Thomas Joseph Ridge

Thomas Joseph Ridge (born August 26, 1945) is an American politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives (1983–1995), Governor of Pennsylvania (1995–2001), Assistant to the President for Homeland Security (2001–2003), and the first United States Secretary of Homeland Security (2003–2005). Since re-entering the private sector, Ridge has served on the boards of The Home Depot and The Hershey Company and as a senior advisor to Deloitte & Touche, and TechRadium. Ridge is also the founder and CEO of Ridge Global, LLC, a Washington, D.C. based security consulting firm. Ridge spent time campaigning with fellow Republican, Senator John McCain during his 2008 bid for the presidency and was believed by some to have been in the short list of potential running mates.More recently, he has accussed the then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General Ashcroft of pressuring him to raise the terror alert level, running up to the 2004 elections. In his memoir, he admits that both men advised him, based upon information they had received, to raise the terror alert level. But, he "felt that it was policitically motivated". Thus, ignoring key advice from the President's cabinet members based "upon a feeling that the war in Iraq was being politically turned into a war on terror....