Editorial: Shifting blame is his game

Saturday, Feb. 11, 2006 | 12:31 p.m.

Light continues to be shed on why the federal government shrugged its shoulders in the hours and days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.

In congressional testimony Friday that centered around the flooding in New Orleans, former FEMA director Michael Brown said he warned top White House staff about the broken levees and rising water levels, but intentionally did not call his supervisor at the Homeland Security Department.

Brown's testimony reflected his displeasure with the reorganization three years ago that saw the Federal Emergency Management Agency folded into the Homeland Security Department headed by Michael Chertoff. "The policies and decisions implemented by the DHS put FEMA on a path to failure," he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Instead of calling Chertoff when he learned Aug. 29 from a FEMA official that Katrina had breached the levees, Brown said he called Deputy White House Chief of Staff Joe Hagin, who was with the vacationing President Bush in Crawford, Texas. Brown said he also e-mailed White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. He said he didn't call Chertoff because he would have been "wasting my time."

Under questioning from Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., Brown acknowledged he informed only the White House staffers, and did not ask them to take action. Bush and Chertoff have said previously that they did not learn of the levee breaches until Aug. 30.

The White House shares much of the blame for the laggard response to Katrina. But Brown's remarks, in our view, do not lift any fault from his own shoulders. His personal differences with the Homeland Security Department did not give him the right to bypass Chertoff, who was in a much better position to make emergency decisions than White House administrators.