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
deeply and personally engaged in the process from before the hurricane.
Speed was of the essence when the hurricane hit,
Our department must drive improvement with a sense of urgency. . . . We as a department must be nimble and decisive, ... We will be straightforward. If something goes wrong, we will not only acknowledge it, we will correct it.
I don't think there's a lack of a sense of urgency,
As long as the president wants me to continue to do that work and thinks I can make a contribution, I'm going to stay at my post.
including a permanent deputy director to augment the resources available to assist with FEMA's vital mission.
last summer FEMA, who reports to you, and the LSU Hurricane Center, and local and state officials did a simulated Hurricane Pam in which the levees broke. ... Thousands drowned.
This 30-minute seating rule was a sensible measure when first applied, ... Now, almost four years later, significantly enhanced layers of security ranging from hardened cockpit doors to air marshals make it reasonable to eliminate this requirement.
It's really all hands on deck to deal with this storm,
I think we have discovered over the last few days that with all the tremendous effort using the existing resources and the traditional frameworks of the National Guard, the unusual set of challenges of conducting a massive evacuation in the context of a still dangerous flood requires us to basically break the traditional model and create a new model -- one for what you might call kind of an ultracatastrophe,
As we improve security, we ought to have the ability to begin to manage the risk by looking to communities that haven't gotten the help.
I define control to mean that we will have an extremely high probability of detecting, responding to and interdicting illegal crossings of our borders.
FEMA is moving supplies and equipment into the hardest hit areas as quickly as possible,
This practice acts as an enticement for additional border crossers, ... It's unacceptable.