Breaking News: Michael Brown removed from managing Hurricane Katrina efforts

[OnBaseMachine]

Per MSNBC. Best news I've heard in a while.

Mods can merge this with another thread if ya want.

[registerthis]

hah, for a second there I was thinking of our own Mike Brown, and then all sorts of horrible images past through my mind...

[Chip R]

And I thought he was doing a heck of a job.

[Blimpie]

I wonder if he was also removed from all FEMA efforts (e.g. Hurricane Ophelia). I can't imagine there will be a mad scramble to assume that throne...

[Blimpie]

Per the Associated Press...

Brown will be replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad w. Allen, who was overseeing New Orleans relief and rescue efforts.

[jmcclain19]

AP Story is up

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor.../katrina_brown

[westofyou]

Michael Brown the goverments version of Tim Johnson.

[Blimpie]

Originally Posted by westofyou

Michael Brown the goverments version of Tim Johnson.

Do you mean the Tim Johnson of Vietnam war hero fame?

[Blimpie]

Based upon the frequency and the sheer volume of these leaks that are emerging about Brown, it sounds like they are about to "change the secret handshake" on him:

Brown's Background Questioned

And as FEMA grapples with criticism from all sides regarding the speed and effectiveness of its response to Hurricane Katrina, questions are now being raised about Brown's background.

Time magazine first reported a discrepancy about Brown's background in emergency management. Click here to read the Time story.

A 2001 press release on the White House Web site says that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing emergency services divisions."

Brown's official biography on the FEMA (search) Web site says that his background in state and local government also includes serving as "an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight" and as a city councilman.

But a former mayor of Edmond, Randel Shadid, told The Associated Press on Friday that Brown had been an assistant to the city manager. Shadid said Brown was never assistant city manager.

"I think there's a difference between the two positions," said Shadid. "I would think that is a discrepancy."

Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, also said that Brown was "an assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees.

Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA's office of public affairs, told Time that while Brown began as an intern at the job in Edmond, he became an "assistant city manager" with a distinguished record of service.

"According to Mike Brown," Andrews told Time, a large portion of points raised by the magazine are "very inaccurate."

"I'm anxious to get back to D.C. to correct all the inaccuracies and lies that are being said," Brown told the Associated Press in the telephone interview.

The official White House announcement of Brown's nomination to head FEMA in January 2003 also says he served as "the Executive Director of the Independent Electrical Contractors," a trade group based in Alexandria, Va.

But two officials of the electrical contractors group told Newsday that Brown was never the national head of the organization but did serve as the executive director of a regional chapter, based in Colorado, where Brown has lived. Click here to read the Newsday story.

Terry Moreland, Brown's immediate successor as the Rocky Mountain executive director, told Newsday that Brown held the job for less than six weeks before becoming general counsel for FEMA in 2001.

The electrical contracting group's current top administrator, Larry Mullins asked, told Newsday that he planned to call the White House to have the 2003 press release that says Brown was the IEC executive director removed.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan referred all questions about Brown's resume to FEMA.

McClellan said the White House's earlier statements that Brown retained the president's confidence remain true — but he declined to state that confidence outright.

"I'd leave it where I left it," McClellan said. "We appreciate the work of all those who have been working around the clock to respond to what has been on the worst natural disasters in our nation's history."

On the more general issue of whether FEMA sufficiently responded to the devastating aftermath caused by Katrina along the Gulf Coast, FOX News obtained a letter written by the American Federation of Government Employees to senators in June 2004, warning that FEMA was being degraded and urging an investigation by the Government Accountability Office. AFGE represents FEMA workers.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security was created in an effort to consolidate and streamline many security-related functions performed by a myriad of U.S. agencies. FEMA was one agency that was rolled into DHS.

"Over the past three years, FEMA has gone from being a model agency to being one where funds are being misspent, employee morale has fallen, and our nation's emergency management capability is being eroded," the letter states.

