Tom Ridge acknowledged that the post 9/11 terror alerts were often based on "flimsy evidence"

Tom Ridge's Mea Culpa:: "The Code Orange Terror Alerts were based on Fake Intelligence | by Michel Chossudovsky | www.globalresearch.ca 12 May 2005 | The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/505A.html

"If we simply go to red ... it basically shuts down the country,"(Tom Ridge) [meaning that civilian government bodies would be closed down and taken over by an Emergency Administration.]
"What a lot of Americans suspected all along turns out to be true. The color-coded alert system for terrorist attacks was a fraud." (www.North.Jersey.com )

Mea Culpa

After leaving his position at Homeland Security, Tom Ridge acknowledged that the post 9/11 terror alerts were often based on "flimsy evidence" and that he had been pressured by the CIA to raise the threat level:

The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level… Ridge [said] .he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it…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?' " (USA Today , 10 May 2005)

A review of the three high profile code orange terror alerts confirms in all three cases that the intelligence had been fabricated.

1. February 7, 2003, Two days after Colin Powell's Feb 5 presentation to the UN Security Council, in the month prior to the invasion of Iraq,
2. December 21, Christmas 2003
3. July 29th 2004, on the same day as John Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. The code orange alert served to galvanize US public opinion in favor of Bush's "war on terrorism" in the months leading up to the November 2004 elections.

In all three cases, Tom Ridge's warnings on the nature of the threat were categorical.The official announcements by the Homeland Security Department had dispelled any lingering doubts regarding the threat level:

"the risk [during the Christmas period] is perhaps greater now than at any point since September 11, 2001;"
"indications that [the] near-term attacks ... will either rival or exceed the [9/11] attacks".
"And it's pretty clear that the nation's capital and New York city would be on any list..."

Compare these pronouncements to Ridge's May 10 statement where he admits that the evidence was flimsy. ...