Ridge steps down as DHS head

Ridge steps down as DHS head    Tom Ridge is stepping down as the first U.S. secretary of homeland security. Ridge Tuesday became the seventh member of President Bush’s cabinet to resign since Bush won a second term last month.
   Ridge presided over the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, which required the integration of 22 agencies and 180,000 employees from multiple departments. The former governor of Pennsylvania was named by Bush to head the department created by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He initially helped to coordinate the government’s homeland defense efforts as homeland security advisor in the White House, where he also led efforts to develop the blueprint for the new department, which the Bush administration at first opposed.
   Ridge’s resignation was not a surprise. There were reports last summer, later confirmed by sources, that he intended to resign after the election because he was burned out from the demands of the job and wanted to return to a private sector job to help pay for his children's college education.
   Ridge’s legacy is one of color-coded alert levels, a consolidated immigration, customs and agriculture inspection force at the border, and the largest government reorganization in 50 years. No terrorist attacks have occurred on his watch.
   “I am confident that the terrorists are aware that from the curb to the cockpit we’ve got additional security measures that didn’t exist a couple years ago, that from port to port we do things differently with maritime security. I’m confident they know that the borders are more secure. I’m confident that they know that we’ve developed and are sharing information with the state and local law enforcement,” Ridge said at a press conference.
   Critics contend Ridge did O.K. with the resources he had, but that much more needs to be done in the area of immigration reform, intelligence sharing among agencies, aviation and maritime security.
   Asked if he thought the private sector had done its share to help invest in security to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure, Ridge responded: “We have done several things. We have developed a formal means of communication to every sector of our economy and we’re in frequent communication, almost daily communication, with one or all of them. We’ve made great progress across the board in developing a business case so that the kind of investment we expect them to make is viewed as precisely that, not as an expense, but as an investment that has a return that is — you can justify to the shareholders.
   “I think by engaging them on best practices in terms of securing, whether it’s a chemical facility, telecommunications site, and the like, and taking advantage of their professional expertise as we go about setting standards for security has been very successful to date.
   “Make no mistake about it, there are more sites to be secured and we will need to continue to engage the private sector, and they will need to accept the responsibility to continue to invest more, but to date, they have been very responsive. They have partnered with us on many — in many occasions, and they’ve continued to — they have made considerable investments. But they’re not done yet either, and my successor will continue to promote their continued investment in securing some of this critical infrastructure that fortunately is a condition of the world’s largest and most diverse and most successful economy,” he said.
   Ridge said he would stay on until Feb. 1 unless his successor is confirmed by the Senate before then. Possible candidates for the job with domestic security backgrounds could include Fran Townsend, the White House homeland security advisor who also has worked for the Coast Guard; Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner; Joe Allbaugh, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security in DHS; and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt, according to the Associated Press.
   Roger Cressey, an MSNBC analyst and former White House counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations, said on TV that Leavitt was active in the DHS Homeland Security Council when he was governor. FEMA is an agency within DHS and Allbaugh is a close political confidant of the president’s from his days as a campaign advisor to Bush during his run for governor in Texas in the 1990s. Bush has made a habit of appointing close political allies like Albaugh and Ridge to important positions in his administration.
   Of note, media reports did not mention Ridge’s top deputy, Adm. James Loy, as a possibility for the job