By KATHERINE PFLEGER
The Associated Press
2/4/2004, 1:08 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — Even as the spy community comes under fire for faulty intelligence in Iraq, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said he believes recent actions taken in response to terrorist threat information have averted an attack.
"Do I personally? Yes," Ridge said Wednesday when asked if a strike has been prevented. "But I don't know that we'll ever be able to confirm it. ... Proving an unknown is a difficult thing to do."
A regular consumer of intelligence information, Ridge said he wouldn't agree with the assessment that the intelligence on Iraq was almost all wrong, as the CIA's former top weapons inspector, David Kay, has said. But Ridge wouldn't go into detail.
Instead, Ridge said he is satisfied with the access and quality of intelligence he is getting from agencies that gather it, like the CIA, as well as the department's ability to use it to make decisions.
"It is a good, solid relationship with the intelligence-gathering community," he said. "Our relationship is satisfactory. From my point of view, whenever we have tasked them to the extent and ability that (they) can get back to us with information we requested — again depending on whether or not there is a source they could extract it from — they have."
"I think our relationship is solid and is getting better every day," he said.
In a 50 minute discussion with reporters, Ridge acknowledged there has been tension recently with foreign governments over the recent string of flight cancellations, beginning around Christmas. Raising a hand in the air, Ridge took some responsibility for the problem, saying because time was short, he initially went straight to European air carriers to discuss what to do — "Time was short," he said.
Ridge said he has since talked to his counterparts in France, Great Britain, Spain and Germany, and a better system now will allow simultaneous discussions with foreign airlines and sovereign governments. "I would feel the same way if British intelligence had a piece of information affecting a domestic carrier, and they didn't call us first," he said.
When asked if the U.S. government's insistence on sky marshals for some flights coming from overseas created the tension, Ridge said: "It may have contributed to it a bit."
"Asking these folks to put air marshals on at the last minute was something they had not ever anticipated, and now they can anticipate it," he later said.
At root, the problem may come down to disagreements among the U.S., Great Britain and France over the assessments on the threat information. Ridge said there "continues to be honest disagreement," though he thinks everyone now agrees —"with varying degrees of satisfaction" — that the right steps were taken.
"Cancellation is absolutely, positively the last resort," Ridge said. "It should always be in our back pocket."