Ex-FEMA Chief Spreads Blame For Government Failures

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON – A former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, yesterday blamed others for most government failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina, especially Governor Blanco of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin. He aggressively defended his own role.


Mr. Brown also said that in the days before the storm, he expressed his concerns that “this is going to be a bad one” in phone conversations and e-mails with President Bush, White House chief of staff Andy Card, and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin.


And he blamed the Department of Homeland Security – the parent agency of FEMA – for not acquiring better equipment ahead of the storm. His efforts to shift blame drew sharp criticism from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike.


“I’m happy you left,” Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican of Connecticut, said. “That kind of look in the lights like a deer tells me you weren’t capable of doing that job.”


Rep. Gene Taylor, a Democrat of Mississippi, told Mr. Brown: “The disconnect was, people thought there was some federal expertise out there. There wasn’t. Not from you.”


Mr. Brown appeared before a special congressional panel set up by House Republican leaders to investigate the catastrophe.


“My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional” two days before the storm hit, Mr. Brown said.


Mr. Brown, who for many became a symbol of government failures in the natural disaster that claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, rejected criticism that he was inexperienced.


Mr. Brown resigned earlier this month after being removed by the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, from on-site responsibility.


Also yesterday, the police superintendent of New Orleans, Eddie Compass, resigned after four turbulent weeks in which the police force was wracked by desertions and disorganization in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.


Meanwhile, a month after the Katrina chaos subsided, police are re-examining the press reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact. The ugliest reports soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans.


Police have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.


The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including the Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.


Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Thibodeaux of the Louisiana National Guard said reports of violence at the Superdome and the convention center were overblown. He was head of security at the Superdome and led the 1,000 military police and infantrymen who went in to secure the center on September 2.


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