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
mapping the entire border to determine exactly what the flow is, where we need to put resources.
There are a lot of things that didn't work well. We are not where we need to be as a nation in the area of preparedness.
While it is very important to focus an enormous amount of attention and effort on what is going on here, we can't afford to let our guard down in respect to other threats that might happen,
We need to build that capability in FEMA,
We will have time to go back and do an after-action report, but the time right now is to look at what the enormous tasks ahead are, ... Meet the Press.
We are emphatically behind the idea that we must in this country be full partners with the rest of the world in a robust and free-flowing pattern of travel and trade.
We've certainly learned a lot of lessons from Katrina, from Rita. Rita was better than Katrina. We're doing a better job planning. We're closer - more closely aligned with the Department of Defense. These things would be positive things if we were to have another attack.
We offered to move him to another office far away from the FEMA building, where he could do no harm, ... We told him that he would have a nice desk, a telephone and a secretary, and that he could spend all day rewriting his resume.
We owe the American people a full accounting from all levels of government concerning what went right and what went wrong with the initial Katrina response,
We urge all Americans to take some simple steps to prepare for emergencies, including getting an emergency supply kit, making a family emergency plan and learning more about how to respond to emergencies that could affect your area,
The fact of the matter is we have learned some lessons, we've listened to some of the critics, and where there is merit to some of those observations, we've incorporated changes to take account of those criticisms.
What it means is that a lot of communities were working from a very low base. They either had very small grants the prior year or even no grants.
There are many things that did not work well with the response,
Threats do not begin or end in a single country, ... must focus on common strategies and common systems of protection.