Tom Ridge Time Quotations

I think for a long time we thought we were 'fortress America' and that we were impenetrable. Maybe in our heart of hearts we knew sooner or later that it was going to happen, ... But to take a look at the president and extraordinary vice president ... I couldn't think of a better team at a tougher time to be leading America, so I'm optimistic about it.

Time will tell if we can directly link him to a specific organization or not,

that those who would do us harm may choose that date or any time around the commemorative period to do us harm again.

An emergency is not the time to plan; it's the time to react, so be informed, ... The actions you would take in a conventional attack may be counterproductive if you took them in response to a different kind of attack.

Anybody that's spent any time combating terrorists ... will tell you that being old doesn't necessarily mean being irrelevant, ... Good intelligence can be appropriate, no matter how old it is.

We are working with the pilots' association in Great Britain and other foreign carriers, ... We hope to convince them in time that, on targeted flights, the use of well-trained air marshals adds another level of security for international travel.

Some people have questioned, 'well, you put us on a general alert a couple of weeks ago and nothing happened,' ... This war on terrorism is going to continue for an indefinite period of time, and from time to time we may issue the same general alert again.

We don't want to broadcast to everybody where we're going to be doing this, but those areas and elements within the private sector, they have already been contacted and they understand that for the time being we want to maintain a similar level of security,

We do recommend that individuals and families in the days ahead take some time to prepare for emergency,

This is the right move at the right time for the right reasons,

God forbid, there may come a time when the local authorities or national authorities will tell you that you've got to use them. But for the time being, we just don't want folks sealing up their doors or sealing up their windows,

They tell us that avoiding panic and confusion in a crisis helps them do their jobs better. So when you protect yourself, you're protecting your community, and it's one less concern that the first responders have at the time of an incident,

When our incident management team and our coordination center was notified (of the explosion), within in a very short period of time ... we knew what was going on at the local (and) state level, ... We engaged immediately in conversations with the Coast Guard, the EPA, the Health and Human Services.

For the first time ever, this international effort will establish one world standard for ship and port security,