Is Tom Ridge on Freedom Crack?

The routine got old pretty quick. By the time Bush's poll numbers started to sink in late May, it wasn't a surprise when John Ashcroft held a press conference to remind people about terrorism, pointing to a shiny new "most wanted" list of old suspects. Ditto when the Democratic convention was getting underway, about to suck the national media into its vortex, and Dept. of Homeland Security Sec. Tom Ridge popped up against the Boston skyline, reminding people that these were dangerous times. And when, three hours before Kerry's acceptance speech, Pakistan announced the capture of an al Qaeda operative, the timing was not only unremarkable, it was expected.

If anyone grumbled about the fishy timing, Bush administration officials feigned disbelief that anyone could even think they'd ever play politics with terror. And until last week, most people seemed eager to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Then on Sunday, Aug. 1, Tom Ridge announced one clumsy terror warning too many, one that strained the public's trust and sparked a long overdue reassessment of the whole alert system. When it came out that the threat level had been raised largely because of three- and four-year-old information-and that this little detail was consciously left out of Ridge's dramatic Aug. 1 announcement-New Yorkers had every reason to be pissed off. Even if raising the threat level turns out to have been justified, it is an outrage that Ridge ladled out information in misleading spoonfuls. (It was almost worth it, though, to see the public regain its natural powers of cynicism.)

If the story had ended here, it would have been bad enough. It won't be a good thing if people start to view terror alerts with all the urgency of American Heart Association warnings about sodium. One new Time poll finds that more than a third of Americans now believe the Bush administration would use terror warnings for its own political gain.

But the story didn't end there. Last Monday came the news that while scrambling to cover its ass in the flap over the warning, the Bush administration deliberately exposed an undercover al Qaeda mole who was providing authorities with key leads to nab the terrorist group's top leadership. According to MSNBC, Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, the suspect whose computer information led to the Aug. 1 alert, "had been actively cooperating with intelligence agents to help catch al-Qaeda operatives."

What is Tom Ridge's budget again? And does this man belong anywhere along the front lines of the nation's defense?

The Daily News reported on Aug. 7 that "British and Pakistani intelligence officials are furious" with the Bush administration "for unmasking their super spy-apparently to justify the orange alert-and for naming the other captured terrorist suspects." According to the News, Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat "expressed dismay the trap they had hoped would lead to the capture of other top Al Qaeda leaders, possibly even Osama Bin Laden, was sprung too soon."

Tim Ripley, security expert for Jane's Defense publications, told the Center for American Progress, "The whole thing smacks of either incompetence or worse. You have to ask: what are they doing compromising a deep mole within al Qaeda, when it's so difficult to get these guys in there in the first place? It goes against all the rules of counter-espionage [and] counter-terrorism."

To recap: The Bush administration issues a string of suspiciously timed terror warnings. It finally gets called out after raising the threat level without being fully honest about why it is doing so. Then, in defending itself from charges of politicizing the alerts, it commits the biggest bonehead move in the fight against al Qaeda since allowing bin Laden to cut through the Khyber Pass.

Until they make some high-level personnel changes, maybe it's time for the Dept. of Homeland Security to stop trying to help out so much.