Thomas Moorer Quotes

I am committed to ensure that our intelligence community, law enforcement, medical professionals, and military have the information and funding needed to protect the American people from threats at home and abroad.

I never know what I'm going to do for the Post next. Two weeks ago I had a piece on Homeland Security. This is one of my pig ongoing projects. How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.

The defense industry understands that the military budgets will continue to be cut until a new threat comes along.

The backbone of our nation's domestic defense against terrorist attacks will continue to be the men and women in local law enforcement and emergency services.

I go to bed at night worrying that I didn't do enough that day to make sure I protect the American people.

And we ask the American people to play an important part of our layered defense. We ask for cooperation, patience and a commitment to vigilance in the face of a determined enemy.

Secondly, security. Both the challenges we face in the world and the responsibilities that our country has in protecting our people, are major issues. We need to do more in the context of domestic security.

When these attacks occur, as they likely will, we will wonder what more we could have done to stop them.

America's entire homeland security enterprise positively invites questions even as it strives to reassure.

America has survived and grown stronger through September 11th and subsequent wars with Afghanistan and Iraq and those who seek to do us harm. We have faced - and met - tremendous challenges ramping up a public health and safety system to protect Americans from future threats.

When we talk about safety and security of the American people, politics falls aside pretty quickly.

I think that the American people should rest assured and be assured that every federal agency that has a role to play in this terrorism is working overtime now, taking every necessary action to protect our great citizens.

And so every one of us in the FBI, I don't care if it's a file clerk someplace or an agent there or a computer specialist, understands that our main mission is to protect the public from another September 11, another terrorist attack.

We all must recognize that homeland security funds should be allocated by threat and no other reason.

The attacks of September 11 persuaded many Americans that what might seem to be obscure or distant potential threats can very quickly materialize and it therefore makes sense to attend to them even before they become urgent.

In a brave new world, a post-September 11 world, anyone is going to make certain mistakes. The mistakes that have been made on homeland security, on protecting our Nation from another terrorist attack, are mistakes of omission. We are simply not doing enough.

Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to the 9/11 Commission members for their valuable service and important recommendations to improve homeland security.

Since September 11th Congress has created the Department of Homeland Security, more than doubled the homeland security budget and implemented a bipartisan overhaul of our intelligence systems.

The federal government has a responsibility to protect all Americans from potential terrorist attack.

We are keeping New Jersey one step, several steps, ahead of terrorism.

The safety of the people is the first and foremost responsibility of government… We are not as prepared as we should be with our public safety network…. The margin for error is exceedingly and uniquely low.

I fear, my Lords, it is too much the temper of this country to be insensible of the approach of danger, until it comes with accumulated terror upon us.

Four years after 9/11 it is scandalous that police and firefighters in large cities still cannot communicate reliably in a major crisis. It is scandalous that airline passengers are still not screened against all names on a terrorist watch list. It is scandalous that we still allocate scarce homeland security dollars on the basis of pork barrel spending, not risk.

The safety of the American people has got to be our number one priority. That is our most important problem.

I’m William Colby and I was the head of the CIA. The job of intelligence is to warn us of dangers to our military. Now the Cold War is over, and the military threat is far less. Now it’s time to cut our military spending by 50 percent and invest the money in our schools, health care, and our economy.