Stephen Flynn Quotations

With no debate in Congress or directive from the White House, the Pentagon has narrowly defined its role as 'homeland defense' against an enemy attack from outside the United States, limiting its role in disaster response to a last-resort backfill for civil authorities. Not surprisingly, that philosophy dictates a very passive posture.

We're not acting like a nation at war.

We have no idea who's in the ports. And many of the folks who come in to service the ports, that drive the trucks back and forth, are people who don't have very distinguished backgrounds. May have criminal backgrounds.

The fact of the matter is criminals have been operating in seaports a long, long time. The bad guys know how open the system is. The good guys don't seem to have a real command on it here because we haven't paid as much attention to this problem as we need to.

Port security today is still a house of cards. For each of these programs, the bar is not very high and there is very little in the way of verification. The result is it is not much of an effective deterrent.

If I had to rank in order 10 things I'm worried about as it relates to security in our ports, the ownership of the lease of a terminal here in the U.S. is near nine or 10 on that list.

What we have failed to realize is the terrorists showed us on 9/11 that we are vulnerable. And Katrina showed us here in late August and September that we are still a very vulnerable society--and the most vulnerable part of the population ends up without the lifeboat.

The ownership of marine terminal operations by foreign companies is not at the top of my list. It distracts us from much more worthwhile efforts to build security.

It can't be a reactive, give me a specific laundry list of what you need and we'll figure whether we've got it. The most critical time in a disaster is in the first 48 to 72 hours and if you're not poised to help out you're not gonna be much good.

It is physically impossible to check every container without essentially stopping global commerce.

It isn't the event but the sudden lack of faith in the system that it causes.

It is only a matter of time before terrorists breach the superficial security measures in place to protect the ports, ships and the millions of containers that link global producers to consumers.

I think he needs to hear, and he certainly values hearing, from private industry players investing their own resources into this project.

We live on the edge as a modern society, and terrorists can take advantage of that, ... What Katrina has told us, Mother Nature has told us: 'You live on the edge, and if you don't make prudent investments, lots of lives and property can be unnecessarily lost.'

Well, it would not even have to be a chemical or biological or nuclear weapon. Because the only thing separating that container yard from basically where people live and work is a fence.

The degree to which the Bush administration is willing to invest in conventional national security spending relative to basic domestic security measures is considerable.

We are vulnerable for two reasons, the world has gotten smaller--more travel, we're more open and as business expands, we are more vulnerable. We are the most free nation in the world--a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. If we wanted to secure our borders or be a police state, we could, but we won't, because we are a free nation.

We are vulnerable for two reasons, the world has gotten smaller -- more travel, we're more open and as business expands, we are more vulnerable. We are the most free nation in the world -- a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. If we wanted to secure our borders or be a police state, we could, but we won't, because we are a free nation.

The role the U.S. government is currently playing in port security does not change with the purchase by Dubai Ports World.

Rumsfeld wants that firewall between Northern Command and DHS because he's legitimately afraid that otherwise, Congress will rob the Defense budget to pay for homeland-security initiatives. The problem with that approach is that it provides no incentives for senior NorthCom leaders to build relationships with mayors and governors around the country, closely studying what capabilities they have and exactly what kind of help they would need in a disaster.

(A fence) would be near the bottom of my list.

A weapon of mass destruction smuggled into our country in a cargo-container could be the next 9/11. The bad guys watched and learned how we reacted after the last attack by grounding all aviation. They could generate massive economic and societal disruption if they succeed at spooking us into closing our borders and ports to all incoming containers,

That's what made this almost impossible to get someone to pay attention for it.

You're not going have a bunch of UAE citizens working the docks. They're longshoremen, vested in high-paying jobs. Most of them are Archie Bunker-kind of Americans.

This is a case where we were arguing about the wrong part of the problem. Americans were shocked to learn that the vast majority of port operations in this country are handled by foreign firms. But transportation is a global network, and we're not going to own all of it.

This is a case where we were arguing about the wrong part of the problem.

It seems like a very basic concept but we can't get any traction on it with the U.S. government.

It may well be a first-generation European, people with visa-exempt passports, with advanced degrees and no record of criminality, who just arrives as a tourist.

It?s an incredibly efficient system, but it?s also a system that poses opportunity for bad people to do bad things.

It shouldn't matter whether the company is from Des Moines or Dubai, do you have confidence that they are essentially doing things that safeguard our security interest?

Does this pose a national security risk? I think that's pushing the envelope. It's not impossible to imagine one could develop an internal conspiracy, but I'd have to assign it a very low probability.

Does this pose a national-security risk? I think that's pushing the envelope.

The No. 1 national security challenge to confront us is a weapon of mass destruction going off in a U.S. city. Well, it could come in a seaport. So we should focus on what it would take to make sure that doesn't happen.

I'm concerned that the entire system is potentially vulnerable.

The lowest-paying jobs on the waterfront are security people. But is that a problem for foreign ownership? No. It's a problem for everybody.