The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How we Can Be Safe Again - Hardcover

Ridge, Tom; Bloom, Lary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312534876 ISBN 13: 9780312534875

Verlag: Thomas Dunne Books, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

When our nation called, Tom Ridge answered. Appointed by the President to head up domestic security, Ridge established the Department of Homeland Security. In this probing and surefooted memoir, Ridge takes us through the challenges he and his new department faced, including Anthrax scares and reports (both real and false alarms) of new Al-Qaeda operations sprouting up in the United States.

A “law and order” Republican who was on the shortlist to be John McCain’s running mate in 2008, Ridge writes with refreshing candor on both the successes and missteps of the DHS. He details the obstacles faced in his new post—often within the administration itself—as well as the failures of Congress to provide for critical homeland security needs, and the irresponsible use of terrorism by both parties to curry favors with voters. Ridge also reveals:

• How the DHS was pressured to connect homeland security to the international “war on terror”

• How Ridge effectively thwarted a plan to raise the national security alert just before the 2004 Election

• How Ridge had pushed for a plan (defeated because of turf wars) to integrate DHS and FEMA disaster management in New Orleans and other areas before Hurricane Katrina

Finally, Ridge offers a prescriptive look to the future, advocating ways that America may reaffirm its safety—including his provocative support for a national ID card program and for comprehensive immigration reform—without sacrificing personal liberty.

Television captures every word and every expression. I was reasonable to think that our enemies would look for any sign of weakness in the person who in a few days would be responsible for protecting America against them. At that moment, I experienced a royal flush of emotion—after all, I was leaving the state I loved, a loyal staff, many friendships developed over a lifetime, the frustration of work unfinished, to head into the unknown and the undoable. In normal times, I might have shed a tear at such thoughts. But I was determined not to do so as I said my farewell. If I needed any reminding, I glanced down at the note I had written for counsel.

“The bastards are watching.”

We can never guarantee we will be free from another attack. We must also understand that every day thousands and thousands of our fellow citizens work here and abroad to take us to a new level of readiness and security. For in the end, Americans do not live in fear. We live in freedom. And we will let no one take that freedom away.

—Tom Ridge, from THE TEST OF OUR TIMES

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The HON. TOM RIDGE became the first secretary of Homeland Security in 2001. The former congressman and governor of Pennsylvania is the president and CEO of Ridge Global, which consults on security, diplomacy, international relations, economic development, and other key issues. Ridge is based on Washington, D.C. LARY BLOOM co-wrote Letters From Nuremberg with Senator Christopher J. Dodd. He has written for The New York Times and Connecticut magazine.

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1

TO THE FIELDS OF SHANKSVILLE

Most people in counterterrorism were talking about the likelihood of a doomsday scenario involving germ warfare or nuclear weapons. We feared that something would happen on a terrifying scale, but not that it would be done with conventional tactics—hijacking—that is reminiscent of the 1970s.

—JULIETTE KAYYEM,

National Commission on Terrorism

On the morning of September 11, 2001, as governor of Pennsylvania, I was unaware of the drama playing out in the cloudless sky overhead. I did not know that the Pennsylvania State Police were looking for me. I was tending my garden, removing the dead stems and leaves from the daylilies, cannas, and roses in one of several raised beds I had built around our house in Erie, the working-class city of my youth. As always, whenever I escaped the capital in Harrisburg for home, I lost myself in the rocky soil and earthy details.

Three hundred miles northwest of the governor’s residence—where more than a full schedule awaited my return later in the day—I once again felt the gardener’s sense of renewal. Public service was in my blood. I loved being governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and still had much to accomplish before my second and final term ended. But the garden was another matter altogether: It was mine to create. There was nobody pulling on my coat sleeves and no political compromises in the doing, except the bargains forged with Mother Nature for suitable weather. I love the varieties and textures of plants and the cycle of garden life. They offer lessons and comfort—the planting, the blossoming, the withering away, the rebirth the following spring. In that cycle the garden mirrors the capacities of human beings. Indeed, I love the sense of optimism gardening inspires: If I plant in the spring, flowers will bloom through the summer.

Early that morning I had visited my mother at St. Vincent Hospital, where she was recovering from surgery. She suffered from a variety of ailments, but she remained a source of strength to me. No bigger than a minute—with ankle weights, coming in maybe at 105 pounds—Laura Ridge was never a complainer. When I brought jelly donuts to her room, I asked how she felt. Although eighty-one at the time and obviously frail, she quoted in answer the classic American folk tune: "The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be."

