Transcript for February 19

SEC’Y CHERTOFF:  Well, actually, they will be used. The challenge we face is where do we put them. It is true that there are certain parts of Louisiana and Mississippi where you can’t put mobile homes because they’re in a flood plain. And that’s partly by regulation and partly common sense. Because you don’t want to put something that’s fixed, that’s a mobile home, in a place that’s going to flood again. We originally hoped that at least some significant number would be placed in other parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. It’s turned out that some communities don’t want to have that happen, and some people don’t want to have that happen. And we’re not going to force them to take these mobile homes. We estimate that several thousand more will be used for victims of Katrina and Rita. We are using others for victims of the wildfires out West. Still others will be used this hurricane season. So what we anticipate is that ultimately all of this stock of mobile homes will be used in disaster-related housing efforts.

MR. RUSSERT:  But there are still thousands of people who are still homeless?

SEC’Y CHERTOFF:  There are. And we are—we are procuring trailers as quickly as we can. Now the biggest problem, Tim, is there is just a total shortage of housing in Louisiana. And that is, we’ve been battling that economic issue for the last six months.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi has said “Enough already.” Let’s take FEMA out of Homeland Security and report directly to the president. Let FEMA work and deal with hurricanes and natural disasters and let Chertoff and Homeland Security worry about terrorism. Why not do that?

SEC’Y CHERTOFF:  I think that would be a big mistake for a couple of reasons. First of all, to the extent things worked well in Katrina, it was only because we had a unified department and could get the Coast Guard involved, we could get TSA involved to help us construct an air bridge for evacuation. We would lose all of that extra help if we separated FEMA out. That’s the first thing.

Second, catastrophes don’t come labeled. Sometimes you know it’s a natural disaster, sometimes you know it’s a terrorist act, sometimes you don’t know. I think the last thing we want to do is to have a situation where we have two parallel agencies fighting over who manages a particular type of a disaster.

Third thing, and I want to say this in the strongest possible terms, we’re coming up on hurricane season. Nature doesn’t wait for us to do yet another reorganization. If FEMA is pulled out of the Department of Homeland Security, I will predict with virtual certainty that we will be much less prepared this hurricane season than we will be if we keep the department together and finish the job of integrating.

MR. RUSSERT:  If a tropical storm, a four or a five, hits New Orleans will the city flood again?

SEC’Y CHERTOFF:  Well, this I think is a very serious question which I intend to address with the mayor and the governor, and actually the governors of both states in the next month. We are not fully rebuilt. The levees are supposed to be rebuilt by June to a level better than they were before Katrina. But we don’t know if there’s a dead-on hit, the worst scenario, we could still very easily have flooding. We’ve got impermanent structures, we’ll still have some debris around. So we need to have a plan starting—you know, we need to start to build a plan now about how we will evacuate and take care of people come June 1, and I’m going to be very insistent on making sure my department and DOD are working with state and local government to do that.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me turn to an issue that is confronting Washington, and that is our ports. And this a pretty interesting issue. “A company in the United Arab Emirates is poised to take over significant operations at six American ports as part of a corporate sale, leaving a country with ties to the September 11 hijackers with influence over a maritime industry considered vulnerable to terrorism.” This is from the Associated Press.

“The sale would affect commercial U.S. port operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. Critics of the proposed purpose—purchase say a port operator complicit in smuggling or terrorism could manipulate manifests and other records to frustrate Homeland Security’s already limited scrutiny of shipping containers and slip contraband past U.S. Custom inspectors.

Since the September 11 attacks, the FBI has said that money for the September 11 strikes was transferred to the hijackers primarily through the United Arab Emirate’s banking system, and much of the operational planning for the attacks took place inside the United Arab Emirates.

Many of the hijackers traveled to the U.S. through the United Arab Emirates. Also, the hijacker who steered a United Airlines flight into the World Trade Center’s south tower:  born in the United Arab Emirates.

After the attacks, U.S. Treasury Department officials complained about a lack of cooperation by the United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries trying to track Osama bin Laden’s bank accounts.” Why would we allow a company based in United Arab Emirates be in charge of security for our ports?

SEC’Y CHERTOFF:  Well, let me make it very clear, first of all. We have a very disciplined process, it’s a classified process, for reviewing any acquisition by a foreign company of assets that we consider relevant to national security. That process worked here. Without getting into classified information, what we typically do if there are concerns is we build in certain conditions, or requirements, that the company has to agree to to make sure we address the national security concerns. And here the Coast Guard and Customs and border protection really play the leading role for our department in terms of designing those conditions and making sure that they’re obeyed.

I do have to caution people, though. The fact that there were somebody born in United Arab Emirates or that some people went to the United Arab Emirates doesn’t mean that every company there is automatically guilty, or automatically has to be excluded from owning something here any more than we...

MR. RUSSERT:  But why take a risk?

SEC’Y CHERTOFF:  Well, I mean, you know, Richard Reid was British. He was going to blow up an airliner. We don’t say the British can’t buy companies here. We don’t take a risk. What we do is we require a very careful review—we have the FBI involved, we have the Department of Defense involved—of what the challenges are. We have, in fact, dealt with this port before because we deal with it overseas as part of our comprehensive global security network. We’ve built in, and we will build in safeguards to make sure that these kinds of things don’t happen. And, you know, this is part of the balancing of security, which is our paramount concern, with the need to still maintain a real robust global trading environment.

MR. RUSSERT:  Before you go, based on your department’s performance during Katrina, why should the American people feel confident, comfortable, that you can keep us safe if, God forbid, there was a terrorist attack?

SEC’Y CHERTOFF:  Tim, I warned in July that we were not as prepared as we need to be, and this is an immature department. And we’ve—you know, Department of Defense took 40 years to get to where it is now. We have made a lot of progress in some areas. There are some areas, including disaster management, where we have a lot more to do. The good news, I guess, is that if there’s anything redeeming out of this hurricane it is that we have learned some very valuable lessons. We have people who are very energized about getting the job of planning done, and getting the resources in, and I’m anticipating that we will be much better positioned this year. But I will warn everybody, this is still not something which is going to be done in six months. We’re going to keep getting better and better, but this is a process that’s going to take a little bit of time.

MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS

Meet the Press Section Front

Nov. 8: Casey, Barbour, Rendell, roundtable, Brokaw Nov. 1: Tim Geithner, David Plouffe, roundtable Oct. 25: Cornyn, Schumer, Burnett, Sorkin, roundtable Oct. 18: Jarrett, Dodd, Kyl, Shriver, Podesta Oct. 11: Levin, Graham, McCaffrey, Myers, roundtable Oct. 4: Ambassador Susan Rice, roundtable Sept. 27: Bill Clinton, Paterson, Kyl, Webb Sept. 20: President Obama, Sen. Graham, Rep. Boehner, roundtable Sept. 13: Durbin, Cornyn, Dean, Gingrich, roundtable Sept. 6: Axelrod, roundtable Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: