Michael D. Brown


 * For other people of the same name, see Michael Brown (disambiguation).

Michael DeWayne Brown (born November 8, 1954) was Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response (EP&R), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a position generally referred to as the director or administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He was appointed in January, 2003 by President George W. Bush and resigned in September, 2005 following public outcry over his handling of Hurricane Katrina.

Background
Brown was born in Guymon, Oklahoma, on November 8, 1954. He received a B.A. in public administration/political science from Central State University (now the University of Central Oklahoma) in 1978, where he started the first UCO College Republicans group. He received his J.D. from Oklahoma City University's School of Law in 1981.

While he was in college, from 1975 to 1978, he handled "labor and budget matters" as an administrative assistant to the city manager of Edmond, Oklahoma (1980 population of 58,123). His White House biography states that he had emergency services oversight in this position. However, the head of public relations for the city denied that Brown had oversight over anybody and explained that "the assistant is more like an intern." Brown disputes this characterization of his position, and the city official cited by Time in this quote claimed on a local news broadcast (Oklahoma City's News 9) that the remark was taken out of context.

While attending law school, Brown was appointed by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma Legislature as the Finance Committee Staff Director, where he oversaw state fiscal issues from 1980-1982. In 1981, he was elected to the city council for Edmond, but resigned to work in private practice.

Later in the 1980s he lived in Enid and practiced law there. A senior partner at the firm later described him as "not serious and somewhat shallow." (ibid). Of 37 lawyers with Jones's firm, Brown was one of two let go when Jones and his partners decided to split up the firm.

He also taught at OCU law school as an adjunct. From 1982-1988, he was the chairman of the board of the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority. Several power plants were built during his tenure. One hydroelectric plant located at Kaw Reservoir was completed in 1989 and named the Michael D. Brown Hydroelectric Power Plant and Dam in his honor. Kay County commissioners have formed a committee to rename the plant.

He ran for Congress in 1988 against Democratic incumbent Glenn English, who had not been challenged in the previous election. English's well-financed campaign trounced Brown with 122,763 votes against 45,199. After losing, Brown promised to try again in 1990, saying, "I have an excellent chance of prevailing. It's a Democratic state, but a very Republican district." In fact, he did not run in 1990, and English beat his Republican opponent, Robert Burns, 110,100 votes to 27,540.

Brown is married and has two children.

IAHA tenure
Before joining the DHS/FEMA, Brown was the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association, (IAHA), from 1989-2001. After numerous lawsuits were filed against the organization over disciplinary actions, Brown was forced to resign.

A March 2000 two-part report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, chronicling one of the disciplinary actions, lauded Brown for pursuing an investigation against David Boggs, "the kingpin of the Arabian horse world," despite internal pressure to end the inquiry. The Brown-led investigation found Boggs performed medically unnecessary surgery on horses to enhance their visual appeal. An ethics board suspended Boggs for five years. Boggs protested through multiple lawsuits against both the organization and Brown, alleging slander and defamation. Brown and the IAHA prevailed, but the lawsuits nonetheless took a toll on morale. Some members interviewed felt Brown showed an imperious attitude, and nicknamed him "The Czar."

Brown started his own legal defense fund before resigning, a move he said was necessary to protect his family's assets. However, some IAHA insiders claimed that this was what really led to his ouster. He raised money from breeders for the fund as well as IAHA, creating a conflict of interest. Also, his contract stipulated that IAHA was to pay all his personal legal expenses, on top of his $100,000 annual salary. IAHA became financially depleted, and had to be merged with the Arabian Horse Registry of America.

Bush administration service
After Bush entered office in January 2001, Brown joined FEMA as General Counsel. He was the first person hired by his long-time friend, then-FEMA director Joe Allbaugh, who also ran Bush's election campaign in 2000. Allbaugh later named Brown his acting deputy director in September 2001. President Bush formally nominated him as deputy director on March 22, 2002, and the Senate confirmed him many months later. Soon thereafter Allbaugh left government and President Bush nominated Brown again in January 2003 for the directorship. Brown was sworn in to his position on April 15, 2003.

Before that, shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Brown served on the Consequence Management Principals' Committee, which acted as the White House's policy coordination group for the federal domestic response to the attacks. Later, Bush asked him to head the Consequence Management Working Group to identify and resolve key issues regarding the federal response plan. In August 2002, Bush appointed him to the Transition Planning Office for the new Department of Homeland Security, serving as the transition leader for the EP&R Division. As undersecretary, Brown also directed the National Incident Management System (NIMS) Integration Center, the National Disaster Medical System and the Nuclear Incident Response Team.

On August 31, 2005, following Hurricane Katrina being named an "Incident of National Significance," Brown was named the Principal Federal Official and placed in charge of the federal government's response by Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff. On September 7, 2005, then Coast Guard Chief of Staff Vice Admiral Thad W. Allen was named Brown's deputy and given operational control of search and rescue and recovery efforts.

