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
The world is not going to stop moving because we are very focused on Katrina. Part of the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security is to deal with all hazards, everything that's out there, and to continue to be able to keep our eye on everything that may happen in the future,
Employers and workers alike should be on notice that the status quo has changed ... these enforcement actions demonstrate that this department has no patience for employers who tolerate or perpetuate a shadow economy.
As you know, the president has established the 'White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina,
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.
By the end of this year our department anticipates issuing a new inexpensive secure travel card for land border crossings.
Our role is not to repair the dikes. Our role is to step in if something happens.
The second is there are some communities that we thought originally would take mobile homes that have decided they don't want them. And we're not going to cram mobile homes down the throats of communities in Louisiana and the Gulf - and other parts of the Gulf Coast.
I'm not going to judge others, ... I did not have a problem dealing with state and local officials.
The whole point of this program is let people decide the fate of their own lives, ... And I think that avoids the whole issue of someone coming from outside and saying, 'You must do this' or 'You must do that.'
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,
I want to have the people who are present here on the ground
Katrina was a crash course in things that worked well and didn't work well.
The tenor of his discussions on Monday . . . was, this was bad, but it could have been worse, ... There was not a report to me until the following morning that there was a significant breach of the 17th Street levee.
Get yourself into that command center in Baton Rouge!