. But they also make me think about the tellers, too. It is well that the truth is finally getting out. It is something of note when men like Ridge and McClellan ostensibly give up insider positions of power as matters of conscience. But don't you wonder why they waited so long to come forward? They could have resigned and told their tales before the 2004 election. Perhaps a raft of these before the vote would have cost Bush a close election and saved the country from at least the last four years of W's misgovernance.

By coming clean, such figures act to assuage their consciences, add to the historical record and perhaps stand as cautionary examples to warn against the abuses of the future. But what they fell short of doing was acting with the complete integrity a democratic public must have in order to make an informed decision. The cold truth is that these men were more abettors than whistle blowers when it could have done the most good. And as a result, the whole nation suffered.