By now most of you have seen that long string of FEMA e-mails at Malkin's. I've been reading through them and I just don't think they're quite as damning as they're made out to be. Let me point out a couple of things:

1. The dinner--someone complained that FEMA director Michael Brown wasn't getting enough time to eat (20-30 min.) before going on the Joe Scarborough show. There is a wonderfully sarcastic reply from Marty Bahamonde, the FEMA dude on the ground, who shoots back "Just tell her I just ate an MRE and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends."

The "her" referred to in that e-mail is Sharon Worthy, the FEMA press secretary tasked with arranging the Scarborough appearance. She's worried about traffic and getting Brown to the studio on time for the show, which is her job, and yes, she's operating in a completely different world there. Ironically she created bad press for FEMA by trying to set up an emergency interview like it was a normal appearance. She should have said, "sir, I can make arrangements, but maybe it would be better if I got you to the station and then I went out to rustle up a chalupa."

I'm not sure Worthy's mistake reflects so badly on Brown. While the Bahamonde e-mail mention's a Ruth's Chris (fancy steakhouse), and there is an RC in Baton Rouge, there's no evidence Brown went there or anywhere particularly nice. Brown was hopefully busy and not really involved in the minutiae of his schedule planning, so a well-meaning but clueless staffer is likely at fault.

2.The "Potential Hot Issue" series of emails. The e-mails concern the provision of oxygen tanks to sick people sheltering in the Superdome. Michelle concludes that titling the e-mails that way suggests that FEMA officials were concerned about "negative publicity".

I don't see that at all. "Hot" would seem to indicate "high priority" and they were giving it that. There was supposed to be a response team in from Oklahoma that would deliver the O2 but the weather prevented them from making it on time.

As the original e-mail (from Dave Passey) points out, local-level fumbuckery failed to stock the Superdome to deal with the disaster (even though Mayor Nagin told people to take shelter there.) Then he points out that local officials "have struggled to put meaningful resource requests together." The rest of the e-mails suggest a group effort to find O2 tanks and mobilize someone to get them there, in the midst of complete anarchy.
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All in all the e-mails don't look good for FEMA, but I wouldn't call them damning. And in one respect they explain FEMA's shortfalls, by showing clearly the difficulties presented by local-government incompetence and poor planning, and how that poor planning in turn handicapped FEMA's mission and introduced an even greater degree of uncertainty into the mix. And they also show these problems coming to light at the time--the decision to blame local government was not an afterthought, but a genuine reaction to New Orleans' lack of any kind of realistic disaster plan.

Brown's gone; but on the question of whether he's a scapegoat or whether he really did screw the pooch as badly as everyone thinks, these e-mails don't shed a whole lot of light.

Posted by: seedubya at 05:45 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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