FEMA's Woes Began Long Before Michael Brown

by Bill Berkowitz

(IPS) -- If there is anything that most observers can agree on about the shamefully slow and painfully inadequate response by the Bush administration during the run-up to, and aftermath of, Hurricane Katrina, it is that Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was not ready for prime time.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has called for Brown's firing, while Maureen Dowd of the New York Times dubbed him "the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA."

To his numerous critics, the man whose major concern for most of the 1990s was Arabian horses was clearly unqualified and unprepared to respond -- let alone manage -- the delivery of emergency services to the hundreds of thousands of victims of the hurricane.

It is also becoming clear that the major reason Brown signed on with FEMA was because of his old college chum, Joseph Allbaugh, a close friend and political advisor to Pres. Bush, who was running the agency at the time.

Long before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and Mississippi, FEMA, then headed by Allbaugh -- Bush's former chief of staff in Texas, and his 2000 campaign manager -- was developing its own shrinkage agenda.

According to press reports, Allbaugh almost immediately began scaling back FEMA's preparedness programs. In April 2001, the White House announced that it planned to privatise much of the agency's work.

In 2001, Allbaugh told Congress that, "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management. Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

Before leaving FEMA in December 2002 -- to found The Allbaugh Company, LLC, a Washington-based corporate strategy and counsel firm eager to cash in on lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts -- Allbaugh helped bury FEMA inside the new Department of Homeland Security.

Could there have been a better way to de-emphasize the agency's work than by bringing in someone to head the agency that had absolutely no experience in disaster relief? While destroying FEMA's capacity to respond to major natural disasters was probably not what Allbaugh had in mind, Michael Brown was the right man to continue along the path that Allbaugh had set: lowering the public's expectations that the agency could handle a crisis the size of Hurricane Katrina.

Brown came over to FEMA at the urging of Allbaugh -- his old Oklahoma college roommate -- shortly after he was fired from his position as "czar" with the International Arabian Horse Association (IAHA), a breeders' and horse-show organization based in Colorado.

First, Brown served as FEMA's deputy director and the agency's general counsel, and later, he became the first under-secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response in the newly created Department of Homeland Security in January 2003, after Allbaugh left for greener pastures.

As "czar" of the IAHA, Brown came under heavy criticism for his leadership skills, or lack thereof. WorldNetDaily, a conservative news site, reported on Sept. 5 that Brown had actually been "fired" by the IAHA.

A former association president, Bill Pennington, told reporters that Brown "just wouldn't follow instruction. Mike was bullheaded and he was gonna do it his way. Period."

However, in the hullabaloo over Michael Brown, one issue that is likely to receive less attention in the post-hurricane analysis is the question of privatization. For decades, conservative think-tanks have been advancing public policy initiatives aimed at hammering the final nail into Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt's so-called "New Deal." Their goal was dramatically reducing the size of government while privatising as many government services as possible.

Shortly after Bush entered the White House in January 2001, the president announced the establishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, thus initiating the foundation of his domestic policy agenda.

In addition to government money given over to faith-based organizations to provide a bevy of social services previously provided by the government, other outsourcing/privatization initiatives would begin to emerge from the White House: So-called "entitlement programs" would be pared to the bone; under-funded public lands would be offered up for commercial exploitation; and Social Security would be privatized.

Grover Norquist's vision -- shrinking the government "to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" -- appeared to rolling along far ahead of schedule. Norquist, who has become an influential figure in Washington during the past two decades through heading up Americans for Tax Reform, told the audience of Pat Robertson's "700 Club" that he wanted "to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP [gross national product] over the next 25 years. We want to reduce the number of people depending on government so there is more autonomy and more free citizens."

The hiring of Michael Brown was not the only reason that FEMA was unprepared to handle a disaster as huge as the one presented by Hurricane Katrina.

In June 2004, FEMA signed a 500,000-dollar contract with the Baton Rouge, Louisiana firm Innovative Emergency Management (IEM), whose motto is "Managing Risk in a Complex World." The company claimed on its website that it would "lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans."

IEM Director of Homeland Security Wayne Thomas told the magazine Biz New Orleans, "Given this area's vulnerability, unique geographic location and elevation, and troubled escape routes, a plan that facilitates a rapid and effective hurricane response and recovery is critical."

"The IEM team's approach to catastrophic planning meets the challenges associated with integrating multi-jurisdictional needs and capabilities into an effective plan for addressing catastrophic hurricane strikes, as well as man-made catastrophic events."

The press release, according to the web log Lenin's Tomb, was removed from the company's online press release archives after Katrina hit.

In the midst of excoriating Michael Brown, and criticising Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, critics emphasize that Pres. Bush should not be let off the hook. After all, he signed off on the appointment of Brown.