On September 11, people died because police officers couldn’t talk to firemen. And Katrina was a reenactment of the same problem. It is really hard to believe this has not been fixed.

Changes in government organization are vastly important but are still only part of what we need to do.

The problem was the CIA and FBI not communicating and not picking them up.

Our purpose is to find out why things happened, how they could have happened, and what we can do to prevent their ever happening again.

It’s really the same confusion that you had on 9/11 – worse, really, because at least in New York City you had Rudy Giuliani.

We’re frustrated, all of us frustrated at the lack of urgency in addressing these various problems.

We felt it was absolutely vital. We had certainly hoped it would have been up and running a long time ago.

Nobody knew who was in charge.

We may end up holding individual agencies, people, and procedures to account. But our fundamental purpose will not be to point fingers. It’s rather to answer fully the questions that so many still have.

you had no command and control. Who was in charge? Really, nobody was in charge.

We shouldn’t need another wake-up call. We believe that the terrorists will strike again; so does every responsible expert that we have talked to. And if they do, and these reforms that might have prevented...