The United States Secretary of Homeland Security is the head of the United States Department of Homeland Security, the body concerned with protecting the American homeland and the safety of American citizens. The Secretary is a member of the President's Cabinet. The position was created by the Homeland Security Act following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The new department consisted primarily of components transferred from other cabinet departments because of their role in homeland security, such as the Coast Guard, Federal Protective Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (which includes the Border Patrol), Secret Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It did not, however, include the FBI or the CIA.
On January 20, 2009, the Senate confirmed Barack Obama's appointment of Janet Napolitano to be the third Secretary of Homeland Security. To assure a smooth transition however, Michael Chertoff was asked not to resign until the morning of January 21, 2009.
Read more about United States Secretary Of Homeland Security: Inclusion in The Presidential Line of Succession, List of Secretaries of Homeland Security, Living Former Secretaries of Homeland Security, Order of Succession
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, secretary, homeland and/or security:
“The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The line that I am urging as today’s conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, a repudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“... the wife of an executive would be a better wife had she been a secretary first. As a secretary, you learn to adjust to the boss’s moods. Many marriages would be happier if the wife would do that.”
—Anne Bogan, U.S. executive secretary. As quoted in Working, book 1, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“Let those who desire a secure homeland conquer it. Let those who do not conquer it live under the whip and in exile, watched over like wild animals, cast from one country to another, concealing the death of their souls with a beggar’s smile from the scorn of free men.”
—José Martí (1853–1895)
“We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you’re looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)