Michael McCaul Quotes

Airport security exists to guard us against terrorist attacks.

Two of the 9/11 hijackers exploited the security vulnerabilities in the United States' visa program and were able to carry out their attacks.

At any time, somebody can blow themselves up and take Americans with them. They can blow up an airplane; they can crash an airplane. That's something we have to worry about every day - we spend 40 billion dollars yearly on homeland security. That has nothing to do with Crusades or any of that other nonsense.

I believe when the country feels threatened it is important that we are seen to be working together to find an appropriate structure for dealing with terrorists in our midst.

The reason we are doing these types of pat downs and using the advanced imagery technology is trying to take the latest intelligence and how we know al Qaeda and affiliates want to hurt us, they want to bring down whether it is passenger air craft or cargo aircraft.

Congress has greatly tightened the loopholes terrorists can use to harm Americans. We need to do more. We need controls immediately on what forms of ID are adequate to board planes and enter secure sites.

So we mustn't lower our guard in any sense because of what has happened in terms of the death of Osama Bin Laden and we are certainly not doing that. The terror threat level here in the U.K. remains at severe and we're very conscious of the need to continue that.

Terrorism as a force is gone. As individuals they are all around and we will continue to look for them.

It's because we need to determine who in this country is poised, positioned to commit terrorist acts.

The anguish in London is a vivid reminder of why we cannot relent in taking the steps necessary to defend our homeland from the present terrorist threat.

While I agree that homegrown terrorism and the jihadist threat deserve continuing attention, a single-minded approach ignores all other threats.

Look, we constantly live looking at the issue of the threat of terrorism.

Well, your premise is correct, that we have to first guard against those who have an affiliation with terrorists and a connection, and so we have watch lists and systems that can make that connection.

If we announced threats [to airlines and flights] as we received them, we would be catering to the terrorists' goals.

You can’t negotiate with them. You can’t buy them off. They want a change of the world. The only way to defeat the Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists is to persuade them to abandon their effort…. It must be an intellectual victory.

We will pursue terrorists everywhere. At an airport – okay, at an airport. If we catch them in a lavatory, in an outhouse, we will take them out there with their pants down.

There is a terrorist threat to this country that remains, and I believe that counter-terrorism needs to be the cornerstone of our mission, our vast mission... and aviation security is something that we still have a fair amount of concerns about.

It seems that, every several months, you have to expect there is going to be a terrorist incident or that there could be a terrorist incident somewhere. Right away, you're thinking, 'What are the consequences? Is this the first part of a larger attack? Is it coordinated, or a lone wolf?'

A big challenge in combating terrorism is learning how to think about things that we can't imagine.

We need to be diligent in our neighborhoods, in America to keep an eye out for wherever there might be some kind of a terrorist cell that is festering that could potentially blow up.

Whether it be the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 or the Terrorism Act 2000, there is no shortage of offences with which to prosecute those who go abroad to fight or train and who may threaten us on their return.

I am not opposed to government efforts to stop terrorist plots. We are still seared by the memory of 9/11, and we should be.

Everyone is now a potential terrorist.

Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon.

(Terrorists) are planning to disrupt our democratic process. It's scary I know, but we're not going to let al Qaeda tell us what to do. In fact, our government has decided that if al Qaeda attempts to disrupt our democratic process, we are going to respond by disrupting it first.