A Post-Katrina Public Flaying
The first reviews are in on Washington's response to the storm--and they're scathing
Another problem was confusion over who was in charge of what and how the lines of authority should operate. Testimony from the GAO concluded that "there were multiple chains of command," as well as "confusion about ... what resources would be provided within specific time frames." The GAO and the House chastised Chertoff for not declaring Katrina a "catastrophic disaster," a designation that would have let federal officials push supplies down to state and local officials before they formally asked for it. What's worse, key DHS officials didn't seem to understand their agency's own National Response Plan, which outlines the roles different federal agencies are supposed to play in responding to a disaster. The sour relationship between Chertoff and FEMA chief Michael Brown tangled things even further. It was revealed in Senate hearings that Brown was calling the White House directly during the crisis--and ignoring Chertoff, his boss--because Brown thought calling Chertoff would have "wasted my time."
No one at the top, critics say, effectively took charge. A symptom of the problem, said Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, was that Chertoff chose to travel to Atlanta for a meeting on avian flu the day after Katrina hit. And Brown, the GAO concluded, lacked the "clear and decisive leadership" that was needed to respond to Katrina.
Marginalized. Behind the stinging rebukes is a more systemic problem: FEMA. The root of the dysfunctional Brown-Chertoff relationship was Brown's feeling that FEMA had been marginalized within the massive DHS bureaucracy--and that natural disaster response had been ignored as the parent agency focus turned increasingly on terrorism. For years, FEMA has been, by government standards, a modest agency, but the House report gave a window into just how modest it had become. When Katrina hit, investigators found that 500 of FEMA's 2,500 positions were unfilled. Acting employees, essentially temporary placeholders, held the top job in eight out of 10 of FEMA's regional offices.
After his trip to the woodshed, several members of Congress called for Chertoff to step down, but the White House expressed support for the former federal prosecutor and appeals court judge, and he is now scrambling to fix things at FEMA. Among his plans: linking the department's operation centers; creating teams of self-sustaining, first-in FEMA personnel who can quickly assess the situation on the ground; and adding 1,500 new FEMA employees.
The changes, Chertoff says, are just the beginning, but he may already be hitting the wall. A source close to Chertoff's review says he and Townsend, the White House adviser, disagree on some fundamental aspects of her upcoming report. Paul Light, a New York University professor who studies homeland security and government management, says Chertoff could turn FEMA around if he found someone with "instant credibility" to lead the agency. But FEMA has an acting director now, and U.S. News has learned that at least four prominent state emergency managers have refused to even be interviewed for the job. Given all the finger-pointing in Washington these days, who could blame them?
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