MR. RUSSERT: Now, let's turn to Hurricane katrina

MEET THE PRESS - Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005

MR. RUSSERT: Now, let's turn to Hurricane Katrina. Joining us is the man in
charge of the federal response to the disaster, the director of Homeland
Security, Michael Chertoff.

Mr. Secretary, this is yesterday's Daily News: "Shame Of A Nation." And I
want to read it to you and our viewers very carefully. It says, "As for
Chertoff, if this is the best his department can do, the homeland is not very secure
at all. It is absolutely outrageous that the United States of America could not
send help to tens of thousands of forlorn, frightened, sick and hungry human
beings at least 24 hours before it did, arguably longer than that. Who is
specifically at fault for what is nothing less than a national scandal... It will
never be known exactly what a day could have meant to so many unfortunates
whose lives came to an end in those hopelessly tortured hours - on scorching
roadsides, for lack of a swallow of water, in sweltering hospital bads, for lack
of insulin. But what is already more than clear is that the nation's
disaster-preparedness mechanisms do not appear to be in the hands of officials who know
how to run them."

Mr. Secretary, are you or anyone who reports to you contemplating resignation?

SEC'Y MICHAEL CHERTOFF: You know, Tim, what we're contemplating now is the
fact that we are very, very much in the middle of a crisis. There's a bit of a
sense that you get that some people think it's now time to draw a sigh of
relief and go back and do the after-action analysis, and there'll be plenty of time
for that. We obviously need to look very closely at things that worked well,
and many things did work well, and some things that didn't work well, and some
things did not work well.

But we have to remember that we have an enormous challenge ahead of us, and
there's not a lot of time to get ahead of it. We have basically moved the
population of New Orleans to other parts of the country, or we're in the process of
doing so. We've got to feed them. We've got to shelter the people. We've got
to get them housing. We've got to educate their children. We have to dewater
the city. We have to clean up the environment. We're going to have to rebuild.
Those are enormous, enormous tasks, and we can't afford to get those messed up.

So what I'm focused on now and what I want my department - in fact, what the
president has ordered all of us to be focused on now -is: What do we need to
do in the next hours, in the next days, in the next weeks and the next months
to make sure we are doing everything possible to give these people succor and
to make their lives easier?

MR. RUSSERT: Mr....

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: We will have time to go back and do an after-action report,
but the time right now is to look at what the enormous tasks ahead are.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, many Americans believe now is the time for accountability.
The Republican governor of Massachusetts said, "We are an embarrassment to
the world." The Republican senator from Louisiana, David Vitter, said that you
deserve a grade of F, flunk. How would you grade yourself?

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: You know, Tim, again I'm going to - the process of grading
myself and grading everybody else is one that we will examine over time. I will
tell you that my focus now is on what is going to go forward. What would
really be - require a grade of F would be to stop thinking about the crisis we have
now so that we can start to go back and do the after-action analysis. There
are some things that actually worked very well. There are some things that
didn't. We may have to break the model that we have used for dealing with
catastrophes, at least in the case of ultra-catastrophes.

And let me tell you, Tim, there is nobody who has ever seen or dealt with a
catastrophe on this scale in this country. It has never happened before. So no
matter what the planning was in advance, we were presented with an
unprecedented situation. Obviously, we're going to want to learn about that. I'll tell
you something I said when I - a month ago before this happened. I said that I
thought that we need to build a preparedness capacity going forward that we have
not yet succeeded in doing. That clearly remains the case, and we will in due
course look at what we've done here and incorporate it into the planning. But
first we are going to make sure we are attending to the crisis at hand.

MR. RUSSERT: So no heads will roll?

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: Tim, in due course, if people want to go and chop heads off,
there'll be an opportunity to do it. The question I would put to people is
what do you want to have us spend our time on now? Do we want to make sure we are
feeding, sheltering, housing and educating those who are distressed, or do we
want to begin the process of finger-pointing? I know that as far as I'm
concerned I have got to be focused on, and everybody else in this government, and
the president has made this very clear, we have got to focus on moving forward
to deal with some very real emergencies which are going to be happening in the
next days and weeks because of the fact that we have to deal with an
unprecedented movement of evacuees.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Vitter, the Republican from Louisiana, said the death
toll could reach 10,000 because of the lack of response. Do you agree with that
number?

