Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge at the Council for Excellence in Government “Excellence In Government 2004” Conference

Release Date: 07/27/04 00:00:00

Washington, D.C.
“Excellence In Government 2004” Conference
July 27, 2004

Secretary Ridge:  Thank you.  Pat, thank you for that exceptional introduction, appreciate that.  Tim, pleasure to join you and thank you for your co-sponsorship of this conference.  And to Bill, Hewlett-Packard, a strong supporter of the Council for Excellence in Government -- obviously, this conference and many of the initiatives, technology initiatives, not only within Homeland Security but around the country, and we certainly appreciate your participation, your support and your friendship as well.  So I thank all three of you.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a real pleasure for me to have the opportunity to spend a little time with you this afternoon.  And before I shared some prepared remarks for you, with you, I want to say that I have been privileged to be involved in the public sector for 25 plus years, I guess, if you count my service in the Army and Congressman, District Attorney, Governor, a couple jobs I've had recently in this Administration.  So I think I know a little bit about public, and I think I know a little bit about the men and women that are attracted to serve their community or their country as public servants.

And while I want to share some thoughts with you about leadership that, hopefully, may resonate with you or may help you or somehow might be applied somewhere down the road, in your own professional experiences, I just want to tip my hat to you as public servants for the contributions you make every single day, based on the decisions you make, the discretions you'll exercise, and the energy you put into your own individual responsibilities.

Too often, I think we, and very appropriately, all the focus is on the major political leaders or the major political appointed offices.  But on a day to day basis, one of the reasons -- well, frankly, not one of the reasons -- the primary reason the government can work and can work effectively is through the initiative and the intelligence and the energies such as people like yourselves bring to your task every day.  

I also know given the length of time in the -- in how long you've served in government, that your family puts on the public service uniform.  There aren't too many people in this audience that necessarily show up at seven and leave at three-thirty.  Not too many people are your level are punching the clock, which means that I suspect that you've been late for dinners from time to time, or you've missed certain celebrations, and you've had to adjust your schedule in order to get things done, as you were charged to do.

And so from one fellow public servant to 1,000 public servants, I just wanted you to understand I appreciate and value your service and I'm glad to be included in that group of people that are often referred to as public servants.

I know you work hard.  I know you try to work as effectively as you possibly can, and I, for one, appreciate the work that you do.

I've been asked to talk to you today about our nation's newest Cabinet department, Homeland Security, now 16 months old; about our management philosophy; as well as certain leadership principles that have been helpful to me in my current post.

For me, personally, leadership is marked by two things:  one, it is personal, it is highly individualized; and two, I believe leadership is rooted in fundamentals, many of which we learn during our most formative years.  Whenever I talk about leadership and management, I can't help but talk about my father, because no one had a more profound effect on who I am and what I have achieved than my dad.  He was emblematic of the words "hardworking" and "integrity."  Aspire to be your best, he would tell me.  Take personal responsibility for your actions.  All work has dignity; I don't care what you do.  Education is the tool of empowerment.  And nobody loves you more than your mom.  (Laughter.)

Now, my mother was a Republican, my dad was a Democrat.  He was so much a Democrat -- and you're going to love this story -- that just before I was elected to Congress, he changed his voter registration so that he could vote for his son in the Republican primary.  You should know that the first day he was eligible to change his party registration back, he did so.  (Laughter.)   So you can imagine we had some pretty interesting dinner conversations.  The thing is something all I wanted to do was for somebody else on the table to just pass the mashed potatoes.  My brother and sister and I learned early not only to bring our appetites to the dinner table but also a point of view.  We learned how to declare our views and how to defend them.  Challenge and be challenged.  What those family moments taught me was that, more than any differing views you bring to the table – be it in the kitchen or the boardroom, within diplomatic circles or on Capitol Hill – shared values are what unite us.  They guide us toward unity and balance, civility and respect, perspective and good decision-making.  They show us how to lead when it matters most.

Now, we know that terrorists don't share our values.  They walk a different and a destructive path.  Our collective reminder is September 11th here, March 11th in Spain, and countless daily acts of murder and destruction around the world.  

But we must remind ourselves, as well, how far we have come since September 11th, stepping out of grief, rising to unprecedented guard, fighting a brutal enemy in a bold, broad and brand new 21st century way.

