35 Quotes by Stephen Flynn

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.