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: You know, I understand first of all, Tim, that - and I'm
clearly including myself among this group - many, many people are frustrated and
very distressed by what happened here. Obviously, every minute matters in a
situation like this. I think I said that we are racing the clock. But even with
that sense of frustration and being upset, I don't think that I'm in a position
to start to speculate and guess about what the numbers will be.

I will tell you one thing I know, that when we come to the point that we've
completed the evacuation, we're going to start dewatering the city - in fact,
it's under way now - we're going to confront some very, very ugly pictures.
Many people may have been trapped when that levee broke, and the lake basically
became, you know, part of the city of New Orleans. People were trapped in their
houses and couldn't get out. Some of those people fortunately apparently were
able to be safe and are coming out now.

We rescued 10,000 people, the Coast Guard did. That's three times as many as
in any prior year. Think about that. That's an - that is compressing in three
days the rescue efforts of - three times the rescue efforts of any prior year.
There were some extraordinary actions that were taken by people at all
levels, including people at the Department of Homeland Security where the Coast
Guard is. So we have worked very aggressively, but we got to tell you, we have to
prepare the country for what may be some very, very difficult pictures in the
weeks to come.

MR. RUSSERT: People were stunned by a comment the president of the United
States made on Wednesday, Mr. Secretary. He said, "I don't think anyone
anticipated the breach of the levees." How could the president be so wrong, be so
misinformed?

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I
remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, "New Orleans
Dodged The Bullet," because if you recall the storm moved to the east and then
continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse.
It was on Tuesday that the levee - may have been overnight Monday to Tuesday
- that the levee started to break. And it was midday Tuesday that I became
aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap and that
essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city. I think that
second catastrophe really caught everybody by surprise. In fact, I think that's one
of the reasons people didn't continue to leave after the hurricane had passed
initially. So this was clearly an unprecedented catastrophe. And I think it
caused a tremendous dislocation in the response effort and, in fact, in our
ability to get materials to people.

And one last point I'd make is this, Tim. We had actually prestaged a
tremendous number of supplies, meals, shelter, water. We had prestaged, even before
the hurricane, dozens of Coast Guard helicopters, which were obviously nearby
but not in the area. So the difficulty wasn't lack of supplies. The difficulty
was that when the levee broke, it was very, very hard to get the supplies to
the people. I-10 was submerged. There was only one significant road going all
the way the way around. Much of the city was flooded. The only way to get to
people and to get supplies was to have airdrops and helicopters. And frankly, it
is very - and their first priority was rescuing people from rooftops. So we
really had a tremendous strain on the capacity of - to be able to both rescue
people and also to be able to get them supplies.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Secretary, you say prestaged. People were sent to the
Convention Center. There was no water, no food, no beds, no authorities there. There
was no planning.

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: My understanding is, and again this is something that's going
to go back - we're going to go back over after the fact is - the plan that
the New Orleans officials and the state officials put together called for the
Superdome to be the refuge of last resort. We became aware of the fact at some
point that people began to go to the Convention Center on their own,
spontaneously, in order to shelter there. And I think it's for that reason that people
found themselves without food and water and supplies. The challenge then
became...

MR. RUSSERT: Well, Mr. Secretary, you said - hold on. Mr. Secretary, there
was no food or water at the Superdome, either. And I want to stay on this
because...

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: Well, my understanding - well...

MR. RUSSERT: I want to stay on this because this is very important. You said
you were surprised by the levee being broken. In 2002, The Times-Picayune did
story after story - and this is eerie; this is what they wrote and how they
predicted what was going to happen. It said, and I'll read it very carefully:
"...A major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from even a
moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time. ... The scene's
been played out for years in computer models or emergency operations
simulations... New Orleans has hurricane levees that create a bowl with the bottom dipping

lower than the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain. ...the levees would trap any
water that gets inside - by breach, overtopping or torrential downpour -
catastrophic storm. ... The estimated 200,000 or more people left behind in an
evacuation will be struggling to survive. Some will be housed at the Superdome, the
designated shelter for people too sick or inform to leave the city. ...But many
will simply be on their own, in homes or looking for high ground. Thousands
will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising water. Other will be washed
away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in
buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little
food or fresh water, perhaps for several days."

