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27–032 PDF 2007

S. Hrg. 109–848

HURRICANE KATRINA: THE HOMELAND SECURITY

DEPARTMENT’S PREPARATION AND RESPONSE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

FEBRUARY 15, 2006

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota 

FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

MARK PRYOR, Arkansas

MICHAEL D. BOPP, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

DAVID T. FLANAGAN, General Counsel 

JONATHAN T. NASS, Counsel 

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Minority Staff Director and Counsel 

ROBERT F. MUSE, Minority General Counsel 

MARY BETH SCHULTZ, Minority Counsel 

BETH M. GROSSMAN, Minority Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 1

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 3

Senator Warner ................................................................................................ 17

Senator Dayton ................................................................................................. 21

Senator Coleman .............................................................................................. 25

Senator Pryor .................................................................................................... 29

Senator Bennett ................................................................................................ 33

Senator Levin .................................................................................................... 35

Senator Chafee ................................................................................................. 39

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 40

Senator Lautenberg .......................................................................................... 43

Prepared statement: 

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 49

WITNESS 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2006

Hon. Michael Chertoff, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 50

Responses to questions submitted for the Record .......................................... 58

APPENDIX 

Information for the Record submitted by Senator Levin ..................................... 162

Exhibit 14 referenced by Senator Coleman ........................................................... 172

Exhibit A referenced by Senator Lautenberg ........................................................ 173

(1)

HURRICANE KATRINA: THE HOMELAND 

SECURITY DEPARTMENT’S PREPARATION 

AND RESPONSE 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2006

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:25 a.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M. Collins, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Collins, Coleman, Chafee, Bennett, Warner, 

Lieberman, Levin, Akaka, Carper, Dayton, Lautenberg, and Pryor. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS 

Chairman COLLINS. The Committee will come to order. 

Today marks our 20th hearing on Hurricane Katrina. As this inquiry nears its end, we turn our focus today to that component of 

the Federal Government that bears ultimate responsibility for a 

quick and effective response to the disaster, the Department of 

Homeland Security. Our witness is Secretary Michael Chertoff, 

who today marks his first anniversary as head of DHS. 

According to its mission statement, one of the fundamental responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security is ‘‘preparing for natural disasters and terrorist attacks through planning, 

technology, and coordinated efforts. In the event of a natural or 

man-made disaster, DHS will be the first Federal Department to 

utilize a full range of State, local, and private partnerships to alleviate the effects of a potential disaster.’’

Clearly, that mission was not accomplished. The Federal Department that was supposed to lead, direct, and coordinate the Federal 

response to Katrina was, time and again, late, uncertain, and ineffective. A central purpose of this hearing is to learn why, in a crisis 

that called for decisive and speedy action, DHS was plagued by indecision and delay. If our government failed so utterly in preparing 

for and responding to a disaster that had been long predicted and 

was imminent for days, we must wonder how much more profound 

the failure would be if a disaster were to take us completely by surprise, such as a terrorist attack. 

The delays in DHS’s response are both alarming and unacceptable. The chasm that Hurricane Katrina exposed between DHS and 

FEMA, one of its most important components, presented a significant impediment to a coordinated, swift Federal response. Concerns 

2

about this disconnect were expressed long before Hurricane 

Katrina, and our investigation has revealed disturbing conflicts 

about roles, resources, and responsibilities. 

But the problem within DHS goes beyond its relationship with 

FEMA. The Department’s overall lack of preparedness for this catastrophe prevented both decisive action before the storm hit and 

an effective response in its immediate aftermath. After landfall, the 

Department far too often appeared to be frozen with indecision and 

nearly paralyzed by ineffective communications. Key decisions were 

either delayed or based on faulty information. As a result, the suffering of Katrina’s victims was worsened and prolonged. 

This lack of preparedness is evident throughout the response to 

Hurricane Katrina. On August 30, the day after Katrina made 

landfall, Secretary Chertoff named then-FEMA Director Michael 

Brown as the Principal Federal Official for the response effort. He 

did so despite Mr. Brown’s hostility to the very concept of a Principal Federal Official and his disdain for the National Response 

Plan. 

In addition to questioning the appointment of Mr. Brown, I wonder why a PFO was not designated before Katrina made landfall, 

when it was already evident that we were facing a looming disaster 

that would require a direct link between Federal operations on the 

ground and DHS headquarters. The effect of this delay was much 

like having the general show up after the battle had already begun. 

From that evident lack of readiness come a great many issues 

that we will explore today. Among them are, why was situational 

awareness at DHS so severely lacking throughout the Katrina response? While people throughout the Nation merely had to turn on 

their television sets to learn of the levee failures and the dire need 

for food and water at the Superdome and the convention center, 

DHS was consistently behind the curve. The delays in response to 

these crises were the direct result of poor communications. 

Why weren’t the tremendous resources of the Department of Defense deployed sooner? The delay in bringing these assets to bear 

not only prolonged the suffering of the victims, but also made the 

work of first responders even more difficult and more dangerous. 

The failure to resolve obvious issues beforehand led to numerous 

other problems, from the poor information flow between DHS and 

the White House, to the difficulties DHS encountered in assigning 

missions to other Federal agencies, to the unnecessary disputes 

with overwhelmed State and local officials. 

The examples are legion: The failure to promptly order the buses 

Michael Brown promised; the failure to deliver essential commodities for victims at the convention center until 2 days after Mr. 

Brown apparently became aware of their plight; the failure to 

quickly process requests for vital commodities throughout Louisiana and Mississippi and to track their delivery; the failure to 

field more search and rescue and emergency medical teams at the 

onset of the flooding; the failure to respond rapidly to a devastated 

telecommunications system; the failure to appoint a single senior 

law enforcement officer as soon as the need became apparent; the 

failure to invoke the Catastrophic Incident Annex to the National 

Response Plan, which would have permitted the Department to be 

more proactive. 

3

The list of critical tasks done either late or not at all is staggering. And perhaps most crucial to understanding the failures of 

Katrina is the fundamental question of whether FEMA had adequate leadership and resources to respond to a disaster of this 

magnitude. 

As I said at our hearing last Friday, FEMA’s response to Katrina 

has to be judged a failure, and as a consequence, the response of 

DHS must be judged a failure, as well, despite the outstanding performance of the Coast Guard and of the individual DHS employees. 

As the third anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security approaches, it is past time for the Department to carry out its 

vital mission and meet its responsibilities to the American people. 

Senator Lieberman. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Good morning, Mr. Secretary. 

The many hearings that we have held, the witnesses that we 

have interviewed, and the documents that we have reviewed have 

brought us to today’s important hearing with our sole witness, the 

Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael 

Chertoff. This Committee’s Katrina investigation is moving now toward conclusion, reckoning, and I hope, reform. 

According to the law, it is the responsibility of the Secretary of 

Homeland Security to lead the government’s preparations for and 

response to disaster, natural or terrorist. The Secretary is the national official most directly responsible for protecting the safety of 

the American people here at home in times of danger. That is what 

the law creating the Department of Homeland Security says, what 

Homeland Security Presidential Directive No. 5 mandates, and 

what the National Response Plan requires, and that is why today 

it is our responsibility to ask Secretary Chertoff some tough, direct, 

and critical questions based on the jarring lack of preparation for 

Katrina that our investigation has found. 

Among the most important of these questions are, Mr. Secretary, 

why did you do so little in the months after you became Secretary 

to make sure that the agencies of our government, particularly 

your own, were ready to carry out their responsibilities to protect 

the American people under the National Response Plan and President Bush’s Homeland Security Presidential Directive No. 5? 

How could you have left us with so many of those agencies so unprepared that when Katrina struck, too many of them ran around 

like Keystone Kops, uncertain about what they were supposed to 

do or unable to do it? 

Why, in the days immediately before Katrina made landfall, as 

the National Hurricane Service and agencies within your own Department warned over and over that this was the long-feared hurricane that would break the levees and drown the City of New Orleans, did you not mobilize more of the resources of the Federal Government to protect this great American city and its people? 

With all the information coming into your Department’s operations center on the day that Katrina struck New Orleans, that the 

city was flooding and people were trapped or drowning, how could 

you, as Secretary of Homeland Security, go to bed that night not 

4

1The prepared statement of Secretary Chertoff appears in the Appendix on page 50. 

knowing what was happening in New Orleans and get up the next 

morning and proceed not to New Orleans to oversee the response 

but to Atlanta for a conference? 

Respectfully, those are some of the hard and perplexing questions that have emerged from this Committee’s investigation that 

you, Mr. Secretary, and we have a responsibility to answer so that 

the next time disaster strikes, as it surely will, the Federal Government is totally ready to protect our country and our people. Thank 

you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator Lieberman. 

Our sole witness today is the Secretary of Homeland Security, 

Michael Chertoff. He was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate exactly 1 year ago. I thank him for appearing here today. 

Secretary Chertoff, we are swearing in all witnesses for this investigation so I would ask that you stand. Do you swear that the 

testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and 

nothing but the truth, so help you, God? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I do. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Please proceed with your statement. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. MICHAEL CHERTOFF,1 SECRETARY, U.S. 

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Thank you, Chairman Collins, and thank 

you, Senator Lieberman. I ask before I give a shortened version of 

what I submitted for the record that the full statement I prepared 

be accepted for the record. 

Chairman COLLINS. Without objection. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I 

have followed the hearings to a reasonable degree of detail and am 

very interested in the perspective of this Committee on one of the 

most difficult and traumatic experiences of my life, which was the 

process of anticipating and managing and dealing with the consequences of Katrina, consequences which still continue to this day. 

You can’t escape the fact when you talk about Katrina that this 

was a storm of unprecedented magnitude, not because it was a surprise, because I don’t think it was a surprise that a storm like this 

could happen, but because in terms of prior experience, at least as 

far as I know, nobody in living memory recalls a set of challenges 

as difficult as those presented by this hurricane. 

And without dwelling on it, just a few things that bear keeping 

in mind. Ninety-thousand square miles were impacted, that is an 

area larger than Great Britain and three-and-a-half times the area 

inundated by the great Mississippi flood of 1927. FEMA estimates 

that 300,000 homes were destroyed, six times as many as the Midwest flood of 1993 and 11 times as many as Hurricane Andrew. A 

hundred-and-eighteen million cubic yards of debris was produced, 

more than double the amount produced by four Florida hurricanes 

of last year, or 2 years ago, and six times what was produced by 

Andrew. So this was an unprecedented disaster. 

And while I am here, I suspect, mainly to talk about things that 

failed, I do think we have to acknowledge things that succeeded. 

5

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 33,000 people, six times the number 

rescued nationwide in all of 2004. FEMA rescued more than 6,500 

and deployed all 28 urban search and rescue teams for the first 

time. Forty-thousand rescued by two agencies, which is seven times 

the number of people rescued in the four hurricanes in Florida in 

2004. And in the first 6 days, the Federal Government distributed 

28 million pounds of ice, 8.5 million meals, 4 million gallons of 

water, which exceeded the combined total for the entire rescue operation in Hurricane Andrew. 

Now, as you pointed out, Chairman Collins, I am responsible for 

the Department of Homeland Security. I am accountable and accept responsibility for the performance of the entire Department, 

the bad and the good. I also have the responsibility to fix what is 

wrong. 

If I can digress and step out of my official role for a minute, I 

can tell you on a personal basis, probably the worst element of this 

catastrophe personally is not criticism I have received or criticism 

the Department has received by committees and commentators, but 

the vision of people who did have their suffering unnecessarily prolonged because this Department did not perform as well as the vision of its performance suggested it should have been able to do. 

And I say that without suggesting I was naive about the challenges 

I assumed when I was confirmed a year ago. In the 6 months that 

I was in office before Katrina hit, I knew, and I said to this Committee, there were many things to be done. 

But I do want to talk about a couple of general observations before I answer the specific questions about what happened in Hurricane Katrina and about what we want to do going forward. 

First of all, I have to say that the idea that this Department and 

this Administration and the President were somehow detached 

from Katrina is simply not correct, in my view and in my recollection of what happened. We were acutely aware of Katrina and the 

risk it posed. We followed this hurricane from the time it started 

to meander up towards the coast of Florida, as it crossed over the 

Southern tip of Florida and got into the Gulf. We knew, and certainly FEMA most of all because if there is anything that FEMA 

is expert in it is hurricanes, that there was at least a potential as 

the week before hurricane landfall came that this would hit New 

Orleans with potentially catastrophic consequences. 

On the weekend before Katrina made landfall, that is August 27 

and 28, the President took an unprecedented step, something that 

has only been done to my knowledge once before, which is to declare an emergency for Louisiana and Mississippi in advance of a 

hurricane landfall, and I want to emphasize that was an extraordinary event because the Stafford Act, which is the Federal law 

that authorizes the Federal Government to come in to act in time 

of disaster, is what I would say is the kind of ultimate tool, the ultimate source of authority for the Federal Government. And for the 

second time in memory, the President took the step of invoking it 

before a hurricane. 

This also, by the way, according to the literal text of the National 

Response Plan, automatically designated this and created this as 

an incident of national significance. So on the weekend before hurricane landfall, as I recollect it, and I am going to try very hard 

6

to separate what I know now from what I knew then because I certainly know a lot more now than I knew back then, but on that 

weekend, I had the assurance that we had opened the legal and 

strategic floodgates to allow as much resource and as many assets 

to be pushed into the theater of engagement as possible. 

