Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows

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14 Sep 2005 00:29:01 -0700

Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/news/politics/12637130.htm

 

Posted on Tue, Sep. 13, 2005

 

Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows

 

BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY, ALISON YOUNG AND SHANNON MCCAFFREY

 

Knight Ridder Newspapers

 

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - 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

 

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(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents Seth Borenstein and William

Douglas contributed to this report.)

 

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© 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.