Former FEMA Director Admits Errors in Response Effort - New York Times

Brown may have 'failed' in FEMA, but he's shooting straight in testimony before Congress. The Democrats will have a tough time defending Blanco and Nagin, who I said early on in this blog, in Katrina's aftermath, were inept and overwhelmed.

To his credit, he's testifying clearly and without obfuscation. Go here for the transcript of his testimony. He's an able guy who's telling it like it is. The media is wrong to blame FEMA for all the response problems. Blanco and Nagin are the culprits. Is any media besides Fox willing to tell the full story? I applaud the Times for this piece. Now, let's see how they editorialize it.


It's already clear that the Times' headline writers have a bias! Here's the headline that should have appeared: Former FEMA Head Testifies Local Officials Failed. If you read the transcripts, you'd agree.

If you buy into the rhetoric that FEMA alone is responsible for the failure, Go here to read about the resignation of the New Orleans police chief today. CNN last night had strong statements from a guy named Brinkley that Nagin is inept and most interested in covering his political backside.

"Former FEMA director Michael Brown aggressively defended his role in responding to Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday and put much of the blame for coordination failures on Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

Michael D. Brown, the former director of FEMA, said many people incorrectly believe the agency serves as something of a federal rapid-response force.

'My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional,' two days before the storm hit, Brown told a special congressional panel set up by House Republican leaders to investigate the catastrophe."


Update 9/28/05:

The Times' editorialists have now weighed in:

"...Republicans used a sham hearing to help Michael Brown, who resigned under fire as the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, pass the buck to Democratic officials in Louisiana despite the now-transparent record of federal ineptness.

According to Mr. Brown's self-serving tale, the heart of the mismanagement of Katrina was that officials in Baton Rouge and New Orleans were too "dysfunctional" for their part of the challenge.