There was a second major question I confronted in that weekend. 

Were our incident commanders exercising their authority properly? 

Were they using the tools? Were they adequately considering the 

things they had to consider as the operational commanders? And 

I want to make it clear that although Michael Brown has got a lot 

of attention, Michael Brown did not function alone at FEMA. In 

that weekend, Federal Coordinating Officers (FCOs), who are 

statutorily designated officers as part of the Stafford Act, were sent 

down to Mississippi and Louisiana and other places, as well, to be 

on-the-ground incident managers for FEMA and for the Department of Homeland Security. 

You saw Bill Lokey here. I think he was a witness. I don’t know 

if Bill Carwile testified. These are two very experienced men. They 

were supported by the very experienced men and women who are 

in the regional headquarters that support these States, and they 

were supported by the very experienced men and women who sat 

around the table at the National Response Coordinating Center at 

FEMA in Washington who are the principal backstop, the principal 

pool of talent that supports operational activity in the field in the 

time of a hurricane, and I would venture to say there were dozens, 

maybe over 100 years of experience fully engaged that weekend. 

I came in on Sunday and I sat in a video teleconference, and that 

conference had at least 50 people who were either sitting in that 

room at FEMA or were sitting at DHS or were sitting in regional 

centers or were sitting on the ground in the Emergency Operations 

Centers in the States. And the purpose of that videoconference is 

to go around and make sure everybody has considered and talked 

about all of the measures that must be in place to anticipate what 

is going to happen when this hurricane hits. 

If there is nothing else that FEMA is an expert in, it is hurricanes. This is the challenge—not on this scale, but this is the challenge they have worked at, they have planned for, and they have 

considered the core of their mission since they were created. 

And as I sat there, I heard a round robin go around, hearing 

from, first of all, each of the emergency managers from the States, 

the National Guard representative from the States talking very 

specifically about their assessment of what needed to be prepositioned, what was on the way, and expressing very clearly their 

satisfaction with the state of affairs and their belief they had prepositioned or en route what they needed to respond. I then heard 

the regional officers go through the same litany and again say they 

felt that everything was en route and positioned the way it needed 

to be. I then heard the people sitting around the table in headquarters talk about things like transportation, urban search and 

rescue, logistics, and medical teams. 

At the end of that VTC—and I also heard Michael Brown say, 

and I think he was quite accurate about this, we need to push everything we can, jam the system, push the envelope, get everything 

down there you need to get. 

7

And then at the end of that, and I was conscious of the fact that, 

although I am the Secretary, I am not a hurricane operator, I do 

not have 30 years of experience managing hurricanes, and I do not 

see myself in a position to contradict or second-guess operational 

decisions by hundreds of years of expertise, but I did want to get 

to the core issue, so I asked two questions, and these are in the 

transcript that is contained of that Sunday VTC, which I know you 

have. 

First, I said, is there anything in this Department that is not 

fully available to you that you need that you don’t have that I need 

to get to you—I am paraphrasing—because it is all available, and 

Michael Brown said, I am in touch with the components, the Coast 

Guard—I specifically mentioned the Coast Guard. Everybody has 

been through this drill before. We are all engaged and working. 

And then because I knew that the Department of Defense had 

unique resources and talents, I asked a second question, have you 

reached out to DOD, the Department of Defense? Are their assets 

ready? Do you have what you need from them? Are you ready to 

go with them? And in the presence of the Defense Department representatives sitting around the table, who I could see on the screen, 

Michael Brown said, yes, we are here with the Defense Department. We are engaged and we are working, getting all the things 

that we need. That was what I needed to know to believe that we 

were—that the experts saw us as ready to move and be 

prepositioned. 

Now, there are many lapses that occurred, and I have certainly 

spent a lot of time personally, probably since last fall, thinking 

about things that might have been done differently. But I do want 

to talk about things that can be done differently in the future very 

briefly. 

First, I want to make it clear to the public, at least, that in the 

first few months after I arrived, after February, I knew that there 

were a lot of challenges in this Department. In fact, I am sure in 

my confirmation hearing, I heard predictions that I was getting 

into a department that was brand new. Senator Bennett, I think, 

pointed out that the Department of Transportation, it took them 5 

years to get ready, and by the way, this is no criticism of Governor 

Ridge, who with some very able assistance had to stand up a department from scratch. But I think it was a candid recognition that 

a new department, barely 2 years old, had a lot of work to do in 

terms of integration, in terms of building capabilities, and in terms 

of building a common culture. 

And after I did a review, I came back and I believe I testified 

in this Committee, I certainly testified elsewhere, and I said publicly in July, scarcely a month before Katrina, I said that we were 

not where we needed to be in terms of preparedness, and I said 

that because having gone through the exercise of TOP–OFF and 

having looked and sat with the people in the Department, I knew 

we had a lot of work to do, and I started to propose some specific 

things to get ourselves turned around, including getting FEMA to 

focus on its core mission and making sure we unified all of our preparedness and our planning and our grants and our training in a 

single focal point. 

8

In accordance with the law and, of course, the appropriations 

process, we targeted October 1 to reorganize, get ourselves better 

situated, and then, of course, move forward to start what is not a 

brief and, in fact, is a very substantial process of getting ourselves 

prepared to the level we need to be. Unfortunately, Katrina didn’t 

wait until October 1. 

So we come here now with a major set of challenges, and I know 

this Committee is looking very carefully at the issue of reform. I 

know that the Committee quite rightly wants us to withhold making significant decisions about major reforms until the Committee 

has had an opportunity to put its findings out, and I agree that is 

appropriate. As a consequence, when I spoke on Monday about 

some of the things we are doing, I deliberately said I am not going 

to talk about more systemic reforms, which the President also is 

going to hear some recommendations about. 

But I do know there are some things we have to get done by 

June 1 because hurricane season is not going to wait again. First 

of all, we have to have a unified incident command. Putting aside 

issues of personality, which at least emerged for me last Friday 

when another witness testified, it is clear that the whole idea that 

we need to pass information from a FEMA operations center to a 

DHS operations center as if across a gulf or a chasm makes no 

sense at all. We have to complete the process of building out our 

operations capability. We have got to have real-time, simultaneous 

visibility into operations in both places. 

Second, it is completely correct to say that our logistics capability 

in Katrina was woefully inadequate. I was astonished to see that 

we didn’t have the capability that most 21st Century corporations 

have to track the flow of goods and services. I was more surprised 

to learn that the reason for that is because we don’t contract for 

that directly, we do it through another agency, and that other 

agency apparently didn’t insert a requirement for such visibility in 

the contract. We are going to correct that. 

Our claims management was also something that fell short, and 

again, to put it in context, we had never had the volume of people 

whose claims needed to be dealt with. I think 770,000 people were 

displaced, approximately, many more than FEMA had ever dealt 

with before, and I think, frankly, FEMA was strained in past emergencies. So we are talking now about expanding capability to deal 

with telephone registration, expanded technological capacities, and 

a dedicated core of people who are specialists to go out into the 

field to reach people when they are widely dispersed as opposed to 

making them touch us. 

Financial management—we are already implementing a plan to 

bring better financial management tools into the Department. 

Debris removal—I am aware of the fact that we still have a lot 

of debris on the ground. It is not moving quickly enough. I got a 

lot of complaints over the last few months about the Army Corps 

of Engineers in terms of being expensive and in terms of being not 

necessarily inefficient, and, of course, all they do is turn around 

and subcontract out to others. That didn’t make a lot of sense to 

me. We have already taken the position that we are going to try 

to equalize the incentive structure to encourage local mayors and 

local officials to hire their own local debris removers as opposed to 

9

going through the Army Corps. We are going to work again this 

year going forward to try to identify some contractors who can be 

available. 

And finally, communications. We had not just a problem of interoperability, we had a problem of operability. We are already building teams in FEMA and DHS to get into the field with better communications equipment and the ability to stream back directly to 

where we are in Washington. We are acquiring more satellite 

equipment and more communications equipment to be able to deploy to our state and local emergency operators so they can communicate with us. 

One thing is clearly true. The foundation of any ability to make 

significant and intelligent decisions in a crisis is communication, 

and we have to get the equipment, and then the second thing is 

we have to have the culture, a culture where people view themselves as part of an integrated team. 

So with that, I want to thank the Committee for the opportunity 

to testify. I anticipate and welcome tough questions. I am going to 

take responsibility for what the Department did, but I am also 

going to take responsibility for identifying solutions for the problems that we saw in Katrina. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you for your statement. 

Rev. YEARWOOD. Senator, but mothers and children are being 

thrown in the street. Mothers and children are being thrown in the 

street while trailers sit in the ground. 

Chairman COLLINS. Sir, this is not a public hearing today. 

Rev. YEARWOOD. This is not American. They are being evicted. 

They are being thrown in the street. It is hard. 

Chairman COLLINS. I understand that, and the Committee is 

working on that issue. We have been to the area twice. I invite you 

to sit quietly and allow us to proceed with the hearing. Thank you. 

I would also invite you to talk further with our staffs if you would 

like to, sir, and see if we can help any specific concern. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. I want to repeat that the Chairman has invited you to sit at the hearing if you would like, sir, so long as you 

remain quiet. 

Chairman COLLINS. Secretary Chertoff, I remain perplexed by 

your decision to appoint Michael Brown as the principal contact for 

the Department when he had such poor relationships with you and 

with other senior officials. Assistant Secretary Stephan has told us 

that Michael Brown did not fully understand a lot of the responsibilities assigned under the National Response Plan, that he opposed the entire concept of having a Principal Federal Official, a 

PFO. 

I am trying to understand why, in view of Mr. Brown’s open disdain for the Department, his disagreement with the concept of the 

PFO, and his criticisms of the National Response Plan, you would 

want to have that person as the Principal Federal Official and how 

you would think that it would improve the ability of the Department to respond to Katrina to have an individual who was disdainful of the whole process. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Chairman Collins, when I answer that 

question, I have to put out of my mind the events of last Friday 

because I have to tell you it was astonishing to me to hear the tesVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:59 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 027032 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\27032.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
10

timony of Mr. Brown concerning his decision, apparently, by his 

own admission, as the PFO on the ground to deliberately bypass 

the Department and not to deal with us. I had attributed the problems I had sometimes engaging with Mr. Brown to just the overwhelming pressures of the situation itself. 

I have to put myself back in the frame of mind of what I knew 

at the time in August. It didn’t surprise me to learn that Michael 

Brown opposed the NRP. I think that there were many people who 

were not necessarily satisfied or happy with Congress’ decision to 

create this Department, and my experience in government, I have 

spent well over a decade in government, and I saw when we tried 

to fuse intelligence and tried to get the CIA and the FBI to talk 

together, there was a lot of grumbling and there were a lot of people who bitterly opposed those things. But one thing I saw, at least 

until this hurricane, was the fact that these people put their policy 

differences aside and acted professionally when matters of life and 

death were at stake. 

I met with Michael Brown. I heard his vision of what he wanted 

to do with FEMA. I heard him address the issue of preparedness 

and the lack of preparedness. I actually agreed with some of his 

suggestions. I agreed we ought to align training and grants and 

preparedness in one place. 

I did disagree with him in one respect. I did not believe that the 

solution was to put all of the grants and all of the grant making 

and training under his authority as the head of FEMA and as the 

Under Secretary in charge. I wasn’t going to give him more authority. 

And after I decided that I was going to propose the structure that 

I ultimately recommended to Congress in July, the Deputy Secretary and I talked to Mr. Brown, and we said to him, look, we 

know you are disappointed with the result of this. If you are going 

to have a problem functioning as the head of FEMA with this, let 

us know. It is perfectly creditable to say, I can’t go along with this. 

I want to leave. If you are going to stay, though, we need to have 

your full commitment. He told us he felt he had gotten a fair hearing and would give us his full commitment. 

I remember in August, before Katrina, for the first time ever, we 

brought emergency managers and homeland security advisors into 

the same room in a summit here in Washington precisely to talk 

about their needs to be sure we were an all-hazards agency, and 

we talked about the need to be integrated and partnered on natural hazards as well as other hazards, and Michael Brown was 

there and he endorsed it. 

So, yes, if I had known then what I know now about Mr. Brown’s 

agenda, I would have done something differently. 

Chairman COLLINS. I guess, as I look back at all the decisions 

that you had to make, I can’t help but conclude that was one of 

your biggest mistakes. I have an e-mail in which your staff is complaining to Michael Brown’s staff that you have lost all contact 

with Michael Brown for 2 days, and this is a critical 2 days. It is 

the 2 days after landfall. Michael Brown testified before this Committee that he found your phone calls to be annoying, disruptive. 

It is just astonishing to me that a person who seemed to not believe 

in the cause and a person on whom you were relying for active, 

11

complete, and prompt communication, which you didn’t get, was 

placed in charge. 

But I want to go on to another issue. I know from talking with 

you during the week of August 28 that later in the week, you were 

in Louisiana. You were working night and day, around the clock, 

to try to remedy the problems and improve the response. But earlier in the week, your actions are puzzling to me because, despite 

what you said in your opening statement, earlier in the week, in 

contrast to later when you were clearly fully engaged, you did seem 

curiously disengaged to me, and the best example of that is on 

Tuesday morning, the day after landfall, when you are aware of the 

significant failures in the levees and you are aware that the City 

of New Orleans is flooding rapidly, and yet you make the decision 

to continue with your schedule and to fly to Atlanta with Secretary 

Levitt to attend a conference on avian flu. 

