Ridge announces resignation as homeland security secretary

WASHINGTON – Tom Ridge, who led federal efforts to strengthen domestic defenses after the… WASHINGTON – Tom Ridge, who led federal efforts to strengthen domestic defenses after the Sept. 11 attacks and gained fame for orange alerts and endorsing duct tape as an anti-terror device, said Thursday that he will step down as the nation’s first secretary of homeland security to spend more time with his family.

Ridge said he would stay on until Feb. 1 unless the Senate confirms his successor before then. The former Pennsylvania governor submitted a formal letter of resignation to President Bush Tuesday morning. His departure had been rumored for some time.

Among those being mentioned Tuesday as possible replacements were White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend; Asa Hutchinson, Ridge’s undersecretary for border and transportation security; Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who worked on building Iraq’s police force; retired Gen. Tommy Franks; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Leavitt; and former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Allbaugh.

Ridge is the seventh Bush Cabinet secretary to announce his departure as Bush prepares for a second four-year term.

Ridge, 59, said Tuesday that it was “time to give personal and family matters a higher priority” and added that he was looking forward to finally having time to attend his teenage son’s rugby games.

On Ridge’s watch, there has not been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. He said Tuesday that he could not say with certainty that the department’s efforts had prevented a strike by al-Qaida but suspected that they had.

“Am I fairly confident that we probably have? Yes, I am,” he said, adding, “but it’s still difficult to prove something unless I could point to a specific case.”

Ridge oversaw the largest government reorganization in more than half a century. The Department of Homeland Security was created in a rush following the terrorist attacks and was essentially a shotgun marriage of 22 different agencies and 180,000 employees dealing with immigration, customs, border protection, ports, aviation and emergency relief for natural disasters.

“I think we have accomplished a great deal in a short period of time,” Ridge said. “As I’ve said to the president, there will always be more work for us to do.”

Ridge’s most memorable legacy may well be the much-maligned color-coded terror-alert system that he put in place to warn Americans of the likelihood of an attack. The national threat level was ratcheted up to orange – or high – six times during Ridge’s tenure, and critics accused him of using it to boost Bush by inflaming fear. Ridge has bristled at such accusations, insisting, “We don’t do politics at homeland security.”

With Ridge at the helm of the fledgling department, the vast new bureaucracy suffered missteps and growing pains. Soon after coming aboard Ridge was mocked when he said that Americans could protect themselves against terrorist attack by stocking up on duct tape and plastic sheeting to help secure their homes.

A former Marine who served in Vietnam, Ridge is seen as a possible Republican presidential contender in 2008 or beyond.

Ridge befriended Bush when he worked for the failed presidential campaign of Bush’s father in 1980. A moderate Republican who supports abortion rights, he won election to Congress in 1982 from Erie, Pa., and was re-elected five times. He was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1995 and re-elected in 1999, then came to Washington just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks when Bush asked him to become the first-ever White House homeland-security adviser.

Overcoming early objections from Bush, Congress created the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 and Ridge became its first secretary.

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(c) 2004, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.