On September 9, 2005, Chertoff relieved Brown of all on-site relief duties along the Gulf Coast, officially replacing him with then VADM Allen. Brown remained Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response. Brown told the Associated Press that "the press" was making him a scapegoat for the allegedly slow federal response to the hurricane.

On September 12, 2005, Brown announced his resignation as director of FEMA. He commented that the negative publicity surrounding him was distracting attention from the relief effort.

Chertoff granted Brown two 30-day contract extensions in order not to "sacrifice the real ability to get a full picture of Mike's experiences." Brown continued to receive his $148,000 annual salary until November 2 2005, when he left in the middle of the second 30-day extension.

Resignation from FEMA
On September 12 2005, in the wake of what was widely believed to be feckless handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and facing allegations that he had falsified portions of his résumé, Brown resigned, saying that it was "in the best interest of the agency and best interest of the president." . His credibility with the public was further shaken when it emerged that he had had no emergency management experience before joining FEMA. The Boston Herald revealed that Brown had previously spent 11 years overseeing horse trial judges and stewards for the Arabian Horse Association, and that the Association had asked him to resign.

By the time he resigned from FEMA, Brown had already been discharged from his functions as coordinator of the federal efforts in New Orleans and Gulf Coast by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and was sent back to Washington to continue FEMA's central operations. President Bush, who had appointed Brown in 2003, praised Brown shortly after the storm hit, saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," but later deflected questions about the resignation, except to deny having discussed the resignation with him.

At least one reliable source, The Economist, recognized the likelihood that Brown was "pushed" out by the administration rather than having resigned voluntarily, although internal e-mails from Brown indicated that he was already planning to leave FEMA at the time Hurricane Katrina hit. The same suggestion was made by at least one member of Congress during a hearing on what went wrong during Katrina. Brown concentrated his testimony at that hearing on alleging that Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin bore most if not all of the blame for the failures in the response to Katrina, and that his only fault had been not to realize sooner the inability of Blanco and Nagin to perform their respective duties. This testimony drew harshly skeptical responses from some members of the Congressional panel, and by the next day it was alleged by Governor Blanco that Brown had committed perjury under oath.

After his September 12 resignation, Brown continued working for FEMA as a contractor to help the agency assess what went wrong in the response to Hurricane Katrina. On September 27, 2005, Brown testified before the House Select Committee on Katrina Preparation and Response that he was paid an annual salary of $148,000 at FEMA.

On November 2, 2005, Brown ended his contract early (it had been extended to mid-November by Secretary Chertoff) and left the federal government.

On January 18, 2006, Brown stated that certainly things could have been handled differently, such as calling in the military. As one of the largest natural disasters to ever strike the US, he stated, "It was beyond the capacity of the state and local governments, and it was beyond the capacity of FEMA." On February 10, 2006, Brown again testified before Congress, this time placing blame on the Department of Homeland Security for the poor handling of the disaster, asserting that the anti-terrorism focus of the Department had caused it to deny resources needed to FEMA. In his February 2006 testimony, Brown also contradicted earlier claims that the White House was unaware of levees having been breached, stating: "For them to claim that we didn’t have awareness of it is just baloney."

On March 1, 2006, AP re-released a recording of Michael Brown and the President in a video conference in which the vulnerability of the levee system was raised with a great deal of concern over potential loss of life. The President denied any awareness of the possibility of a levee-related catastrophe in a live interview.

Work for InferX Company
Brown began as an adviser to a publicly traded company, InferX, which claims its technology is the answer to the U.S.A's security concerns, as well as the credibility problems of the DHS and FEMA. Brown has been on the media circuit talking about technology that claims to screen for terror suspects, track threats in shipping containers and cargo hauling, and gather data for law enforcement tracking. As of December 2007, Brown was named CEO of InferX.

Work for Cotton Companies
As of 2007, Brown worked for Cotton Companies, a private firm specializing in disaster recovery. Throughout 2007 and early 2008 Brown made appearances to the press on behalf of Cotton companies. In these appearances, he referred to the lessons that he had learned from his experiences as the head of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Frances
In 2004, FEMA disbursed $30 million in disaster relief funds for Hurricane Frances to residents of Miami, Florida, a city which was not affected by the hurricane. Brown admitted to $12 million in overpayments, but denied any serious mistakes, blaming a computer glitch. After investigating, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel wrote that Brown was responsible and called for him to be fired.

In January 2005, U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) publicly urged President Bush to fire Brown, citing the Sun-Sentinel 's report. Wexler repeated his call in April to Chertoff, citing new reports that FEMA sent inspectors with criminal records of robbery and embezzlement to do damage assessments.

Hurricane Katrina
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many Democratic politicians called for Brown to be fired immediately, including California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski, New York Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, Colorado Senator Ken Salazar, Michigan Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick and Senator Debbie Stabenow, Louisiana State Rep. Peter Sullivan, Nevada Senator Harry Reid, and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin.