Now, avian flu is an important potential threat, but Katrina was 

an immediate crisis. I just don’t understand why you didn’t cancel 

those plans, return immediately to the Emergency Operations Center, and take control. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think I can address both of the questions 

or the comments by talking a little bit about Monday and Tuesday. 

Let me begin by saying, and I encourage you to look again at the 

Sunday video teleconference, going into the hurricane, both in the 

words and in the demeanor, Michael Brown gave me no reason to 

doubt his commitment to work and use all of the assets available 

to make this response as capable as possible. So I had no sense 

going in that whatever his personal feelings were, there was going 

to be a problem. 

On Monday, and I am sure we will get into this later, I was concerned about the levees. The original projection, I think, in Hurricane Pam, which actually projected, I think, 60,000 deaths, was for 

an over-topping, a single surge that would overtake and flood the 

city, whereas levee breaching, which in some ways presents a much 

more difficult set of challenges, was not actually what was anticipated. 

My focus in that on Monday, once the storm had passed sufficiently to start getting reports from the ground, was to tap into the 

Homeland Security Operations Center, either by going back and 

forth or having people come up or by getting on the phone to see 

what was the ground truth, what was the real situation on the 

ground, and I remember specifically asking about what are the conditions of the levees and hearing at some point early in the afternoon an initial report that said there may be some over-topping, 

there may be some loss of the, I guess they call it rip-rap or something on top of the levees, but no substantial levee breach. 

I knew I was going to get a situational report at 6 p.m., which 

would give me a complete laydown of all the assets and all the conditions on the ground. I think the situation report is part of what 

has been submitted. I probably actually got it a little bit closer to 

7 p.m. And I remember quite specifically that report said there was 

no—there are some reports of breaching, but nothing has been confirmed. We are looking into it. 

12

So I was mindful of the issue of breaching because I knew that 

if we had a substantial breach, I don’t mean a small breach, that 

would pose a second set of problems. 

I am sure we will get into the question of why I didn’t hear about 

e-mails that came later that night, but I will tell you at least when 

I went to bed, it was my belief, and it was somewhat fortified by 

things I saw on TV, that actually, the storm had not done the 

worst that had been imagined. I think it actually moved a little bit 

to the east at the last minute. 

On Monday, I thought about whether I should go down to the 

hurricane area, and we actually had a discussion about that in my 

office, about whether I ought to go down to Baton Rouge where the 

Emergency Operations Center and Mike Brown was. I determined 

not to do it because I was concerned about coming in and actually 

interfering with the operators in the first 24 hours of the post-hurricane operation. 

Now, I will tell you that I have a respect for the difference between the operator and the person who is leading the organization. 

The operator is very much involved in the immediate decisions of 

what goes on. I have been an operator. I was an operator on September 11, and I know the way I dealt with the Attorney General 

on September 11. So I would try to be sensitive to not getting in 

his hair, but also be supportive. 

The decision I made was not to go to an avian flu conference but 

to do two things on Tuesday, go down to a meeting at the CDC 

about avian flu with Secretary Levitt, and I want to make it clear, 

this is not a conference like you go to in a hotel. This was a meeting among the top leaders of the Department to kick-start our preparedness for avian flu. 

But second, to go to the Emergency Operations Center in Atlanta, which is where Region IV is located. Region IV had half the 

responsibility for coordinating the response for Katrina. My 

thought was that would be a way of my getting another perspective 

and visibility on what was going on on the ground, talking to operational people without getting into a situation where Mike Brown 

felt someone was coming and now actually creating a question 

about who’s running the immediate incident management in the 

field. 

On Tuesday morning at around 7 a.m., I got the spot report that 

indicated there had been a substantial levee breach. I then tried—

I made a determination, since I was going to go to the operations 

center, I ought to continue with the trip. And I need to make clear 

that the Federal Government spends a considerable amount of effort providing me with 24-hour communications. There is never a 

moment that I am not within a hand’s reach of a secure telephone, 

a secure fax, and literally what I have in my office. So it is the 

hardware and the ability to communicate, that full capability was 

with me every moment that I went down, and I, frankly, spent a 

lot of time on the phone and in communication back with headquarters during Tuesday. 

So with that capability in mind, I did take the trip. I did ask the 

question immediately, is this an irreparable breach? What is the 

area that is going to be flooded? And as reports came in, as information came in, I became aware of the fact that this was almost 

13

the worst possible levee breach because it would submerge a large 

center part of the city. I don’t want to give a long answer, but I 

want to give you a complete answer. 

I knew at that point that there were three immediate things that 

had to be done. Search and rescue had to be accelerated because 

you were dealing with potentially hours where people’s lives were 

in the balance. Second, we had to make sure there was food and 

water for people who were stranded. And third, we had to think 

about a second evacuation. Those needed to be done in that order 

because saving lives in search and rescue is a matter of hours. 

Food and water is a matter of hours. Evacuation is a matter of a 

day or two. And really, from that point on, I continued either by 

telephone or in person to repeatedly pulse back at headquarters 

and in the field, frankly, to see how we were doing on those things. 

The last thing I want to add is the e-mail you read about my conversation with Michael Brown occurred on Tuesday night, and as 

part of my effort to get truth on Tuesday about now what was the 

plan for this second evacuation—because by the way, the Coast 

Guard, I got very good reporting from throughout the thing. I 

heard that there were approximately 450 buses lined up to come. 

I did not have a confidence that there was a plan that was visible 

to me. I wanted to get the incident manager on the phone. I had 

difficulty getting it. I heard that he was flying around with governors and other people, that he was thinking about a TV appearance, and I gave him a very clear message. Job one is to get this 

thing done. Sit in the operations center. Get with the relevant 

managers. Make sure you are taking care of all these issues, and 

that is the Tuesday call. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Lieberman. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Madam Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, in my opening statement I said that according to 

the law, you were the lead Federal official in charge of preparation 

for and response to disasters, and obviously you were both a distinguished lawyer and a distinguished judge before you assumed this 

position, so I appreciate the fact that you said in your opening 

statement that you understand that you are the prime Federal official that has that responsibility and that you accept the accountability for it. 

Very briefly, pursuant to the Homeland Security Act, President 

Bush issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 in February 2003, which said that the Secretary of Homeland Security is 

the Principal Federal Official for domestic incident management responsible for coordinating Federal operations within the United 

States to prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies. 

And then the National Response Plan issued in January 2005, an 

update of the previous Federal Response Plan, among its changes 

made one very significant change, and that was to take FEMA out 

of the lead position in disaster management and give it to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. 

That is a very strong legal premise for your accountability, and 

I want to just make sure I understood that though you accepted responsibility, at one point you said, honestly, I am not a hurricane 

operator, and that is why in some sense I gather you are saying 

14

you deferred to others. Nonetheless, I assume, pursuant to the laws 

that I have described, you accept ultimate responsibility. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I want to be completely clear. Not only do 

I accept responsibility in a legal sense, I took seriously my responsibility to make sure things were operating properly. When I talk 

about being the operator, the example I use is the person who actually makes the operational decisions about which particular assets 

are deployed where, how you are to conduct search and rescue, and 

the way the NRP works is——

Senator LIEBERMAN. Wait a minute. Excuse me because I accept 

that, and I have a limited time. I want to get to the weekend before 

the landfall. We spent a lot of time in these investigations on Hurricane Pam, which was a mock hurricane exercise, fortunately 

much more powerful and damaging than Katrina turned out to be. 

I assume that you were familiar with the Hurricane Pam exercise, 

is that right? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. And Hurricane Pam showed that Federal, 

State, and local agencies were not ready to deal with the Pam or 

Katrina-type hurricane, is that correct? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think actually Pam itself was not fully 

complete. I think the evacuation piece was done in the summer of 

2005——

Senator LIEBERMAN. But generally speaking, it was clear that 

there was a lot to do to get ready for a Katrina-type hurricane. I 

want to go to the weekend before the hurricane struck. I know that 

some people said after the hurricane that there was a misimpression first that New Orleans had dodged the bullet, but by the 

evidence the Committee has gathered, and to some extent by what 

you have said in your opening statement, by Sunday night before 

the Monday morning of landfall, it was very clear that there was 

a loaded gun poised and aimed at the City of New Orleans. There 

were reports all throughout the weekend. 

On Saturday at 9 a.m., FEMA produces slides at headquarters 

that state current predicted path takes storm directly over New Orleans. The slides state the Hurricane Pam exercise predicted 

60,000 fatalities and 1 million-plus persons displaced, and then 

goes on to say Pam’s estimates are exceeded by Hurricane Katrina 

real-life impacts, projecting at that point that there could be more 

than 60,000 fatalities, a million-plus persons displaced. 

Dr. Mayfield is warning constantly about the seriousness. Sunday afternoon, National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis 

Center within DHS puts out a report saying Katrina was a Category 4 storm or higher that would ‘‘likely lead to severe flooding 

and/or levee breaching that could leave the New Orleans metro 

area submerged for weeks or months.’’ That is Sunday afternoon 

from within DHS. 

So it is quite correct, and I wrote down what you said, beginning 

the week before, we were, you said, acutely aware of Katrina and 

the risk it posed, and finally, we knew that it potentially would hit 

New Orleans, and I quote what you said, ‘‘with potentially catastrophic consequences.’’

So the question that I have builds on this, and it is that our investigation has nonetheless revealed, though you understood by 

15

your statement today that this was a catastrophic hurricane, that 

prior to landfall, there were many things that were not done, that 

were done later in the week. For instance, you did not designate 

a Principal Federal Officer that weekend as required by the National Response Plan. You did not stand up the Interagency Incident Management Group that weekend as required by the National 

Response Plan. You didn’t designate a law enforcement component 

within DHS to serve as the co-lead for law enforcement under the 

NRP. And based on the projections in the FEMA report I have 

cited and the NISAC report of an enormous number of fatalities 

and displaced persons, you did not direct FEMA to task the Department of Transportation, or you didn’t talk to DOT itself to obtain and immediately move buses to New Orleans so that the people who were not able to get out of New Orleans before landfall 

would not be left in the horrific conditions that we all observed at 

the Superdome and the convention center. 

I want to contrast that with what happened 3 days later after 

DHS, to use your Deputy Michael Jackson’s term, kicked it up a 

notch and the Federal Government took very powerful actions. 

Countries saw just how impressive that response was. 

So the question really is, how do you explain the Department’s 

failure, your failure to take much more aggressive action over the 

weekend before landfall since you knew that this storm was going 

to hit New Orleans with potentially catastrophic consequences? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Let me try to unpack all the steps of the 

question and begin by saying I think that the recognition of the 

catastrophic possibility here—of course, and it was a potential, you 

have to prepare for the worst, you hope for the best, is reflected 

by the President’s declaration of emergency, which as I said was 

virtually unprecedented. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Could I ask you a question on that? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. As you know, I believe, or let me ask you, 

did you know at that point that when the President declares an 

emergency, it automatically becomes an incident of national significance? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. And charges you with the responsibility? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Correct. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. The question, and I don’t want you to spend 

a lot of time on this, but I was puzzled by Tuesday evening, I think 

announced Wednesday morning, you formally announced that this 

was an incident of national significance. It raised a question about 

whether you knew it over the weekend. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. The answer is that on Tuesday, we had a 

cabinet meeting the next day, and I wanted to formalize the appointment of Michael Brown as PFO, and it was, I guess, kind of 

a judicial hangover. You tend to write in a formalistic style. But 

my understanding of the plan and my reading of the plan then and 

now is that by dint of declaring the emergency, it automatically 

made it an incident of national significance. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. That is my reading, as well. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. And that is why I became personally involved in it. 

16

As far as the IIMG is concerned, the IIMG was kept briefed——

Senator LIEBERMAN. So why did you declare it again on Tuesday 

if you knew that it——

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think because I had never done any paperwork in my own hand. I said to somebody afterwards, this is 

probably a judicial hangover. It is the way I was used to writing. 

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. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. OK. So again, you are testifying this morning that as of the President’s declaration of emergency, which by 

your testimony was unusual, maybe unprecedented, you knew that 

it was notched up. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Correct. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. It was an incident of national significance, 

which gave you more authority and responsibility to mobilize the 

resources of the Federal Government. So I ask again why more was 

not done over the weekend. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. And let me make clear, it gives me more 

authority to coordinate it. It doesn’t actually change my legal authorities. So let me talk about the individual things we are discussing, and I think you raised three. You raised the PFO, the 

IIMG, and the issue of transportation. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Right, and the law enforcement. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. First, as it relates to the IIMG, which is a 

group of representatives of the agencies who come together to provide strategic guidance, that group was kept in the loop. It was 

briefed. It was brought in on Monday. It didn’t actually stand up 

until Tuesday. If this had been a different kind of a catastrophe, 

one that FEMA was not accustomed to dealing with, like a biological incident, I would certainly have triggered that group right 

away. I think on July 7, when the London bombings came up, we 

triggered that group right away. 

