Playing politics with terror: Tom Ridge used to say he never played politics with the terror alert levels. But now that he's no longer the head of Homeland Security, guess who he says was making the decisions? Politicians. He says administration officials overruled his opposition to elevating the threat level.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'"