One of the essential elements of government responsibility is to communicate effectively to the American people, especially in time of a potential terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?

The Staten Island Ferry remains a potential terrorist target.

The sad fact is that the same terrorist scenarios, if they occurred in five different States, there could be five different sets of responses to the American people. We need, at a minimum, a level of coordination on communicating threats to the public.

It does make sense to say that it's more likely, thank God, to have a natural disaster than a terrorist one,

If we had a terrorist attack, the way the people respond is going to determine whether that attack is just a tragedy or whether that attack becomes an all-out disaster.