Michael Chertoff

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has a new book out this week, warned in an interview that national security will suffer if counter-terrorism warriors fear that bosses will second-guess their front-line actions after the fact. Chertoff said his book, "Homeland Security: Assessing the First Five Years," lays out an architecture for defending the nation against the threats of the 21st century. As Homeland Security chief from 2005 through the end of the Bush administration, Chertoff oversaw 218,000 employees and a $50-billion budget.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has a new book out this week, warned in an interview that national security will suffer if counter-terrorism warriors fear that bosses will second-guess their front-line actions after the fact. Chertoff said his book, "Homeland Security: Assessing the First Five Years," lays out an architecture for defending the nation against the threats of the 21st century. As Homeland Security chief from 2005 through the end of the Bush administration, Chertoff oversaw 218,000 employees and a $50-billion budget.

In nominating Michael Chertoff to be the second head of the Department of Homeland Security, President Bush has chosen a lawyer of uncommon experience. But how much of it will be helpful in managing the government's most unruly new bureaucracy remains to be seen. As a federal prosecutor, Chertoff took on mobsters and corporate scoundrels; as the top criminal official in the Justice Department on Sept. 11, 2001, he went after suspected terrorists.

Every few weeks for nearly four years, the Secret Service screened the IDs of employees of a Maryland cleaning company before they entered the house of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the nation's top immigration official. The company's owner says the workers sailed through the checks -- although some of them were actually illegal immigrants. Now, owner James Reid finds himself in a predicament that he considers especially confounding.

Cargo bound for the United States from six foreign ports -- including one in England owned by Dubai Ports World -- will be screened for nuclear and radiological weapons before being loaded onto ships, federal officials announced Thursday. Dubai Ports World is the United Arab Emirates company whose purchase of ports in New York and five other U.S. cities earlier this year unleashed a political furor that led to new port security mandates, including this one.

President Bush on Tuesday selected Michael Chertoff, who helped formulate the administration's controversial legal strategy after Sept. 11, as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Chertoff, 51, a federal appellate court judge, was head of the Justice Department's criminal division at the time of the terrorist attacks.

Re "Chertoff's border ambitions," April 19 Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff's border fences (actual and virtual) will never keep out illegal crossers as long as they continue to send competing messages. One sign reads "Keep Out." The other, "Help Wanted." Stephen C. Lee La Habra

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff waived environmental regulations and laws restricting immediate construction of border fencing along southwestern Arizona's Barry M. Goldwater Range. The action was taken to circumvent laws including the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

The Homeland Security chief tore into his own employees for staging a phony news conference at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government," Michael Chertoff said. "I have made unambiguously clear, in Anglo-Saxon prose, that it is not to ever happen again, and there will be appropriate disciplinary action taken against those people who exhibited what I regard as extraordinarily poor judgment."

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Michael Chertoff's nomination to an appeals court Thursday. Chertoff, the head of the criminal division at the Justice Department and a former federal prosecutor, was nominated to a seat on the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Although the Judiciary Committee has been the setting for several fierce battles over President Bush's nominees in recent months, the Chertoff nomination hasn't been one of those fights.

As recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast slowly expanded Wednesday, local leaders and federal officials resolved their spat over logistical tie-ups that kept thousands of residents from getting food and supplies from government aid stations. But in hard-hit Galveston Island, Hurricane Ike's widespread devastation left frazzled city officials sniping at one another about the crush of residents who wanted to return to a place that medical experts said is a health hazard.

Re "Chertoff's border ambitions," April 19 Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff's border fences (actual and virtual) will never keep out illegal crossers as long as they continue to send competing messages. One sign reads "Keep Out." The other, "Help Wanted." Stephen C. Lee La Habra

Michael Chertoff was in the driver's seat of a white Chevrolet Tahoe, under the glare of high-powered lights ringing Border Patrol headquarters. It was 10 p.m., 15 hours into the Homeland Security secretary's workday. An agent sitting beside him tapped a glowing computer screen. A map expanded. Drawing on an arsenal of radar, sensors and cameras, it displayed a spray of red dots -- suspected border crossers.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has asked the federal government to review its immigration enforcement priorities, warning that work-site raids on "non-exploitative" businesses could have "severe and lasting effects" on the local economy.

The Homeland Security chief tore into his own employees for staging a phony news conference at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government," Michael Chertoff said. "I have made unambiguously clear, in Anglo-Saxon prose, that it is not to ever happen again, and there will be appropriate disciplinary action taken against those people who exhibited what I regard as extraordinarily poor judgment."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff predicted painful economic fallout from the array of immigration enforcement measures the administration unveiled Friday in an attempt to choke off the jobs "magnet" that draws illegal immigrants. The changes, which would stiffen work-site enforcement, add border agents and increase penalties for rogue employers, could cause havoc in immigrant-dependent industries like agriculture, hospitality and healthcare, Chertoff acknowledged.

Looking for a strategy to prevent disasters like Hurricane Katrina? Try regulating the weather, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff joked Monday. At the beginning of his remarks to state emergency management directors, Chertoff noted the snowstorm that hit the East Coast on Sunday, joking that it had been arranged "to give a little additional urgency to these proceedings."

Fretters "This whole situation is totally overwhelming." -- Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco "I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem." -- New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin * Uniters "It is a source of tremendous pride to me to work with people who have pulled off this really exceptional response."

Flanked by lawmakers and law enforcement authorities at a fire station at the Port of Los Angeles, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Friday unveiled a new strategy for the rapid resumption of trade after a terrorist attack at a major U.S. port. As the U.S. Coast Guard gunboat Halibut idled a few yards offshore, Chertoff said the plan was "about making sure we spend as little time as possible paralyzed by an attack."

Fearing complacency among the American people over possible terrorist threats, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday that the nation faced a heightened chance of an attack this summer. "I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk," Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune's editorial board in an unusually blunt assessment of America's terrorist threat level. "Summertime seems to be appealing to them," he said of Al Qaeda.