Posted on 09/14/2005 9:48:57 AM PDT by lowbridge
Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows
By Jonathan S. Landay, Alison Young and Shannon McCaffrey
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.
Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.
As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.
But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.
But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.
"As you know, the President has established the `White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the Administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina," Chertoff said in the memo to the secretaries of defense, health and human services and other key federal agencies.
On the day that Chertoff wrote the memo, Bush was in San Diego presiding over a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo for the first time declared Katrina an "Incident of National Significance," a key designation that triggers swift federal coordination. The following afternoon, Bush met with his Cabinet, then appeared before TV cameras in the White House Rose Garden to announce the government's planned action.
That same day, Aug. 31, the Department of Defense, whose troops and equipment are crucial in such large disasters, activated its Task Force Katrina. But active-duty troops didn't begin to arrive in large numbers along the Gulf Coast until Saturday.
White House and homeland security officials wouldn't explain why Chertoff waited some 36 hours to declare Katrina an incident of national significance and why he didn't immediately begin to direct the federal response from the moment on Aug. 27 when the National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina would strike the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force in 48 hours. Nor would they explain why Bush felt the need to appoint a separate task force.
Chertoff's hesitation and Bush's creation of a task force both appear to contradict the National Response Plan and previous presidential directives that specify what the secretary of homeland security is assigned to do without further presidential orders. The goal of the National Response Plan is to provide a streamlined framework for swiftly delivering federal assistance when a disaster - caused by terrorists or Mother Nature - is too big for local officials to handle.
Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, referred most inquiries about the memo and Chertoff's actions to the Department of Homeland Security.
"There will be an after-action report" on the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Perino said. She added that "Chertoff had the authority to invoke the Incident of National Significance, and he did it on Tuesday."
Perino said the creation of the White House task force didn't add another bureaucratic layer or delay the response to the devastating hurricane. "Absolutely not," she said. "I think it helped move things along." When asked whether the delay in issuing the Incident of National Significance was to allow Bush time to return to Washington, Perino replied: "Not that I'm aware of."
Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, didn't dispute that the National Response Plan put Chertoff in charge in federal response to a catastrophe. But he disputed that the bureaucracy got in the way of launching the federal response.
"There was a tremendous sense of urgency," Knocke said. "We were mobilizing the greatest response to a disaster in the nation's history."
Knocke noted that members of the Coast Guard were already in New Orleans performing rescues and FEMA personnel and supplies had been deployed to the region.
The Department of Homeland Security has refused repeated requests to provide details about Chertoff's schedule and said it couldn't say specifically when the department requested assistance from the military. Knocke said a military liaison was working with FEMA, but said he didn't know his or her name or rank. FEMA officials said they wouldn't provide information about the liaison.
Knocke said members of almost every federal agency had already been meeting as part of the department's Interagency Incident Management Group, which convened for the first time on the Friday before the hurricane struck. So it would be a mistake, he said, to interpret the memo as meaning that Tuesday, Aug. 30 was the first time that members of the federal government coordinated.
The Chertoff memo indicates that the response to Katrina wasn't left to disaster professionals, but was run out of the White House, said George Haddow, a former deputy chief of staff at FEMA during the Clinton administration and the co-author of an emergency management textbook.
"It shows that the president is running the disaster, the White House is running it as opposed to Brown or Chertoff," Haddow said. Brown "is a convenient fall guy. He's not the problem really. The problem is a system that was marginalized."
A former FEMA director under President Reagan expressed shock by the inaction that Chertoff's memo suggested. It showed that Chertoff "does not have a full appreciation for what the country is faced with - nor does anyone who waits that long," said Gen. Julius Becton Jr., who was FEMA director from 1985-1989.
"Anytime you have a delay in taking action, there's a potential for losing lives," Becton told Knight Ridder. "I have no idea how many lives we're talking about. ... I don't understand why, except that they were inefficient."
Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo came on the heels of a memo from Brown, written several hours after Katrina made landfall, showing that the FEMA director was waiting for Chertoff's permission to get help from others within the massive department. In that memo, first obtained by the Associated Press last week, Brown requested Chertoff's "assistance to make available DHS employees willing to deploy as soon as possible." It asked for another 1,000 homeland security workers within two days and 2,000 within a week.
The four-paragraph memo ended with Brown thanking Chertoff "for your consideration in helping us meet our responsibilities in this near catastrophic event."
According to the National Response Plan, which was unveiled in January by Chertoff's predecessor, Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security is supposed to declare an Incident of National Significance when a catastrophic event occurs.
"Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude," according to the plan, which evolved from earlier plans and lessons learned after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "Notification and full coordination with the States will occur, but the coordination process must not delay or impede the rapid deployment and use of critical resources."
Should Chertoff have declared Katrina an Incident of National Significance sooner - even before the storm struck? Did his delay slow the quick delivery of the massive federal response that was needed? Would it have made a difference?
"You raise good questions," said Frank J. Cilluffo, the director of George Washington University's Homeland Security Planning Institute. It's too early to tell, he said, whether unfamiliarity with or glitches in the new National Response Plan were factors in the poor early response to Katrina.
"Clearly this is the first test. It certainly did not pass with flying colors," Cilluffo said of the National Response Plan.
Mike Byrne, a former senior homeland security official under Ridge who worked on the plan, said he doesn't think the new National Response Plan caused the confusion that plagued the early response to Katrina.
Something else went wrong, he suspects. The new National Response Plan isn't all that different from the previous plan, called the Federal Response Plan.
"Our history of responding to major disasters has been one where we've done it well," Byrne said. "We need to figure out why this one didn't go as well as the others did. It's shocking to me."
Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo is posted at www.krwashington.com
To read the National Response Plan, go to: http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRP(underscore)FullText.pdf
I also think the article is ignoring that teh levees broke somewhat after the hurricane passed, so this "36 hours after the hurricane hit" may be misleading. I think the response was fantastic and unprecedented. If it can be mnade better next time, great, but we are allowing "blame" to be assessed for a success.
I see. It wasn't Brown. It was his superior, Chertoff, who was at fault. If Chertoff was at fault wasn't Rummy also to blame? And we know where the buck stops- Bush was at fault. Bush should resign.
This would be Tuesday. Before the flooding started.
When the mayor was in Dallas and the governor was ???
I agree. It all leads back to the Governor. The Governor was pointing a finger at Bush during the storm but after the storm, even though he came and talked with her in person, she delayed federal help to her constituents.
The NO city officials wanted the people to evacuate but local officials on the other side of the river refused them entry into their community via the bridge adjacent to the convention center. The people were placed in a completely unsustainable position with no food or water and no way to leave except by walking on the elevated section of I-10 in the daytime heat. Whether that escape route was also blocked by local LEO's is unknown.
Responsibility Missing from Gulf Coast, Bush Took It
by Scott Ott
(2005-09-14) -- After two weeks of speculation about what happened to personal responsibility on the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, President George Bush finally admitted yesterday that he has taken it.
"...to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," the president told reporters at a news conference as he stood next to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who first alerted Americans to the absence of responsibility, issued a joint statement downplaying the significance of the Bush announcement.
"Now that the president has taken responsibility, he can keep it," the Democrat leaders said. "We don't have much use for it in state and local government. After years of benevolent Democrat leadership, most of our constituents think that it all lies in Washington anyway, so they won't even notice it was taken."
Meanwhile, some members of Congress called for an investigation.
"Bush's announcement that he takes responsibility is being spun to sound like something new," said one unnamed Democrat senator. "But we can see from his actions that he's been on-the-take for years. He didn't just take responsibility yesterday. He had it all along. I can certainly confirm that it was nowhere to be found in Congress. Our hands are clean."
www.scrappleface.com
Apparently the author has 'forgotten' that FEMA was staged and ready to go before the storm hit. FEMA was told, by the mayor of NO, on the Monday after the storm hit that NO didn't need federal help. It wasn't until Tuesday morning that the moron decided federal help would be necessary. FEMA was moving into NO by Tuesday evening.
Seems like a good response to me.
The lefties think they'll climb up the chain of command.
"THIS IS IT!!! I BELEEEEEIIIVEEE! IMPEACHMENT TIME!!!!"
"Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials."
I think it was done to establish a chain of command, a flowchart of decision makers, delineate responsibility, delegate authority, eliminate confusion, and prevent a duplication of resources.
Looked good on paper, but apparently nobody studied it. (No 'return' statements in a couple of the the sub-routines.)
You can bet they are going over Chertoff's resume with a fine-toothed comb right as we speak.
And that conclusion was reached how?
That paragraph tells all one needs to know as to the motivation behind the article.
As far as NOLA goes, it wasn't until August 30 that it became clear the city was flooded.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1482715/posts?page=20#20
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1482715/posts?page=24#24
And you are right, it doesn't explain how the governor exercised her control.
I've grabbed and started reading parts of the CFR that describes how FEMA and the states are supposed to work together, and it's no surprise that coordination was (probably still is) lacking.
TITLE 44--EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND ASSISTANCEI can't figure out, from those apparantly contradictory assignments of responsibility, who is supposed to be "in charge of what." Even if there was a cooperative spirit, and I think there was not, the opportunities for crossed-wires and miscommunication are almost too numerous to fathom.
CHAPTER I--FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
PART 206_FEDERAL DISASTER ASSISTANCE FOR DISASTERS DECLARED ON OR AFTER NOVEMBER 23, 1988
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_04/44cfr206_04.htmlSubpart B_The Declaration Process
Sec. 206.42 Responsibilities of coordinating officers.(b) The SCO [State Coordinating Officer - Mr. Art Jones] coordinates State and local disaster assistance efforts with those of the Federal Government working closely with the FCO. The SCO is the principal point of contact regarding coordination of State and local disaster relief activities, and implementation of the State emergency plan. The functions, responsibilities, and authorities of the SCO are set forth in the State emergency plan. It is the responsibility of the SCO to ensure that all affected local jurisdictions are informed of the declaration, the types of assistance authorized, and the areas eligible to receive such assistance.
Subpart C_Emergency Assistance
Sec. 206.64 Coordination of assistance.After an emergency declaration by the President, all Federal agencies, voluntary organizations, and State and local governments providing assistance shall operate under the coordination of the Federal Coordinating Officer. [William Lokey named to handle Lousiana, by Michael D. Brown]
Further, among the criteria necessary to declare an "Incident of National Significance" under HSPD-5 is that "...State/local capabilities are overwhelmed and Federal assistance is requested."
The help was on the ground. The INS designation would only have consolidated all efforts under federal control, and that is waht Blanco declined to request!
There appear to be a lot of people on both sides who have to check on an individual's party affiliation before deciding whether to blame him or her for the train wreak that was Katrina. The plain fact is that we, the tax payers of the United States, are going to have to foot the bill for this fiasco regardless of who is to blame. I'm no more interested in defending Republican political hacks than I am democrats. If they didn't do their job, they don't deserve to keep it.
Right. I intend to muster my fellow North Carolinians to riot and demand our debit cards!
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