Top FEMA Officials Lack Experience, But Administration Doesn't Care

[JABBS]

The top three officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency share at least one trait: they had little or no experience in disaster management before landing top FEMA posts.

According to a Sept. 7 Chicago Tribune story, FEMA Director Michael Brown was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association and had virtually no experience in disaster management.

Brown was removed Friday as head of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

An official biography of Brown's top aide, acting deputy director Patrick Rhode, doesn't list any disaster relief experience.

The department's No. 3 official, acting deputy chief of staff Brooks Altshuler, also does not have emergency management experience, FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule told the Tribune.

Rhode and Altshuler each worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations, which arranges the president's travel and scripts his appearances.

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The credentials of top FEMA managers stand in contrast to the backgrounds of leaders of the agency during the Clinton administration.

Clinton-era FEMA Director James Lee Witt headed the Arkansas office of emergency services before he was tapped by Clinton in 1993 to run the federal disaster relief agency.

Witt's top aides in 2000, Lynn Canton and Michael Armstrong, both ran regional FEMA offices for at least three years before assuming senior positions with the agency in Washington.

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The question that no one is asking, of course, is why isn't the Bush Administration getting any heat for putting together a FEMA team so lacking in experience? Why isn't anyone criticizing the administration -- and his Republican-led Congress -- for allowing a FEMA leadership that screams "party before country."

Maybe because officially, the Bush Administration doesn't think FEMA has done a bad job.

Brown's boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, said today in discussing Brown's removal from the Katrina response: "Mike Brown has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to this unprecedented challenge. I appreciate his work, as does everybody here."

And JABBS agrees. Mike Brown did do "everything he possibly could." He was so woefully unprepared for the task at hand, so badly overmatched by the realities of Hurricane Katrina, that "everything he possibly could" do was not very good.

You know Brown will disappear from the public eye for a while, then get a cushy job with some Washington think tank or corporate friend of Bush/Cheney.

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This article first appeared at Journalists Against Bush's B.S.

[Erika]

1. They are all Bushbot donors

None had credentials and our poor paid the price.