The AFGE letter goes on to say: "Over the past three-and-a-half years, professional emergency managers at FEMA have been supplanted on the job by politically-connected contactors and by novice employees with little background or knowledge of emergency management."

It continues: "Numerous state and local emergency officials have complained that FEMA's emergency management role and functions are continually being downgraded under the new 'National Response Plan.'"

The National Response Plan mentioned was created by DHS as an effort to establish a "comprehensive all-hazards approach to enhance the ability of the United States to manage domestic incidents," according to the DHS Web site.

"The plan incorporates best practices and procedures from incident management disciplines-homeland security, emergency management, law enforcement, firefighting, public works, public health, responder and recovery worker health and safety, emergency medical services, and the private sector-and integrates them into a unified structure. It forms the basis of how the federal government coordinates with state, local, and tribal governments and the private sector during incidents."

Meanwhile, the director of the National Hurricane Center who claims he made a personal plea to those involved in disaster relief to make sure they knew what was coming as Hurricane Katrina came ashore last week.

Max Mayfield now confirms that the day before the storm hit the Gulf Coast, he was so concerned that he personally called New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, (search) Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco (search) and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (search) to warn them.

"The thing I remember telling all three of them is that when I walked out of the hurricane center that night I wanted to be able to sleep at night knowing that I had done everything that I could do," Mayfield said.

Nagin is facing criticism, according to a published report, because the evacuation order for the city was issued 20 hours before Katrina made landfall, when researchers believe twice that amount of time was needed to clear New Orleans (search).

Here's how Nagin described the emergency call from the National Hurricane Center on Sept. 6.

"I ordered the mandatory evacuation the night that I got a call from the head of the hurricane center, Max somebody … and he said, 'Mr. Mayor, I've never seen a storm like this. I've never seen conditions like this.'"

Then there's political fall out for Blanco. The New York Times is reporting that politics snarled the plans to get military troops into her state, in part because some in the administration worried about the message it would send — a Republican president circumventing a southern Democratic governor.

To seize control on the control on the ground, the president would have relied on what's called the Insurrection Act, which lets him take the reins in times of unrest and send in troops for law and order. But according to the report, the belief was that Blanco would resist surrendering control.

And then, there is always this one....

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0907051fema1.html

But, if Brown is out at FEMA, then there should be no way that "Gov. Blank Stare" should be throwing away any coupons either....

September 9, 2005

Political Issues Snarled Plans for Military Help After Storm

By ERIC LIPTON, ERIC SCHMITT
and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - As New Orleans descended into chaos last week and Louisiana's governor asked for 40,000 soldiers, President Bush's senior advisers debated whether the president should speed the arrival of active-duty troops by seizing control of the hurricane relief mission from the governor.

For reasons of practicality and politics, officials at the Justice Department and the Pentagon, and then at the White House, decided not to urge Mr. Bush to take command of the effort. Instead, the Washington officials decided to rely on the growing number of National Guard personnel flowing into Louisiana, who were under Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's control.

The debate began after officials realized that Hurricane Katrina had exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration's senior domestic security officials, the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated.

As criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina has mounted, one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis.

To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established.

While combat troops can conduct relief missions without the legal authority of the Insurrection Act, Pentagon and military officials say that no active-duty forces could have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans on Wednesday or Thursday without confronting law-and-order challenges.

But just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and Justice Department officials.

"Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.

Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers.

"I need everything you have got," Ms. Blanco said she told Mr. Bush last Monday, after the storm hit.

In an interview, she acknowledged that she did not specify what sorts of soldiers. "Nobody told me that I had to request that," Ms. Blanco said. "I thought that I had requested everything they had. We were living in a war zone by then."

By Wednesday, she had asked for 40,000 soldiers.

In the discussions in Washington, also at issue was whether active-duty troops could respond faster and in larger numbers than the Guard.