Now, in the private sector, there are often revolutionary changes that successful businesses either adapt to or perish.  In much the same way, government faced the same challenge after September 11th.  The old model of different agencies was no longer adequate to combat a new kind of enemy, a new kind of warfare.  So the President and Congress exercised the strong leadership necessary to make Homeland Security the newest Cabinet agency.  

As you all know, there were plenty of skeptics who said this could not be done.  It was hard to imagine a reorganization of government happening on this scale, and on such a short timeline.  But our response was quite simply:  Why not?  Who says it can't be done?  We already had 180,000 men and women committed to doing their job every single day as best as they possibly could.  We had men and women with tremendous sense of mission and commitment.  We knew that the images of 9/11, while it chilled our spines, also heated the passion of our nation, and that the freedoms and security of our families, friends and fellow citizens were at stake.

I've traveled much of the country; I've talked to many of my co-workers, fellow public servants.  And the vast majority of them welcomed the merger.  In a post 9/11 world, they gained a new respect for the importance of their jobs, as well as did the rest of the country, and the need to do them both differently and better.  And so our charge was to unify that sense of purpose, make it easier for them to do their jobs and, as a nation, approach the protection of our people and our way of life in a smarter and more efficient way.

For many reasons, this was an enormous undertaking.  In a sense, on March 1, 2003, the Department of Homeland Security became the largest IPO ever.  We became a "public sector offering" staked in the security of our country and, as such, everyone in the country, and, I might add, and the world, having a stake in the Department's success.

One of the more interesting things we had to do, one of the first things we had to do was essentially terminate the employment of 180,000 people on February 28th and rehire them the next day on March 1st, without a delay in their paycheck -- very important.  But more than 22 agencies and 180,000 people – we also had 22 different human resource servicing offices, eight different payroll systems, 19 financial management centers, 13 procurement systems – and literally hundreds of legacy systems that had to be consolidated, integrated and upgraded.

What's more, this reorganization required looking beyond old agendas, old missions, cultures, histories and processes, coming together as one holistic unified enterprise.  And it required -- and I would emphasize, it enabled once disjointed employees in different agencies to rally around a single mission:  to spot, stop and response to threats and hazards to our nation.  

And at the same time, from the very start, we had to remain operational.  And while we worked swiftly to get servers up, systems consolidated, staplers at every desk, we also had to be squarely focused on the protection of our country.

The recombination of agencies created a vast job description for the new Department.  I'd like to give you just a little snapshot.  Today, as we have every day since March 1st, we patrol 95,000 miles of coastline and navigable waters, 7,500 miles of borderline with Canada and Mexico.

We screen nearly 100 -- excuse me, we screen nearly 1 1/2 million passengers before they board commercial aircraft and 2 1/2 million pieces of luggage that pass through this country's 429 commercial airports.  We inspect tons of imported food product, review thousands of visas and green card applications.  We work with states, cities and citizens to help them prepare and recover from emergencies, whether acts of man or Mother Nature.  We review dozens of technology proposals, some 500 cyber security reports daily, and more than 1,000 pieces of intelligence.  That's just a small slice of what we do every single day in Homeland Security.

We're in constant daily communication with authorities throughout the country to safeguard our nation's most critical infrastructure – bridges and water supplies, phone and cyber systems, airports and shipping lanes, chemical and nuclear facilities, hospitals and laboratories – just about everything that keeps this country operational and keeps our economy strong.

Now, what we wanted our employees to know from the very outset was that they were now at the core of a unified mission, no longer at the edges.  If you don't have a deeply felt respect for your fellow employees, their concerns and their ideas, then respect for you and the organizational mission will not be returned.  So immediately, we held a town hall meeting with employees.  We spoke, we listened, we answered questions.  And throughout this entire first 16 months, whenever we are out, or other members of our leadership are out around the country, we often stop, ask a group of our fellow employees to gather with us behind closed doors, and have the kind of conversations you need to have to make your organization stronger and better, and in the process, make the country safer.  We told them what we knew; we answered questions.  And that was important to do as soon as news of the new department was announced and certain things continued to evolve.

Clearly, what was initially critical to guiding this combined workforce and guarding the country was building a first-rate leadership team.  First, we had to look to people who had a deep knowledge in their area of expertise, but also who were willing to blend what they know and what they've done with both new thinking and group thinking.  A reorganization of this kind comes with its element of hassle, not to mention just pure hard work.  We needed aptitude but also attitude.  We needed people who had a great sense of history-making and were fully committed to the mission.