But I have to tell you, at least at the time, it was my judgment 

that if there is any area where the expertise resided around that 

table at the National Response Coordination Center, it is hurricanes. I mean, there is no group of people who have spent more 

time on that than the people at the NRCC. So I frankly viewed 

that group as the source of operational advice and even strategic 

advice going forward. 

Likewise, in terms of declaring Michael Brown a PFO——

Senator LIEBERMAN. Why not do that right away on Saturday 

after——

Secretary CHERTOFF. With the PFO? 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Yes. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Because, again, and this may reflect kind 

of a practical reality as opposed to formality, the function of the 

PFO is to represent the Secretary and basically exercise his authority in terms of coordination. It doesn’t exercise command authority, 

it is a coordinating authority. 

If I had brought somebody outside the chain of command, I probably would have done it right away. But given the fact that Michael Brown was an Under Secretary of the Department, so he was 

the third ranking member of the Department, at least in terms of 

level, and given the fact that he and the team working on this had 

17

been working together for a week, I frankly didn’t think it was necessary at that point to add an additional title or additional measure of authority. 

When the cabinet meeting came up, I guess in recognition of the 

fact that, first of all, this was going to be actually a much longer 

process of rescue than we originally hoped it would be, I wanted 

to make sure that, out of courtesy to my colleagues, I was very 

clear to them that I was conveying to Michael Brown every ounce 

of authority to speak on my behalf in the field as the operator as 

I could do. 

With respect to the issue of transportation, let me say that in 

that first couple of days after I learned about the levee breach, it 

was clear to me that the biggest failure was not getting buses in. 

We did a very good job with rescue, and I kept very close tabs 

through the Coast Guard on the number of missions flown——

Senator LIEBERMAN. How about on the weekend before the storm 

hit New Orleans, knowing that the predictions were for a very 

large number of displaced people? Why not mobilize Federal DOT 

resources? We had a witness here from DOT who said they began 

to get ready to deliver buses under a contract, a stand-by contract 

they had on the previous Friday but were not asked. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I can’t tell you specifically about 

buses, but I know, because I remember this particularly, if you go 

back to that Sunday conference, there was a specific question about 

activating ESF–1, which is the Department of Transportation and 

the Movement Coordination Center. So my understanding on Sunday was that the people whose job it is at the Department of 

Transportation to move all this, get buses, planes, or trains, had 

been stood up and were now working on the contingency plans to 

do that. I will acknowledge to you I did not call the Department 

of Transportation and say, I want to see the plan. 

On Thursday—actually, on Tuesday and Wednesday, after landfall, I expected to then see the plan. And my heated conversation 

with Mr. Brown, if I can describe it that way on Tuesday, and my 

consistent, if I can use the word nudging, nudging the Department, 

nudging, prodding, poking, and ultimately raising my voice about 

buses on Wednesday led to a decision by the deputy and me on 

Thursday that we needed to simply take this away and get it done 

ourselves. That was, by the way, a failure of—that is not what I 

should have been doing and not what the deputy should have been 

doing and reflected my frustration. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. I thank you for answering. My time is up. 

I assume if you give me just a one-word answer, that as you look 

back, you agree that the Department’s preparations over the weekend preceding Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast were inadequate? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes, particularly in the area of bus transportation. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Warner. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR WARNER 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

18

Mr. Secretary, first, there is a report out today issued by the 

House of Representatives. Our Committee will eventually issue its 

report, but I would say that—looking around the table, I think I 

am the longest-serving Member except for Senator Levin—I have 

the highest degree of confidence in this Chairman and this Ranking Member of any two Senators here in this building, and I am 

confident that our report will be fair and objective, and it will reflect on your statements this morning, where you step up and accept accountability. That is exceedingly important in all realms of 

our government and I commend you for that. 

I wonder if you would just indulge me in a personal story. It coincidentally was in February 1969, when President Nixon took office and I was privileged to join the Department of Defense in the 

Navy as Under Secretary and then the Secretary, and a remarkable man became Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, who left the 

Congress and took on that job, and it was in the middle of a war. 

Now, I mention this because a number of us had known President Nixon for many years. I had been with him in his first campaign as an advance man, traveled with him to 12 States, kept 

abreast of him and worked with him during the interregnum, and 

I mention that only that when Laird formed his Department, put 

it together, he brought us all into a room one day and closed the 

door, and he looked at us straight in the eye and he said, ‘‘Now, 

I want to make it clear. Many of you have known the President. 

You have varying degrees of personal relationships.’’ I am saying 

with a sense of humility I did know him quite well. And, he said, 

‘‘but I want you to understand I am the Secretary, and from this 

moment forward, I and I, alone, will communicate with the President. If there is anyone that feels that you have a need to do some 

direct communication, give me the courtesy of letting me know and 

then we will talk it through together.’’

As I say, this country was in a tough situation in that war, taking over the responsibilities, and that worked. I will never forget 

that. You might tuck that away for future reference. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. A good piece of advice. 

Senator WARNER. And he also said, ‘‘If anyone decides to violate 

that rule, please pack up and say goodbye,’’ and that was understood. 

Now, we go to the question of people in charge and chain of command. In your written testimony, you said ‘‘We must have a clear 

chain of command for managing incidents, and we must have a 

unity of purpose across our Department.’’ You are addressing that 

and putting together a very important part of this Committee’s 

record. So many people felt that they had a measure of take 

charge, and you have the sovereignty of the States to deal with and 

the governors, and I suppose mayors consider themselves a subset 

of the sovereignty. This one, I think, exercised some of that 

thought. You have the FEMA director, the National Guard, the 

Coast Guard, the active duty military, all these components. 

Lessons learned from this, how do you propose in a future situation, and we must focus on that, how do you propose to sort 

through all of those situations? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think, Senator, you put your finger on the 

most challenging element of this, precisely because you have, first 

19

of all, State and local governments with elected officials. You have 

a lot of different departments, and they all have their own authorities. And I can’t say I have got a complete answer, and I think I 

am looking in part to this Committee’s report and also what Assistant to the President Townsend is going to suggest, but I can give 

you some ideas. 

First of all, I think just as a mechanical matter, this idea that 

we have separate operations centers where one delivers something 

to something else in DHS makes no sense. We don’t yet have the 

campus that would allow us to literally have one operations center, 

but we are in the process of building the hardware and also the 

culture that gives everybody simultaneous visibility. 

Second element, and I saw this work much better in Hurricane 

Rita, is relations with DOD. We all knew in theory in August that 

Northern Command and Department of Homeland Security would 

have to work together as partners, but knowing that and not actually having practiced it and having gotten out there and done the 

work doesn’t allow you to actually execute as well as you should. 

That is why we did better in Hurricane Rita than Katrina. 

The Department of Defense NORTHCOM is going to be putting 

some of its planners into our regional offices. We have got some 

people over at NORTHCOM. We are looking in some way to set up 

a regional preparedness function under our new Under Secretary 

so that we can get closer to the States in various regions a cell of 

DOD and DHS planners who can work with the State and locals 

to build that relationship. 

Senator WARNER. That is an interesting response, and I would 

hope that prior to finalizing that you might come up and acquaint 

the Committee with your proposals such that if we have some 

thoughts, that we might be able to contribute them because that 

unity of command is absolutely essential. You do have the subset 

of problems between the active duty forces, whether or not to nationalize the National Guard. Now, that is a matter that the President really has to work out with the respective governors if that 

is necessary, and then your integration with, again, the National 

Guard of that State. 

In this situation, I felt—and by the way, I think General Honore ́

did a superb job as did all the men and women in uniform, be they 

active or Guard or Reserve. Do you feel that? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I do. I think they did an outstanding job. 

Senator WARNER. But all of the individuals, right down to the 

privates and the sergeants that were there——

Secretary CHERTOFF. Absolutely. 

Senator WARNER [continuing]. Integrating that, and it is a great 

credit to the military that they will step in. But I think through 

personality and the ability to know how to exercise command, 

Honore ́ and the Adjutant General certainly of Louisiana worked 

out their situations quite well. Do you agree with that? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I do. 

Senator WARNER. The distinguished Ranking Member talked 

about the National Response Plan, and I wasn’t certain I was listening carefully to your response. Do you feel it was or was not followed? 

20

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think it was—well, let me put it this way. 

Until last Friday, I believed that problems in actually following it 

were just inherent in the fact that the situation was overwhelming 

and it was a new plan. I mean, I think it was—it had never been 

used before. Friday, I think I heard from a witness additional facts 

which now cause me to believe there may have been a choice not 

to follow it, but I will tell you, that was news to me. 

Senator WARNER. So do you feel that the NRP as written is adequate, or do you wish to make some changes as we go to the future? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think we need to look at some changes because I think it winds up sometimes being cumbersome. It is evident to me, for example, that there is genuine confusion about 

some of the elements of the plan and when you have to do certain 

things. Rather than try to argue as if we are talking about a legal 

document, I think we ought to clarify it and simplify it. But I think 

the basic concept of an integrated management system is a correct 

concept. 

Senator WARNER. Well, again, I would hope that this Committee 

would be involved before that was finalized because we all bear a 

measure of responsibility in a natural disaster of these proportions. 

It just isn’t the Executive Branch, it is the Congress, and we want 

to be supportive because we have learned from bitter experience in 

this the element of human suffering. 

You heard the gentleman behind you get up and speak out about 

the plight of so many individuals today. I know they are foremost 

in your mind. What active steps are you taking today to try and 

alleviate the suffering that is taking place every hour we sit here? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Here is the program we have in place. In 

order to transition people from having the government directly pay 

for hotels, which are very expensive, to having people receiving assistance that they can use to find places to live or receiving trailers, we put in a process, a program, to first of all validate the appropriateness of everybody in the hotel to see who is, in fact, entitled to be there and who isn’t, get them their money, and then give 

them a couple of weeks from the time they get their money to find 

someplace to live. We have sent—we have done a lot of intensive 

work sending teams in to meet with people in hotels to give them 

housing solutions. If they have to wait for trailers or if they have 

to wait for apartments, they will have individual assistance that 

they can use to pay for places to live until that happens. 

I know the hotels are a little impatient and with tourism coming 

up, some of them want to push people out. We have tried very hard 

to be very sensitive to helping people find housing, but ultimately 

move us away from what is a very expensive program of having 

large numbers of people in hotels. 

Senator WARNER. Could you fill in, in the few seconds I have left, 

the story of the trailers and the accuracy of it and the situation because it really, the compassion of the American people is enormous 

for those suffering, and when they hear stories like this, they feel 

it quite disturbing, and expenditures being used for purposes totally unrelated, in other words, compensation somehow they have 

received in other areas, totally unrelated to alleviating that suffering. 

21

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, we knew in the first week that the 

scale of people who would require assistance being so large and 

being so widely dispersed, we would have to reconcile two imperatives. One is people who had literally swum out of their houses 

with nothing but the clothes on their back who needed to have 

money for food and clothing, and then people who are going to try 

to cheat you. 

So we got the Inspector General in right away, and we said, look, 

we are trying to devise a program to get money to people as quickly 

as we can and yet try to build in some way to avoid fraud. I don’t 

think we were entirely successful because (a) of the scale and (b) 

we didn’t have the systems in place. 

One thing I am happy to say is this. The criticism that our telephone system did not allow us to validate who people were and the 

addresses has now been corrected. We have taken the program that 

was used to validate people who registered online and in the last 

couple of weeks we have made it operational for telephones, as 

well. So there are a series of steps we are taking through implementing the financial controls that will eliminate at least a large 

part of this threat in the future. 

But I think part of it is also prosecuting people who try to rip 

us off. 

Senator WARNER. Madam Chairman, my time is up. I wish you 

and your Department good luck in the future. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Thank you. 

Senator WARNER. Thank you very much. You didn’t cover the 

trailers, but maybe later you can speak about the trailers. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Dayton. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON 

Senator DAYTON. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

The House Committee’s report that has just been released says 

it remains difficult to understand how government could respond so 

ineffectively to a disaster that was anticipated for years and for 

which specific dire warnings had been issued for days. The crisis 

was not only predictable, it was predicted. If this is what happens 

when we have advance warning, we shudder to imagine the consequences when we do not. 

As those of us who accompanied the Chairman and the Ranking 

Member recently to Mississippi and New Orleans can attest, this 

failure of response was not just in the immediate aftermath of the 

hurricane. It remains and continues to this day. According to one 

article in the Washington Post, vast sections of the City of New Orleans are still without utilities. Without electricity, businesses can’t 

open their doors. New Orleans is a Gordian knot of complications 

that has tied up about everyone. Everyone is waiting for the FEMA 

maps like they were oracles of Delphi because the maps will tell 

residents and businesses where and how they can rebuild. Those 

maps are not likely to be finally released until August, a year after 

the hurricane has occurred. As Senator Warner pointed out, we 

heard testimony from the Inspector General that mobile homes and 

the like that have been bought are just an incredible waste of 

money that are sitting and rotting in, ironically, Hope, Arkansas. 

22

So this incompetence and this lack of a capable response by 

FEMA and by DHS continues to this day. That, to me, is if anything more disturbing than the failure of the immediate response. 