By last Wednesday, Pentagon officials said even the 82nd Airborne, which has a brigade on standby to move out within 18 hours, could not arrive any faster than 7,000 National Guard troops, which are specially trained and equipped for civilian law enforcement duties.

In the end, the flow of thousands of National Guard soldiers, especially military police, was accelerated from other states.

"I was there. I saw what needed to be done," Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said in an interview. "They were the fastest, best-capable, most appropriate force to get there in the time allowed. And that's what it's all about."

But one senior Army officer expressed puzzlement that active-duty troops were not summoned sooner, saying 82nd Airborne troops were ready to move out from Fort Bragg, N.C., on Sunday, the day before the hurricane hit.

The call never came, administration officials said, in part because military officials believed Guard troops would get to the stricken region faster and because administration civilians worried that there could be political fallout if federal troops were forced to shoot looters.

Louisiana officials were furious that there was not more of a show of force, in terms of relief supplies and troops, from the federal government in the middle of last week. As the water was rising in New Orleans, the governor repeatedly questioned whether Washington had started its promised surge of federal resources.

"We needed equipment," Ms. Blanco said in an interview. "Helicopters. We got isolated."

Aides to Ms. Blanco said she was prepared to accept the deployment of active-duty military officials in her state. But she and other state officials balked at giving up control of the Guard as Justice Department officials said would have been required by the Insurrection Act if those combat troops were to be sent in before order was restored.

In a separate discussion last weekend, the governor also rejected a more modest proposal for a hybrid command structure in which both the Guard and active-duty troops would be under the command of an active-duty, three-star general - but only after he had been sworn into the Louisiana National Guard.

Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations for the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Pentagon in August streamlined a rigid, decades-old system of deployment orders to allow the military's Northern Command to dispatch liaisons to work with local officials before an approaching hurricane.

The Pentagon is reviewing events from the time Hurricane Katrina reached full strength and bore down on New Orleans and five days later when Mr. Bush ordered 7,200 active-duty soldiers and marines to the scene.

After the hurricane passed New Orleans and the levees broke, flooding the city, it became increasingly evident that disaster-response efforts were badly bogged down.

Justice Department lawyers, who were receiving harrowing reports from the area, considered whether active-duty military units could be brought into relief operations even if state authorities gave their consent - or even if they refused.

The issue of federalizing the response was one of several legal issues considered in a flurry of meetings at the Justice Department, the White House and other agencies, administration officials said.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales urged Justice Department lawyers to interpret the federal law creatively to help local authorities, those officials said. For example, federal prosecutors prepared to expand their enforcement of some criminal statutes like anti-carjacking laws that can be prosecuted by either state or federal authorities.

On the issue of whether the military could be deployed without the invitation of state officials, the Office of Legal Counsel, the unit within the Justice Department that provides legal advice to federal agencies, concluded that the federal government had authority to move in even over the objection of local officials.

This act was last invoked in 1992 for the Los Angeles riots, but at the request of Gov. Pete Wilson of California, and has not been invoked over a governor's objections since the civil rights era - and before that, to the time of the Civil War, administration officials said. Bush administration, Pentagon and senior military officials warned that such an extreme measure would have serious legal and political implications.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said deployment of National Guard soldiers to Iraq, including a brigade from Louisiana, did not affect the relief mission, but Ms. Blanco disagreed.

"Over the last year, we have had about 5,000 out, at one time," she said. "They are on active duty, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That certainly is a factor."

By Friday, National Guard reinforcements had arrived, and a truck convoy of 1,000 Guard soldiers brought relief supplies - and order - to the convention center area.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security say the experience with Hurricane Katrina has demonstrated flaws in the nation's plans to handle disaster.

"This event has exposed, perhaps ultimately to our benefit, a deficiency in terms of replacing first responders who tragically may be the first casualties," Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for domestic security, said.

Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, has suggested that active-duty troops be trained and equipped to intervene if front-line emergency personnel are stricken. But the Pentagon's leadership remains unconvinced that this plan is sound, suggesting instead that the national emergency response plans be revised to draw reinforcements initially from civilian police, firefighters, medical personnel and hazardous-waste experts in other states not affected by a disaster.