We also needed leaders who understood that titles do not convey leadership.  A title suggests little more than a chain of command, which may get you compliance -- may get you compliance to minimal standards, but not commitment, which is emotionally and intellectually different, as you all know.  Commitment translates into hours and effort and passion for what you're trying to achieve together as an organization.

And as a leader, I say to you, you have to have faith in yourself.  As Adlai Stevenson once said, "It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny sitting on a horse."  I don't know how my leadership team looks on a horse, but I know they're skilled, they're principled, they're confident, they're entrepreneurial, they're good-hearted people, and I'm very fortunate to have them by my side.

So we had a team, a leadership team as well as an energized and dedicated group of border patrol agents, port security personnel, TSA screeners, Coast Guard members, intelligence analysts, disaster relief workers – men and women nationwide, and worldwide, who were committed to the fullest protection of our nation and our people.

Now, in any task you undertake, if everything becomes a priority, nothing gets done; or rather, nothing gets done well.  You have to have a clear set of priorities, know what needs to be done first, and what next and what next.  We need a framework of priorities, a clear and well-defined charter, and it was laid out in the President's National Strategy for Homeland Security.  The Department was the primary engine that would drive the strategy, along with other federal partners:  governors, mayors and private sector leaders.  But we knew, within the Department, we were the change agents, we were the catalysts charged with getting things done.

In a short amount of time, we began to layer defenses, build multiple perimeters, put them in and around airports -- from the curb to the cockpit -- seaports and land borders.  We quickly assessed vulnerabilities and launched measures to correct them.  It was a first-things-first approach, done fast but I'd like to think done well, to carry out the guidelines set by the President.

And earlier this year, we completed our own Strategic Plan that included a vision, mission, strategic goals, core values, principles and action plans that will take us into the future.

Now, let me emphasize something that I think is very, very important.  Homeland Security is a national strategy.  It's about much more than the horizontal melding of 22 agencies of 180,000 people.  The attacks of 9/11 required a whole new philosophy of how we secure this country, a philosophy of shared leadership and shared responsibility and shared accountability -- in essence, particularly given our system of government, a new notion of federalism, because, given the scope of what occurs here every day and every minute around this great country, it's clear that the protection of this nation cannot be micro-managed from Washington, D.C.  Instead, it must be a high priority in every city, every neighborhood, in every home and business across America.

As I've said many times, homeland security in the 21st century is really about the integration of an entire country.  It's about partnerships.  So immediately, we began working with the governors and the mayors, our state and local partners, to improve coordination and delineate chains of command.  We have a large and a shared agenda, ranging from sharing and responding to threat information to building up emergency preparedness capabilities.  We also provided our government partners at the state and local level with resources to help them achieve this critical mission.  Since March 1st of 2003, we've made available homeland security grants totaling in excess of $8 billion to help them with that effort -- $8 billion.  And if the House and Senate pass the President's budget this year, there will be at least an additional $3 billion plus on tops of that.  And in return for the dollars, we've required strategic plans from the states and the territories to help ensure that the funds are spent in a smart and in a focused way.

We took a similar approach with members of the private sector.  Nearly 85 percent of America's critical infrastructure is owned by private business.  Al-Qaeda has already made it known they're out to destroy our economy.  You cannot have economic security without homeland security, or homeland security without economic security.  We know: institutions have to trust institutions; leaders have to trust leaders.  So we started by inviting businesspeople to the discussion table early on and sharing information.  We're constantly reaching out to the private sector and to the state and locals, and doing just that.  We needed to get a business buy-in to help us help them protect their assets, their communities, and their employees.  But when you're also talking about chemical and nuclear facilities, oil refineries and power plants, we needed them to help us protect our citizens and our way of life.

Key to good risk management in the terrorist-fighting business is to build up your protections so we are less vulnerable to attack.  Our role has been to perform vulnerability assessments, provide training, and then collaborate on security standards.

And, quite frankly, to convey that good security is good business.  We've had highly successful collaborations with the private sector in securing the supply chains through their participation in known shipper programs at land, sea and airports.  And I have to say, we've had a strong response again -- shared leadership, shared responsibility.

Now, in businesses, company -- in business, companies are always trying to improve or to replace their old products.  The marketplace requires it.  But they also want to bring brand new products to market to respond to competition and evolving consumer sophistication.  The same can be said of Homeland Security.

