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 White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 10/23/07 (California Wildfires) — Tuesday, October 23, 2007 — MS. PERINO: Well, I think that there were lessons learned from Katrina, especially in regards to early communication and coordination between the federal, state, and local governments. Obviously, the situation is different. When you have a hurricane, there are days when you can prepare and prepare for evacuation. These fires can spark up overnight and literally your house is going up in smoke. And so that's why the President declared the emergency so that we can help people get to a place where they can be safe. Clearly, when they're talking about increased coordination that means that you can get assets like those DOD assets and the U.S. Department of Agriculture assets, the Department of Interior assets to that region quickly. And I would say that the state and federal -- I'm sorry, the state and local governments are working quite well together, as well, which is why we've had a good coordinated response. It's a very dangerous situation. You have over 300,000 people evacuated, and the President is very concerned for not only their safety, but for how we are going to help them afterwards. Q Well, when you send Secretary Chertoff out or Director Paulison or you take a minute to show us 280,000 bottles of water, is that designed to make sure folks know that the administration won't repeat its own mistakes? MS. PERINO: I would say that it's not designed to do anything for me to show you that; it's to alert people to what the federal government is doing in order to help the people of southern California. The whole world is watching how much of the state -- the southern part of the state is on fire. The federal government is very concerned, the President is concerned himself, and that's why we're providing these assets. We did provide assets at Katrina. But there were lessons learned out of Katrina and I think that we are applying some of those, especially when it comes to early communication, early and often communication between our staff here at the federal level and then the Governor's staff and the Mayor's staff. Q Is the President going to go out? MS. PERINO: We don't have anything to announce in terms of the President going out. Right now it would be premature to announce because of the situation on the ground requiring so much of the security assets to be put towards helping people get out of harm's way, or to fight -- actually fight the fires. And so we are going to continue to update the President. He'll get a briefing tonight from Secretaries Chertoff and -- I'm sorry, Secretary Chertoff and Administrator Paulison. And then if we have more to update you on when -- whether he might go, we'll let you know. Q And as far as he knows right now, is everything going as well as it could be going? I've seen a couple of wire reports that at the -- center they were asking for water and other things, donations. MS. PERINO: Well, I think that -- again, being such an emergency where you have so many people needing to be in one place immediately, obviously they would need a lot of support; not only bottles of water, but cots, diapers, baby formula. People have had to leave immediately. Governor Schwarzenegger did tell the President he felt he was getting what he needed, but the President said, you've got an open line of communication, and if you need more, you just have to let us know. California | Dana Perino | Department of Homeland Security | Katrina | Michael Chertoff | Natural Disasters | Press Briefing | White House Press Corps Labels: California, Dana Perino, Department of Homeland Security, Katrina, Michael Chertoff, Natural Disasters, Press Briefing, White House Press Corps >> Full Story
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 7:48:00 PM  White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 9/27/07 (Cyber Security) — Thursday, September 27, 2007 — MS. PERINO: Well, I don't know who all would have seen the tape, but obviously, these are very important issues for the government to address. Malicious cyber attacks are a possibility, and it is only right and proper that the federal government, in conjunction with the private sector, which has a lot of responsibility over many critical pieces of infrastructure across the country, that we work cooperatively, plan for the worst, and expect the worst, and that way we can prevent it from happening. So I don't know who all would have seen it, but obviously, I think it's a good thing that the government is checking into this, making sure that we know what could be possible so that we can all work together and make sure that it doesn't happen. Q Well, what about the funding for this? According to OMB, next fiscal year, the Department of Homeland Security is expected to drop cyber-security spending to less than $100 million, and spending on securing the control systems that control the critical infrastructure is projected to be only $12 million. Why such a small amount of money? MS. PERINO: Well, I think what we need to remember is that the issue of cyber security crosses many different agencies, and they all work cooperatively together. In fact, DHS, Department of Homeland Security, is tasked with making sure that everyone is coordinated across the agencies. The other thing is, since 2004, the budget at that time for overall cyber-security issues was $4 billion. Now it's over $6 billion in the President's '08 request. What you're talking about is a small part of something that DHS does. So it doesn't -- it's not reflective, in terms of the overall budget in terms of cyber security. And what that doesn't include -- and I don't have the number, but I can try to get it for you -- is the research and development monies that are going into funding experiments and things to make sure that we're preventing any sort of attacks. Q So, I mean, you're saying that those figures that I just quoted are not a reflection of where cyber security is in terms of priorities for this administration? MS. PERINO: That's absolutely correct. The priorities should be shown that in the overall, cyber-security budget has gone up by over $2 billion. And we continue to do more coordination and cooperation, not only through the interagency process, to make sure that we're all hooked up and knitted up, but also with our state and local partners, but more importantly, the private sector, which, for example, with electrical grids, a lot of that security is handled by private sector. Labels: Cyber Security, Dana Perino, Department of Homeland Security, Press Briefing, White House Press Corps >> Full Story
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 6:45:00 PM
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