Ex-FEMA chief spreads the blame

WASHINGTON -- Michael D. Brown, the former FEMA director, said yesterday that ''dysfunctional" state and local governments in Louisiana had worsened the suffering and loss of life in the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, and that the agency's response was hurt by the Bush administration's focus on terror at the expense of domestic emergency operations.

In defiant, sometimes testy remarks, Brown told a panel of lawmakers investigating the response to Katrina that after the Federal Emergency Management Agency was placed under the new Department of Homeland Security in 2002, budget requests for new communications equipment were brushed aside.

His agency, he said, has suffered ''emaciation" because antiterror operations have become a priority for the administration.

Pressed by committee members, Brown aggressively defended his performance.

He also refused to admit fault for the government's response in delivering aid to starving, traumatized victims of Hurricane Katrina. He said he could not persuade Louisiana's governor, Kathleen B. Blanco, or the mayor of New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, to order evacuations sooner.

Brown also said that he had called for evacuations on a Saturday, two days before Katrina was due to make landfall, but Nagin waited a day before ordering the city cleared on Aug. 28 -- less than 24 hours before Katrina hit.

''My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," said Brown, who is still on the government payroll as a consultant to help fix problems that the catastrophe seemed to have exposed.

''The failure to evacuate," Brown said, ''was the tipping point for all the other things that either went wrong or were exacerbated."

Brown's contentious testimony, however, drew sharp fire from some members of Congress, who portrayed him as an inept manager who was not qualified for his FEMA post.

In addition, FEMA and its top managers were excoriated for not ensuring that New Orleans evacuation centers were adequately supplied, and for not helping tens of thousands of poor residents get out of the storm's path.

''You folks fell on your face. You got an F-minus in my book," said Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat of Mississippi, whose district suffered significant damage in Katrina. ''Maybe the president made a very good move when he asked you to leave your job."

Representative Christopher R. Shays, Republican of Connecticut, expressed disbelief when Brown said the biggest mistakes he had made were not holding regular news briefings and not persuading Blanco and Nagin to evacuate residents. While local governments ''blew it" by not ordering an evacuation more quickly, Shays said, Brown did nothing to coordinate the federal response and to make sure evacuees had enough food and water.

''That's why I'm happy you left, because that kind of, you know, look in the lights like a deer tells me that you weren't capable to do the job," Shays said. ''The whole reason why I think you're there is to take command of coordinating, working with [other agencies], not just complaining about what other people are doing."

Brown became a symbol of the Bush administration's failures in Katrina, which killed more than 1,000 people and left New Orleans inundated with flood water.

As news footage showed desperate conditions at the city's convention center, Brown said in interviews that he had not been aware of their problems until he saw the scene on television.

After the storm, Brown's credentials for the job came under question; before joining the government, he had spent the previous decade as a top official in the International Arabian Horse Association, and several media organizations reported on exaggerations in his resume.

President Bush, who was on vacation when the storm hit, saw his approval ratings plunge to record lows after the Katrina catastrophe and the government's flat-footed response.

During a briefing in Biloxi, Miss., Bush publicly praised ''Brownie" for doing ''a heck of a job," but his administration relieved Brown and ordered him back to Washington a few days later; that move prompted Brown to quit.

Testifying before the committee yesterday, Brown offered testimony that was defiant and defensive. He bristled when Taylor asked him for a reminder of emergency officials' names, and at one point he tersely corrected Taylor when Taylor called FEMA an ''association" rather than an agency.

Brown said he did not appreciate being ''berated" by members of Congress for circumstances that were out of his control. And he lashed out at the media, saying they had published ''lies" and exaggerations regarding discrepancies in his work history.

He said repeatedly that the first-responders to any disaster must be state and local officials, and conceded only that federal officials were not prepared for the scope of the disaster.

''I guess you want me to be the superhero that is going to step in there and suddenly take everybody out of New Orleans," he told Shays. ''We were prepared but overwhelmed, is the best way I could put it."

When Taylor suggested that Brown was uninformed about the victims' suffering, Brown shot back that his Sunday school teacher had died in the Oklahoma City bombing and that he saw devastation and misery when he traveled to Southeast Asia after the tsunami in December. ''I know what death and destruction is, so I wouldn't expect you to lecture me about not knowing how people suffer," Brown said.

Brown conceded that a $1 million hurricane simulation exercise in New Orleans last year exposed many communications and logistical problems. But he said homeland security officials ignored his request for increased funding to fix the problems, though he said he did not recall details of his budget request.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters in Miami yesterday that he would not respond to his former deputy's criticisms. ''He speaks for himself, and he's entitled to his point of view, and I don't have anything to add," Chertoff said.

Blanco, meanwhile, accused Brown of downplaying her efforts to evacuate the city and get federal help in as quickly as possible.

''Such falsehoods and misleading statements, made under oath before Congress, are shocking," Blanco said in a statement issued yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday's hearing took place amid a partisan disagreement that could hamper the results of any congressional inquiry.

Democrats boycotted the committee when their call for an independent panel was ignored; they believe that, since Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress, any legislative investigation would be a ''whitewash."

Still, some Democrats jumped on Brown's testimony. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democrat of New York, said the problems with the administration he described show the agency should be restored to Cabinet-level status.

''The unanswered calls for help from FEMA to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security should send a shiver down every American's spine," Clinton said.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.