Katrina Coverage

From this March 3 CNN transcript come these claims from former FEMA head Michael Brown:
- FEMA had been marginalized.
- He thinks Michael Chertoff should quit or be fired.
- He thinks Chertoff was misleading the American public about Brown appearing on TV and characterizing it as show-boating.
And, this:
MESERVE: In the transcripts of the 29th briefing, you […]

Around noon on the day when Katrina hit New Orleans, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco told the Bush administration that the levees were safe:
"We keep getting reports in some places that maybe water is coming over the levees… We heard a report unconfirmed, I think, we have not breached the levee. I think we have not […]

Four days after Katrina, George W Bush said:
"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."
However, videos obtained by the AP shows internal Bush administration briefings, including one in which Bush and DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff were told that the levees might breach:
In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush […]

From this:
Flawed government planning for major disasters led to rampant confusion during the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the White House concluded Thursday in a report focusing more on fixing shortfalls before the next storm season than on assigning blame.
The review described poor communications systems, delays in delivering supplies and overall tumult within the […]

There's a short AP report in "Ex-FEMA Chief Blames Homeland Security", a longer one in "Brown blames Homeland for Katrina response: Ex-FEMA chief says he's a scapegoat: ‘I feel somewhat abandoned’". CNN offers "Brown says he's been made Katrina scapegoat: Ex-FEMA chief blames Homeland Security for slow response". Commentary here and here, video excerpt here.

From this:
Michael D. Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, testified today that he let senior White House staffers know as soon as he had heard that flooding had begun in New Orleans on the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall.
Mr. Brown also called claims by top officials at the Department of Homeland Security […]

According to emails and other documents recently released, no less than twenty-eight government agencies - ranging from the local level all the way up to the White House - knew that the levees had broken on August 29, the day the storm landed.
In fact, "the Bush administration" knew about the failures at 7:30 am NO […]

It appears the White House has cut him loose and have given the word that they won't defend him. And, he's asking whether he can now tell all that he knows:
Former disaster agency chief Michael Brown is indicating he is ready to reveal his correspondence with President Bush and other officials during Hurricane Katrina unless […]

The WaPo offers "Brown's Turf Wars Sapped FEMA's Strength" says that the new DHS under Tom Ridge trimmed FEMA's budget, making it a shadow of its former self. FEMA head Michael Brown was a turf warrior who tried to use his White House connections to undercut the DHS, but they didn't support him:
In many ways, […]

NBC's Brian Williams conducted a long interview with president Bush, and the section about Katrina has Bush:
- repeating his blame-taking for the weak federal response ("to the extent that the federal government was ineffective, I'm responsible")
- given the opportunity to blame Blanco, Nagin, or others, he said "we're beyond that"
- he was watching the TV […]