Posted on 02/11/2006 7:03:18 PM PST by Indy Pendance
WASHINGTON - Former federal disaster chief Michael Brown, the face of the government's listless response to Hurricane Katrina, said Friday he told top Bush officials the day the storm howled ashore of massive flooding in New Orleans and warned "we were realizing our worst nightmare."
More defiant than defensive, Brown told senators he dealt directly with White House officials the day of the Aug. 29 storm, including chief of staff Andrew Card and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin.
He also said the Homeland Security Department was among a half-dozen government agencies that received regular briefings that day from him and other officials by way of video conference calls. Administration officials have said they did not realize the severe damage Katrina had caused until after the storm had passed.
Under oath, Brown told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he could not explain why his appeals failed to produce a faster response.
"I expected them to cut every piece of red tape, do everything they could ... that I didn't want to hear anybody say that we couldn't do everything they humanly could to respond to this," Brown said about a video conference with administration officials — in which President Bush briefly participated — the day before Katrina hit. "Because I knew in my gut this was the bad one."
In the end, the storm claimed more than 1,300 lives, uprooted hundreds of thousands more and caused tens of billions in damage. The devastation in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities left Americans with enduring images of their countrymen dying in flooded nursing homes and pleading for rescue from rooftops.
Brown, in his second Capitol Hill appearance since Katrina, told his side to the senators five months after he quit under fire as chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
He agreed with some senators who characterized him as a scapegoat for government failures.
"I feel somewhat abandoned," said Brown,
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said he did not know that New Orleans' levees were breached until Aug. 30. Bush at the time said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
At an occasionally contentious White House briefing Friday, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said there were conflicting reports about the levees in the immediate aftermath of the storm.
"We knew of the flooding that was going on," McClellan said. "That's why our top priority was focused on saving lives. ... The cause of the flooding was secondary to that top priority and that's the way it should be."
After three hours of testimony, Brown was handed a subpoena ordering him to reappear in front of a House panel investigating the storm response. Brown is expected to be questioned by House investigators this weekend — days before the panel is expected to release its findings on the storm.
Recounting conference calls that described initial damage reports the day Katrina hit, Brown scoffed at claims that Homeland Security didn't know about the devastation's scope until the next day. He called those claims "just baloney."
Some senators suggested Brown look inward before pointing the finger elsewhere.
"You're not prepared to put a mirror in front of your face and recognize your own inadequacies," said Norm Coleman, R-Minn. "Perhaps you may get a more sympathetic hearing if you had a willingness to confess your own sins in this."
Brown responded: "That's very easy for you to say sitting behind that dais and not being there in the middle of that disaster watching that human suffering and watching those people dying and trying to deal with those structural dysfunctionalities, even within the federal government."
The disjointed federal response, Brown said, was in part the result of FEMA being swallowed in 2003 by the newly created Homeland Security Department, which he said was focused on fighting terrorism.
Natural disasters "had become the stepchild of the Department of Homeland Security," he said. Had there been a report that "a terrorist had blown up the 17th Street Canal levee, then everybody would have jumped all over that," he added.
Some senators attempted to trace the failures back to the White House.
"You quite appropriately and admirably wanted to get the word to the president as quickly as you could," said Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., asking about Brown's conversation with Hagin on the evening of Aug. 29. "Did you tell Mr. Hagin in that phone call that New Orleans was flooding?"
Brown answered: "I think I told him that we were realizing our worst nightmare, that everything we had planned about, worried about, that FEMA, frankly, had worried about for 10 years was coming true."
Sen. Robert Bennett (news, bio, voting record), R-Utah, suggested Brown may have delayed the federal response by cutting Homeland Security out of the loop about the levee failures and going straight to the White House.
"I think I now understand why Secretary Chertoff says he didn't know," Bennett said. "The reason he didn't know is because you didn't think it important to tell him."
Brown said he communicated directly with the White House instead of Homeland Security because FEMA's parent agency "just bogged things down."
Lara Jakes Jordan columns aren't any fun unless she includes the key at the bottom verifying which quotes are fake and which are accurate.
