Katrina Whitewash: Michael Chertoff Remains Incriminated by the Smoking Gun Buried in Plain Sight

"President Bush will likely nominate Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, senior administration officials told CNN Monday." August 27, 2007

Chairman Susan Collins moved to sideline an examination into the smoking gun that incriminated Michael Chertoff. She opened the hearings by directly asking - and answering - the critical question herself. Her answer was both clever and artful; what seemed straightforward and reasonable was in fact pure nonsense.

Six days later, Chertoff testified and gave substantially the same dishonest answer. The stunt worked. To this day, the most damning evidence against Michael Chertoff remains barely acknowledged and hiding in plain sight.

In her opening statement at the Senate hearings on February 10, 2006 Susan Collins, the Republican Senator from Maine, asked and answered the question:

"The day after the storm...Secretary Chertoff named Michael Brown as the lead federal official for the response effort. At the same time, the secretary declared Hurricane Katrina an Incident of National Significance, which is the designation that triggers the National Response Plan.

"The National Response Plan, in turn, is the comprehensive national road map that guides the federal response to catastrophes.

"The secretary's action led many to the question why the Incident of National Significance declaration had not been made earlier."

"But in reality, the declaration itself was meaningless because, by the plain terms of the National Response Plan, Hurricane Katrina had become an Incident of National Significance three days earlier when the President declared an emergency in Louisiana."

Collins' logic seemed simple enough: A Presidential Emergency Declaration = an Incident of National Significance = National Response Plan is triggered. Therefore, a declaration of an Incident of National Significance was a meaningless formality. Chertoff said the same thing when Joe Lieberman asked him why the declaration was made on Tuesday August 30, instead of Saturday August 27. The DHS Secretary testified, "In truth, I didn't need to do it. I was told I didn't need to do it -- but I just did it to formalize it."

But when you translate the bureaucratic jargon back into English, Collins' assertion means something different. In effect, she said that it didn't matter that the fire chief pulled the fire alarm three days late, because, under the law, it was obvious the alarm should have been pulled three days earlier.

Contrary to what Collins implied, the National Response Plan does not rely on emergency responders to construe the statutory implications of a presidential declaration. No plan for a large mobilization ever works that way. Emergency plans always rely on clear lines of communication, on an established chain of command, and on the dissemination of straightforward, unambiguous directions.

The National Response Plan, or NRP, is no different. It is easy to understand. It preempts any question about who is in charge and who has the power to give orders and deploy resources. Once President Bush declared an emergency on August 27, 2005, 45 hours before Katrina made landfall, Chertoff had the legal obligation to declare an Incident of National Significance. That declaration would have mobilized all federal agencies, all state and local officials and all major relief agencies who had prepared to follow the agreed-upon road map. Without that declaration, people wondered who was in charge. The road map, the power to direct all federal agencies, all state and local officials and all major relief agencies resided exclusively with Michael Chertoff. It never resided with Michael Brown, until Chertoff conferred such power upon him, at the point when the disorganization became irreparable.

During the critical three days when Chertoff rejected his legal duty to activate the Plan, people in New Orleans perished. They did not die because of bureaucratic inertia, "the fog of war" or a shortage of bus drivers; those were not contributing factors to a general breakdown. They were the foreseeable consequences of one man's deliberate refusal to follow his legal obligations. The smoking gun is the NRP and Chertoff's obvious refusal to follow it.

The litany of reports and hearings on Katrina all dutifully bypassed the primary and overriding reason why New Orleans suffered 1,000+ deaths two years ago. That reason is simple, singular and straightforward. But thanks to the obfuscations of Susan Collins and other Republicans, we still hear their mantra, "There's plenty of blame to go around."

Anyone can trace the response failures that occurred before and after the levies broke, and compare them to the way things were supposed to work under the NRP. Yet this simple cause-and-effect analysis is missing or buried in the government reports on the subject. (Chertoff's failure was not "A Failure of Initiative.") The evidence shows that Chertoff's crime against humanity was cold hearted and deliberate. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Even historian Douglas Brinkley pulled his punches in The Great Deluge. Brinkley lays out the facts that incriminate Chertoff, and draws the inevitable inference, yet fails to acknowledge the magnitude of the implications. Brinkley writes:

"Under rules instituted in January 2005, Homeland Secretary was in charge of all major disasters, whether from international terrorism, Mother Nature, or infrastructure collapse. Until Chertoff designated it "an incident of national significance," and appointed someone (presum¬ably the FEMA director in the case of hurricanes) as the "principal federal official," relief would be halting at best. Without that designation, Brown could not legally take charge, giving orders to local and state officials and overseeing deployment of National Guard and other U.S. military person¬nel. 'I am having a horrible time,' Brown admitted to Chertoff in a tele¬phone conversation on Monday. 'I can't get a unified command established.'

