Michael Chertoff Quotes on Facts (8 Quotes)

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.

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.

It would be enormously difficult if we were to attempt to control illegal immigration at the border without having some legal avenue to address the fact that there is a high demand for non-U.S. people to come in and perform certain kinds of jobs,

We've done it in intelligence sharing and certain elements of security. There were parts of the department, in fact, that worked very well in Katrina, like the Coast Guard and TSA.

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.

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.

I'm kind of amazed you can write a report in which you reach your conclusions before you actually speak to the people who were involved in the decision-making process. It's kind of jumping to conclusions before the facts were gathered.

Now, I'm not suggesting we're going to wait 40 years or even four years, but I think we have to put in perspective the fact that we've come quite a distance. We have quite a distance to come - go, as well.