One of our charges was and continues to be to create brand new capabilities, which we are affecting partly through reorganization and functional integration, partly by creating things out of whole cloth -- capabilities generated by our Science and Technology and Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection divisions.

For example, one of the first things we did as a new Department was to reorganize our border functions in a way that would create one bureau dedicated to securing our border, one dedicated to enforcement responsibilities, and another to facilitating the process for lawful immigration.  In creating that trifecta, we established better morale, improved service, shorter delays and tighter security.

We accelerated and unified the border inspection process by taking three once-disparate faces of government, three chains of command, three different kinds of uniforms, and cross-training these good people, highly motivated people to do each other's job.  This establishes "one face" at the border – one officer, one uniform, all now potentially in a position to do three tasks if the country or the situation requires, with new technological tools, long promised by their legacy agencies, quickly delivered by the new agency to help them do their jobs better.

An extension of that program is U.S.-VISIT, which, as most of you know, we launched in January at major airports and seaports across the country.  It's a general notion that we need to know who's coming into the country, how long they're going to be here, and when they leave.  U.S.-VISIT helps us do that.  Since its inception, beginning of this year, we've sped the processing of nearly seven million legitimate passengers to airports and seaports, and matched more than 800 potential entrants against criminal watch lists.

As I said, we're also creating new capabilities through functional integration.  Those 22 different human resource servicing offices I mentioned earlier have been reduced to seven; eight different payroll systems down to three, 19 original financial centers down to ten; 13 procurement systems down to eight; and the list goes on and on.  Again, continuing to integrate responsibilities and the functions of our office internally.  The result:  a reduction in costly overlap and an influx of "smart systems" for a 21st-century way in which we must work.

But again, we also created new divisions that previously didn't exist to generate innovative approaches and greater capabilities to promote security.  As the President has said, "Our enemies are not idle, and neither are we."  I can assure you we've made great progress in the developing stages of new technologies:  radiation detection devices, bio-agent sensitive alarms, sensors that can detect dangerous pathogens when they are released.

We've instituted new protective measures, both seen and unseen, to safeguard everything from our nation's vast web of computer networks to our vast array of byways, bridges and buildings. And as you can guess, the management challenge of our time is not simply to change, but to leave nothing to chance.  And the entrepreneurial spirit driving Homeland Security, all across the country, is making sure we remain forward-thinking, and as quickly adaptable as our enemy.

Now, like any new organizational entity, we had to move quickly to establish an organizational identity.  Remember, we bring in these 22 disparate agencies:  histories, cultures, own organizational identities.  We want to meld people around the common.  Visually, that meant branding – a new Departmental seal, for example, to replace the hodge-podge of logos and seals developed by multiple agencies and programs over the decades.  We actually felt that branding serves a number of very constructive purposes.  It introduced us to the public, could hopefully reassure the public that there's a strong force protector at work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on their behalf.  We also felt that it signaled a vast presence to our enemies and provides our employees with a greater sense of belonging:  One team, one fight – and they are all a significant part of it.

Now, that's where the creation of a cultural identity comes in.  Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the world "culture."  I didn't do that well in biology; maybe that's why it reminds me of something you grow in a Petrie dish.  But I do believe that good leaders create environments where trust and teamwork are valued, performance is recognized and people feel compelled, self-motivated every single day, to do their best.  Part of leadership is vesting in the people around you.

You have to enable and empower people to make decisions independent of you.  As I've learned, each person on a team is an extension of your leadership.  I don't care what you're doing and where you're located.  If you're part of a team or leading a team, every member of that team conceivably is an extension of you.  If they feel empowered by you, then they will magnify significantly your personal ability to lead.   Trust is a great force multiplier.  

And that extends to our Department's many constituencies:  Congress, the public, as well as our state, local, private sector and international partners.  From an agency standpoint, it was critically important for Homeland Security to set realistic expectations.

From the outset, we made it clear:  we are "an agency in a hurry."  We are in relentless pursuit of our goals, the foremost being the preservation of our freedoms and our security and our way of life.  From the outset, we knew that success would be difficult to measure.  Internally, you have to define "success" for your coworkers, for your employees.  Otherwise, they don't have a sense; they don't have any feeling of progress.  It's fairly easy to do internally.  We can measure progress by the completion of initiatives and the timeframes on which we -- under which we deliver them.  