The federal government rewrote its national emergency response plan after the Sept. 11 attacks, but it relied on local officials to manage any crisis in its opening days. But Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed local "first responders," including civilian police and the National Guard.

At a news conference on Saturday, Mr. Chertoff said, "The unusual set of challenges of conducting a massive evacuation in the context of a still dangerous flood requires us to basically break the traditional model and create a new model, one for what you might call kind of an ultra-catastrophe.""

Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker reported from Washington for this article, and Eric Lipton from Baton Rouge, La. David Johnston contributed reporting.

[RBA]

So President Bush refuses to do something to save lives because he is afraid of the political ramfications and it's Gov Blanco's fault?

[Blimpie]

Originally Posted by RedBloodedAmerican

So President Bush refuses to do something to save lives because he is afraid of the political ramfications and it's Gov Blanco's fault?

My point is that both Brown and Blanco were ill-prepared to handle this crisis to an alarming extent. While, I concede that Bush was far too concerned with political protocols and stepping on toes in this instance, I have a hard time making the "summary leaps" that you do about Bush.

To say that Bush "refuses to do something to save lives because he is afraid of the political ramfications " is really just silly and inflammatory.

[ochre]

Originally Posted by Blimpie

To say that Bush "refuses to do something to save lives because he is afraid of the political ramfications " is really just silly and inflammatory.

well, he didn't do it. He also has somebody in his administration (allegedly) saying

"Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.

So, you are right. It is silly and inflammatory. Of course it is also most likely true.

[Falls City Beer]

Originally Posted by Blimpie

To say that Bush "refuses to do something to save lives because he is afraid of the political ramfications " is really just silly and inflammatory.

I agree to some extent. But I also think it's silly to believe that anyone other than the President has the authority to cut through the red tape that slowed rescue and recovery. He's the hammer, he's the authority--with that authority comes great responsibility.

[westofyou]

Originally Posted by Falls City Beer

He's the hammer, he's the authority--with that authority comes great responsibility.

He couldn't get it out.



I wonder why?

[Blimpie]

This crisis did not evolve in a vacuum. Bush was not sitting at a table staring at two buttons. One saying, "Save Lives," while the other said "Save Your Approval Rating." I realize that hindsight is always 20/20, but my God--some of you people must be walking around with X-Ray vision.

Just within that one NY Times article, look at the sheer number of agencies that were involved in the coordination efforts and decision making processes. Justice Department, Homeland Security, Pentagon, etc...were all asked to provide their guidance on the Federal level which was actually the root of the problem. That's not even mentioning the input that was flying around from three different State and several different Local governments.

Anybody who has read the posts by RFS during the last week or so should conclude the same thing. The Katrina tragedy did not occur last week, but it occurred four years ago when FEMA was restructured after 9-11 and, basically, absorbed by Homeland. That was the worst possible thing that could happen to an already bloated Federal agency.

By designating state and local entities to become first-responders in a crisis, they thought that they were giving the communities what they wanted in the way of strategic flexiblities and streamlined efficiencies. The problem was that not all localities are capable of doing things the "Federal" way of things. That's probably a good thing in most instances, but in this case, the results were tragic. Since several of the posters on this thread have the innate ability to use hindsight skills as a strategic weapon of choice, I have a question for them:

Now, try to be honest. How capable are you in the art of foresight? I am just curious where some of you might have been on this crucial issue of FEMA restructuring four years ago? I'll bet some of you were either: 1) all for the idea or 2) had no idea it even occurred. Did anybody who was a member of this board jump on their soapboxes back then and decry the fact that FEMA was, at that time, essentially being asked to evolve into a more bureaucratic entity after 9-11? If so, please link me the thread. I will have nothing but mad props for you. But if all you are doing is being a Monday Morning Quarterback (and you know who you are), please just save it.