I think they are both critically important, but this is ongoing. As 

I will get into later in my second round, Roseau, Minnesota, a 

small town in Northern Minnesota, has struggled for 3 years after 

a flood to get approval for a $619,000 project that has just been in 

the regional office going around and around. FEMA should be out 

of Roseau by now. This occurred in June 2003. They should be on 

to whatever, but it goes on and on. People get dragged on. These 

are responsible local officials just trying to rebuild their community, which was flooded, and they can’t get a $619,000 project. 

The problems in FEMA are so systemic and so ingrained, I just 

frankly don’t know, other than turning the responsibility over to 

the National Guard and making some chain of command temporarily responsible for immediate emergencies until you can go back 

and start this agency all over again because this is just so dysfunctional or nonfunctional, it is frightening, and it sets up expectations 

that people in an emergency are going to get helped, and they 

don’t. SBA and the housing, all this just goes on and on, and New 

Orleans is a macro example, but there are these smaller examples 

all over. 

The Committee report goes on to say that Katrina was a failure 

of initiative. It was a failure of leadership, it says. Mr. Brown, who 

I realize you inherited, was the roommate of the previous Director 

of FEMA, resigned in part because of issues that were raised about 

falsification of his qualifications in his resume. The predecessor, 

Mr. Albaugh, was the national campaign manager for the President’s 2000 election campaign. According to this bio in Wikipedia, 

Mr. Albaugh brought about several internal reorganizations of 

FEMA designed to shrink the agency in size and scope, and particularly, the Albaugh FEMA diminished the Clinton Administration’s organizational emphasis on disaster mitigation in favor of 

terrorism response. That is an accusation that Mr. Brown made 

himself last week. 

But where this gets current and relevant is he says in March 

2005, Mr. Albaugh registered as a lobbyist on behalf of Kellogg, 

Brown and Root, which is the firm, a subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation, that we have received testimony has failed on numerous 

occasions in Iraq and has, according to that Inspector General, over 

$1 billion of questionable charges. 

Two of his clients, Mr. Albaugh’s clients, Kellogg, Brown and 

Root, and the Shaw Group, reading the list of contracts received in 

the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, appear again and again—roof 

repaired in Louisiana, Shaw Constructors, Inc. Water removal, City 

of New Orleans, and these are projects, as I say, that in cases have 

been delayed or not even begun to occur. Unwatering, Kellogg, 

Brown and Root, contingency support for INS, temporary expansion 

of facilities, Kellogg, Brown and Root. FEMA’s prime contractors, 

of which there are four, one being the Shaw Group. It has on its 

website the saying, ‘‘Hurricane Recovery Projects, Apply Here.’’ It 

received a $100 million emergency FEMA contract for housing 

management and construction. The Shaw Group received a $100 

million order from the Army Corps of Engineers for work. 

23

Another article says the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a 

contract worth up to $385 million for the building of temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg, Brown and Root. Another 

one says KBR won a $33 million contract from the Naval Facilities 

Engineering Command for Hurricane Katrina stabilization and recovery. 

So here you have a situation where somebody who downsized the 

agency and people who are basically then turning around and getting contracts, some of them big sole-source contracts, that they 

haven’t performed on and they are continuing because these two 

$100 million awards that I cited for KBR, or for the Shaw Group, 

I am sorry, were awarded just in the last couple of weeks. 

You have, I think, a political scandal of enormous proportions not 

only in what happened immediately because of the failures of communication, but the opportunistic greed that has dominated this recovery project is one that needs to be rooted out and eliminated, 

and you need to find, if it is possible to find it given FEMA’s reputation, people who are professionals, who are trained and experienced with professional management of disaster recovery, which is 

what FEMA is charged to do, who aren’t put in these key positions 

because of their prior political campaign experience, who aren’t allowed to then leave office and turn around and become consultants 

for companies that are making hundreds of millions of dollars off 

the misery of the people that are still suffering down there and not 

even performing on the contracts. 

I think you have a monumental disaster, and I think FEMA is 

the disaster today. It is an even greater disaster than the disasters 

it is supposed to be addressing. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. This is a lot to respond to. Maybe I can just 

do it briefly this way. As we get into recovery, of course, that engages a lot of different elements, a lot of different departments. 

You are quite right that we continue to have open on the books disasters from over 10 years ago. The Northridge earthquake, which 

I think was in 1993 or 1994, we still have a FEMA office open 

there, and I think that raises some interesting questions about the 

way in which we handle long-term recovery, which I think has 

grown like topsy over the last few years. 

In terms of things like some of the frustrations in New Orleans, 

of course, the President has a Gulf Coast coordinator who is working closely with the States and locals. Sometimes these are matters 

of problems at FEMA. Sometimes there were trailers that were sitting staged that for a long time no one wanted to give occupancy 

permits because nobody wanted to have it, as they say, in my backyard. So we had to get local permission. We don’t have the ability 

to say to mayors, take it. You have to. You have no choice. We have 

had problems with utility companies in terms of hooking things up. 

So there is a lot to work on in FEMA. One thing I will tell you, 

though, is that the President has appointed some really outstanding people to help me in this Department since I have come 

on board. George Foresman, for example, who is our Under Secretary for Preparedness, has spent 30 years, most recently as Governor Warner of Virginia’s Homeland Security Advisor, working in 

the area of homeland security and emergency management. We are 

24

looking at people, ultimately—we have Dave Paulison, who has 30 

years in emergency management in Florida as the Acting Director. 

So we are committed to getting people in here who have the appropriate skills to run their particular components, and we know 

we have a lot of work to do with FEMA. We have started to talk 

about some of the things we need to do, and one of the things I 

look forward to is having the Committee talk about some of these 

long-term recovery issues and how to deal with them. 

Senator DAYTON. Mr. Secretary, when I go back to the sequence 

of events regarding information, and you have acknowledged that 

was a problem, but Mr. Bahamonde testified before this Committee 

that at approximately 11 a.m. on Monday morning, the worst possible news came into the Emergency Operations Center. I stood 

there and listened to the first report of the levee break at the 17th 

Street Canal. They added that it was ‘‘very bad.’’ We have here pictures that he took from a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter at about 

5:30 p.m. on Monday afternoon. I mean, this is New Orleans underwater. This is not, as you said earlier, the possibility of 80 percent 

flooding, this is 80 percent flooding that has already occurred, that 

has been documented by the one FEMA individual on site at 5:30 

in the afternoon. 

He said that he then contacted the FEMA headquarters three 

different times—including Mr. Brown, yet we had testimony last 

week from General Broderick, head of the HSOC, that he left the 

office that Monday evening unaware. He said there were conflicting 

reports, but this is about as hard to refute as anything I could 

imagine. He came in the next morning at 6 a.m. and became convinced that there had been, in fact, major breaches and flooding. 

He, then, according to his testimony, didn’t tell Assistant Secretary 

Stephan until 11:30 in the morning that this catastrophe had already occurred, which it was first identified 24 hours previously by 

somebody, an eyewitness. 

Talk about situational awareness, you have people that are taking pictures from helicopters that are communicating. How much 

more situational awareness could anybody at your level have? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I think this comes directly back to the 

point of integration. As I later learned, and I actually spoke to 

Marty Bahamonde the weekend after landfall and for the first time 

actually heard from him what had happened, which no one had 

told me before then, he took these pictures, I guess, in the late 

afternoon or early evening around 6 p.m. There is no question this 

is exactly the kind of image that should have come into the HSOC 

and would have immediately, it seems to me, alerted everybody 

that we had a major breach. 

I have a lot of respect for General Broderick, and I think you 

read his resume. He spent more time running operations centers 

and handling crises for the Marine Corps than anybody I have ever 

met. I trust him implicitly to sift information. I am confident that 

had he had this, he would have gotten it to me immediately. I can 

tell you that the 6 a.m. report did get to me, so when he got it, 

he did pass it on to me. 

The fact that there could be people talking about this in FEMA 

and we not know about it is precisely the problem of lack of integration. Part of it is hardware and stuff, but I have to be honest, 

25

part of it is culture, people—this is the stovepiping we have dealt 

with in the intelligence community. People sometimes hoard information. I have been in the Department of Justice, I have dealt with 

issues there that are similar, and I am dealing with it here. We 

have got to convince people that stovepiping information and 

hoarding information is irresponsible when matters of life and 

death are involved. 

Senator DAYTON. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Coleman. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, I do appreciate your candor and admission of responsibility, which is important. I felt, in listening to Michael 

Brown, that he feigned admission of any sort of responsibility, and 

in fact, I think what he really was doing—what he testified to 

when he said very directly, even though he asked me—I have 

apologized; what else should I do? His testimony essentially was 

that DHS and FEMA, their response was doomed from the beginning because of the structural incorporation of FEMA into DHS. I 

have been pointing out this disfunction. He stated these clashes in 

the Department, if they are not fixed, this Department is doomed 

to fail. It will fail the country. 

Is it your belief that FEMA and DHS were doomed to fail because of structural infirmities? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. No, quite the opposite, and I will tell you 

that the proof of the pudding to me is in a couple of stories I will 

tell you about what happened on Thursday, which were examples 

of situations where finally violating my general rule that the operator ought to be in control of the operation, the Deputy Secretary 

and I started to intervene personally into operational things because I think—my perception was at the time Mr. Brown may not 

have been aware of the capabilities. Maybe now, after the testimony on Friday, he didn’t want to use them. 

One was the buses, the air bridge out of the Superdome. When 

we learned that the plan was to simply bus everybody to Houston, 

we realized that is going to take forever, so the Deputy, working 

with TSA, which is one of the components of the Department, and 

the private sector was able to get commercial aircraft, arrange to 

come into New Orleans Airport to create an air bridge so we could 

bus people just to the airport and then go back and pick up more 

people. That was one example of enhanced capability. 

The second was the Coast Guard. I got a report from the Coast 

Guard on Thursday that there were pockets of people who had selfevacuated to a high ground that didn’t have water, and I guess 

FEMA wasn’t able to respond. So I simply directed the Coast 

Guard to take a helicopter, and I was a little hesitant because I 

didn’t want to take them out of another mission, and map where 

those people were so they could go back and deliver water. 

Those are examples of capabilities that DHS brought to the 

table. The shame is that we were not made aware of the need to 

do those things a little earlier. 

Senator COLEMAN. I want to talk about that. The Chairman 

raised the issue of how could you have the guy in charge who clearVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:59 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 027032 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\27032.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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1 Exhibit 14 appears in the Appendix on page 172. 

ly didn’t have respect for chain of command, who basically said it 

was a waste of time to talk to you and was talking to the White 

House. You answered in response to what you know now versus 

what you knew then. I want to go back to kind of what you knew 

then. 

One of the issues is when did you know that New Orleans was 

underwater? You have indicated that you didn’t know Monday. You 

went to sleep Monday night thinking, in effect, that you dodged a 

bullet, and so when we woke up reading papers, that was the impression you had, and apparently you didn’t get information from 

Bahamonde or anybody else talking about the breach, is that correct? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. That is correct. 

Senator COLEMAN. But then on Tuesday morning, actually, in regard to a Tim Russert interview which was September 4, Sunday, 

you talked about what actually happened. You talked about New 

Orleans. You woke up Tuesday. New Orleans dodged a bullet. And 

it was on Tuesday the levee—it may have been overnight Monday 

or Tuesday the levee started to break, and it was mid-day Tuesday 

they became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap and essentially the lake was going to start to drain 

into the city. Were you saying here that it was Tuesday afternoon, 

mid-day before you knew——

Secretary CHERTOFF. No. What I said——

Senator COLEMAN [continuing]. That the break was irreparable? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. No, what I said was this, and I apologize 

a little bit because I think I was on 4 hours of sleep over 48 hours 

when I did that interview from the field outside of New Orleans. 

What I said, my understanding at the time, as late as Sunday, was 

that the breach had occurred overnight Monday because I found 

out about it first thing, 6 a.m., Tuesday. Then the question I had 

is, well, what can be done? Is this something the Army Corps can 

repair? My impression is it took a little bit of time to get a definitive answer to that. Mid-day is probably not the right word. I knew 

by mid-morning that it was irreparable, and I also knew by midmorning that it was situated in a way that would really flood the 

entire city like a bathtub until equilibrium. 

Senator COLEMAN. On Monday morning, I think it was in Exhibit 

14,1 there is an e-mail from Michael Brown to Patrick Rhode, I 

think, and others saying that he touched Chertoff—this e-mail is 

8:53, so it is 9 in the morning. Brown is saying that he touched 

Chertoff today. ‘‘FYI, he and Leavitt are headed to CDC.’’ You have 

testified to that. ‘‘Casually mentioned he was going to R4 to give 

morale boost to R4.’’ You indicated you went to that Atlanta base. 

Did you know that? Did they know that? When Brown said he 

touched you, what did you and Brown talk about on Monday morning? Did he not explain that he understood that the levee was broken, that we were facing a great catastrophe? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t think he knew—I can’t speak for 

him. What I have seen of the record does not suggest to me he 

knew on Monday morning that the levee had been breached. I have 

seen an e-mail, after the fact again, around 12:30 or something like 

27

that on Monday, where Brown says to somebody, I think there is 

some over-topping. So on Monday morning, I asked him for general—I don’t remember the exact conversation—what is the situation. The storm was still going on. I expected that we wouldn’t 

know the full picture. At that point, he did not tell me about a 

levee breach. 

Senator COLEMAN. How do you respond to the reports or the emails that the White House knew Monday night about the breach. 