Owl_Eagle
"You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being"-Hillary Clinton
(Yes, she really said that
Peggy Noonan
The Case Against Hillary Clinton, pg 55)
Here's the deal....
If you call the FBI and report a crime it better have a terrorst angle, otherwise they won't respond.
The DHS is so secure you can't find a phone number to call it (your Senator will have problems finding one too).
Since 9/11, all agencies that got dumped into DHS have been focused on terrorists to the exclusion of other duties (ie, FEMA). And, since everyone is still trying to figure out who their boss is, and what duties they're supposed to handle, the entire things is FUBAR'd.
Therefore it doesn't suprise me that FEMA was serious screwed up, as was the whole Katrina response.
As I recall, Bush opposed the whole DHS idea, but the Dems pushed it...
So the administration knew the Levee had burst. What were they supposed to do, Run down there with a shovel?
Once the storm hit shore there wasnt dick anyone could do till the tide went out.
The problem was they couldnt start work until Blanko dipstick announced an emergency.
Whether or not the White House knew is really irrelevant. He was the head of FEMA, it was his job to do something about it.
What became of how GWB asked Blanco if she would allow federal help several days before Katrina hit shore?
I guess some responsibility lies with the administration for not realizing the breath taking incompetence of Nagin and Blanco. I mean, while most of us didn't determine that until seeing the two of them on T.V. for a few seconds, the White House should be held to a higher standard and made that call when they noticed the (D) after their names.
Owl_Eagle
"You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being"-Hillary Clinton
(Yes, she really said that
Peggy Noonan
The Case Against Hillary Clinton, pg 55)
That doesn't count, you see, it sheds a positive light on the Bush administration. Can't have that now.
Actually, it wasn't.
The Dems not only pushed DHS, they demanded that FEMA be included in it ~ probably had the thought that by burying it in a far larger bureaucracy, corrupt contracting practices (as always engaged in by Democrats when they are "in charge") would not be readily found by auditors ~ something always difficult in any agency with high level security clearance systems.
At the hearings he could remember everything that he said but couldn't remember who he said it to. Also, his emails didn't match his account of what he said. I don't know, it just seemed strange to me.
You're right, it was actually Blanco and Nagin's responsibility. However, as far as the federal government is concerned, it was Brown's responsibility as FEMA director, that's what he was appointed to do.
LOL.
You're right and it's too bad Bush flip-floped. Many conservatives warned long ago that making a bureaucracy even more unwieldy and inefficient by adding FEMA to it was a big mistake. Now that we've seen its colossal failure the finger-pointing begins. Let's face reality: it was a failure on every level - federal, state, local. Perhaps it was worse on the state and local level but Bush is far from blameless.
That is important to keep pointing out.
I'm certain it will be one subject on the Sunday Morning Talk Show and thats a good area to repeat it in.
President Bush did go to Blanco days before and asked if she would allow Federal help, and it was refused, that is a fact!!!!!
If President Bush had sent in Fema without her request or permission...President Bush would be in impeachment trials right now.
That is how strong their hate for President Bush is, Landrieu, Blanco, and hillary (remember she was down there) are eaten up with thier hate!!!!!! Let them rot!!!!!
With a GOP Congress? Highly doubtful.
This guy was a loser before Katrina hit and he is STILL a loser. That's what happens when you don't properly vette your political appointees...
Now he is turning on the team that gave him his big chance, which he probably didn't deserve and surely won't get again.
I thought that also, but a little research seems to support that Bush wanted DHS. There were two flys in the ointment I believe (1)was the DemonRATs fought about the protection of the unionized 170,000 employees of the soon-to-be huge Government Agency. DemonRATs always want union representation - they also fought when the Transportation Security Agency went from private airline funded to government employees funded by the tax payer. (2) I think that Bush opposed a part of the DHS bill that would open a commission on 911 hearings. But now back to DHS creation - "The bill, passed by the House in a 299-121 vote, is a compromise measure, meant to break an impasse over labor rights and civil service protection for the estimated 170,000 workers in the proposed Department of Homeland Security. [snip] But the measure introduced Wednesday drops previous provisions to create an independent commission to investigate intelligence lapses before the September 11, 2001, terrorist strikes."
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