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're going to make sure that victims of this disaster, whatever their economic circumstances, get the necessary financial assistance to ensure that they can obtain a temporary residence for the time being, ... These programs have been designed to give families the maximum amount of flexibility and freedom to decide where they want to relocate and what they want to do over the next few months.
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.'
We need more than brute enforcement, ... We need a temporary worker program as well.
And I have to say, I agree with some of the criticisms that some have made about that state program which allocates the grant money on a very rigid formula all across the country, with a certain percentage to each state.
The DHS programs supporting these teams already possess their own communications and aerial surveillance capabilities, such as helicopters and P-3 aircraft, ... Once in position, the teams will be able to relay up-to-the-minute, dependable information on which authorities could act confidently.
I think we're going to be ready when it does hit land,
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,
I think we need to prepare the country for what's coming, ... What's going to happen when we de-water and remove the water from New Orleans is we're going to uncover people who died, maybe hiding in houses, got caught by the flood, people whose remains are going to be found in the streets. . . . It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine.
I think that that predication unhappily turned out to be correct and one of the things I said was we're racing the clock. Unfortunately, the hurricane beat us,
I think there's a strong argument that it ought not to be located in downtown Washington because of the desire to have some distance, you know, between ourselves and some other buildings,
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.
We can't be in the position any longer where we are paying the burden and bearing the burden for countries that won't cooperate with us and take their own citizens back.
We've got the adequate personnel now who are able to make sure that we have a comprehensive evacuation effort.
Our role is not to repair the dikes. Our role is to step in if something happens.