Obviously, you didn’t. What happened there? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think the whole idea of dealing with conveying information by e-mailing people you know around the government is a huge mistake. We have an operations center to fuse 

information. This is, again—I feel like I am back with the issues 

with intelligence. It has got to come to one place. If it had come 

to the HSOC, the HSOC has the responsibility to notify the White 

House Situation Room as well as me. 

Senator COLEMAN. It was clear, though, that by Wednesday or 

Thursday, clear to Americans, my wife watching TV and then talking to her husband, the Senator, and just being aghast at what was 

going on and why can’t we get food to the Convention Center? 

What is happening at the Superdome? It was clear that Brown was 

in way over his head, way over his head. Yet on Friday, I believe 

it was Friday, September 2, the President is standing there and 

saying, ‘‘Brownie, you are doing a heck of a job,’’ which tells me 

somebody didn’t tell the President that he has got a FEMA Director who is way over his head, who has failed to respond to the 

needs of the people in the city. All of America knows that. It 

seemed the only people who didn’t know were the White House and 

Homeland Security. How did that lack of communication take 

place? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Let me give you, again, a kind of a playby-play of my assessment of Mr. Brown as things went on. On 

Wednesday, I was in a cabinet meeting. There were associated 

meetings about this. He actually did communicate with me on 

Wednesday. I was regularly in touch either through the HSOC or 

directly, even talking to people in the field. 

On Thursday, we had the incidents I have described with the 

Coast Guard and the bus, and also it was Thursday when I discovered about the Convention Center. I initially asked Mr. Brown. He 

said there are 1,500 people there. Finally, I had to send somebody 

in and have them report back directly. 

Thursday night, I began to—I asked myself, are we dealing with 

a situation where it is not just the inherent overwhelming challenge, but that maybe despite good intentions, Mr. Brown is really 

not up to this, and I thought I would go down on Friday and see 

for myself. 

When I came back on Saturday, I concluded I had to replace Mr. 

Brown, at least in Louisiana, and at that point, I solicited some 

suggestions and began the process of bringing Admiral Allen in to 

be the Deputy PFO on Monday. 

Senator COLEMAN. The President, to his credit, has accepted responsibility. I mean, the buck stops at his desk. I would suggest, 

though, Mr. Secretary, that as head of DHS that you failed the 

President by allowing him on Friday to be with somebody that at 

28

that point in time, I think you had to have some real doubts that 

Michael Brown was capable of providing the leadership that needed 

to be provided in those circumstances. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I certainly had reservations. First of all, I 

am acutely—look, I mean, my job was to manage this incident. I 

take responsibility for the management, and I want to make it 

completely clear that when Michael Brown said, well, he went to 

the White House for this, it was not the White House’s responsibility to direct the operation or to direct the operator, and it was 

our Department’s responsibility. To the extent that failed the President, I feel that very acutely. 

I can’t speak for the President. I understand that on Friday, notwithstanding my doubts, I believe Mr. Brown was doing the best 

he could. And so I can’t say I was offended by the fact that—he was 

very tired. He was up a lot. I don’t think we should let hindsight 

color the fact that he worked hard. But I certainly on my own 

began to reevaluate him over that period of time. 

Senator COLEMAN. My concern about that is, again, it is not what 

we know now, but really then. I mean, if all you had to do was 

watch TV then, I think most of America knew by Wednesday night 

and Thursday that FEMA had not responded the way it should, 

and a lack of leadership across the board. I have said this was the 

perfect storm of poor leadership, a governor who didn’t make decisions, a mayor who was holed up in a hotel without communications and wasn’t showing leadership, and a FEMA Director who 

clearly did not provide leadership. I think we knew it. What concerns me is with all the communications you have, everything you 

tuned into, you are still evaluating something that I think is pretty 

apparent to the rest of us. 

A last comment very quickly because we have to talk about 

today, I was with the Chairman and the Ranking Member. We visited Mississippi and New Orleans. To many people, FEMA is a 

four-letter word, a negative four-letter word. There is a lot of work 

that needs to be done, and I do think we have to look ahead and 

deal with the great tragedy that is going on, deal with the situation 

that I think Chairman Warner was getting to. You have these 

trailers, and they are sitting somewhere and not functional where 

people need them. 

So I would hope as we not just look at what happened then, but 

as we are looking at what is happening now, that we don’t need 

to do another investigation a year from now as to the slowness of 

the response. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, do you want me to talk about, not 

trailers, but the mobile homes now? The original conception, I 

think, was just to have mobile home communities in places that 

were outside the flood plain. It turned out, I think, not to be the 

right solution, partly because I don’t think communities wanted 

them. What we will do with these mobile homes is we need to 

make sure they are stored properly. They will be used in the area 

and for other purposes. 

More generally, let me leave you with this thought. The challenge we have now is we have to continue the recovery process, but 

we have to get ready for June 1, which is my—we could have something before June 1, but the hurricane date. So we have both of 

29

those things to juggle, and that is why I am spending a considerable amount of my time now talking about how do we rebuild 

FEMA. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Pryor. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Let me just make sure I understand this. You used to be on the 

Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Correct. 

Senator PRYOR. So you gave up a lifetime appointment for this, 

is that right? [Laughter.] 

Secretary CHERTOFF. My wife reminds me of that periodically. 

Senator PRYOR. I thought you might hear about that from some 

folks. Let me ask you about something that one of our Congressmen in Arkansas, Mike Ross, who represents the Fourth Congressional District, has talked about a lot in the last few days and that 

is the FEMA trailers that are in Hope, Arkansas. They are in an 

airport there. There has been a lot of news coverage on this. As I 

understand it, there are two types of, what do you call them, trailers, manufactured homes——

Secretary CHERTOFF. Right. 

Senator PRYOR [continuing]. Or whatever terminology you would 

like to use. One type is the type that you have that are stored in 

Hope, and as I understand it, those are maybe a more permanent 

type of home that needs permanent utility hook-ups. There is another type that I think you may call in the lingo in FEMA, you may 

call them travel trailers. Is that right? There are two types of trailers? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. There are mobile homes and trailers, correct. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. And on the travel trailers, they can be put 

in someone’s yard. They can be hooked up to the existing utilities 

there. And they can be placed in a floodplain, is that correct? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. That is correct. 

Senator PRYOR. And so the first question I have is, who made the 

decision or why was the decision made to go with the more permanent-type mobile home rather than the so-called travel trailer? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Actually, the decision was made to use 

both, and we have acquired many more travel trailers than mobile 

homes. At the time that the dimensions of this became clear, there 

was literally a shortage. I mean, there was not enough capacity, 

and they wanted to contract to get as many trailers and as many 

of any kind of living facility in the pipeline as quickly as possible. 

So we really turned the spigot on for the trailers. 

I think the original thought was the mobile homes would be an 

alternative to trailers in places without a floodplain, for example, 

if there were communities around Baton Rouge, we might use 

those for that. I think it has turned out that they are not particularly popular in terms of having communities like that, and while 

I still envision we are going to use several thousand of those mobile 

homes where we can instead of trailers, we will have to use the excess for non-floodplain places. 

30

Senator PRYOR. So is it your testimony today, just so I am clear 

on this, that it is up to the local communities? If they want the 

trailers, they can have them? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, no, but they have to agree to have 

them or we can’t put them there. If a local community says, give 

me trailers, we still have to allocate among people who want them 

because there is a shortage. But if they say, we don’t want mobile 

homes and they don’t grant a certificate of occupancy, then I don’t 

think we can do anything. 

Senator PRYOR. And has that been your experience here, that 

they don’t grant a certificate of occupancy? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. What has been reported to me is that there 

are instances where, with respect to mobile homes or trailers sometimes, there are communities that do not want to grant a certificate 

of occupancy if you are going to put a group of homes in one place. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. And I guess, not to parse words with you, 

but you said it has been reported to you that there are incidents 

of that——

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes. 

Senator PRYOR. What I want to get a sense of is how widespread 

that is, because I went down with the Committee to that region 

and my impression from local people is they were begging FEMA 

for trailers and mobile homes, just begging them. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes, and the reason I say reported to me 

is because not having spoken to the mayors myself, necessarily, all 

of them myself, I don’t want to say something that turns out to be 

inaccurate. I think Mississippi is different than Louisiana. I think 

in Mississippi, you have a lot of home sites that are habitable right 

now, and many of those people—and this is the traditional hurricane model—many of those people want to put a trailer on their 

home site, they hook it up, they are ready to go. 

I think we have satisfied a lot of those needs. I don’t think we 

have satisfied all of them. Louisiana is different because we have 

a lot of area that is not habitable, and some of what is habitable 

is still in a floodplain, and there have been discussions about, for 

example, in some communities, having groups of mobile homes or 

groups of trailers in a park, and that is where we have sometimes 

gotten some resistance. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Well, I would like to explore that with you 

further, but our time is short. 

As I understand the policy under the previous administration, 

when James Lee Witt was running FEMA, apparently what they 

would do with trailers or mobile homes is they would negotiate 

with the manufacturers before any storm, and they had a series of 

contracts in the file, so to speak, and then once they knew the 

needs after the flood or after the storm, whatever it may be, once 

they knew the need, they would execute the contracts. As I understand it, there has been a change in FEMA’s policy, and you tell 

me if I am wrong, but my impression is that after this hurricane, 

you all really started almost at ground zero and had to do the negotiations and all that after the storm occurred. Is that true? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I am not sure that is correct, and so I want 

to make sure that we get back to you on that to find out. My impression is there were some contracts, but that the scope well exVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:59 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 027032 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\27032.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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ceeded that. And also, there were also some purchases that we allowed to be made locally just to meet the need and also to help the 

local communities. 

Senator PRYOR. Were these contracts on a competitive bid basis? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t know what the specific procurement 

was with respect to the trailer contracts. So again, I don’t want to 

say something here that I am going to be wrong about. I think that 

generally, I agree with you. The right answer here is to prearrange 

contracts up front, and one of the reasons I was emphatic about 

some of the changes I announced earlier in my testimony is there 

is a time line for procuring, and we have got to get that started. 

I think that is the right place to go. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Again, I would love for you to get the answers to those questions back to the Committee, if possible. 

Another question that you probably won’t know right now is as 

I understand, under the current FEMA setup, there was a middleman that was hired to somehow go out on the market and find 

these trailers, and I would like to know more about who that was 

and how that contract worked. Were they on a percentage or flat 

fee? I would like to know more. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. We will have to get that back to you. 

Senator PRYOR. And also this issue of the floodplain. You can’t 

put these in the floodplain. As I understand it, that is a FEMA regulation, is that right? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. That is my understanding. 

Senator PRYOR. And that regulation could be changed? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. It could be. Now, let me make it clear that 

trailers can be in the floodplain. Mobile homes cannot be. 

Senator PRYOR. I am sorry, yes, mobile homes. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. We could change it. I have actually asked 

about that. I think there would be a serious concern about putting 

a mobile home in a floodplain in an area which is likely to be exposed to a hurricane in less than 6 months, and one of the things 

I am trying to caution people about is we need to start thinking 

now about what preparations are being made in Louisiana and 

Mississippi for the upcoming hurricane season while we are in the 

process of rebuilding. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. Well, let me talk about, if I can follow up 

on that planning theme that you just mentioned. As I understand 

it, with Hurricane Pam, that simulation was supposed to be a twopart simulation. It began in 2002. The first part was to simulate 

a hurricane in the New Orleans area. The second part of that was 

to simulate a massive earthquake in New Madrid, Missouri, which, 

by the way, is immediately north of Arkansas and the New Madrid 

fault actually runs through the very northeastern corner of our 

State, so that is near and dear to our hearts, as well. The New Madrid exercise has never been done, is that right? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t know if it has ever been done. 

Senator PRYOR. I am pretty sure, you can take my word for it, 

that it has not been done, and it seems to me that here again we 

see a total lack of planning for what scientists and seismologists, 

etc., tell us could be an enormous national disaster. And again, it 

appears that FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security are 

just not prepared for that. So I would encourage you to do that exVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:59 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 027032 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\27032.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
32

ercise, to spend the money, the resources, whatever it may be, to 

do that exercise so that you are prepared for that massive earthquake. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, let me say that you have touched on 

an issue that is very much at the forefront of my mind. The President directed and Congress then subsequently legislated a requirement that we go to all the States, and this would include Missouri, 

and look at their emergency plans. Our deadline for reporting on 

the first cut was Friday, September 10. I am pleased to say we 

made the deadline, which I thought was important. 

We are going to have to do this for all the States now. Like the 

rest of my job, we are always in a race against time, and I have 

a great Under Secretary of Preparedness who has a lot of experience, and I have tasked him to make sure that this gets done as 

quickly as possible. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Well, the New Madrid fault is a very serious 

fault line in North America, potentially the most deadly one that 

there is. 

The last question I have for you is that Congressman Baker of 

Louisiana has introduced legislation that would create the Louisiana Recovery Corporation, and I assume you are familiar with 

that proposal. I would like to get your thoughts on the bill, and my 

understanding is the Administration does not support that legislation, but I would like to get your thoughts and know if the Administration has taken a position on it. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think the Administration, principally 

through Chairman Powell, who the President is looking to to coordinate the recovery phase of this, is working with Congressman 

Baker. I know there are ongoing discussions. We all want to 

achieve the same result. We need to get this process kick-started 

to make sure that we can start the process of rebuilding New Orleans, taking account of the fact that we have to live with the topography of the city and make some accommodations to the challenge 

that poses. 

