Chertoff: Planning for disaster requires everyone
So that's not to slight the importance of training for trauma, training for ordinary kinds of explosions. But it's to recognize that conventional weapons we actually do know how to do pretty well. Police know how to do it; firefighters know how to do it, because they've done it, and because it tends to be geographically confined.
And a lot of the pressure we put in preparedness is particularly focusing on the kinds of threats that we haven't had the experience in; that we don't have the real capabilities in.
And I might say, I think we've done an awful lot in the last few years to really build up a system of capabilities that would serve us well and put us in a much better position in the war in 2001.
DUFFY: One last question, Mr. Secretary.
Q: Mr. Secretary ...Half the population, or about half of it, lives within an hour of a major body of water. Can you walk us through a little bit of what you're doing regarding protection of the waterways of the nation?
CHERTOFF: Well, I figured you'd be asking about evacuation plans. And I guess that's a little part of it if you have floods.
Obviously, the Coast Guard plays the critical role on the – from the federal standpoint in terms of protecting our waterways. As you get further out into the ocean, of course, the Navy – that becomes the domain of the Navy. And we do have a maritime domain strategy that is focused on making sure we've fully integrated the Navy's capabilities and Coast Guard's capabilities protecting our coasts against some kind of a threat from overseas.
The next level of that, of course, is the ports, making sure somebody doesn't come into our ports. And there again we have Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection share a lot of that responsibility.
The thrust of our strategy is always put the defensive perimeter as far away from the United States as possible. We want to intercept the threat thousands of miles away and not dozens of miles away or in our own country. That means increased use of intelligence information. It means adapting technology like radiation portal monitors and X-ray type screening machines, gamma screening machines, not only in our own ports but putting them overseas in our Megaports program and other similar kinds of programs.
It means increasing the level of security at the ports themselves through some initiatives which I think we're going to be rolling out the next couple of weeks that will continue to raise that level making sure the port itself is safe. Finally, of course, even in our rivers and navigable waterways inside the United States – we have the Coast Guard, we have local police who are constantly monitoring, making sure we have a higher security level, particularly at those elements, or those parts of the waterways where there is critical infrastructure. There can be oil terminals. There can be major shipping piers. We've got to protect that stuff even on our navigable waterways, and we are working with the Coast Guard and the local and state officials to make sure that we're doing that.
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