Brown: I warned Bush about Katrina

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former federal disaster chief
Michael Brown told a Senate panel on Friday he had warned
President George W. Bush that New Orleans was facing
catastrophe the day before Hurricane Katrina struck.

The committee is investigating failures by federal, state
and local officials to deal properly with the August 29 storm
and particularly why the Bush administration was so slow to
react to the emergency.

Brown as director of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency emerged as the main scapegoat for the government’s
response.

He told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee he had held a video conference call the
afternoon of August 28, the day before the hurricane struck,
which he specifically recalled Bush listened in on.

Brown said he warned top administration officials on the
call that a disaster was looming and that the government should
go on top alert and cut through red tape in its response. “I
knew in my gut this was the bad one,” he said.

Some 1,200 people died and hundreds of thousands were made
homeless in the storm, which devastated parts of the coast of
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Brown, who was forced to resign two weeks after the
disaster, said he also briefed White House Deputy Chief of
Staff Joe Hagin, who was with Bush at his Texas ranch, about
the extent of the disaster on the evening of Aug 29.

“I told him (Hagin) 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,” Brown said.

He added that he did not recall whether Bush himself was in
on that telephone call but was not worried because “I knew that
in speaking to Joe, I was speaking to the President.”

Bush was nearing the end of his month-long summer vacation
when the hurricane struck. He was on a working trip to Arizona
and California on the day the hurricane hit and the day after,
August 29 and August 30, and returned to Washington from his
Texas ranch on August 31.

SLOW REACTION

The committee is trying to discover why Bush and senior
administration officials apparently believed that New Orleans
had been spared the worst effects of the hurricane for hours
after the city was already flooded.

On September 1, Bush said in a television interview, “I
don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.”

Yet Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the committee’s
ranking Democrat, cited a report from the National Weather
Service at 9:14 a.m. on August 29 that at least one of the
levees protecting the city was breached. He cited numerous
other reports as that day went on describing a massive
disaster.

“Our investigation has shown a gross lack of planning and
preparation by both the Department of Homeland Security and
FEMA,” Lieberman said.

On September 2, Bush toured the area and told Brown, a
lawyer, Republican activist and former commissioner of an
Arabian horse association, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a
job.” But a week later, with public anger rising, Brown was
recalled to Washington. He resigned a few days later.

Brown told the committee he felt he had been made a
scapegoat. “I certainly feel somewhat abandoned,” he added.

He said he believed he had had a good relationship with
Bush, but added: “Unfortunately he called me “Brownie” at the
wrong time. Thanks a lot sir,” he said, to laughter.

Brown blamed the poor federal response to Katrina partly on
the absorption of FEMA into the Department of Homeland
Security, which was focused on preventing terrorist attacks and
neglected the threat of natural disasters. He urged that it be
set up as a separate agency once again.

He said that if a terrorist bomb had breached one of the
levees in New Orleans, the department would have instantly
mobilized. But because the threat was from a natural disaster,
the response from senior officials was less urgent.

The morning after Katrina struck, Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff boarded a plane for Atlanta for a
previously-scheduled meeting on avian flu, at a time when
residents of New Orleans were fighting for their lives,
Chertoff will testify to the committee on Tuesday.

Brown said he had not sought to brief Chertoff directly
because it would have “wasted my time.”

Utah Republican Sen. Robert Bennett responded: “That is a
staggering statement. It demonstrates a dysfunctional
department to a degree far greater than any we have seen.”

Brown’s testimony struck a very different tone from his
previous appearance before Congress a month after the disaster
when he blamed local officials, called the state of Louisiana
“dysfunctional” and defended his own performance.

(HURRICANES-KATRINA-CONGRESS; writing by Alan Elsner;
editing by David Storey; Reuters Messaging:
alan.elsner.reuters.com@reuters.net; 01-202-8988440))