Tom Ridge: I'm Not Second-Guessing Bush Terror Alerts

Tom Ridge's new book, The Test of Our Times, isn't even out yet and already the former Homeland Security chief is backing off some of its claims. In the book Ridge says that shortly before the 2004 election, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, in a "vigorous" discussion, pressured him to raise the national terror threat alert level after Osama bin Laden released a videotaped message, suggesting they did so for political reasons.

Ridge writes that @he rejected raising the level because bin Laden had released nearly 20 such tapes since 9/11 and the latest contained nothing suggesting an imminent threat.

"Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level, and was supported by Rumsfeld," he writes. "There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' "

Rumsfeld's and Ashcroft's argument, according to the book, is that President Bush's ratings tended to go up when the terror alert level increased. Ridge writes that even though he won the argument and the threat level wasn't raised, the incident prompted him to quit the Bush administration.

Not surprisingly, Rumsfeld, through a spokesperson, dismisses Ridge's claims as "nonsense."

Now, one day before the book's release, Ridge is back-peddling slightly. He tells Time, "I'm not second-guessing my colleagues." Rather, he says, he's simply having second thoughts about decisions made at the Cabinet level in the Bush White House. In the interview, he even goes so far as to say it was "wrong" to include the incident in the book.