Thomas Kean Quotes (30 Quotes)

I think there's a real question in my mind and I think of several other commissioners as to whether the president's getting decent information, as to whether the president's getting the kind of thing the president needs to make the kind of decisions that the president every day has to make.

We believe that the terrorists will strike again. If they do, and these reforms that might have prevented such an attack have not been implemented, what will our excuses be.

Some of the failures are shocking. Four years after 911, it is a scandal that police and firefighters in large cities still can't talk to each other when they are hit with a major crisis.

What we're concerned about now is that these recommendations more than four years after 911 are still not being done. People are not paying attention to them.

The question will be whether the guy at the top in charge of intelligence has any real budget authority. If he doesn't, it's not real. I think the good part of the week was the President's statement that he's open to change.

It scares me a bit that we dismantled the CIA to the point that it now takes five years to rebuild it.

It was obvious nobody knew who was in charge. There was no unified command structure ... the mayor is saying one thing, the governor says another. The president is in the state, and the governor learns about it on TV.

While the terrorists are learning and adopting, our government is still moving at a crawl. Many obvious steps that the American people assume have been completed have not been. Our leadership is distracted.

If Congress does not act, people will die -- I cannot put it more simply than that.

It is a scandal in our minds that four years after 911, we have not yet set aside radio spectrum to insure that police, firefighters and emergency medical technicians can communicate reliably during any kind of attack or any kind of major disaster.

Every expert with whom we spoke told us an attack of even greater magnitude is now possible and even probable. We do not have the luxury of time.

It's really the same confusion that you had on 911 - worse, really, because at least in New York City you had Rudy Giuliani.

We felt it was absolutely vital. We had certainly hoped it would have been up and running a long time ago.

The most painful death in all the world is the death of a child. When a child dies, when one child dies-not the 11 per 1,000 we talk about statistically, but the one that a mother held briefly in her arms-he leaves an empty place in a parent's heart that will never heal.

It's very disappointing, ... All we're trying to do is make the public safer.

The fact that Congress has chosen not to do something about this is a national scandal that has cost lives,

We are safer but we are not yet safe. Four years after 911, we are not as safe as we could be. And that is unacceptable. While the terrorists are learning and adapting, our government is still moving at a crawl.

People ought to stay out of our business.

you had no command and control. Who was in charge Really, nobody was in charge.

We may end up holding individual agencies, people, and procedures to account. But our fundamental purpose will not be to point fingers. It's rather to answer fully the questions that so many still have.

The terrorists are smart because they will go where the security is the weakest. We have no greater fear then a terrorist who is inside the United States with a nuclear weapon ... so why isn't the President talking about securing nuclear materials

God help us if we have another attack.

The most striking thing to us is that the size of the problem still totally dwarfs the policy response. We have no greater fear than a terrorist who is inside the United States with a nuclear weapon. The consequences of such an attack would be catastrophic for our people, for our economy, for our liberties.

There are many things that people think have been done that simply haven't been done. Our leadership has been distracted in this country. Some of the failures are shocking.

Changes in government organization are vastly important but are still only part of what we need to do.

This is not a terrorist incident, but it brings into play all of the same issues and shortcomings, ... What makes you mad is that it's the same things we saw on 911. Whoever is responsible for acting in these places hasn't acted. Are they going to do it now What else has to happen for people to act

Whether it's a chemical attack or a nuclear attack or an earthquake in San Francisco, it's largely the same response. And this is proof that we still haven't got it right.

The first people who reached the World Trade Center did not know who was in charge. Every state and locality has got to have one agency in charge.

It's not a priority for the government right now. You don't see the Congress or the president talking about public safety is number one, as we think it should be, and a lot of the things we need to do really to prevent another 911 just simply aren't being done by the president or by the Congress.

The United States government was simply not active enough in combating the terrorist threat before 911.