Senator PRYOR. So in other words, you don’t have a position on 

the Baker bill? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t think at this time the Administration’s position has been announced. We are continuing to work on 

the issue with Congressman Baker and others. I don’t have a definitive position to give you. 

Senator PRYOR. Madam Chairman, thank you, and I guess just 

on a personal note I would say that I feel like we have given the 

Department of Homeland Security and even Secretary Chertoff 

plenty of time to fix the problems with FEMA and preparedness 

and emergency response, and quite frankly, with all due respect, 

I don’t think that they have done it, and I think it is probably time 

for the Congress to come in and offer the fix there. Every time we 

sit down and talk about it, we talk about all these problems. I 

guess the fear I have is we may have a big government solution 

to this, and that is let us throw more money, let us redo the organization chart, let us do this, but in the end, it is not very effective. 

So I would be glad to work with the Chairman and the Ranking 

Member on that. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Bennett. 

33

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BENNETT 

Senator BENNETT. Thank you very much. 

Secretary Chertoff, is the Coast Guard part of the Department of 

Homeland Security? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes. 

Senator BENNETT. So why do we hear that the Department has 

failed? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I have tried to be careful to say that there 

were some real successes and also some of the other components, 

like TSA, real successes. There were some real successes in FEMA, 

and there were some failures, as well. 

Senator BENNETT. I think that is an important point to make because what we need to do in this hearing, or what I think we are 

trying to do in this hearing, is look at three separate areas: The 

past, we want to know what happened; and the present, what is 

going on with the trailers, etc.; and then, ultimately, the future. 

Where are we going to try to solve the problems of the Department? 

You remembered correctly my warning that the Department was 

not going to function properly for at least 5 years. This has nothing 

whatever to do with who is appointed to try to get it to work. This 

has everything to do with the challenge of creating it. This is the 

largest reorganization of the Executive Branch since the creation of 

the Department of Defense, and unfortunately, the first Secretary 

of Defense committed suicide. Secretary Ridge got through that 

without that particular result. But the Department of Defense 

never really functioned for about 20 years after it was formed, and 

to Senator Pryor’s point, it took the Goldwater-Nichols Act to ultimately fix that, but that came after decades of experience with the 

cultural clashes that occurred. 

The Coast Guard handled its transfer into the Department of 

Homeland Security virtually without a ripple, and that is a tribute 

to the Department and it is a tribute to the Coast Guard. 

FEMA obviously did not, and I was interested in your reaction 

to the testimony we had on Friday. To repeat, I found it staggering 

that an Under Secretary—you have described him as the third 

most important figure in the Department in terms of the pecking 

order—would testify that he deliberately would not call you and 

discuss things with you because he considered it ‘‘a waste of my 

time.’’ I heard your answer to the Chairman, but it is staggering 

to me that a subordinate could be that insubordinate and hide it 

from you to the degree that he apparently did. 

I have looked over the excerpts from the VTC transcripts, not 

only your questions, and you gave us these excerpts to demonstrate 

your questions, but his answers, and there isn’t a hint in his answers of the attitude that we saw on Friday. You read those answers and you think, this is the most open, cooperative, supportive 

subordinate you could possibly have, and yet he sat at that table 

and told us that it would be a waste of his time to have a conversation with you. 

That is an incredible demonstration of dysfunction, and the difference between FEMA’s performance and the Coast Guard’s performance is a demonstration of that kind of refusal to integrate 

which the Coast Guard commandant, maybe because he is used to 

34

chain of command and following orders, obviously didn’t have any 

problems with. But that is the past, and we go forward. 

I must say, I find your description of what you did on the day 

when you were supposedly off in Atlanta enjoying yourself to be 

properly—I find it to be an accurate description of a very engaged 

official, and you do have all of the modern communications and just 

because you are physically in Atlanta doesn’t mean, as it would 

have meant 10 years ago, that you had no connection with what 

was going on. So I find that reassuring and appreciate and thank 

you for that. 

As to the present, you are dealing with these issues and you are 

aware of them. Let us spend a little time talking about the future. 

I still have confidence in your abilities to manage this Department, and given the baptism by fire, if you will, through which you 

have gone in the time since Katrina, there is probably not another 

official on the planet better prepared to understand the challenges 

and the enormity of the challenges than you are. Look into the future, although 5 years is running, if indeed that is the figure we 

are going to take, and tell us what kind not only of FEMA you 

would like to create, but what kind of Department of Homeland Security you would like to leave behind as your legacy, the contribution you want to make in this part of your stewardship that you 

could say, I left the Department no longer dysfunctional and properly put together. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Now, Senator, I have thought about that 

since before I took this job. The short answer is I would like to 

leave it one Department. I think your description of what happened 

to the Department of Defense is something I am very aware of, and 

we actually looked to what happened there to try to accelerate that 

sense of jointness, that sense of unity that you need to make one 

Department. 

Part of it is we have got to finish the process of building integrated operations centers, getting a single IT structure, and we are 

doing all that now. But a second piece of it is we need to build a 

common culture, promoting joint assignments, promoting people 

moving from one component to another, and promoting a culture of 

preparedness. 

I was concerned when I came into the Department that the hardest part of what we do is planning and thinking through what do 

you do when you face contingencies, and that is still a challenge 

we have ahead of us, ranging from everything from terrorism to 

natural hazards. 

Senator BENNETT. By the way, I assume you reject Mr. Brown’s 

statement that you are so focused on terrorism, you think natural 

disasters don’t matter. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Not only do I reject it, but I rejected it explicitly in a speech, at which Mr. Brown was present, when I rolled 

out my second stage review, and I rejected it again when we had 

the first time ever joint summit with emergency managers and 

homeland security advisors, at which Mr. Brown was present, and 

I reject it because, first of all, there is going to be a lot of common 

requirements that are going to apply whether you are dealing with 

evacuation because of a flood or a hurricane or evacuation because 

of some chemical explosion caused by terrorists. 

35

Second, things are not going to come labeled. We are not going 

to necessarily know, is this a terrorist attack? A levee could be 

breached because of a natural problem or it could be breached because of a terrorist problem. 

The last thing we need to do is to create a new stovepipe where 

people are competing about this. 

Senator BENNETT. I apologize for interrupting you, but I wanted 

to get that point and go back to your overall——

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think that a big part of this is going to 

be building a culture of preparedness and planning where we really 

integrate our planning and our preparedness with our state and 

local partners, and that means really getting into specifics in a way 

that I don’t know we always have in the past and asking the hard 

questions like we are in the process of doing now. What is your 

evacuation plan? What are you going to do if the bus drivers don’t 

show up to drive the buses out? These are the kinds of hard questions we can only answer if we really put the resources and the effort into preparedness that we are doing thanks to this Congress’ 

appropriation for preparedness this year and what we are going to 

do going forward. 

At the end of the day, I would like to feel that in terms of the 

spectrum of prevention, protection, and response, this Department 

is all hands on every single one of those things, and while we are 

always going to have challenges, I mean, you are never going to 

have a natural catastrophe that is anything but difficult and ugly, 

I would like to do the best humanly possible to have us in a position to spare people’s suffering and pain during those kinds of catastrophes. 

Senator BENNETT. Thank you. I wish you well. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Levin. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN 

Senator LEVIN. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and welcome to 

you, Secretary Chertoff. 

You have already mentioned to us in your statement that the 

breaches in the levees caught you by surprise. You only referred to 

the breach in the levees and not to the size of the storm. It was 

the fact that the levees broke that you were referring to the week 

in question when you said you were caught by surprise, is that a 

fair statement? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. It is fair with just this one additional fact. 

I would not have been surprised on Monday morning to hear about 

levee breaches. What surprised me is my going home Friday night, 

12 hours after the storm had passed, or 10 hours after the storm 

had passed, having seen a report that said there were no significant breaches, and then to find out the next morning that there 

had been a breach. That is what surprised me. 

Senator LEVIN. You mean Monday night instead of Friday night? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I am sorry, yes, Monday night instead of 

Friday. 

Senator LEVIN. Now, the President said on Thursday, September 

1, on Good Morning America, ‘‘I don’t think anyone anticipated the 

breach of the levees.’’ That is not accurate, is it? 

36

Secretary CHERTOFF. My understanding is he meant what I 

meant, which is the perception was that although it would not have 

been a surprise on Monday morning to learn about breaches of levees, based on what, speaking for myself, I knew Monday evening, 

thinking it was over, I was surprised on Tuesday morning. 

Senator LEVIN. There had been a long list of studies that anticipated breach of the levees, is that true? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Breach and over-topping, yes. 

Senator LEVIN. Let us just talk breach. The Corps of Engineers 

as early as 1994 talked about a possibility of breach. In 2000, the 

Corps of Engineers talked about the possibility of breach. Your own 

Assessment Center talked about the possibility of breach of the levees, is that not accurate? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t know all of the reports, but I know 

there has certainly been a lot of discussion over the years of that 

as a possibility. 

Senator LEVIN. Well, let me read to you, then, your own Assessment Center report on Sunday prior to landfall. It said the following, that New Orleans is surrounded by a 130-mile system of 

levees to protect the urban area. It lies six feet below sea level from 

surrounding waters. The potential for severe storm surge to overwhelm Lake Pontchartrain levees is the greatest concern for New 

Orleans. Any storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to 

severe flooding and/or levee breaching. This was immediately prior 

to landfall. 

Now, did you receive that report? You were supposed to receive 

it in your Monday morning briefing. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t remember the specific report, but 

again, I want to make it clear, I have no doubt that I knew that 

as the storm approached, one possible outcome was levee breaching, and I have never heard anybody suggest that they didn’t realize that was a possibility. 

Senator LEVIN. Well, no, you suggested it on television——

Secretary CHERTOFF. No, what I said was given my—what I had 

been told had happened on Monday, which is that the worst had 

not occurred, I did not anticipate that I would get a report on Tuesday morning that said, oh, you know what? The worst did occur. 

Senator LEVIN. The way you talked later on that week, you said, 

‘‘I will tell you that really that perfect storm of combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners and maybe anybody’s foresight.’’ But it didn’t escape the foresight of planners. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well——

Senator LEVIN. The planners said, and you now acknowledge, 

that you were aware of the fact that the levees could be breached. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I certainly was aware of it. I think what I 

was referring to was the particular combination of events. 

Senator LEVIN. It didn’t come across that way to me, but——

Secretary CHERTOFF. I am quite sure I have said things in the 

press that don’t come across the way I intended them to, but I am 

telling you what I thought at the time. 

Senator LEVIN. When you went to bed on Monday night, not 

knowing that the levees had been breached, this is in the face of 

all kinds of communications to your agency saying that the levees 

had been breached on Monday. There was an 11:13 a.m. e-mail to 

37

1The information submitted by Senator Levin appears in the Appendix on page 162. 

your Director of Response, is it Michael Lowder, saying flooding is 

significant throughout the region and the levee in New Orleans has 

reportedly been breached, sending six to eight feet of water 

throughout the Ninth Ward area of the city. That is 11:13 a.m. on 

Monday. 

At 11:51 a.m. on Monday, New Orleans Fire Department is reporting a 20-foot-wide breach on the Lake Pontchartrain-side levee. 

That was an e-mail from FEMA’s Michael Heath to FEMA’s Deputy Director of Response, Michael Lowder. You have got later reports on Monday saying the same thing. 

We just have received, belatedly, may I say, a Coast Guard report. The Committee has been frustrated in getting a number of 

documents. That was reported a couple of days ago by the Government Accountability Office, I believe, reported difficulty in getting 

documents. The Committee just received this document from—this 

is a Coast Guard e-mail going directly into your ops center, your 

HSOC at the Department of Homeland Security, and this is dated 

Monday, 1:51 p.m. A levee in New Orleans has been breached, 

sending three to eight feet of water into the Ninth Ward area of 

the city. 

Now, that is not stovepiping. That goes directly into your operation, and yet 10 hours later, you go to bed believing that there 

had been no breach because you received a report at 6 p.m., apparently, saying that there had been no breach of the levees yet at 6 

p.m. Is that so far accurate? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, that is not the only reason because I 

had been asking repeatedly and getting repeatedly oral reports 

about what was going on, not from my ops center people, and had 

not gotten a report that there was a significant breach of the levees. 

Senator LEVIN. Well, your ops center was notified a number of 

times during the day that there was a significant breach of the levees, including from the Coast Guard. I don’t know if this document 

is part of the record yet, but if it isn’t, I would ask that it be made 

part of the record, Madam Chairman.1

Chairman COLLINS. Without objection. 

Senator LEVIN. A levee in New Orleans—this is 1:51 in the afternoon—a levee in New Orleans has been breached, sending three to 

eight feet of water into the Ninth Ward area of the city. Now, 

something is not working well in your shop if you are not notified 

of that. You have all these communications systems right at your 

hand. You indicated you can be contacted within seconds. They are 

with you all the time. And yet you go to bed 10 hours later without 

apparently being aware of the most significant event that had happened in New Orleans following landfall, which is the breach of 

those levees. Who was responsible for not getting you that information from your ops center to you? Have you found out? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Let me, first of all, be fair in saying that—

and here again, and I have spoken to General Broderick about this, 

he has testified before you because I know he was dismayed at the 

fact that he didn’t know and I didn’t know. First of all, some of 

what you have read, I think, are internal e-mail communications 

38

among FEMA people, which as I have said previously is not the 

way you organize and communicate information. 