Externally, to the general public, it's a little bit more difficult.  I think you can appreciate that.  We know that we've disrupted terrorist networks, thwarted attacks and better trained and prepared our nation should an attack occur.  But the reality, and thus the expectations we work under every day, is we simply can make no guarantees.  In an age when threats come packaged in a suitcase or an envelope, when terrorists have access to many of the same technologies as we do, the war is hard fought and ever-evolving each and every day.

Given that context, it's particularly important from a management perspective that we communicate with our constituencies as much as possible.  So we tell our story to Congress.  I think our leadership team last year was -- testified before Congress over 130 times.  And we take these opportunities to talk about what we're achieving, and what we need to achieve even more.

We talk to our partners, so that we can share threat information and implement the best protective measures and build capabilities around the country.  We explain ourselves to the American public at every turn so they understand our policies and procedures and what they can do to help both their families and their own communities.

Today we can also communicate this: That we have made measurable, visible progress during these our first 16 months of work.  But we know, we clearly know, there is much more work to do.  So we will continue to ensure the momentum we have established, sustain and expand our first-year successes, and develop new means to defend and protect our country.  We will serve as other generations have served during moments of great challenge – with persistence, grace, fortitude and moral certainty.

I think my dad, who never lived to witness the tragic day of September 11th, would be proud to see the nation that has since taken shape.  America has become a nation of leaders, from citizens here at home, to our soldiers overseas, to everyone who so quickly and passionately, patriotically, intelligently, and willingly took on a collective mission -- to keep America safe and to keep it free.

That's what leaders do.  Leaders challenge the moment.  They steel their resolve.  They lead, together, when it matters most.  And I have every confidence that this sense of leadership is abundantly present in this room.  And may all of us continue to summon that leadership to our very best personal and professional efforts.

Thank you very much.  (Applause.)  

Ms. McGinnis: Thank you so much, Secretary Ridge.  And I want to give you a small gift, which is here -- good.  You've heard of red tape.  You talked about red tape, right?

Secretary Ridge:  I've heard of duct tape, too. (Laughter.)

Ms. McGinnis:  Oh, yeah.  This is not --

Secretary Ridge:  I didn't want to bring it up, but it just seemed to be the right moment. (Laughter.)

Ms. McGinnis:  Next year.  That's right.

Secretary Ridge:  Next year, maybe.

Ms. McGinnis: That's right.  This is not duct tape.  (Laughter.)

Secretary Ridge:  Okay.

Ms. McGinnis: This red tape was used to bound documents in the Civil War.  This is the actual red tape that was used to tie up those documents and we've cut it and put it in Lucite as a symbol of the kind of entrepreneurial leadership that you symbolize and you talked about.

Secretary Ridge:  Thank you.  Yeah, that's great.

Ms. McGinnis:  So thank you very much.

Secretary Ridge: Thank you very much.  That's great. (Applause.)

Ms. McGinnis:  Great.

Secretary Ridge:  Thank you, thank you.  Great.

Ms. McGinnis: Do you want to take a couple of questions?

Secretary Ridge:  That guy right there.  You're my buddy.

Ms. McGinnis: Do you want to take two questions?

Secretary Ridge:  Sure, if they want.

Ms. McGinnis: Okay.  All right.  All right.  We've twisted his arm and I hope Susan is in agreement with this.  We have time for a couple of questions or comments, and I think you all know where the microphones are.  So have at it.

Secretary Ridge:  Don't feel obliged.

Ms. McGinnis: But don't feel obliged, if you're enjoying your lunch.  

Okay.  Here we go.  I knew there would be a question.  It just takes a little while to get to the -- question?

Question:   As an ordinary American citizen, what is it that I can do to be helpful to you and to Homeland Security?  So for -- just as an example is, I hear the announcements of code levels of danger and I'm aware, but I'm not sure what to do about it.  How can I be helpful to you to help me?

Secretary Ridge:  Thank you, because I think at the heart of your question, you really reflect a question that's been asked millions of times, if not publicly, a lot of folks around the country have said:  What can I do?  What should I do?

And I would say to you, with great respect, that we ask a few simple but very important things of individual citizens.  We ask them as family members to have a communication plan with their family in the event, unlikely but possible, event occurs in their community.  If your household is anything like mine, the only time you're together -- and the older the kids get, the less time it is -- at night -- is at night when you're all sleeping.

So there needs to be a communication plan with your family.  What do you do?  Where do you go?  How do you meet?  How do you contact one another?  We ask you to develop a ready kit.  I mean, this is something that the Red Cross and other agencies have been ordered for a long, long time.

