"It is a good, solid relationship with the intelligence-gathering community,'' he said. "Our relationship is satisfactory. From my point of view, whenever we have tasked them to the extent and ability that (they) can get back to us with information we requested -- again depending on whether or not there is a source they could extract it from -- they have.''
"I think our relationship is solid and is getting better every day,'' he said.
I'm sorry but what we have here is typical from a political appointee covering his hide. I'll bet the intelligence community are cringing at all the sound bites and bovine excrement coming from such a public outpouring by Ridge. By stating that they have 'averted an attack' but have nothing else to show for it such as detainees or weapons is so typical of a politician. They will continue to parade themselves for the media with such pathetic quotes for public consumption. He might as well go on air every day and hail his department as all conquering heros as they have averted an attack again. Hell, the are actually averting one right now as I type.
It just angers me to see these politicians talking absolute rubbish, trying to give the impression that they have actually done or are doing something when in fact most us who work in the industry know that it is little more than eye candy for the public. I for one do not want to wait until the next time there is a terrorist atrocity that hammers another nail in the coffin of our industry just because some egotistical politician in too far up his or her own backside to make decisions based on hard evidence and sound advice instead of vanity and @rse covering.
I just finished reading the book 'Catch me if you can' by Frank Abignale. Much better than the film and in a published interview at the end he is asked what he thinks about the current security regime since 9/11 and interestingly he too believes that profiling is the way to go... and that from someone who was an expert in gaining access to a flight deck, even if it was quite some time ago. Until we we get politicians who are not more interested in the number of sound bites they can get rather than making sure the job is done properly, I think we are setting ourselves up for another atrocity using an aircraft. It probably won't be anything we expect but with the obvious lack of co-operation between the various agencies as highlighted by the comments at the start of this post (I would expect the relationship between the various agencies to be 'excellent', not just 'satisfactory' by now. They've had over two years to get their acts together after all!) together with a politician who would rather highlight bovine excrement rather than just quietly get on with the job, we are likely to be just as surprised once again in the future!