Michael Brown Situation Quotations

His whole life was his family. It's a tragic situation for everyone involved. These two young children, they have no mother, no father and no grandma.

My obligation was to the White House and to make certain that the president understood what was going on and what the situation was. And I did that.

What we have right now is a situation where, with my having access to the military, bringing in the National Guard troops, securing the area, we'll be able to continue the relief efforts that we have been doing over the last several days, ... We'll be able to ramp those up and continue the evacuation.

There is no question in my mind, that at the highest levels of the White House they understood how grave the situation was.

Yes, I learned about that, the federal government learned about that (Thursday), ... And that shows how difficult communications are in the situation where there was virtually no communications, except for our teams on the ground.

The total lack of communication. The inability to hear and have good intelligence on the ground about what was occurring there, ... We had to actually take teams out yesterday because of the dangerous situation they were in. That's very frustrating not only to me but those teams. Those medical teams want to help save lives and the thugs and the others that are causing the problem are actually making it more difficult. So we had to pull them out for a while. They want to go back in. They're going back in.

He's very engaged, and he's asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask. I say that only because I want everyone to recognize ... how serious the situation remains.