"A stronger personality than Michael Brown might have seized com¬mand anyway. But even Brown's GOP allies knew he was weak-kneed. The question that still haunts the events of Monday, August 29, was not, however, why Michael Brown needed post-Katrina direction and so much instruction from his boss. The important question was why Chertoff was so callous, both to Brown's specific relief needs and to the apocalyptic needs of the entire Gulf Coast region. Brown tried to maneuver around Chertoff, to appeal directly to President Bush, but it was hard to get through to the White House.

[...]

"Clearly Chertoff didn't just make a mistake during the first days of Katrina--he did virtually nothing at all, which was by far the greater sin. With the hurricane approaching Louisiana and Mississippi, Chertoff never even went to his office, staying at home for the crucial forty-eight hours before landfall. Most astonishing of all, as Katrina ravaged nearly 29,000 square miles of America on Monday, Chertoff didn't even speak to Brown until 8 p.m. When CNN, Fox News, ABC News, and the rest started reporting the horrific flooding in New Orleans due to the levee breaks, Chertoff scoffed, dismissing media reports of human suffering as melodrama. With a cavalier wave of the hand, according to the Washington Post, Chertoff downplayed the bleak reports as 'rumored or exaggerated.' Worse yet, Chertoff insisted that Brown and FEMA as a whole were do¬ing an "excellent" job. Evan Thomas of Newsweek was closer to the mark when in his seminal article 'How Bush Blew It,' he declared that FEMA was 'not up to the job.'

"Chertoff 's inaction cost lives. FEMA had been brought into the gar¬gantuan Department of Homeland Security after 9/11; now it was clear somebody needed to pull it out again. It was a huge black eye for Home¬land Security. The Harvard prosecutor performed just as poorly as the Oklahoman--even worse. Brown, to his credit, kept trying to get the Bush administration's full attention. Chertoff had assumed his important cabi¬net position with big talk about keeping Americans safe from man-made and natural disasters. He was a principal engineer of the USA Patriot Act and wrote an article in the neoconservative publication The Weekly Standard full of bravado about fighting the war on terror 'beyond case-by-case.' He fancied himself an intellectual, but one who understood trench war¬fare. President Bush, in selecting Chertoff to replace Tom Ridge, said that 'Mike has shown a deep commitment to the cause of justice and unwa¬vering determination to protect the American people.' His determination to protect the American people did not seem to extend to those who lived in Gulf towns like Grand Isle, Louisiana; Ocean Springs, Mississippi; or Dauphin Island, Alabama. The one quality, in fact, not evident in Chertoff 's handling of Katrina was caring about what the storm inflicted. While fellow citizens were dying, screaming for help, clutching chunks of floating wood and palm fronds trying to stay alive, Chertoff, the one " i 've b e e n f e m a - e d " 271 American who could have helped the most, turned a casual, cold, indiffer¬ent eye to their plight.

"When Brown put through his 8 p.m. telephone calls on that Monday, Chertoff was at his home resting. Chertoff 's spokesman later claimed that the Homeland Security secretary "was hobbled by a lack of specific informa¬tion" regarding Katrina on Monday night. That clumsy contrivance pre¬sumed that Chertoff was discounting or ignoring the reports from Brown, who was then in the EOC in Baton Rouge, or those reports streaming in from the affected area that were all over various FEMA offices. Air Force aerial images of the swamped Gulf Coast were arriving with increasing fre¬quency at EOC, each showing an obliterated landscape, with water towers and refineries among the only recognizable landmarks in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. As Homeland Security chief, Chertoff had the most effective communications network of any cabinet office at his disposal, in¬cluding the resources of the top brass in the Pentagon. He didn't use it. If nothing else, there were a growing number of images on television. But he seemed oblivious to Barbour's 'nuclear devastation' metaphor, and allowed the Great Deluge to run its course willy-nilly. 'What happened was Home¬land Security was geared toward terrorism,' Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti said. 'They knew that FEMA could cope with a hurricane. Okay. Maybe. But the Bush administration refused to come to grips with the flood. Wind damage was not water. They just didn't get that. In New Orleans, house after house, block after block, mile after mile was disappearing.' "

Right away, Chertoff started lying about his criminal neglect. Four times, for good measure, he referred to non-existent newspaper headlines that said "New Orleans Dodged the Bullet."

More to come later.

Comments

[Marnie1]

Secondary to all this, is that in not activating an important new tool in reacting to national disasters, the Bush administration missed an incredible real life chance to "try out" their new plan and find the bugs.

You would think that they would be panting to show off their new gadget.

