the media will be throwing all the credit for the FEMA effort, to Witt now.
WWL NEWS
Updates as they come in on Katrina
03:08 PM CDT on Saturday, September 3, 2005
Tom Planchet
3:05 P.M. - BATON ROUGE: The former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency joined the Louisiana government Saturday to help direct the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
James Lee Witt, who ran FEMA from 1993 to 2001, said he will stay as long as he as needed.
"He will sit at the table for me, and he will be my voice at the table," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said.
Louisiana officials are getting stretched too thin and need help, she said. "I like to hire the smartest people in the country," she added.
Witt has more than 25 years of disaster management experience. He was appointed to head FEMA in 1993, after President Clinton took office. FEMA had been strongly criticized in 1992 for its slow response to Hurricanes Andrew and Hugo; after Witt took over, it won praise for its vigorous reaction to Midwest floods and the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles.
Blanco said that when she told Mike Brown, FEMA's current head, that she hoped to hire him, "he said, `That is absolutely the right thing to do. He will make a huge difference."'
At the National Hurricane Conference in March, Witt said putting FEMA under the Homeland Security Department hurt its ability to deal with natural disasters.
On Saturday, he said, "Now's not the time to point blame at anyone."
Is he any good on TV? I just got the awful thought that Hillary wanted him in so he could supply the anti-Bush rants for the Sunday shows. (Obviously putting Blanco or Nagin on wouldn't do the dems much good -- apart from at DU, of course.)