Republican politicians such as Senator Trent Lott have also criticized Brown's leadership of FEMA. Brown's performance was defended, however, by Republicans such as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and former Presidential speechwriter Pat Buchanan. At the Mobile (Alabama) Regional Airport on September 2, 2005, President Bush publicly praised Brown's handling of the disaster, saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." "Heck of a job" soon became sarcastic slang for things done very poorly.

Brown also wanted to know whether there were enough federal medical teams in place to treat evacuees in the Superdome.

Bush appeared on the tape sitting at a table in a small room at his Crawford, Texas ranch. He did not ask any questions. He told state officials that the federal government was prepared to handle the storm and its aftermath.

"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," he said.

On August 29, 2005, five hours after the hurricane hit land, Brown made his first request for Homeland Security rescue workers, to be deployed to the disaster area only after two days of training. He also told fire and rescue departments outside affected areas to refrain from providing trucks or emergency workers without a direct appeal from state or local governments in order to avoid coordination problems and the accusation of overstepping federal authority.

On September 1, 2005, Brown told Paula Zahn of CNN that he was unaware that New Orleans' officials had housed thousands of evacuees, who quickly ran out of food and water, in the Convention Center — even though major news outlets had been reporting on the evacuees' plight for at least a day. He also criticized those that were stuck in New Orleans as those "who chose not to evacuate, who chose not to leave the city" (disobeying a mandatory evacuation order).

On September 2, 2005, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley stated that he pledged firefighters, police officers, health department workers, and other resources on behalf of the city, but was only asked to send one tank truck.

Controversy arose in November of 2005 as a House committee investigating the response to Katrina released about 1,000 e-mail messages between Brown, staff and acquaintances. On the day Katrina struck, Brown wrote "Can I quit now? Can I go home?" He later quipped to a friend on September 2 that he could not meet her because he was "trapped [as FEMA head] ... please rescue me." On August 29th (the day the hurricane hit), Brown also quipped in e-mail to a co-worker, "I am a fashion god" because he shopped at the upscale department store Nordstrom. In another e-mail, Brown's press secretary, Sharon Worthy, advised him to roll up his sleeves "to look more hard-working." "Even the president rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow." An e-mail offering critical medical equipment went unanswered for four days.

On Thanksgiving week in 2005, Michael Brown was No. 1 on CNN's "Political Turkey of the Year" list for his ineptitude during the events of Hurricane Katrina.

On August 28, 2007, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards proposed what he called "Brownie's Law" requiring that "qualified people, not political hacks", lead key federal agencies.

Calls for dismissal or resignation
Charles Krauthammer described Brown as "late, slow and in way over his head" in response to Hurricane Katrina.

On September 12, 2005, Brown announced his resignation as director.

Accusations of false claims in Brown's credentials
TIME reported on Friday, September 9 2005, that it had discovered serious inaccuracies and false claims within Brown's biography posted on FEMA's web site (FEMA) and on FindLaw, a legal directory with information provided directly by attorneys and their offices (FindLaw). A FEMA representative replied that "Mike Brown states there are many inaccuracies in the article."

Brown claimed previous emergency experience as "assistant city manager with emergency services oversight" for the city of Edmond, Oklahoma. According to interviews and records obtained by TIME, Brown was a college intern in the city manager's office, without hiring, firing, or other management responsibilities. Brown claims to have won the "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University" award; according to the University Relations office, Brown had been a student, not a faculty member. In the "Professional Associations and Memberships" section of his FindLaw biography, Brown claims to be a Director of the Oklahoma Christian Home from 1983 to the present. But according to an administrator with the Home, Brown is "not a person that anyone here is familiar with."

The TIME article missed another possible fabrication in Brown's FindLaw biography. According to this biography, Brown graduated from college in 1978 and almost immediately afterward began serving as Chairman of the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority from 1980 through the present. Yet the website of the OMPA (OMPA), which has only a couple dozen employees, does not list Brown as Chairman, an officer or an employee. According to the OMPA, Charles Lam serves as Chairman and none of the employees interviewed knew of any association between Michael Brown and the OMPA.



Conservative bloggers
Michelle Malkin stated about Brown: if someone is a worthless sack of bones, I'll say so. And I don't care if he has 'Bush appointee' stamped on his forehead or a GOP elephant tattooed to his backside. Brown's clueless public comments after landfall are reason enough to give him the boot... and he should have never been there in the first place."

Praise
Columnist Al Kamen of the Washington Post wrote on December 5, 2001, "the White House has searched high and low to find a deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, only to discover the best candidate was right there among them all along, serving as FEMA general counsel and acting deputy director".

Brown's appointment to the head of FEMA in early 2003 went largely unnoticed by the media. However, the Denver Post praised the Aurora, Colorado resident as an effective leader. An editorial in the paper in welcoming his nomination opened, "Michael D. Brown is a lawyer by trade, but will need a juggler's skill as the new chief of the nation's key emergency response agency." News items in the paper credited Brown with a "key role" in the government's September 11, 2001 recovery efforts.

On September 2, 2005, President George W. Bush said, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," praising Brown's response to Hurricane Katrina.