I’d return to the hospital, I thought, once my gardening duties were completed, and still have plenty of time before the state plane, a King Air turboprop, would be sent from the capital to take me back to Harrisburg. Once there, I’d get back to the business of governing. The last thing on my mind was terrorism.

What I didn’t know that morning was plenty. The state police called the troopers assigned to me, and they gave me the startling, incomprehensible news that two commercial airplanes had flown into the Twin Towers in New York City.

I was pulling into my driveway at the time. I went into the house, turned on the television in the master bedroom, and picked up the phone. I talked to Mark Campbell, my chief of staff, as I watched horrifying images repeated over and over: passenger jets were crashing into office towers, smoke was billowing, unimaginable horrors were occurring inside.

"What do you know?" he asked.

"I know what you know," I replied. Which was very little beyond what I was watching through the lenses of network cameras.

I said, "I don’t know if there are more planes in the air and other attacks coming." I thought, well, Pennsylvania has its own share of tall buildings and historic structures, and who the hell knows where this enemy, whoever it was, could be headed. I asked Campbell to ramp up operations at the headquarters of the state’s emergency operations center outside of Harrisburg. When I hung up, I watched a report from the Pentagon by NBC correspondent Jim Miklashevski. He was reviewing what the Department of Defense knew about what had happened in Manhattan. Suddenly, there was a loud explosion behind him. He ended his report, saying he needed to find out what had happened. It was, of course, the third civilian airplane turned into a missile—a direct hit on America’s military headquarters. And soon there would be a fourth, the one that would hit, quite literally, home.

In the time that has passed since that day, I have often pictured myself as a passenger in the cabin of United Airlines Flight 93. With the chances of survival slim to none, I have wondered what I would have done.

The sky above Pennsylvania was in the typical flight plan of United 93. It had originated at New Jersey’s Newark Airport, then flown due west toward San Francisco en route to its ultimate destination, Tokyo. The Boeing 757-200 had rolled down the runway at 8:42 A.M., about twenty-five minutes later than usual. That the flight was late taking off due to heavy airport congestion meant that its fate, though tragic, would differ from that of the three other passenger jets hijacked that morning by a well-rehearsed team of nineteen men intent on killing themselves while carrying out their stunning assault on America.

It appeared to air traffic controllers that United 93 was flying according to plan until 9:28 A.M., near the Ohio border, when the craft unaccountably went into a brief descent—seven hundred feet—and then: "Mayday" and "Hey, get out of here! Get out of here! Get out of here!" was heard and recorded at the FAA’s Cleveland Center facility.

By that point, it was clear that our country was being attacked by an enemy that used a far different strategy than any we had ever faced or even contemplated. This enemy hadn’t gone to the trouble of outfitting itself with ground troops equipped with mortars and supported by tanks, helicopters, and an aircraft carrier battle group. They had the ingenious and horrific idea of turning passenger planes, filled with humanity and thousands of gallons of jet fuel, into weapons of mass destruction.

By 9:15 A.M. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Flight 175, both out of Boston, had already hit the upper floors of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, and another plane, American Flight 77, out of Washington Dulles International Airport, was headed for the Pentagon. The attack had by then brought destruction, death, and a state of national shock on a scale that immediately invited comparisons to that "date which will live in infamy," December 7, 1941.

Passengers on those three planes had been unaware that the hijackings were intended for a much different purpose than those they’d read about or seen on the news. Since the 1960s, when the phenomenon began with flights being diverted to Cuba, hijacking was used primarily as a bargaining tool. The hijackers held those aboard as hostages for ransom to secure the release of comrades held in prison, or other similar purposes. That was the era before the widespread phenomenon of the suicide bomber.

But to passengers aboard United 93, it appeared that a suicide bomber was aboard. Of the four men seated in the first-class section—Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Nami, Ahmad al-Haznawi, and Ziad Jarrah—who conspired to take over the cockpit by using their box cutters and knives, one also had a device strapped to his body. From the cockpit, Jarrah, the native of Lebanon who sat in the pilot’s seat after the attack on the cockpit crew, told the thirty-seven passengers over the intercom, "Ladies and gentleman, ladies and gentlemen. Hear the captain. Please sit down, keep remaining seating. We have a bomb on board, so sit." The other three hijackers on United 93—as were most of the nineteen involved that morning—were Saudi Arabians. But to the passengers...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Thomas Dunne Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312534876
• ISBN 13: 9780312534875
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar