Reply
Thu 2 Mar, 2006 10:30 am
This is for all of the Bush chauvinists who constantly demand proof that Bush lies. I wonder how they will try to spin this one? Not only did President Bush lie, but so did Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. It seems the tapes always bring down dishonest and incompetent presidents and their minions.---BBB/
AP Gets Video: Bush Warned Fully About Katrina
Published: March 01, 2006 7:00 PM ET
E & P
In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.
Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."
The footage - along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press - show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.
[The video received wide airing on television news Wednesday night, as questions were raised about exactly how AP had obtained it.]
Linked by secure video, Bush's confidence on Aug. 28 starkly contrasts with the dire warnings his disaster chief and a cacophony of federal, state and local officials provided during the four days before the storm.
A top hurricane expert voiced "grave concerns" about the levees and then-Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren't enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.
"I'm concerned about ... their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe," Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall.
Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:
--Homeland Security officials have said the "fog of war" blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. "I'm sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done," National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.
"I don't buy the `fog of war' defense," Brown told the AP in an interview Wednesday. "It was a fog of bureaucracy."
--Bush declared four days after the storm, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility - and Bush was worried too.
White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Brown discussed fears of a levee breach the day the storm hit.
"I talked to the president twice today, once in Crawford and then again on Air Force One," Brown said. "He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches."
--Louisiana officials angrily blamed the federal government for not being prepared but the transcripts shows they were still praising FEMA as the storm roared toward the Gulf Coast and even two days afterward. "I think a lot of the planning FEMA has done with us the past year has really paid off," Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness deputy director, said during the Aug. 28 briefing.
It wasn't long before Smith and other state officials sounded overwhelmed.
"We appreciate everything that you all are doing for us, and all I would ask is that you realize that what's going on and the sense of urgency needs to be ratcheted up," Smith said Aug. 30.
--Mississippi begged for more attention in that same briefing.
"We know that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that need to be rescued, but we would just ask you, we desperately need to get our share of assets because we'll have people dying - not because of water coming up, but because we can't get them medical treatment in our affected counties," said a Mississippi state official whose name was not mentioned on the tape.
--Video footage of the Aug. 28 briefing, the final one before Katrina struck, showed an intense Brown voicing concerns from the government's disaster operation center and imploring colleagues to do whatever was necessary to help victims.
"We're going to need everything that we can possibly muster, not only in this state and in the region, but the nation, to respond to this event," Brown warned. He called the storm "a bad one, a big one" and implored federal agencies to cut through red tape to help people, bending rules if necessary.
"Go ahead and do it," Brown said. "I'll figure out some way to justify it. ... Just let them yell at me."
Bush appeared from a narrow, windowless room at his vacation ranch in Texas, with his elbows on a table. Hagin was sitting alongside him. Neither asked questions in the Aug. 28 briefing.
"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," the president said.
A relaxed Chertoff, sporting a polo shirt, weighed in from Washington at Homeland Security's operations center. He would later fly to Atlanta, outside of Katrina's reach, for a bird flu event.
--One snippet captures a missed opportunity on Aug. 28 for the government to have dispatched active-duty military troops to the region to augment the National Guard.
Chertoff: "Are there any DOD assets that might be available? Have we reached out to them?"
Brown: "We have DOD assets over here at EOC (emergency operations center). They are fully engaged. And we are having those discussions with them now."
Chertoff: "Good job."
In fact, active duty troops weren't dispatched until days after the storm. And many states' National Guards had yet to be deployed to the region despite offers of assistance, and it took days before the Pentagon deployed active-duty personnel to help overwhelmed Guardsmen.
--The National Hurricane Center's Mayfield told the final briefing before Katrina struck that storm models predicted minimal flooding inside New Orleans during the hurricane but he expressed concerns that counterclockwise winds and storm surges afterward could cause the levees at Lake Pontchartrain to be overrun.
"I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern," Mayfield told the briefing.
Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated.
"They're not taking patients out of hospitals, taking prisoners out of prisons and they're leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So I'm very concerned about that," Brown said.
Despite the concerns, it ultimately took days for search and rescue teams to reach some hospitals and nursing homes.
Brown also told colleagues one of his top concerns was whether evacuees who went to the New Orleans Superdome - which became a symbol of the failed Katrina response - would be safe and have adequate medical care.
"The Superdome is about 12 feet below sea level.... I don't know whether the roof is designed to stand, withstand a Category Five hurricane," he said.
Brown also wanted to know whether there were enough federal medical teams in place to treat evacuees and the dead in the Superdome.
"Not to be (missing) kind of gross here," Brown interjected, "but I'm concerned" about the medical and mortuary resources "and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe."
You know what this means, don 't you?
Brownie WAS doin a heck of a job!!!!
I mean, what else was he supposed to do, grab everyone by their collars and shake em like in some disaster movie? He even brought up that he was concerned about the Superdome. It's incredible to see this now, waatch Dubya being all calm and smug, knowing what's going to happen.
I especially love when he says, "And of course we pray there will be no loss of life." Yeah, pray about it is about all they do, too.
Brown shouldn't be administration's scapegoat, experts say
Posted on Thu, Mar. 02, 2006
Brown shouldn't be administration's scapegoat, experts say
By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - For months now, former FEMA Director Michael Brown has been the butt of late-night TV jokes and a punching bag on Capitol Hill for his handling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe.
Surprisingly, redemption seems at hand.
Bolstered by Wednesday's release of a videotape and transcripts of federal disaster response sessions in the days just before and after Katrina, Brown and his hurricane team are seen as sounding the alarm of an impending disaster. In contrast, President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff appear impassive the day before Katrina struck as officials predicted that the levees around New Orleans could fail. The president asked no questions.
Now the Bush administration is stepping up the attacks on the former Federal Emergency Management Agency director for sidestepping the chain of command, and the same disaster experts who excoriated Brown, some even cracking jokes about his previous experience with the International Arabian Horse Association, are coming to his side.
On Thursday, Knight Ridder interviewed 12 longtime disaster experts, and most believe Brown should not be the scapegoat for the administration.
All but one of them - which included Republicans and Democrats, two former Federal Emergency Management Agency directors, former state and local disaster chiefs and academics who collectively have more than a century's experience - whom Knight Ridder interviewed Thursday said they had a hard time buying the Bush administration's line.
Seven of them said they were inclined to believe Brown's version of events. Four said both Brown and Chertoff were at fault and Bush was especially culpable for hiring them. Only one said he faulted Brown more.
Nearly all of them chided the Bush administration for merging FEMA into the new and massive Department of Homeland Security in 2003.
"I believe Brown," said James Lee Witt, the FEMA director during the Clinton administration. "Look what he tried to warn them of, and nobody listened."
Former Reagan FEMA chief Gen. Julius Becton, like others, dismissed the White House's claim that Brown's principal failing was his decision to sidestep Chertoff and deal directly with the president and his staff. In an interview Wednesday night, Brown said he made his move to cut through the "fog of bureaucracy" in an effort to speed relief to the Gulf Coast.
"At least Brown has been in the business for a couple of years," Becton said. "When the chain of command is incompetent or you perceive the chain of command is not in the best interest of the agency, you're duty-bound to go around that chain of command."
The experts were critical of much of the government's efforts in the Katrina catastrophe.
"Brown apparently screwed up, Chertoff screwed up and both of them were hired by Bush," said Michael Lindell, the director of the Natural Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. "If you put somebody in charge of the Department of Homeland Security who is riveted with terror attacks and chopping up FEMA ... it was inevitable."
"The problem was from the very bottom - from the city to the state to FEMA to DHS to Bush," Lindell said.
The harsh critique was prompted in part by the videotape and transcripts of a series of federal disaster briefings that were made public Wednesday as part of Brown's counterattack. Brown resigned as FEMA chief less than a month after Katrina struck amid mounting criticism of the federal response.
Penn State University professor Beverly Cigler, who co-chaired a Katrina task force for public administration academics, said Chertoff's behavior in the crisis made her doubt that he knew of the existence of a 426-page National Response Plan, which put him in charge. If he did, she said, "he didn't know what was in it or how to use it."
Shirley Laska, the director of the Center for Hazards Assessment Response and Technology at the University of New Orleans, said she was surprised that Chertoff hadn't been forced to resign yet.
Less than a minute after criticizing Brown for being "willfully insubordinate," Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke brushed aside questions about what the experts said: "We don't have the time to waste to get into a he-said she-said sandbox name-throwing battle."
"We've got a lot of work to do," Knocke said. "June 1" - the beginning of hurricane season - "is coming fast."
The experts' support for Brown now is a far cry from the days after Katrina, when "Brownie," as the president called him once on television, became a national butt of jokes, especially given his pre-2001 job running the International Arabian Horse Association. At the time, Brown was accused of being a crony who exaggerated what little experience he had on his resume. For example, Kate Hale, a former Miami emergency-management chief who ridiculed Brown's horse experience in September, said Thursday: "I've been impressed with the things I've heard him say."
Brown said he thought he could make FEMA work in the new federal department, and that it had functioned well when Tom Ridge was secretary. Ridge had permitted Brown to work directly with the White House during more than 100 disasters. But Brown charged that when Chertoff took over he diminished FEMA and Brown's role, especially during the first exercise of the new National Response Plan. "It told me that FEMA was pretty much irrelevant," Brown said.
Brown said Chertoff got angry at him after Brown met with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and Chertoff told Brown he had to stay in Baton Rouge, La., and not go to the worst disaster areas, something he called a "bonehead decision."
Chertoff, according to Brown, killed a second drill for a major hurricane in New Orleans, which envisioned many of the problems that came about after Katrina struck. Knocke disputed that claim with a terse, "Next he'll say we sunk the Titanic."
The only outside expert to come to Chertoff's defense, and then only halfheartedly, was Jerry Hauer, a former New York City emergency-management chief and a former assistant federal Health and Human Services preparedness chief.
"I think it's Brown (at fault) more than Chertoff," Hauer said. "Somewhere along the line this has become a finger-pointing exercise between Chertoff and Brown, and the bottom line is neither one performed well. Chertoff certainly was lost in the whole arena of things. And Mike Brown did not completely exercise all the assets that he needed."
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace