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Brown: I warned Bush about Katrina

Posted on: Friday, 10 February 2006, 16:08 CST

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))

Source: REUTERS

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