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Homeland Security by any other name ...
Sunday, August 6, 2006

By MARGARET CARLSON
BLOOMBERG NEWS

The last time we saw Katrina Designated Scapegoat Michael Brown, he was enjoying a slight uptick in his reputation, thanks to the release of a videotape in March.

Although the video had the murky qualities of a porn flick, it clearly showed former FEMA Director Brown trying to convince his superiors, including President Bush, how bad the hurricane would be, how much red tape had to be cut, and what an awful place the Superdome would be for evacuees.

While no one was going to award Brown the Medal of Freedom, Leno and Letterman began to let up on him and Congress turned to shaping up folks still on the job, such as bumbling Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff.

Now, Brown has violated Washington's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not attempt a second act before its time (see Al Gore). With many of last year's victims still living in rickety mobile homes -- the lucky ones, that is -- this is definitely not the time.

Brown launched his comeback effort in the September issue of Playboy in an interview, the only section of the magazine anyone will admit to reading. It's full of self-pity. On being relieved of his duties, he says, "Sent home. What a stupid phrase. Like a child. I'd been going 24 hours a day." He adds, "I was talking to the president of the United States." To go from that "to zero miles an hour was a heavy burden to carry," he says.

About accusations he had inflated his resume -- false, he says, with an affidavit to prove it. "I had to live with that in the middle of everything else," he says.

Of course, "live" is the operative word. When so many were dying, his concerns seemed petty, and still do. Yet Brown, who was extolled by Bush for his relief work on Katrina shortly before he was forced to resign, is determined to give as good as he got. He whacks Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, for asking him questions and then leaving the room without giving Brown a chance to defend his honor. He also takes on Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, for insisting he had no idea how tragic the situation was.

"I've smelled death," Brown tells Playboy interviewer David Sheff. "For that little twerp to claim I didn't understand death and suffering, he can just bite me, for all I care."

No one talks like that in Washington, no matter how angry. Maybe Brown thought he was in Hollywood, where actor Mel Gibson unleashed a slew of anti-Semitic epithets at an officer who arrested him for drunk driving. Gibson has since apologized, blaming alcohol.

I went looking for Brown's nemeses. First I called the twerp. Taylor had heard Brown's invitation to bite him. Says Taylor, "I've got worse stuff now on that incompetent," and "to get fired in this administration for incompetence, you really have to stick out."

Taylor recounted one e-mail, which, he says, has "Brownie dining on his government credit card at Ruth's Chris Steak House in Baton Rouge -- high ground, I remind you." Meanwhile, Taylor says, "I'm down with my mayors in Mississippi who are waist deep in water, covered in mud, eating stuff the police looted for them off the shelf at the Winn-Dixie to stay alive. It's good I didn't have the e-mails at the hearings. I really wouldn't have been able to control myself."

Coleman's press secretary gave me a short statement: "The facts show that Michael Brown didn't do his job. End of story."

As Brown's interview was coming out, so was a bipartisan report by the House Government Reform Committee. It concluded that Homeland Security had spent $34 billion in two years on badly managed private contracts and had little to show for it. While that's not nearly as much as flies out the door of the Pentagon to be wasted by Halliburton Co., it's a good clip for a rookie agency.

The department, which oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is rapidly setting a new standard for profligacy. According to two former inspectors general, the DHS furnished its various offices with multiple Sub-Zero refrigerators, silk flowers and leather briefcases.

It threw itself a party costing $500,000 to hand out "lifetime achievement" awards to employees at a department in existence for less than two years. One office for 140 employees costing $19 million has seven kitchens and 12 conference rooms and $500,000 worth of art and decorative items.

The cushy surroundings don't mean people are actually working. More likely, they're giving out contracts to get others working. According to the congressional report, in 2003, DHS spent $3.5 billion on 14,000 contracts, many of them no-bid. In 2005, it spent $10 billion on contracts, even more of them no-bid. Aside from the miserable job FEMA did during Katrina, it has blown through billions since, spending, at one point, $915 million on 26,000 trailers that could never be used to help the homeless because they were not built for the wet climate of Louisiana.

Fiscally conservative Republicans are livid at this administration's wasteful, out-of-control spending, but that has not moved the president to change. Brown says it's only talk that the Senate will abolish his former agency for being so dysfunctional. "The way they work, they'll probably change the name and do nothing else."

A name change might not be enough for the president. Although he visited the National Hurricane Center in Miami on Monday, Bush never mentioned FEMA.

He left that to his new FEMA director, R. David Paulison, Brown's successor. Paulison said he's doubled the number of employees to 8,000 and has stockpiled enough food to feed a million people for a week. "I want to make this country proud of FEMA again."

We'll get back to you in September on that.



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Margaret Carlson is a columnist for Bloomberg News; mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

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