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
And here where the fact that we've given over half a billion dollars to New York really plays a role, because New York has already made a lot of investments in the kinds of things which you'd expect to have as basic security.
The best principle is not only to fight the last battle, ... In July we talked a lot about subways. In September we talked a lot about hurricanes. We still need to talk about aviation, about avian flu.
We have to continue to use both low-tech and high-tech tools to assist our Border Patrol in patrolling this portion of terrain and protecting ourselves against people who want to sneak across.
That might be a model for some kind of data retention issue. It might be one that would say the government, instead of holding the data itself, will allow it to remain in the private sector, provided the private sector retains it for a period of time so we can ping against it.
And one of the things we did here was we put the maximum amount of money up front in those cities that were at the greater risk, but that doesn't mean that we keep rebuilding the same security over and over again.
We may have to force people to get together in terms of picking a particular type of technology and starting to build to that technology, as opposed to everybody exercising their right to buy their own system, you know, at will.
First, we did rank everybody by risk, and New York comes out number one.
I have to say, in honesty, patience will be required for everybody, ... Under the best circumstances, even in the best planning, you still confront the physical reality of a destructive storm.
The lesson is that when the storm hits, the best place to be is to be out of the path of the storm, ... There's plenty of notice about Rita.
And if we make the process political, if we start to make it personal, we're actually going to frustrate good public policy, in terms of managing this money.
I think that was a bad idea, and I directed it not to happen again,
I was very unhappy with the lack of situational awareness I had in the couple of days after Katrina. I never want to be in the position again where I don't have real eyes on the ground to tell me what is going on in no uncertain terms as opposed to waiting to get reports coming through the media or inconsistencies from the field.
We need to prepare the country for what's coming,
The message has gone out very clearly to everybody that we're going to be efficient, we're going to cut through red tape, but we're not going to cut though the laws,