MICHAEL CHERTOFF: THE MASTER OF DISASTER

MICHAEL CHERTOFF DELAYED FEDERAL AID TO NEW ORLEANS

HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY DELAYED
FEDERAL ASSISTANCE
TO VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATARINA

Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is the government official legally responsible for the delayed and inept federal response to Hurricane Katrina. But will he be held accountable for the suffering and lives lost due to his failure to act?

As the nation watched the horrific scenes of devastation and became aware of the widespread human suffering caused by Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic flood that followed, the pressing questions were: "Where is FEMA? Where is Homeland Security? Where is the federal assistance?"

The fact that tens of thousands of American citizens were left stranded for days on end without the essentials of life and that bloated corpses lay rotting in the streets of New Orleans for more than ten days shocked the nation.

It seemed as if terrorism was being perpetrated against the people of New Orleans with a dose of psychological terrorism for the nation as a whole. But who is to blame?

"What is remarkable," Dan Barry wrote in his article, "Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street," in the New York Times on Sept.8, "is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable."

"THIS IS NOT AMERICA"

"It is not acceptable," Michael Johnson of Houston responded. "There is no excuse to allow dead bodies to rot in the street while people just walk by. If it is acceptable, which apparently it is to the authorities, then this is not America anymore."

"We have been abandoned by our own country," Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, south of New Orleans, told NBC's Meet the Press.

"It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans," Broussard said. "Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now."

Federal officials, however, steadfastly refused to answer the key question every reporter asked: "Who is to blame for the delayed and ineffective federal response?"

When Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS), arrived in Louisiana several days after the flood, he became testy when a reporter asked who was to blame for the failure of the federal government to respond more quickly and effectively.

The time to assign blame would come later, he said. Chertoff is the Israeli-American former Asst. Attorney General who managed the investigation of the 9-11 attacks, an investigation in which scores of Israeli terror suspects were released on visa violations.

"As it happens," the New Yorker reported, "Chertoff was the senior Justice Department official on duty at the F.B.I. command center right after the attacks." His office became "the funnel for what is probably the most important criminal investigation in American history, as prosecutors and F.B.I. investigators pour in to seek the boss's approval," Jeffrey Toobin wrote in November 2001. "For day-to-day decisions, Chertoff has the last word."

On Sept. 14, the U.S. Senate rejected, by a party-line vote of 44 to 54, a bill introduced by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), which would have created a blue-ribbon bipartisan panel to investigate the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina.

Chertoff, a graduate of Harvard Law School, knows who is legally responsible for the delayed and inadequate federal response to Hurricane Katrina, a failure that undoubtedly exacerbated the human suffering and caused an untold number of lives to be lost. The responsibility is all his.

President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Presidential Directive [HSPD-5] on February 28, 2003, which makes the DHS secretary the legal authority in such disasters.

The National Response Plan of 2004 states: "Pursuant to HSPD-5, the Secretary of Homeland Security is responsible for coordinating Federal operations within the United States to prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies."

HSPD-5 mandates: "If the resources of state and local authorities are overwhelmed and federal assistance has been requested by the appropriate State and local authorities," the DHS Secretary is responsible "to coordinate the Federal Government's resources."

Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, governor of Louisiana, along with the state's Office of Homeland Security, had formally requested federal assistance and asked President Bush to "declare an expedited major disaster" on August 28. Blanco had already declared a state of emergency on August 26, three days before the hurricane made landfall on August 29.

In an apparent attempt to shield Chertoff from blame, Bush accepted responsibility for any failures of the federal government in its response to the catastrophe.

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said at the White House on Sept. 13.

Earlier, on Sept. 9, Michael D. Brown, director of the FEMA, a sub-agency of DHS, had been recalled from New Orleans by Chertoff. Amid a growing scandal, Brown resigned on Sept. 12.

"CHERTOFF WAS IN CHARGE"

"But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster," Knight Ridder (KR) reported the following day.

"Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials," KR reported. "FEMA 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."

A DHS memo signed by Chertoff indicates that he formally granted Brown that authority on August 30. "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," KR reported.

The memo "suggests that Chertoff may have been confused" about his role in disaster response, KR reported. Confusion, however, would seem to be an unlikely defense.

Chertoff and FEMA had plenty of advance warning about Katrina. Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune on Sept. 4 that senior DHS and FEMA officials, including Chertoff and Brown, had been fully briefed by his staff long before Katrina made landfall.

Mayfield said the strength of the storm and the disaster it could bring were made clear during the briefings and in formal advisories, which warned of a storm surge capable of overtopping levees in New Orleans.

"We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield said. "It's not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped.

"I keep looking back to see if there was anything else we could have done, and I just don't know what it would be," he said. Chertoff, however, told reporters Saturday that government officials had not expected the damaging combination of a powerful hurricane and the levee breaches that flooded New Orleans.

In the days before Katrina hit, Mayfield said, his staff had briefed FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and its offices in Dallas and Atlanta about the potential effects of the storm.

Mayfield said the briefings were logged in the hurricane center's records, and that his staff had participated in a five-day exercise in July 2004 named "Hurricane Pam," which had been sponsored by FEMA and the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in which a storm like Katrina hit the city.

FEMA's news release of July 23, 2004, announced the end of the Pam exercise, which was very similar to what Katrina actually delivered:

"Hurricane Pam brought sustained winds of 120 mph, up to 20 inches of rain in parts of southeast Louisiana and storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans area. More than one million residents evacuated and Hurricane Pam destroyed 500,000-600,000 buildings."

DISMANTLED FEMA

"To increase overall preparedness, particularly for catastrophic events," Chertoff announced a reorganization of FEMA on July 13, 2005. He dismantled the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate, of which FEMA comprised the bulk and was headed by a full under secretary.

Chertoff then split FEMA into two parts. The first part kept the name FEMA and had a director, not an undersecretary, who reported to Chertoff. It was, however, stripped of any preparedness functions, and dealt solely with response and recovery.

With the rest, Chertoff created the Directorate for Preparedness. The new directorate was tasked with facilitating grants for responder training, citizen awareness, public health, infrastructure, and cyber security.

In 2002-2003, Chertoff's wife, Meryl Justin, worked at FEMA as disaster response branch chief and facilitated the agency’s transition into DHS.

During her tenure at FEMA, Meryl briefed members of Congress and their staffs on response and recovery efforts following natural and technological disasters, including Hurricane Lili and the Shuttle Columbia disaster.

Meryl also served as director of New Jersey's office in Washington under governors Donald T. DiFrancesco and James E. McGreevey. As director, she represented the state’s interests before Congress, White House staff and federal executive agencies. After 9-11, Meryl was responsible for securing grants for New Jersey homeland security and transportation projects from Congress and federal agencies as part of the state’s relief and recovery efforts.

Gov. McGreevey resigned in November 2004 after it was reported that his homeland security aide, an Israeli named Golan Cipel, planned to file a sexual harassment suit.

The son of an Israeli Mossad agent, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff - not Michael Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to Hurricane Katrina. As I said when he was made Secretary, "Don't you feel more secure already?"

Ask that question of the people of New Orleans.

Who's next?

Chertoff oversees the Secret Service, which protects the president; the Coast Guard, which guards our coasts; and the Dept. of Homeland Security and FEMA, which responds - or doesn't respond - to catastrophic disasters in the United States.

Chertoff needs to be held accountable for criminal negligence leading to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people in New Orleans.

Chertoff is the Master of Disaster.

By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press

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