Michael Chertoff Quotations

We are pleased to have the American Red Cross, which has long been a leader in emergency preparedness and response, co-sponsor National Preparedness Month 2005, ... The commitment of the American Red Cross and the members of National Preparedness Month Coalition are integral as we work to encourage all Americans to prepare for emergencies. As leaders in their communities, these organizations will help spread life saving information and move the entire nation toward a greater state of preparedness.

We're going to need more than just brute enforcement,

We're going to go back and look at all of this after-action, when we have time, but I've got to emphasize something: We are still in the middle of an emergency.

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.

We're going to make sure help is on the way immediately to those who need it,

We're going to have to go house to house in this city. We're going to have to check every single place to find people who may be alive and in need of assistance,

Unless it can be credibly established that a mobilizing Federal resource ... is not needed at the catastrophic incident venue, that resource deploys,

We face an extraordinary threat to our national security and physical safety of the American people of a character that, at least in my lifetime, we have never faced before,

We're racing the clock in terms of possible injury. We're racing the clock in terms of illness, and we're racing the clock to get them food and water.

We've got hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced, ... This is unprecedented in this country's history and it's going to call for the kind of relief effort which we've been able to mount overseas, and we're now going to have to mount at home.

We've got hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced,

We've seen them attack in London, for example; we've seen them attack in Spain; we've seen them attack elsewhere, so I think we have to operate on the assumption that they do have some capability and they certainly have the intent.

We're hiring as rapidly as we can, and we're prepared to bring all the resources.

There are people who have been sweltering in shelters, waiting for food and water,

making provisions for people in nursing homes or hospitals to get them out so they are out of harm's way and don't need to be rescued.

Searching Jane and Mary Doe for evidence beyond the scope of the warrant and without probable cause violated their clearly established 4th Amendment rights,

Second, there are two problems with respect to mobile homes in particular. One is we obviously don't want to put them in a flood plain, because if there's another flood, you're going to lose the mobile home.

So it's not meant to substitute for the trailers, but it's meant to recognize the fact that as we speak not everybody can or necessarily wants to get into trailers,

shocked people out of a bit of complacency.

Simply stated, our goal is to gain control of our borders,

She obviously has the confidence of the president, and that has a huge impact on her ability to influence the process,

Mike managed over 160 disasters during his tenure at FEMA, and his service in those disasters has been commended by many, ... He has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to the unprecedented challenge posed by Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans levee breach. He is a good man, and I personally appreciate his work and his commitment.

My judgment was that we had a battlefield commander, ... To go down there, I would have been doing Mike Brown's job.

One of the things we'll look at is why in the middle of this emerging crisis there was kind of a conflict on the information,

Of course, demand was very high, and demand outstripped supply,

New Orleans is of particular concern because much of that city lies below sea level,

Obviously, people feel strongly about their home communities and they tend to see their own risks to the exclusion of others. Our job is to balance.

Return every single illegal entrant -- no exceptions,

Nobody leaves a hotel without getting a full measure of three months of rental assistance. So no one has been evicted - no one who's eligible has been evicted from a hotel without getting a significant amount of money to find - to pay for their rent.

One of the first things we must do is retool FEMA and enhance this vital agency's capabilities so that it can fulfill its historic and critical mission of supporting response and recovery,

If we get a wild bird or even a domestic chicken that gets infected with avian flu, we're going to be able to deal with it, because we've got a lot of experience with that.

I have directed Mike Brown to return to administering FEMA nationally,

I don't endorse those views, ... I know the city was totally overwhelmed. My own view is I have to get my own house in order. That's what I'm focused on.

because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor.

Get yourself into that command center in Baton Rouge!

From my own experience, I don't endorse those views,

If an ultra-catastrophe occurs, there's going to be some harmful fall-out.

For those who wonder why it is difficult to get these supply and medical teams into place, the answer is, they are battling an ongoing dynamic problem with the water,

He has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to the unprecedented challenge posed by Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans levee breach,

We totally understand what it's like to be sitting on top of a roof or to be sitting in a shelter where it's hot, where you're worried about when you're going to be picked up, where you're thirsty, where you're hungry,

We're now starting to see the fruits of seeds that were harvested when we started talking about this strategy a year or so ago.

What I said was not that we didn't anticipate that there's a possibility the levees will break. What I said was, in this storm, what happened is, the storm passed and passed without the levees breaking on Monday. Tuesday morning, I opened newspapers and saw headlines that said 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet,' which surprised people. What surprised them was that the levee broke overnight and the next day and, in fact, collapsed. That was a surprise.

what I have uncovered in Ptech connects with some of the things that she has discovered. Sibel is not allowed to disclose content but she can ask me questions. I know some of the things that she mentioned there connect directly to what I discovered.

We are extremely pleased with the response of every element of the federal government (and) all of our federal partners have made to this terrible tragedy,

to ensure a work environment free of unlawful discrimination and retaliation.

