Intelligence gathering at seaside town

THE seaside town of Dungarvan will play host to a major international intelligence conference in July which will feature a speech from a former US secretary of homeland security.

Tom Ridge, who is also the 43rd governor of Pennsylvania, will address the event organised by the American-based Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies.

That college has held advanced training courses for senior US FBI personnel since the September 2001 terror attacks.

According to its website, Mercyhurst College will be “bringing together leading practitioners from across the US and Europe to share best practices in intelligence analysis”.

There are plans for the Dungarvan conference to become an annual event.

This year the college sent six faculty and 26students to Dungarvan to establish a satellite campus, and Dungarvan shares a sister city relationship with the city of Erie in Pennsylvania where Mercyhurst is based.

Tom Ridge was appointed head of the Office of Homeland Security by former president George W Bush in 2001 and in 2004 was named in a lawsuit filed against a number of senior US officials, including then-attorney general John Ashcroft, by a Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, who said he had been tortured in Syria.

Ridge quit his position in 2004, claiming afterwards that he successfully fought an effort by senior Bush administration officials to raise America’s terror alert level in the days before the 2004 presidential election.

This week Mr Ridge said of an attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up a plane over Detroit at Christmas: “Why didn’t they yank his visa and put him on the ‘no-fly’ list? We need to accept the notion to act quickly.

“Terrorism – it’s a war we can win if we’re patient, resilient, resolute and focused.”