Say What?

The New York Times has an article based on an interview with Michael Brown. Reading it is almost a surreal experience.

While it seems that Brownie is trying to lay blame elsewhere, (though, he says, not on the White House) his own words are a damning self-indictment, and therefore also indict the man who put him in the job. Perhaps the way he doesn't see that gives some insight into why he was so awful.

For example, there is the story of the night of Monday, August 29:

Mr. Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he told the officials in Washington that the Louisiana governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and her staff were proving incapable of organizing a coherent state effort and that his field officers in the city were reporting an "out of control" situation.

"I am having a horrible time," Mr. Brown said he told Mr. Chertoff and a White House official - either Mr. Card or his deputy, Joe Hagin - in a status report that evening. "I can't get a unified command established."

By the time of that call, he added, "I was beginning to realize things were going to hell in a handbasket" in Louisiana. A day later, Mr. Brown said, he asked the White House to take over the response effort.

Getting a unified command established is, I believe, pretty much FEMA's number 1 job. The whole point of having a FEMA is that state and local authorities will be overwhelmed, and even if not, would be unable to organize and coordinate the comprehensive relief efforts of dozens of agencies, including federal ones. So, he's pretty much saying, although I don't think he realizes it, that he called Chertoff, and with a White House deputy on the phone, said "I am without the ability to do the job I have been given."

Then, a day later, he wants the White House to take over? Um, Mr. Brown, when the White House wants to handle a disaster, they delegate to the disaster guys, i.e., you. Is this another example of the near-deification of W? Somehow, he would be able to magically do what those assigned to the job couldn't, and create on-the-fly the massive coordinated effort that should have been happening?

Or was it a glimmer of self-awareness, understanding that people could tell he was a patronage idiot, so they were ignoring him, and Brown thought only the Big Guns could have effect?

Either way, if what he says is true, the White House had notice as of Monday night that FEMA couldn't handle it, and that they were sending up a flare for help. This doesn't jive with what has been previously acknowledged by the White House. Perhaps he didn't use the right phrasing?

A senior administration official said Wednesday night that White House officials recalled the conversations with Mr. Brown but did not believe they had the urgency or desperation he described in the interview.

"There's a general recollection of him saying, 'They're going to need more help,' " said the official, who insisted on anonymity because of the delicacy of internal White House discussions.

Who's telling the truth? I don't know. If only we had an independent panel to get to the bottom of this. (A "senior administration official" also said the Governor of Louisiana hadn't declared an emergency, when, if fact, she had, and the President had responded to it.) Later, Brown, or the growing disaster, does get his message across.

But Brown isn't trying to dump anything on the White House. Oh no. (He's read the memo.)

In his first extensive interview since resigning as FEMA director on Monday under intense criticism, Mr. Brown declined to blame President Bush or the White House for his removal or for the flawed response.

"I truly believed the White House was not at fault here," he said.

He focused much of his criticism on Governor Blanco, contrasting what he described as her confused response with far more agile mobilizations in Mississippi and Alabama, as well as in Florida during last year's hurricanes.

That's right, it's the Democrat's fault. States that have Republican governors don't have that kind of problem. Got it. If Louisiana had elected a Republican, you would have done a much better job. Maybe you wouldn't have been commandeering buses on their way for evacuations, stopping shipments of water, redirecting shipments of medical supplies, and holding rescue workers at staging areas far from the disaster, if Blanco had been on the ball? Never mind.

Brown's own narrative paints him as a patheticly ineffectual personal presence, and not a particularly bright man.

But as the hurricane approached early on Sunday, Mr. Brown said he grew so frustrated with the failure of local authorities to make the evacuation mandatory that he asked Mr. Bush for help.

"Would you please call the mayor and tell him to ask people to evacuate?" Mr. Brown said he asked Mr. Bush in a phone call.

"Mike, you want me to call the mayor?" the president responded in surprise, Mr. Brown said. Moments later, apparently on his own, the mayor, C. Ray Nagin, held a news conference to announce a mandatory evacuation, but it was too late, Mr. Brown said. Plans said it would take at least 72 hours to get everyone out.

When he arrived in Baton Rouge on Sunday evening, Mr. Brown said, he was concerned about the lack of coordinated response from Governor Blanco and Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, the adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard.

"What do you need? Help me help you," Mr. Brown said he asked them. "The response was like, 'Let us find out,' and then I never received specific requests for specific things that needed doing."

The most responsive person he could find, Mr. Brown said, was Governor Blanco's husband, Raymond. "He would try to go find stuff out for me," Mr. Brown said.

Governor Blanco's communications director, Mr. Mann, said that she was frustrated that Mr. Brown and others at FEMA wanted itemized requests before acting. "It was like walking into an emergency room bleeding profusely and being expected to instruct the doctors how to treat you," he said.

"Daddy, Roy won't play with me, will you make him?" I can understand why someone in Bush's position might have been surprised. It's not the sort of thing you'd expect to hear. Worse, "moments later" the evacuation was called, which means Brown didn't really have a clue about whether he was or wasn't getting cooperation on the evacuation announcement, which also means he wasn't already involved in helping to coordinate it. Maybe if he'd been working with the mayor, instead of calling Daddy for help, he might have been on top of that.

I also notice that he didn't go to the locals and say "Here's what I can deliver; where do you want it?" Did he really, really say "Help me help you?" Like they haven't got a few hundred thousand other people in need of real help? Frankly, isn't it Brown's job to figure out how to help them? And seriously, while they weren't getting back to him, couldn't he have started figuring it out himself? Like, "gee, communications are down. I wonder if we could get an Air Force communications plane in the air?" Or, "We needed 72 hours for an evacuation, and we only had 24, so there must be a lot of folks left behind. What might they need, and how can I get it here soonest?" He's not a very creative problem-solver.

And he also complains when he's handed prioritized lists!

The next morning, Mr. Brown said, he and Governor Blanco decided to take a helicopter into New Orleans to see the mayor and assess the situation. But before the helicopter took off, his field coordinating officer, or F.C.O., called from the city on a satellite phone. "It is getting out of control down here; the levee has broken," the staff member told him, he said.

The crowd in the Superdome, the city's shelter of last resort, was already larger than expected. But Mr. Brown said he was relieved to see that the mayor had a detailed list of priorities, starting with help to evacuate the Superdome.

Mr. Brown passed the list on to the state emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, but when he returned that evening he was surprised to find that nothing had been done.

"I am just screaming at my F.C.O., 'Where are the helicopters?' " he recalled. " 'Where is the National Guard? Where is all the stuff that the mayor wanted?' "

So, when he is handed a list of specific things, he hands it off to an underling, while he goes for a copter ride. Perhaps there was no way for him to check on the progress of the underling during the day; communications was a problem. But still, he doesn't discover that nothing has been done for hours?

So, I'm thinking, maybe he should have skipped the copter ride, and been on the phone himself? Maybe he should have been checking with the FCO hourly on progress? Maybe Brown should have been pulling the federal strings all the locals thought he was there to pull and gotten the things on the list himself?

It goes on like that. It doesn't make him look good. It does, however, make Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré sound OK:

By Wednesday morning, Mr. Brown said, he learned that General Honoré was on his way. While the general did not have responsibility for the entire relief effort and the Guard, his commanding manner helped mobilize the state's efforts.

"Honoré shows up and he and I have a phone conversation," Mr. Brown said. "He gets the message, and, boom, it starts happening."

Funny what can happen when the right person has the job, huh?