He's a believer in the fact that a judge has a limited role to play and has a responsibility to play the role in an honest fashion ? that you're not supposed to substitute your personal judgments for what the law is.

going to be about as ugly a scene a you can imagine.

We may never know everybody who participated. But actually, I am encouraged by the fact that, as we have pulled together information that comes globally to us, we've filled in more and more pieces of the puzzle.

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.

We make sure there are assurances in place in general. Sufficient to satisfy us that the deal is appropriate from a national security standpoint.

guidance and efforts have been instrumental in balancing our need to preserve the integrity of our borders without sacrificing the free flow of commerce on which our nation and the global community depends.

Katrina was a crash course in things that worked well and didn't work well.

Just two weeks out from Hurricane Katrina, improvements in communication and coordination between levels of government were already evident, ... But that is only one step in ensuring that we identify the lessons learned from Katrina and make the necessary adjustments.

I think the American public is rightly distressed about a situation in which they feel we do not have proper control over our borders, ... We need to have a comprehensive solution and one that really will work.

I think that the lesson of this hurricane, which we will clearly look at as we go over an after-action evaluation, is going to be very valuable in moving forward. I mean, this was an ultra-catastrophe, but we have to be prepared even for ultra-catastrophes, even things that happen once in a lifetime and once in a generation. So, yes, we will be studying that.

It is going to be a very difficult process, I think the emotional toll is going to be substantial,

It is going to be an unhappy number,

It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine.

It is going to be about as ugly a scene as we've witnessed in this country, with the possible exception of 9/11,

It is going to be about as ugly a scene as we've witnessed in this country, ... I really want to tell people that we have got some tough days ahead of us.

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 we need to prepare the country for what's coming,

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 that was a bad idea, and I directed it not to happen again,

Last year, New York got $200 million. This year, we're going to give them $124 million under this particular program. But last year was an artificially elevated number to make up from the very low grant the year before.

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.

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.

Our role is not to repair the dikes. Our role is to step in if something happens.

Our goal at DHS is to completely eliminate the 'catch and release' enforcement problem, and return every single illegal entrant,

received little or no assistance from the United States.

People have got to take some responsibility for preparing themselves, ... That means you get yourself three days' worth of food, three days' worth of water; you get yourself flashlights, batteries, either a hand-crank radio or a battery-powered radio, a first-aid kit precisely because you know it's going to take 48 to 72 hours to be able to fully service everyone.

State and local authorities have the principal, first-line-of-response obligation, with respect to a disaster of this kind, ... Obviously, the law recognizes they can't do it themselves.

My own view is this, I've got to get my own house in order, ... I am not here to judge others. I did not have a problem with state and local officials.

mapping the entire border to determine exactly what the flow is, where we need to put resources.

I think it would be hugely, hugely difficult to do this,

managers and supervisors found responsible for violating civil rights or whistleblower protection laws will be disciplined accordingly.

We need more than brute enforcement, ... We need a temporary worker program as well.

We now know people need gas during emergencies and they have a responsibility - those people who run stations and ultimately those people who provide the fuel - have responsibility to hold up their end when a crisis comes.

That would be hugely, hugely difficult, and require an enormous expenditure of resources.

Mike Brown talked about the need to take seriously this hurricane ... It was difficult to know where on the Gulf Coast it was going to land.

Mike Brown has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to this unprecedented challenge. I appreciate his work, as does everybody here.

Michael Brown has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to this unprecedented challenge,

We need to prepare the country for what's coming. We are going to uncover people who died in their homes. It's going to be an ugly scene.

We need to prepare the country for what's coming ... we are going to uncover people who died hiding in the houses, maybe got caught in floods, it is going to be as ugly a scene as you can imagine,

We need to prepare the country for what's coming, ... We are going to uncover people who died hiding in the houses, maybe got caught in floods. It is going to be as ugly a scene as you can imagine.

We need to prepare the country for what's coming,

You can be assured that before a deal is approved we put safeguards in place, assurances in place, that make everybody comfortable that we are where we need to be from a national security viewpoint.

willingness to take on the vital task of leading FEMA during this challenging time.

We continue to search 24/7. We search by day we search by night,

Well, I think first of all there was a failure to have real, clear information at our disposal. There was a real lack of situational awareness. We didn't have the capabilities on the ground to give us real-time, accurate assessments of the physical condition of the city.

Well, I said in July before Katrina that we had a lot more work to do in preparedness. And I think that was borne out, obviously, a month later.

Well, I'm not excusing the fact that planning and preparedness was not where it should be. We've known for 20 years about this hurricane, this possibility of this kind of hurricane.

Well, I mean, Congress did originally set the formula for the state grants, and they guaranteed every state a minimum formula. So that was a congressional decision.

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.

We have to operate with a new level of cooperation and commitment with members of the international community,

We have to have seamless interaction with military forces, ... Mike Brown has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to this unprecedented challenge. I appreciate his work, as does everybody here.