We always monitor the flow of information, intelligence, threat streams to see whether we have any indication there's some imminent. We work hard to identify potential cells and disrupt them. This is one of the reasons we put so much emphasis on intelligence gathering.

So that's why I said, if you look at the average, you would see the money New York got this year was in line with the average across the prior three years and substantially more, by a country mile, than the money given to any other city.

I'm sometimes asked why it is that for 30 years we seem to have trouble in the United States enforcing the rules against illegal immigration, and I'll tell you what the answer is. The answer is that when the television cameras turn off and the spotlight moves to something else, there are a host of interest groups and advocacy groups who work very, very hard to make it difficult to enforce these rules. I'm not commenting adversely on their motivation, but I can tell you the effect of all of this is to wear down the ability of an agency to enforce the law.

We don't really have the ability to enforce the law with respect to illegal work in this country in a way that's truly effective...We haven't been able to require every employer to enter a system in which they check the work status of their employees and determine whether they're legal, and without that, we don't really have the ability to enforce the law with respect to illegal work in this country in a way that's truly effective. And that would be the single greatest additional weapon we could use if we're serious about tackling this problem.

There really is no vacation from the world in which we live.

Al Qaeda is very media-savvy and very focused on what goes on in the global media.

So people have to decide. Do they want to have the security? Do they want to continue to plug the gap [in border security] that GAO has identified and recognize that there will be some costs to doing that? Or do we want to make sure that business isn't hampered and that people can move back and forth readily, and recognize that, if we don't put some barriers in place, we're going to wind up with dangerous people coming into the country?