[Mb-civic] Brown Blames Superiors For Response to Katrina - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Brown Blames Superiors For Response to Katrina

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 11, 2006; A01

Michael D. Brown, the former Federal Emergency Management Agency 
director, accused the Bush administration yesterday of setting the 
nation's disaster preparedness on a "path to failure" before Hurricane 
Katrina by overemphasizing the threat of terrorism, and of discounting 
warnings on the day the storm hit that a worst-case flood was enveloping 
New Orleans.

Brown called "a little disingenuous" and "just baloney" assertions by 
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other top Bush 
administration officials that they were unaware of the severity of the 
catastrophe for a day after Katrina struck on Aug. 29. Investigators say 
their inaction delayed the launch of federal emergency measures, rescue 
efforts and aid to tens of thousands of stranded New Orleans residents.

Brown's highly charged testimony before a Senate investigative panel was 
a striking about-face from his comments to its House counterpart in 
September, when he was still on the administration payroll. At that 
time, Brown leveled his harshest criticism for what President Bush has 
called an "inadequate" response at Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux 
Blanco (D) and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin (D), who Brown said failed 
to fully evacuate the city and to forge a unified command.

His sometimes combative exchanges with senators also offered a rare 
glimpse of a former Bush official publicly criticizing the 
administration. He sharpened his earlier criticism and named people whom 
he had previously described only in general terms.

After the White House declined to offer Brown a legal defense of 
executive privilege, which would have allowed him not to testify to 
lawmakers, Brown said yesterday that Chertoff and his predecessor, Tom 
Ridge, paved the way for FEMA's Katrina failures by fomenting a 
"cultural clash" between FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. 
DHS absorbed FEMA in 2003, and the head of the emergency agency stopped 
reporting to the president.

Internal turf wars siphoned away FEMA's disaster response capability and 
funding, Brown said. If not repaired, he said, the Department of 
Homeland Security is "doomed to fail, and that will fail the country."

Brown also cited a "disconnect" with Bush officials in the hours before 
and after Katrina hit. He said they were distracted by the fight against 
terrorism from the general threat posed by recurring natural disasters 
and from specific warnings that a direct hit by a projected Category 5 
hurricane would swamp New Orleans and strand as many as 100,000 people.

Brown said he called and spoke at least twice on Aug. 29 with White 
House Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph Hagin or Chief of Staff Andrew H. 
Card Jr., telling them: "New Orleans is flooding; it's the worst-case 
scenario." But the message apparently did not get through to Homeland 
Security officials.

"They should have had awareness of it, because they were receiving the 
same information that we were," Brown said.

"Had there been a report coming out . . . that said, 'Yes, we've 
confirmed that a terrorist has blown up the 17th Street Canal levee,' 
then everybody would have jumped all over that and been trying to do 
everything they could," Brown said. "But because this was a natural 
disaster, that has become the stepchild within the Department of 
Homeland Security."

The Category 3 storm eventually killed 1,321 people, including 1,072 in 
Louisiana; displaced about 2 million people; and caused more than $150 
billion in damage.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan 
cited "conflicting reports" immediately after the storm hit. "Some were 
saying" the levee system "was overtopped," he said. "Some were saying it 
was breached. And, again, we knew of the flooding that was going on -- 
that's why our top priority was focused on saving lives."

Testifying after Brown, Matthew Broderick, the department's director of 
operations coordination, and Robert B. Stephan, assistant secretary for 
infrastructure protection, faulted Brown for failing to communicate with 
the chain of command.

"Mr. Brown should have picked up the phone and called the secretary 
right away," Broderick said.

Brown, who first received reports that city levees were failing at 10 
a.m. on Aug. 29, said that he relayed them to headquarters for 
confirmation and alerted Hagin, who was with Bush at the president's 
Texas ranch as well as in Arizona and California that day.

Brown said he could not recall whether Bush was on the line, but he 
added: "I knew that in speaking to Joe, I was talking directly to the 
president." Brown later said that he did not ask Hagin for any 
particular help, and that he regretted not calling for military 
assistance the weekend before Katrina made landfall.

Brown, a Bush political loyalist who became the face of the government's 
failed response, said under questioning that he repeatedly asked the 
White House and other federal agencies for help, but that his authority 
was limited by FEMA's position within the Department of Homeland 
Security and that the agency's resources were overwhelmed.

He has been criticized for his lack of leadership after the storm, for 
his own lack of awareness of the developing crisis and for misstatements 
about conditions at New Orleans's convention center, where thousands 
were stranded without food and water. Leaked e-mails have portrayed 
Brown as more concerned with his public appearance and planned departure 
from FEMA than with disaster operations.

Brown's deputy at FEMA, Patrick Rhode, testified yesterday that he 
participated in a conference call on the afternoon of Aug. 29 detailing 
catastrophic levee failures and alerted the department's Homeland 
Security Operations Center, which was feeding reports to the White House.

Senators released a timeline showing that authorities received 16 
reports from federal, state and local agencies and the American Red 
Cross that New Orleans's levees had been breached between 8:30 a.m. and 
6 p.m. on Aug. 29, though the Homeland Security Operations Center 
reported the opposite at 6 p.m.

A perplexed Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate 
investigation, asked why the official reaction of Washington and the 
military was that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet" despite reports 
from the ground that the city was 80 percent flooded, its levee system 
had failed and thousands faced death.

"All they had to do," Brown said, was listen to the Homeland Security 
teleconferences "and pay attention."

Collins singled out Chertoff and other department officials for a "lack 
of awareness" of fundamental emergency operations and a "slow, hesitant 
response." She said that though "DHS's playbook appears designed to 
distance" top officials from FEMA, they "must answer for decisions that 
they made or failed to make."

Under questioning, Brown said he did not directly brief Chertoff -- who 
was "gone or going to Atlanta" for an Aug. 30 event on the possible flu 
pandemic -- because "it would have wasted my time." He said he preferred 
to call Card or Hagin directly.

Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah) called Brown's remarks "staggering." He 
said they demonstrated "a dysfunctional department to a degree far 
greater than any we've seen."

After Brown spoke to the Senate, he was subpoenaed to reappear before 
House investigators.

Next week, Chertoff and Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House's 
homeland security adviser, are scheduled to discuss internal changes. 
And the House investigative committee is scheduled to issue its Katrina 
report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/10/AR2006021000267.html?referrer=email
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