9-18-06, 8:24 a.m.

Although our casual contacts as students at Harvard in the 1960s never amounted to a friendship, Tom, they did give me a sense of your character.

We came to Harvard when JFK was still president, the torch liberty had been passed ('the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God'), and the idealism of our generation was being expressed in the Peace Corps, in the civil rights movement, and at times at our dining room tables.

It was over dinner conversation – since you and I, being not only members of the same class but also residents of Quincy House, ate our meals in the same dining rooms for four years-that I got my sense of you as an earnest young man, not posing a sophisticated cynic like some of our classmates, who took seriously the ideals of America.

Did I see you correctly then, Tom?

It is, in any event, with that image of you in mind that I write to you now. For I believe that you are in a unique position at this historical moment to help America come into better alignment with the ideals you and I both cherished back then.

There's an issue on which I wish to ask you to speak out. It's the Bush administration's use of 'the war on terror' for its own political advantage.

As you doubtless know, suspicions about this 'fear-mongering' have been around for some time, but they have lately been increasing in intensity.

Just weeks ago, on his MSNBC program, Countdown, Keith Olbermann laid out a timeline that painted a suggestive and disturbing picture. Olbermann delineated a highly suspicious correlation between those times that the Bush administration faced political difficulties (and thus would have wanted to change the public's focus) and those times when a terror-related announcement was made that changed the headlines and usually lifted the administration's poll numbers.

And then there was the recent, much-publicized bust of an alleged terrorist plot in Great Britain. Even as the American people were being re-awakened to fears of terrorists attacking our air travel, reports were widespread that the Bush administration had pressured the British to make the arrests precipitously, well before the British investigators themselves felt that the time was right.

No plausible explanation has been offered as to why the Bush administration was so eager for the arrests to be made immediately despite the now-evident fact that there was no immediate threat of an attack and despite the danger that premature arrests might jeopardize a successful prosecution. This failure to offer some legitimate reason clearly suggests the possibility of an illegitimate reason, such as how the 'terrorist plot' story could serve to overshadow the extraordinary defeat of Joe Lieberman by his own party of for being too supportive of the Bush administration and of its war in Iraq.

Surely you'll agree, or at least the young Tom Ridge I thought I knew would have agreed: it would be hard to find words too harsh to describe the perfidy of leadership that deliberately played politics with such vital matters of national security. How terrible it would be for a president of the United States to evoke and cultivate fear in the American people-not to serve the people's needs but to serve his own at their expense.

But while many Americans harbor such suspicions of this president and his administration fear-mongering about the 'war on terror' to increase their own power, almost half of the country continues to be swayed whenever the Bush administration plays the terror card, hypnotized by the fear intentionally evoked by those declaring themselves to be the people's only possible protectors.

If the trust of Bush supporters is being betrayed, their knowing of this betrayal would be a matter of urgent national importance. But people who still turn to the Bush administration for protection are not going to listen to Bush's critics. In this deeply polarized society, such critics have long since been dismissed by the president's supporters as 'Bush-bashers.'

But they would listen to you.

So I call upon you to come forward and tell the country what you witnessed during your tenure as this president's head of Homeland Security.

Were the movements to higher states of alert announced by your Department ever politically motivated?

One of your public statements since you left office certainly certain suggests you saw something amiss in that system of public warnings. 'More often than not,' you've been quoted as saying, 'we were the least inclined to raise [the threat level]. 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?''

But your saying that you didn't see a good reason for the alert is not the same as your telling the country about a perceptible bad reason behind it. So, if you told us all you know, would the full truth confirm to the country that the Bush people used the raising of the threat level for their own political purposes?

How about the threat system itself: was it legitimate? After all, as the American people discovered, there wasn't really anything that the ordinary citizen could do with the information that the threat had become greater, more immediate. In fact, we were told not to stop going about our ordinary business. And there really was no way that we could rally to protect the country better.

Was the only point of that whole color-coded threat system just to provide the administration with a mechanism to increase the fear of the citizenry –a fear that, though useless for our national security, might prove politically useful for the Bush administration?

You were there. There is an urgent need for America to hear what you witnessed.

Even now, as the mid-term elections approach, the president's strategy of heightening our fear of terrorism, while claiming we need him to protect us, is on full display.

President Bush is using this strategy to pressure Congress to legitimize his use of interrogation methods that are understood around the world to be torture, methods forbidden by the Geneva Conventions which as part of a ratified treaty are, according to our Constitution, the law of the land. This, despite the fact that the U.S. military has itself determined that statements elicited by such methods are unreliable.

He is also using this strategy to pressure Congress to legitimize his conduct of warrantless surveillance, despite the finding by a federal judge (and the American Bar Association) that such a practice is unconstitutional. This, despite the fact that the administration has offered no plausible arguments as to why it could not both protect us and obey the law and the Constitution.

'Trust us' has been this administration's continual response to accusations that it is violating the restraints the Constitution places on the executive branch, weakening the system of checks and balances that have protected the American people from tyranny for more than two hundred years.

If you know that they do not deserve our trust, if you know that they have misused these threats for their own political purposes, the American people need for you to come forward and tell what you know.

Of course we need to be protected against external enemies. But as our Founding Fathers understood, what we most need to be protected against is the rise of tyranny from within.

I can imagine, Tom, that even if you do know something that the rest of the country should hear, you might feel inhibited from coming forward by a sense of loyalty-loyalty to your party and loyalty to the president who appointed you.

But if this president has indeed done what many suspect, you can owe such a president no loyalty. If you know that this administration routinely puts their quest for power ahead of service to the nation, then it is your duty to put loyalty to America ahead of any other loyalty.

As Colin Powell has just come forward to call attention –albeit too tactfully- to the truth that the administration is trying to obscure (that its position represents an assault on the Geneva Conventions against torture), even saying that 'the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,' so also should you help the American people to understand the destructive and dangerous things that are being done in the name of that 'war.'

I can sympathize, Tom, if you're afraid of retaliation –from people who shamelessly use character assassination against whistle-blowers-for your telling a truth that hurts your party. But the possibility of such a political cost surely would be an acceptable risk to a man who was awarded a medal for 'gallantry' in Vietnam.

We have entered in our sixties now, you and I and the rest of the class of 1967. We've still got productive years left, but this is hardly a time –if ever there is one-to put ambitions ahead of one's principles and ideals. It's time to think of one's legacy.

You have served your country in many ways in the past almost forty years. But I would wager that nothing you have done so far would serve your country better than coming forward now and speaking plainly to the American people about what you have witnessed about this administration's uses and abuses of this 'war on terror.'

-Andrew Bard Schmookler is the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America?s Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states. Schmookler can be reached at

From