Michael Chertoff
Michael Chertoff
Michael Chertoffis an American attorney who was the second United States Secretary of Homeland Security under Presidents George W. Bush andBarack Obama, and co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act. He previously served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as a federal prosecutor, and as Assistant U.S. Attorney General. He succeeded Tom Ridge as United States Secretary of Homeland Security on February 15, 2005...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth28 November 1953
CountryUnited States of America
We need more than brute enforcement, ... We need a temporary worker program as well.
We now know people need gas during emergencies and they have a responsibility - those people who run stations and ultimately those people who provide the fuel - have responsibility to hold up their end when a crisis comes.
Well, I think first of all there was a failure to have real, clear information at our disposal. There was a real lack of situational awareness. We didn't have the capabilities on the ground to give us real-time, accurate assessments of the physical condition of the city.
Well, I said in July before Katrina that we had a lot more work to do in preparedness. And I think that was borne out, obviously, a month later.
Well, I'm not excusing the fact that planning and preparedness was not where it should be. We've known for 20 years about this hurricane, this possibility of this kind of hurricane.
Well, I mean, Congress did originally set the formula for the state grants, and they guaranteed every state a minimum formula. So that was a congressional decision.
We have to operate with a new level of cooperation and commitment with members of the international community,
I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers, and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.
I'll tell you something I said a month ago before this (Katrina) happened. I said that I thought we need to build a preparedness capacity going forward that we have not yet succeeded in doing.
I'll tell you something I said a month ago before this (Katrina) happened,
I knew I became more involved in operational matters than I would normally expect to be or want to be, given the fact that I had a battlefield commander on the ground, ... I am not a hurricane expert. I've got to rely on people to execute the details of the plan.
I'm kind of amazed you can write a report in which you reach your conclusions before you actually speak to the people who were involved in the decision-making process. It's kind of jumping to conclusions before the facts were gathered.
But I think the bottom line right now is to take the constructive criticism and use that to build toward, as I say, the hurricane season that is 100 days away. And we don't have a lot of time to waste before we start to address that next set of challenges.
If there are contracts that turn out to be not properly cost effective or inappropriate in some other way, we can redo the contracts; we can renegotiate those contracts,