That was four years ago. And last summer FEMA, who reports to you, and the
LSU Hurricane Center, and local and state officials did a simulated Hurricane
Pam in which the levees broke. The levees broke, Mr. Secretary, and people -
thousands...

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: Actually, Tim, that...

MR. RUSSERT: Thousands drowned.

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: Tim, I had...

MR. RUSSERT: There's a CD which is in your department and the White House has
it and the president, and you are saying, "We were surprised that the levees
may not hold." How could this be?

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: No, Tim, I have to tell you, that's not what I said. You have
to listen to what I said. What I said was not that we didn't anticipate that
there's a possibility the levees will break. What I said is in this storm,
what happened is the storm passed and passed without the levees breaking on
Monday. Tuesday morning, I opened newspapers and saw headlines that said "New
Orleans Dodged The Bullet," which surprised people. What surprised them was that
the levee broke overnight and the next day and, in fact, collapsed. That was a
surprise.

As to the larger point, there's no question that people have known for
probably decades that New Orleans sits in a bowl surrounded by levees. This is a
city built on the coast in an area that has hurricanes in it that is built below
sea levels and that is a soup bowl. People have talked for years about, you
know, whether it makes sense to have a city like that, how to build the levees.
So, of course, that's not a surprise. What caught people by surprise in this
instance was the fact that there was a second wave, and that, as The
Times-Picayune article makes very clear, creates an almost apocalyptic challenge for
rescuers.

The fact of the matter is, there's only really one way to deal with that
issue, and that is to get people out first. Once that bowl breaks and that soup
bowl fills with water, it is unquestionably the case, as we saw vividly
demonstrated, that it's going to be almost impossible to get people out. So there is
really only one way to deal with it, and that is to evacuate people in advance.

Michael Brown got on TV in Saturday and he said to people in New Orleans,
"Take this seriously. There is a storm coming." On Friday there was discussion
about the fact that even though this storm could fall anywhere along the Gulf,
people had to be carefully monitoring it. We were watching it on Saturday and
Sunday. The president was on a videoconference on Sunday telling us we've got
to do everything possible to be prepared. But you know, Tim, at the end of the
day, this is the ground truth: The only way to avoid a catastrophic problem in
that soup bowl is to have people leave before the hurricane hits. Those who
got out are fine. Those who stayed in faced one of the most horrible
experiences in their life.

MR. RUSSERT: But that's the point. Those who got out were people with SUVs
and automobiles and air fares who could get out. Those who could not get out
were the poor who rely on public buses to get out. Your Web site says that your
department assumes primary responsibility for a national disaster. If you knew
a hurricane 3 storm was coming, why weren't buses, trains, planes, cruise
ships, trucks provided on Friday, Saturday, Sunday to evacuate people before the
storm?

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: Tim, the way that emergency operations act under the law is
the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests
with state and local officials. The federal government comes in and supports
those officials. That's why Mike Brown got on TV on Saturday and he told people
to start to get out of there.

Now, ultimately the resources that will get people who don't have cars and
don't have the ability to remove themselves has to rest with the kinds of assets
a city has - the city's buses, the city's transportation. You know, there
will be plenty of time to go back over what the preparation has been with respect
to infrastructure in New Orleans, with respect to transportation, with
respect to evacuation. To confront a situation that, as you point out, people have
been aware of for decades - this is not something that just came on the horizon
recently.

But I want to leave you with a very, very important marker which I'm going to
put down now. At this particular moment, this is not over. There is a
tremendous challenge. Whatever the criticisms and the after-action report may be
about what was right and what was wrong looking back, what would be a horrible
tragedy would be to distract ourselves from avoiding further problems because
we're spending time talking about problems that have already occurred.

MR. RUSSERT: The...

SEC'Y CHERTOFF: We are going to ha