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
If you start to plan in an emergency, you're not planning, you're improvising,
I knew I became more involved in operational matters than I would normally expect to be or want to be, given the fact that I had a battlefield commander on the ground, ... I am not a hurricane expert. I've got to rely on people to execute the details of the plan.
I'm proud of what ICE has accomplished in this past year. We will continue to fight. We will continue to use our unique legal authorities to remove violent and criminal gangs from our nation's communities.
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.
You've got to make sure you've built the entire system so that once you apprehend people, you can hold them and then remove them in a prompt way.
And one of the things we did here was we put the maximum amount of money up front in those cities that were at the greater risk, but that doesn't mean that we keep rebuilding the same security over and over again.
And one of the things I want to say, Wolf, is we're 100 days from hurricane season, and we've got to start focusing on what we're going to do to make ourselves ready for the next hurricane.
These are not people who are larger than life. They took advantage of the fact that something that was unthinkable on September 10 became, unfortunately, all too thinkable on September 11.
All I have to do is say, 'You are empowered to go fulfill the mission,' and it gets done,
The devastation and tragic loss of life caused by Hurricane Katrina earlier this week reinforce the urgency of our coalition's work,
And here where the fact that we've given over half a billion dollars to New York really plays a role, because New York has already made a lot of investments in the kinds of things which you'd expect to have as basic security.
And if we make the process political, if we start to make it personal, we're actually going to frustrate good public policy, in terms of managing this money.
The lesson is that when the storm hits, the best place to be is to be out of the path of the storm, ... There's plenty of notice about Rita.
You can't fly helicopters in a hurricane. You can't drive trucks in a hurricane.