Today, Michael Brown, former director of FEMA who resigned because of his poor leadership, testified in front of a Senate committee about the White House's poor response to Hurricane Katrina and what went wrong.
One of the main questions is what went wrong with the reporting of broken, breached levees. The levees were breached int he late morning of Monday, August 29. Michael Chertoff acknowledged that the levees were breached midday Tuesday (timeline available from Think Progress).
What went wrong, according to Brown, was poor communication by White House aides. Brown says that he told top aides about the problems.
Brown told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this morning that he had called a senior White House aide, most likely deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, the previous evening, Monday, Aug. 29, to inform him of the levee break.Brown, testifying under oath, was unable to say with total assurance that it was Hagin with whom he spoke that night, but said it "probably" was Hagin, a person with whom he had "a personal relationship." Brown added that he was fully confident that Hagin, who was with the president at his ranch, would inform Bush.
So Brown says that he told the White House the night of August 29 - and that no one felt they should have told President George Bush.
Brown said that he "knew that in speaking to Joe I was talking directly to the president." While Brown was not an effective leader, it looks like he may have taken more of the blame than he deserves. The poor communication may have been in the White House itself.
It looks like "Brownie" is throwing the White House under the bus. It will be good to know more about this, so it will never happen again.
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As always, all praise be to the whistle-blower.