I noted with some of you, and you picked it up, the notion of the duct tape.  That wasn't really at the heart of the ready kit, in spite of the fact that some people made it that way.  But there are certain things we'd like you to just set aside, supplies, in the unlikely but possible event something could occur.

The other thing we ask citizens is to -- respecting their sophistication is to stay informed.  There are plenty of websites.  We have a ready.gov website.  But there are plenty of websites out there that to which you can refer from time to time.  They'll even give you background information about some of the things that may be discussed, either by our Department or by commentators on TV or the radio about potential implications of what would happen if such and such would occur.

And that's basically what we'd like individual citizens to do.  If you take the time to prepare yourself and your family in the unlikely but possible involvement as a result of an attack, you will go a long way in elevating the level of preparedness in security for the country.  If you ask a first responder, they would all tell you, your ability to take care of yourself at the time of crisis eases their ability as well.

So it's a very appropriate question.  Those aren't major things to do.  They do take time, a little time, but I encourage everybody to do it.  If you want to step up your participation, we have Citizen Corps Councils in over 1,000 communities representing 50 percent of the country.  If you want to volunteer, if you want to be a -- get CERT training, certified -- become a member of a Certified Emergency Response Team, if you want to aid your police department, your fire department.  There are plenty of other more visible things you can do outside your family or your business.  

If you're a parent, get involved in the parent/teachers organizations.  Make sure your school is engaged intellectually.  Make sure they have a plan.  Those are simple things but they're very important, and they're fundamental to the reality with which we are confronted in the 21st century, as that -- that is the unpredictable nature of a terrorist attack.  

And then let the security and law enforcement professionals do their job, which they do with even greater intensity today than they did on September 12th, 2001.  I must tell you, the men and women in those two lines of work around the country -- federal, state, local, private sector -- don't worry about their interest or concern or passion to combat terrorism being diminished because of a lapse of time.  If anything else, it's been heightened and you, as taxpayers, are giving, are providing them in excess of eight billion a day to train and exercise and to be ready.  They'll be ready.  We just want you to be ready as well.

Question: I was wondering, in bringing together the Department of Homeland Security what was your biggest change, management challenge, and how did you overcome that to bring about team DHS?

Secretary Ridge: There is fairly lengthy list of challenges associated with this.  I think the single most important challenge we had initially was to try to convey to each and every one of my colleagues, 180,000 strong, that their commitment to getting their particular work, their assignment done as well as they can, frankly, better and better every day, was absolutely critical to the overall mission of Homeland Security, was to convey the notion that we have to be right.

You know that litany that I read you earlier in my remarks about the number of passengers every day on commercial aircraft, the number of pieces of luggage, the number of people coming across our borders, and the list goes on and on.  We have to be right over a billion times a year.  The terrorists only have to be right once.  And so, conveying and hopefully instilling both a sense of pride in what they do every step of the way, but the notion that we can't afford mistakes.  We have to be right all the time.

But I would also tell you that that turned out to be easily communicated, but I think even, and proudly I can say to you that I think my colleagues understand that.  But the notion that everything they do -- I don't care where they are in the department, what they're doing in the department -- use their instincts, use their experience and that extra commitment to getting the job done better today than it was today, and the notion that when they turn the lights out at night -- if they're in an office that does that -- to make sure that the work they had finished that particular day had made the country just a little bit safer and a little bit more secure.

The other will come in time.  We will integrate all of those functions in time.  We'll develop a new human resources system.  We'll continue to reorganize to make us more effective.  We'll continue to remind my colleagues -- and I can say this -- and I've said this to them privately and publicly, I can make an argument to you today that the man and woman at the Port of Entry, at a border, or the TSA screener, or the Coast Guardsman that just boarded a high interest vessel, what they do every single day operationally may be more important every single day than what I do.

They need to understand the value of their work and they need to be valued.  And, hopefully, that's where America comes in and says, "Yes, we know screeners are important to my safety and my security.  They're important to the country."  Those folks that used to be at the border, wave you through, you want them to take the time and make the right decision.

So again, that was the biggest challenge, to buy into the notion that we have to demand excellence of ourselves every single day because we can afford no mistakes.  None.

Question: Thank you.

Secretary Ridge: Thank you very much. (Applause)

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This page was last modified on 07/27/04 00:00:00