Ex-FEMA Chief Makes No Apologies for Katrina Performance

Michael Brown, the ill-fated director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the Katrina crisis, became a household name for reasons he might not have preferred. Since resigning in 2005 amid heavy criticism, he has worked as a consultant and corporate speaker, earning what he calls “big bucks” counseling CEOs on the traps sometimes laid by news reporters.

Having authored a book on Katrina and made plans for another on the rationale behind the creation of the Homeland Security Department, he currently hosts a syndicated talk radio show for KHOW in Denver.

Ten years after the storm that made FEMA the poster child for tardy responses and wasted resources, he spoke to Government Executive about press coverage, indecisive leaders and the reforms made at FEMA in the storm’s aftermath.

“People often forget that Katrina was both a public policy issue and political issue,” Brown said, recalling post-Katrina criticisms from lawmakers who—opportunistically, in his view—asked why his agency hadn’t planned better for such a catastrophe. In fact, Brown said, he and his team had worked quite effectively the year before Katrina when four hurricanes hit Florida.

Then-Gov. Jeb Bush—whom Brown insists he praises for substance rather than because he is the brother of then-President George W. Bush—“had a history of planning. My team and I could walk into Jeb’s office in 2004 and divide responsibility up, ask what the weaknesses are, what the responsibilities are. Same with [Gov.] Haley Barbour in Mississippi,” Brown said.

RELATED: An Oral History of the Katrina Response

Louisiana’s Democratic Gov. Katherine Blanco, by contrast, “didn’t have the kind of system that allows quick decisions,” he said. “She had an open-door policy! Imagine a governor in the midst of a crisis, sitting in a room listening to the FEMA director with his federal chief operating officer, her chief of staff, mine, my chief of staff, her temporary emergency manager, all giving input so she can decide. This open door allows Sens. David Vitter and Mary Landrieu and people I don’t even know to come into to this meeting and give their opinion, having not heard anything that’s been discussed before. The decision-making process screeches to a halt.”

Brown also criticized then New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin for failing to order a mandatory evacuation while there was still time to move people who lacked transportation.

Lost in the Flood: Context

During the crisis, when some of Brown’s internal emails were published, the press and public mocked him for their impressions that he was joking about quitting his job.

“My staff advised me I should make the rounds on all the cable shows. I’m pretty much just saying that if you live in New Orleans, my advice is, I’d get my butt out of there,” he said. I tell that to every cable news outlet trying to convince people.” But the media reports of the emails created an impression he didn’t care, Brown said. “In context, [we provided some] comedic relief. I’m in a car heading to Andrews [Air Force Base] to fly down. That’s when I sent an email to Joe Hagin making the joke, “Can I quit now?”

The context was that the previous May, Brown had gone to White House Chief of Staff Andy Card to say, “It’s time for me to leave—that I’m ready to go back to Colorado and I’d been there longer than planned.” Card said he understood, but asked Brown to stay through hurricane season until a replacement could be named. “My wife still despises me for it, and my friends,” Brown said. “It’s a typical Washington thing, you wait four months to get things lined up. And of course I said yes.”

Brown was also excoriated because of emails showing him admiring his staff’s FEMA T-shirts amidst all the misery on the Gulf Coast, joking that “I got it at Nordstrom’s.”

He says those comments reflected his rapport with his loyal staff. “It’s like a heart surgeon with someone’s heart out of their chest listening to rock and roll and joking with nurses about dating,” he said. “To the media who criticize me, screw you . . . I think I handled it well and did things the right way. But the absolute vilification and hatred which still exists is amazing to me, that somehow it’s my fault people died because they didn’t evacuate. Some don’t understand federalism, the role of the federal government, about waiving posse comitatus or invoking the Insurrection Act. We had no authority to evacuate people.”

Another set of interviews also ended badly for Brown, who stressed that accurate, up-to-the-minute information during the crisis was hard to come by. His staff did not know, he explained, that the New Orleans convention center, which was supposed to be locked but which was connected to hotels, had been broken into by panicked guests.

“Next day I do a round of TV interviews inside a trailer from Baton Rouge. [ABC News’s] Ted Koppel asks, 'When did you learn about the people in the convention center?' I threw a temper tantrum after the interview. The day after the landfall, touring, either that evening or next day, Koppel and [CNN correspondent] Soledad O’Brien keep asking me when did I learn about the convention center. I keep saying ‘we just learned about it,’ speaking in an adrenalin rush, having gone 36 hours without sleep, and without his press secretary in the room. “To people listening,” Brown said, it sounded as if “you just learned about it but we have all known since 18 hours ago. So they think this guy is really out of touch.”

Brown now considers that event a great lesson in media relations. “I tell people, ‘Never give an interview on TV, in a small trailer staring at a TV with staff outside, so there’s no one in there to hear and whisper, “I think you’re missing the point of the question.’”

As for the reorganization at FEMA under current Administrator Craig Fugate, Brown expressed mixed feelings.

Washington works based on money and your proximity” to power, Brown said. “I was criticized in Katrina for breaking the so-called chain of command, but to me the chain was exactly what the [1988 Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act] says, that the FEMA director is a direct report to the president of the United States. The reason it was set up that way, is so if you’re acting on behalf of the president, and doing business pre-DHS, I could pick up the phone and call [Transportation Secretary] Norm Mineta or [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld and say I need X. If it’s a declared disaster, they know the FEMA director is speaking on behalf of the White House.”

Brown praised Tom Ridge, the first Homeland Security secretary and former governor of Pennsylvania, for staying out of Brown’s way during the four hurricanes that preceded Katrina. But Michael Chertoff, who was DHS Secretary during Katrina, “simply didn’t understand how things work,” Brown said. (Chertoff in July 2015 declined an interview with Government Executive .)

“It’s a bureaucratic nightmare that DHS has become,” Brown continued. “I’m criticized post-Katrina for ignoring the chain of command. But post -Katrina, they implemented what we were doing but made it too convoluted. They said the FEMA director during a disaster reports directly to the president, but at all other times to the DHS secretary. If you have one disaster a year and you are in a huge, 200,000-plus-employee department fighting for your budget, you get your priorities from DHS with the undersecretary for management. [Then comes] a disaster and to fight for all the programs you think are important, suddenly you’re bypassing all the people to get what you need—going directly to the White House, DoD, the secretary and you’re going back to the same old thing,” Brown said.

“You just can’t do it that way—you can’t serve two masters. You can’t be fighting for priorities for nine months of the year and ignore them for the other three months. It’s a fool’s errand.”