Or maybe they know that it is really a nonfunctional political boondoggle.

[syllepsis]

My guess is that, as another poster mentioned, these people subscribe to Norquist's idea of 'starving the beast': making government capable of nothing but nonfunctional political boondoggles.
Of course, this does not starve the beast; on the contrary, it fattens it to the point of obesity. But by circular logic, since government has been shown to be useless, you 'feed' it with more and more salaried tapeworms like Chertoff and the unlamented Gonzo, who make it even more useless, as a retort to supposed profligate Dems who will 'waste taxpayer's money on government programs that don't work.'
Of course, the reason these programs are so costly and useless is because they are infested with parasites. That rumbling in Chertoff's gut is sinister in more ways than one.

[syllepsis]

Chertoff is an utterly dishonest and hypocritical man, who enjoys nothing better than to point the accusing finger at someone else for faults he himself is guilty of.His behavior during Katrina was indefensible, and I cannot wait for Maine voters to show Collins what they think of her apologies for this man.
Here in New York, even the right-wing rags lampoon him for his absurd prioritizing of petting zoos in Indiana over the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty in the DHS budget a year or so back. This man felt so attacked by outraged New Yorkers (including Republican Rep. Peter King) that he felt compelled, like so many worthless functionaries of the Administration, to write an op-ed piece in the Times (I find this amusing, in a grim sort of way, given the Administration's behavior towards non-Adminstration Times op-ed writers ).
In this piece, he lectured New Yorkers on how he had to fix what he called "administrative errors" in NYC's DHS requests, including the city's erroneous classification of the Empire State Building as an "icon" (no, according to him it was an 'office building;' one can only imagine the quibbles he would have gotten into were the WTC still standing: two office buildings, one 'complex', 'singular entity with two towers,' that no doubt is best thought of as 'one office building?' Anything but an 'icon.')
If Bush puts Chertoff in as a recess appointment, the calls for impeachment will only get louder.

[peterg76]

"Chertoff rejected his legal duty to activate the Plan"

Sounds like an impeachable offence.

[KansasKowboy]

During lunch I heard a commentator on TV say that they thought it was just a rumor about Chertoff being asked to head the AG Ofiice. They commented that they doubted the Bush Administration would want two confermation hearings at one time. That makes sense to me. But then nothing this administration does makes sense so I guess anything could happen.

[duboisist]

David Fiderer brings up a good point and one I never heard before.
At first I wondered why I never heard it before, but then I read an above comment about "every level of government failed."
In order to spread the blame, it was necessary to convince the public that there was something local and state governments could have done that would have made everything work out right. If Mr. Fiderer is correct there was little anyone else could do BECAUSE the Feds screwed things up so badly.

From day one, people have been blaming Mayor Nagin for not using buses to evacuate more people (even though there were no drivers, fuel, or anywhere for them to go). They even blamed the victims themselves for not leaving earlier or for "looting".
People have been focusing on "Good Job" Brownie when the real question is why he still had his job when he had already proven to be incompetent.

Once we stop the big lie and we can look at the facts and put the blame squarely where it belongs.

[avergejoe]

So why did MSM make Brown the fall guy instead of joe l's buddy, ineptoff?
Doesn't he have a problem with his gut, anyway?

[dividebyzero]

You must have the preverbial nail seeking hammer. Dead on. Please don't let folks forget that Chertoff still owes us a lot of explaining. I've been involved since day one and I can't see how anyone is more to blame than this guy. Brown may have been inconpetent but he couldn't do anything even if he knew what to do.

Dismantle DHS!

[WheelofVoter]

The captain SHOULD go down with the ship. Only Brownie went down with Katrina. Chertoff was the captain. Bush needs someone in the AG spot to quell these investigations and keep him, Cheney, and Rove out of Jail. There is much evidence to destroy in eavesdropping, firings, torture. Chertoff has shown he can destroy a whole city; who better to to destroy the mountain of evidence?

[LiberalLibertarian]

A very important and timely piece. One interesting point I did not know before....­(Chertoff) "was a principal engineer of the USA Patriot Act". This guy is as filthy as Gonzales ever was, and we MUST NOT allow one rubber stamp anti-const­itutionali­st to be replaced with another equally dangerous partisan hack. Chertoff's gut could not notice an entire American city drowning despite streaming satellite images and a road map, how on earth will he be any more effective as AG?

Beware the administration's shell game....

[realitytrumpsbull]

The Disembodied Death's Head On A Stick did a real botch job, but he had lots of help, can't wait to see what kind of expertise will manifest itself regarding the border...the sooner they fire the rest of the clowns in this circus, the better off we'll be, in my view...

