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PrintFormer Pennsylvania Gov. and first Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge now is the president and CEO of Ridge Global LLC, an advisory corporation. He attended Harvard University on a scholarship, then went to Dickinson Law School. He was drafted into the Vietnam War and earned a Bronze Star. His book "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... and How We Can Be Safe Again" was published last year and garnered a lot of attention for what he considers a misunderstanding about politics and raising the alert before the presidential election. He will speak at the annual Traffic Club of Pittsburgh dinner Thursday at the Omni William Penn. For information, call 412-331-7151.
Did your time in Vietnam change your personality?
See the My experience in the military, which included training in the country for almost a year and then being an infantry solider, was something of which I'm particularly proud. To put it in summary fashion, I don't dwell on my experience as a soldier, but I do draw on it from time to time.
You were drafted like so many men at the time. Did you think "why now?" Weren't you in law school?
In retrospect I look back and say the Pentagon and how they conducted the war will always be subjected to criticism. But one criticism they'll never get is eliminating the deferral status to people who were in law school. I think most Americans think we have too many lawyers anyhow [laughs]. So it was a career interruption. I was surprised. I was disappointed, but also as I look back on the experience, hopefully it made me a better lawyer and just a better person and a better public servant.
Do you miss being in the loop the way you were when you held government office?
Oh, yes. First of all, I loved being governor. Six years, nine months and five days. It was a marvelous and extraordinary experience. Homeland Security was an entirely different operation. We wrote the job description after I said "yes" to the president. There was no national strategy. There was no department. There were a lot of things that made it the most challenging. There are two things I miss ... One, not knowing. I was briefed every morning, and I know a lot of things that most Americans wouldn't care to know. So I miss not knowing, and I really do miss the people that I worked with. From the governor's side, I miss effecting significant change and the people I worked with way back when.
As secretary of Homeland Security, did you ever feel you were still being kept out of the loop by the CIA and FBI? Did information flow freely or was there resentment?
At the outset, and I suspect even through today, but clearly at the outset when we built the department there was a clash of cultures. We felt they ought to be pushing information to us, and we spent a great deal of time pulling it out of them. ... It's still not a perfect information-sharing system. You can just flash-forward to the whole effort to build a national cyber security system and the same problems will still exist. There will be silos doing their different things, and they won't want to share information across federal government lines, and they certainly will be reluctant to share it with the private sector that should be their partners, as well as the state governments.
So much has been made of Chinese espionage, both cyber and old school. Do you think we are paying enough attention to the cyber side of it?
No. We are not paying enough attention. I don't believe America as a population understands the severity of the challenge. Cyber warfare is not in the future; it is going on right now. To give you an example, the Department of Defense had 55,000 attacks in 2008 and by halfway through '09 they had 45,000. Treasury will tell you about it. I mean, it's happening all the time. While we are starting to pay a little more attention, there is no national strategy. We haven't set priorities for policy or for funding, and a cyber war is going on. [Former national intelligence chief] Mike McConnell, who worked in both Republican and Democrat administrations, said, "If we were to fight a cyber war today we would probably lose." I agree with him.
How involved with cyber security is Ridge Global?
We do have some companies that are in that space, and we are beginning to expand our reach in that space. As a matter of fact, the individual who used to be on my advisory board to help me with some of the cyber security work, Howard Schmidt, was just tapped by President Obama to be his cyber security czar. So we certainly have an interest, and I think we have an ability to help.
Do you get many countries asking for your services?
We don't. We certainly have the capability to do so. We really focus in on business-to-business development. I've got a Rolodex that's pretty good -- full of experts from the days I worked at Homeland Security; also my days as governor.
Have the connections you made in government life been valuable in private life?
They're valuable because so many of them are personal, and I stay in touch as a matter of friendship with a lot of people. You know, some of our clients have some pretty complex problems that require a certain expertise. Because of friendships and professional relationships that I've developed over the years, I'm able to pull them in and marry them with capabilities I have within Ridge Global to provide almost a suite of services to different clients.
When you were named to run Homeland Security, did it concern you that you did not have a counterintelligence background?
That's a wonderful question because when it was announced that I was going to take that job there was quite a bit of concern, I would even say legitimate public concern, about that missing piece of the resume. But as I've learned all my life when you go into any job you better understand the value that you offer and what you know and what you don't know. And make sure you quickly fill the gaps in the areas of what you don't know with subject matter experts and people that can help you. I often give talks on leadership, and I like to refer to something Adlai Stevenson said: "Leaders need to be confident. If you think you look funny sitting on a horse, it will be pretty difficult to lead a calvary charge."
Where did you get your confidence?
I think you have to be comfortable with making decisions, and that comes with time. My first lessons came in the backseat of the car listening to my father. I learned a lot when I was a laborer working construction with a union card, and obviously I learned a lot in the military. So as the calendar flips and you grow older, hopefully you become more knowledgeable, and where you're working you become a more capable leader.
So making the tough decisions wasn't as tough?
It's always difficult. There are people around me who I care a lot about, who care a lot about me -- within several hours after I got the original phone call from President Bush said, "We don't think you should take the job. If something goes wrong, if there's another attack, you will be held accountable and you will be blamed." That just goes with accepting a position of responsibility. ...
What motivated you to write your book "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... and How We Can Be Safe Again"?
There were several reasons. First I thought it was important for the first secretary to chronicle in a general way the evolution of the department. The environment in which the department was built and how it had to operate both domestically and overseas and the challenges associated with building a department. I just wanted to tell that story. It also gave me a chance to answer many, many questions that were asked both publicly and privately after I left the office, and I wanted to chronicle, elevate and celebrate some of the individuals with whom I worked.
Were you prepared for the onslaught of questions over some of your "musings" in your book about politically motivated situations?
Oh, yeah. Well, unfortunately, controversy sells. My view from the outset was if you listen to other people's interpretation of the book, you've done neither the book, nor me, nor yourself justice. So when people started musing about was this relevant or that relevant, was it politically motivated? I remember picking up the phone and telling a reporter, "Did you read page such and such?" [They said,] "Well, no." So I said, "The next time you ask the question, make sure you read that. It will answer the question very clearly." So you are never prepared, but you'd better expect it.
Mackenzie Carpenter's video program, "Omnivore," is available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
