It was serious enough from our perspective ... a credible enough theory that at least we ought to tell folks we are mindful of it and that you ought to be mindful of it out there as well, |
It's a national effort grounded in the knowledge that states and local agencies play the primary role in emergency response. |
It's pretty clear that we're just going to be ready. |
It's the responsibility of our staff to plan and prepare this being almost a permanent part of our environment in the future, |
Let me count the ways, |
Let us to do all we can to honor all those who rose up with resolve to defeat evil, who were released into the arms of angels to see the grateful face of God, |
Liberty is the most precious gift we offer our citizens. |
Maybe that's very much the reason that you'd be worried about it, because you hadn't seen it before, |
might require an added level of protection, an added layer of safety. |
More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it. Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on alert, There were times when the White House was really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' We often lost the argument. |
Multiple sources [are] basically saying the same thing -- talking about near-term attacks the scope of which would be similar to or even greater than September 11. |
Our approach at this point is to think big but begin implementing on a small scale, ... We want to get it right. |
Our goal is to deter any potential attack with multiple layers of security and, based on what I have seen and heard, I can tell you that the security plans and arrangements and commitment of federal, state and local officials is very, very strong, |
Protecting this information is critically important. Shut them down and you shut down America as we know it, |
requesting some $36.2 billion clearly communicates this administration's commitment to investing in our Homeland Security. |