page_title: Janet Napolitano
section_title: Secretary of Homeland Security
hierarchical_section_title: Janet Napolitano / Secretary of Homeland Security
caption_attribution_description: Secretary of Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano, FBI Special Agent in Charge John V. Gilies and Vice President NFL Security Operations Milt Aldridge answer questions on Super Bowl XLIV security which CBP will be assisting with.
context_page_description: Janet Ann Napolitano is an American politician, lawyer, and university administrator who served as the 21st Governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009 and as the United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2009 to 2013, under President Barack Obama. She was president of the University of California system from September 2013, and stepped down from that position on August 1, 2020 to join the faculty at Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.
  Prior to her election as governor, she served as Attorney General of Arizona from 1999 to 2003. She was the first woman and the 23rd person to serve in that office. She has been the first woman to serve in several offices, including Attorney General of Arizona, Secretary of Homeland Security, and president of the University of California.
  Forbes ranked her as the world's ninth most powerful woman in 2012 and eighth most powerful woman in 2013. In 2008, she was listed by The New York Times as one of the women most likely to become the first female President of the United States.
context_section_description: In February 2006, Napolitano was named by The White House Project as one of "8 in '08", a group of eight female politicians who were suggested as possible candidates for president in 2008. On January 11, 2008, she endorsed then Illinois Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for president. On November 5, 2008, she was named to the advisory board of the Obama-Biden Transition Project. 
  On December 1, 2008, Barack Obama introduced Napolitano as his nominee for United States Secretary of Homeland Security. On January 20, 2009, Napolitano was confirmed, becoming the first woman appointed as Secretary in the relatively new department, and the fourth person to hold the position overall (including one acting secretary). Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer became governor of Arizona.
  In March 2009, Napolitano told the German news site Der Spiegel that while there is always a threat from terrorism, she preferred to talk about "man-caused' disasters" as a way "to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur." 
  In April 2009, in an interview defending her plans to tighten the Canada–US border, Napolitano incorrectly implied that the September 11 attack perpetrators entered the United States from Canada. This claim was made by several politicians based upon erroneous news reports in the days after the attack. Napolitano explained that she misunderstood the question and was referring to other individuals who had planned attacks and entered through Canada, but Canadian diplomats rebuked her for helping perpetuate a myth.
  In response to criticism, she later said that while she knew no 9/11 terrorists entered the U.S. through Canada, "there are other instances … when suspected terrorists have attempted to enter our country from Canada to the United States... [s]ome of these are well known to the public, such as the millennium bomber, while others are not due to security reasons." There has only been one publicly reported case of terrorists coming to the United States through Canada, that of Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian citizen who was in Canada illegally. Nevertheless, Napolitano later claimed that "Canada allows people into its country that we do not allow into ours" as a justification for treating the Mexican and Canadian borders equally.
caption: Napolitano discussing security at a Super Bowl XLIV press conference. The Super Bowl is designated as a National Special Security Event by Homeland Security.
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