Ridge: No Pressure to Raise Alerts

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge backpedaled on accusations made in his new book that Bush officials pressured him to raise terror alerts to boost the president’s approval ratings. In The Test of Our Times, which comes out Tuesday, Ridge says Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft urged him to raise the terror-alert level before 2004’s Election Day. “I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' " he writes in the book. In an interview, Ridge said “I was never pressured,” and that he doesn’t want to second-guess his colleagues. Ridge, who now heads a security consulting firm, also took time to hit the current administration on national security in the interview, saying Congress is lacking a sense of urgency about protecting the country.