276 Quotes by Michael Chertoff

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

There has been a huge development overnight ... the historic French Quarter, dry last night and it is now filling with water. This is water from nearby Lake Pontchartrain; the levees failed overnight.

I have to say, in honesty, patience will be required for everybody, ... Under the best circumstances, even in the best planning, you still confront the physical reality of a destructive storm.

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,

We've certainly learned a lot of lessons from Katrina, from Rita. Rita was better than Katrina. We're doing a better job planning. We're closer - more closely aligned with the Department of Defense. These things would be positive things if we were to have another attack.

interprets the law, straight without injecting your personal preferences.

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.

There are a lot of things that didn't work well. We are not where we need to be as a nation in the area of preparedness.