[chinohillster]

Ah, very good, realitytru­mpsbull...­it's very interesting that two AM radio "shock jocks" in Southern California who are on from 3-7 PM regularly refer to Chertoff as "The Skull"...these are fairly conservative, "oh-my-goo­dness-the-­Mexicans-a­re-overunn­ing-Southe­rn-Califor­nia-and-we­'ll-be-des­troyed" guys, but they have little love for Bush or the political hacks in his Administration.

[CatfishJohn]

Thank you for your depiction of what indeed was Chertoff's callous , coldhearted disdain for not only the imminent suffering but a reminder of what Chertoff actually told those stranded in horrific conditions at the Super Dome, with old ladies expiring on the sidewalk, mothers desperate for their babies and the Republican's longtanding implicit contempt for poor Aqmerica finally being made so agonzingly apparent..Chertoff, according to a CNN report issued that week, when asked what message he had for these suffering Americans at the Superdome, actually said, "tell them to get on their laptops and follwo FEMA instructions from there"...yeah, "get on their laptops" (!!!) was exactl;y what the stranded and suffering needed to hear at that moment from this stunningly cold and compassionless man...very reassuring...now, i am in retrospect, feeling his efforts on behalf of the victims would have been far more prompt and urgent if Katrina had just hit San Diego, South Beach, Miami or some other wealthy, white corner of America...but this is admittedly just speculation.... perhaps he was just utterly incompetent...but i doubt that...

[Decipherer]

This excellent blog should be Exhibit A before the Senate Judiciary Committee when and if Michael "Skeletor" Chertoff is nominated to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States.

I don't care whether Chertoff is an experienced lawyer, jurist or anything of the sort. Chertoff is a Bush crony of the worst kind and two years to the day after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, his Department of Homeland Security (there's a compound oxymoron for you!)has allowed that great city to rot while billions of dollars have been squandered, stolen, or grossly misspent right under his nose by corrupt contractors and other Bush cronies.

If he had a shred of self-respect and dignity left, Chertoff should resign regardless, simply out of shame for his grotesque and spectacular failure. But, it is a hallmark of this venal, corrupt, incompetent, and negligent administration that no one will ever acknowledge failure or seek to do anything about it.

In Japan, shamed officials will often commit hari-kiri to atone for their offenses. In China, corrupt businessmen and government officials have done likewise when the facts of their crimes & offenses have been exposed.

It's time for the Bushies to start doing the right thing, and end it all.

At a bare minimum, under no circumstances should this person ever become Attorney General of the United States.

[rawdata]

hello david thank you for your post.......we had the 'iron age' et. al., ....now we have the'spin age'' everything is a spin .....the truth about things is not allowed ....unless we the people get as excited about elections as the iphone , we will remain a dictatorship ........too bad , we [usa] had such an opporunity after ww2 to have everyone experience the american dream but the war profiteers took over ......shame

[Mormondude]

Relying completely on nanny government will always lead to disaster.

The lesson of Katrina is that government WILL NOT and CANNOT protect people. Every level of government failed.

[BigTuna]

Considering that one of the most fundamental purposes of government is to protect its people, something even Libertarians agree with, should we assume that you're a follower of the Grover Norquist "drown government in the bathtub" philosophy that has so thoroughly wrecked our country?

[erinaceus]

I disagree. The lesson of Katrina (spelled out by David Fiderer in the above article) is that this administration purposely prevented the government from mounting any helpful response.

Why? Is it the Norquistian hatred of public works, systematic replacement of career professionals with crony ideologues, and wasteful disregard for human life when there is no money to be made?

Then again, the reason may be far simpler: the obstructing silence during the destruction of this blue city in a red state has an awful political stench to it. Or does anybody here think that these Mayberry Machiavellis would have been so slow to respond to a similar catastrophe in a republican stronghold (especially when the loss of a single city could tip the balance of the electoral college)?

[BigTuna]

The worst thing that could possibly have happened in the midst of the New Orleans tragedy was the rumor of someone on the ground shooting at rescue helicopters. Even though NOT ONE SHOT was fired at any helicopter during the entire rescue operation, it was all the Republicans needed to feel justified in abandoning a city that, to them, was full of ungrateful savages.

EVERYTHING that occurred (and didn't occur) in the immediate aftermath of the storm can ultimately be traced back to that rumor. It changed the tone of the operation as viewed by the right wing. If there ever was meaningful concern about the residents of New Orleans, it vanished that day.

[seawolf77]

Funny it did not fail in Florida during FOUR!!!! hurricanes. I guess when it fails in a democratic, mostly black city it is government doewsn't work but when it works in a mostly white state run by your brother it's another story.

[noamjunior]

mail that to the congression commitee in charrge of JD appointees