Secretary Michael Chertoff U.S. Department of Homeland Security "Addressing 21st Century Threats: The U.S. Prevention Strategy

As we approach the seventh anniversary of the attacks on U.S. soil (New York - Manhattan, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania) and the fifth anniversary of the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, I post these (beginning) comments of Secretary Chertoff from a speech he delivered at Rice University, Houston, TX. The entire speech can be viewed at: http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/speeches/sp_1219697784176.shtm

The following information was retrieved at www.dhs.gov/xnews/speeches/sp 1219697784176.shtm on Sept. 8th, 2008.

Release Date: June 5, 2008

Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice UniversityHouston, TX

Secretary Chertoff: "Thank you, Ambassador Djerejian, for your introduction. I’m delighted to be with you today. I appreciate the opportunity to speak at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, which is one of our nation’s most distinguished academic forums, named after one of our nation’s most distinguished policy makers.
As some of you know, our Department recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. We were established shortly after the September 11th attacks to mobilize our nation to prevent, protect against, and respond to acts of terrorism and other threats to our security.
Reaching our five-year milestone has given us the occasion to look back over the past five years and assess our progress in a number of areas that are central to our mission. For all milestones - that's a very good opportunity to kind of look back. Maybe it's a better opportunity to look forward. The major focuses and activities of the Department of Homeland Security are, in my judgment, basically five in number.
One is to work to prevent dangerous people from coming into the United States and causing us harm. One is to keep dangerous things and dangerous cargo, dangerous weapons out of the country.
The third is to protect our infrastructure should somebody try to attack. That includes not only our transportation, but it includes things like our energy infrastructure, which, of course, is of greater interest to those living in this area.
A fourth is mitigating the effect of either a manmade disaster or a natural disaster by having an effective and swift response.
And finally, there's the task of any large organization institutionalizing the processes and procedures that allow this to work efficiently and allow us to integrate the activities in the Department which began its life in 22 separate components and now has over 280,000 employees."