You have a Coast Guard document. I haven’t seen it, or I don’t 

know if I have seen it. There was information flowing in, as I think 

Mr. Broderick testified and certainly as he told me, that was imperfect, conflicting, indefinite, and he made judgments about when 

things were—he was comfortable enough with the facts to pass 

them up to the leadership of the Department. 

By way of example, I think at 12:09 p.m., I see an e-mail, which 

I didn’t see at the time, where Michael Brown says to Michael 

Lowder that he is being told that what was described as a breach 

is water over, not a breach. So there is that issue——

Senator LEVIN. My question is, have you made an effort to discover how it was that these messages——

Secretary CHERTOFF. I know how it is. 

Senator LEVIN. This was known early Monday morning, right? 

We have testimony saying that the helicopter, the Coast Guard 

man flew over, saw the breach in the morning, confirmed it in the 

evening, took the pictures which I believe Senator Dayton showed 

you. Those pictures all were there before you went to bed. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I agree that by late Monday, or by the time 

those pictures were taken——

Senator LEVIN. How do these screw-ups happen? I mean, have 

you looked into them? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes. The answer is, I have looked into 

them——

Senator LEVIN. How did they happen? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think it is a combination. Some of these 

messages never got to the operations center. Some of them did, but 

there were conflicting stories, so there was an effort made to ascertain what the truth was. Was there really a breach? How significant was it? 

Senator LEVIN. Should there have been that effort made? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, there was an effort and it should 

have been made. The problem is it wasn’t made—the effort did not 

proceed the way it should have proceeded. Let me try to put it this 

way. I give a lot of credit to Marty Bahamonde for getting on a 

Coast Guard helicopter to take those pictures, but he never should 

have had to do it. We should have had the capability on Monday 

to put on the ground not a public affairs officer, but trained officers 

who would go out and actually do a survey and would have communicated that back to us. 

Senator LEVIN. I agree with that, but there were messages that 

came into your particular agency——

Secretary CHERTOFF. Right. 

Senator LEVIN [continuing]. Saying that there was a breach all 

day Monday that never got to you, apparently, by the time you 

went to bed. It is a critical issue, the breach of those levees. That 

is where the flooding——

Secretary CHERTOFF. Not only that, but——

Senator LEVIN. Because I am out of time, has anybody been held 

responsible, accountable for failing to do what they should have 

done in terms of either getting the data together, getting it to you, 

notifying you with that telephone that is right at your elbow? Is 

39

there any accountability except your coming before us and saying, 

I accept responsibility? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes, and let me make two points. It was 

not an issue of messages not being conveyed. The report at 6 p.m. 

affirmatively told me that reports were that levees hadn’t been 

breached, so there was—at that point, the judgment had been 

made there was not enough information. I have gone over this in 

quite painful detail with General Broderick. I have a lot of respect 

for him, and I trust him implicitly. I know he was unhappy about 

that. I know he has made adjustments in the operations center to 

deal with that. I have made it clear to him that while I respect and 

understand his desire to make sure the information is sufficiently 

grounded before he gets me, I would rather him reach me earlier 

with less perfect information. 

I have been through this fog of war stuff in September 11, and 

I vividly remember it there, so the answer is I have held people accountable, and I believe we have a process now that will be better, 

but I don’t underestimate the challenge of information flow. 

Senator LEVIN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Chafee. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CHAFEE 

Senator CHAFEE. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and welcome, 

Secretary. 

There has been a lot of criticism of what occurred in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and one of those is your attendance of the 

avian flu conference on Tuesday. However, I do think avian flu is 

a serious issue, and as we do look ahead, how are we prepared for 

that possibility? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think that actually is a challenge which 

is more difficult because unlike hurricanes, which we have done before, I don’t think anybody in living memory has dealt with something as potentially as serious as that, although it may never come 

to pass. The answer is that the President has put an enormous 

amount of his personal attention on this. We have a national strategy. We are working on a national implementation plan and Department plans. 

One of the things we have tried very hard to do, which is a lesson of Katrina, is engage early with State and local public health 

and homeland security officials because the Federal Government is 

not going to be able to do this by itself. The ground responsibility 

for managing a public health emergency and dealing with the collateral consequences will lie with State and local government, and 

they have got to start thinking about that. 

You know, we can deliver, for example, things out of the National 

Stockpile to an airport, but they have got to get them distributed 

to people. So I don’t want to make a bad pun, but I would say we 

are working feverishly to get this thing done because we don’t 

know if and when we are going to need it. 

Senator CHAFEE. Are there any specifics you can share with the 

American public that they should be undertaking? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. First of all, I want to make it very clear 

that it is important people not be alarmed. We talk generally about 

preparedness. We have a website, ready.gov, which deals with preVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:59 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 027032 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\27032.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
40

paredness, types of measures you can make for preparedness. I 

think HHS has a website up. A lot of what the public will be able 

to do will involve sanitary precautions, making sure you avoid 

things which allow transmission of infectious material. 

I have personally spoken to the CEOs of a number of very large 

corporations, and I have said to them, based on my experience in 

Katrina, which is now certainly had a lot of educative effect on me, 

that they need to start thinking about who their essential employees are, how they will keep their operations running if we have 

something. So I think what people can do is they can look to information that we are going to be putting out, look to their local officials. If they have business responsibilities, work with their companies to have contingency plans about continuity of operations and 

who is essential. 

Senator CHAFEE. Thank you. That is all I have. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Akaka. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Madam Collins. I want to 

commend you and the Ranking Member, Senator Lieberman, once 

again for your bipartisan diligence and the way in which you have 

conducted this investigation. In my humble opinion, you have 

served the Senate and our country well. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. I also want to acknowledge, Madam Chairman 

and Ranking Member Lieberman, the hard work of your staffs who 

have reviewed—maybe this is an understatement—hundreds of 

thousands of documents and conducted hundreds of interviews. I 

hope the country will be better prepared because of the efforts of 

the Committee and the Committee staff. 

I, along with my colleagues, will be considering what steps need 

to be taken to ensure that a future disaster does not result in the 

tragedies that befell the Gulf Coast. Mr. Secretary, many, including 

yourself, have accepted personal responsibility for what went 

wrong, but with due respect, I believe those who have lost loved 

ones, homes, and jobs may need more accountability than has been 

shown up to this point. You have a responsibility to convince the 

American people that you understand what went wrong with 

DHS’s response and to convince us that you have a clear strategy 

to ensure these mistakes will not be made again. 

Your statement outlines how large and catastrophic Hurricane 

Katrina was, but you were not as clear in explaining what went 

wrong. The issue is not the size of the disaster, but the quality of 

the response. Without knowing what really happened, the American people may not be convinced that the solutions you are proposing are the correct ones. 

Mr. Secretary, I want to follow up on a response you gave to Senator Lieberman. You said that if it had been a biological terrorist 

attack, you would have stood up the IIMG, the Interagency Incident Management Group, right away instead of waiting. Shouldn’t 

the Department be taking an all-hazards approach? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Absolutely, and I have said that repeatedly, 

but my point was this. The experts in the government in hurricanes were at FEMA. I mean, if there is anything that FEMA does 

41

and has done over the last 20 years, it has been hurricanes. Even 

Michael Brown had been through four prior hurricanes the previous year. So in terms of where I would look to for advice and expertise on what needs to be done to get ready to prepare for a hurricane, I couldn’t have collected a better group of people than the 

people who were already sitting around the table at FEMA headquarters. 

My point was that if we were dealing with a catastrophe that 

they hadn’t been accustomed to dealing with because they hadn’t 

faced it before, then I would have looked to bring experts in with 

the relevant disciplines, like, for example, medical people because 

there the way you deal with a response can be very influenced by 

the medical issues. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Secretary, I have asked questions in past 

hearings about the PFO and how it came about. The National Response Plan states that once an individual is named Principal Federal Officer, he or she ‘‘must relinquish the conduct of all normal 

duties and functions.’’ Last week, I asked former Deputy Director 

of FEMA Patrick Rhode what impact this provision had on his position. He responded that he was unaware of the provision and 

therefore was unaware that under the NRP, he became Acting 

FEMA Director while Michael Brown was PFO. Were you aware of 

this provision in the NRP when you named Mr. Brown to be PFO, 

and if so, did you communicate that information to Mr. Rhode? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. As I read this, it doesn’t actually require 

the PFO to resign or suspend. It requires him to spend full time 

being the PFO. I will tell you that, in fact, not only Michael Brown, 

but everybody at FEMA during this hurricane was doing nothing 

but working on Hurricane Katrina. So in practice, everybody was 

focused 100 percent on Hurricane Katrina, and FEMA was dealing 

with nothing but Hurricane Katrina. 

I want to make one point clear, though, that in terms of who is 

running things back in headquarters, and I respect Mr. Rhode, he 

is very intelligent, and he worked hard, but the person who was 

the Chief Operating Officer was a very experienced veteran of 

FEMA of, I don’t know how many years, but many years with a 

lot of emergency background experience, and he and the team of 

people around him were the people that we really looked to in 

terms of the actual management of the agency while Mr. Brown 

was down in the Gulf. 

Senator AKAKA. Would you be able to give the name of that person? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. It is Ken Burris; he was the Chief Operating Officer. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, and I thank you for that 

specific response. 

Making sure disaster victims have food, water, and ice is one of 

FEMA’s core responsibilities and probably one that average Americans most closely associate with FEMA. Given the importance of 

this mission, why was the FEMA logistics system ‘‘not up to the 

task of handling a truly catastrophic event,’’ as you have stated in 

your testimony? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Because although they ordered a lot of food, 

water, and ice, and for initial staging, the way they obtain it, and 

42

this is my understanding, is they don’t contract directly but they 

contract through, I think, the Army Corps of Engineers. I don’t 

think those contracts, at least as far as I know, require that the 

actual shipper provide real-time information about the location of 

shipments. I know from personal experience, just as does everybody 

in this room, that if you—I am not going to single out a particular 

company, but there are a lot of companies you can send a package 

in and they are going to tell you by the minute where that package 

is. 

So I guess my—it seems to me at a minimum what we need to 

do by June 1 is in the contract require that you put on the trucks 

the kind of communications that allows you to track where a truck 

is at any particular point in time, and that is something which just 

requires better contracting, better procurement. 

Senator AKAKA. Can you again be specific? Name who was responsible for ensuring that this was done right. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I was only 6 months in the Department, I 

don’t know who originally set up the arrangement to do contracting 

through other agencies. The business model of FEMA, which has 

existed for a while, which involves contracting with other people, 

because you have a very small agency, is not, I think, a necessarily 

good business model, and a lot of what we have suggested in the 

last week—and I want to be honest, we have been working on this 

for a few months. I announced it on Monday, but we have been 

looking at this since November and December of last year, is designed to alter that business model so that we do the kinds of 

things that I think people logically expect us to be able to do. 

Senator AKAKA. One of the problems that seems to appear is that 

DHS does not really have a point of contact in these disaster areas. 

Having a permanent consolidated DHS regional office in the Gulf 

Coast may have prevented some of the catastrophic response previous to Hurricane Katrina by establishing a strong preexisting 

relationship between DHS and State and local officials. Such an office would also have provided one DHS point of contact. A consolidated DHS presence is critical in Hawaii because we do not have 

neighboring states that can provide assistance during a catastrophic incident. Our only outside help would have to come from 

the Federal Government. The people of Hawaii want to know 

whether you will implement a regional office structure in DHS as 

required by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. We do, as I have indicated, although the 

exact details aren’t—I don’t think they are fully formed, we do look 

to have a regional DHS structure focused on the issue of preparedness, linked up with the military and linked up with the FEMA regions to have exactly what you are describing, a continuity of relationship and preparedness with the States within a region. 

Senator AKAKA. The reason I asked that specifically about Hawaii is that NORTHCOM is working with you, but NORTHCOM 

does not include Hawaii. A regional office there would certainly 

serve Hawaii as well as the Pacific and should be considered for 

a regional office, and that is my question to you. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I didn’t realize that was true. As we roll out 

the details of what we are doing in the next couple of months, I 

43

will certainly talk to Admiral Keating because it is critical that we 

be aligned in how we do these things. 

Senator AKAKA. I thank you so much for your responses. As you 

know, this Committee wants to learn all we can about the mistakes 

and try to work on solutions with you on helping our country. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I look forward to that. We have a lot of 

work to do. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Lautenberg. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Thank you. Mr. Secretary, we have known 

each other some time, and I had been a big booster for—boaster, 

as well—for you when you took on this important assignment. 

While there are questions asked now about what happened, when, 

where, the fact of the matter is that the situation was so unique, 

not to make any excuses and not to relieve anybody of blame, but 

when Michael Brown was here, I suggested that maybe he was the 

designated scapegoat, and I think what happens is there are probably several designated scapegoats because the fingers are pointing 

all over. Some of it is productive and some of it, I think, is not really significant. 

Starting from the present situation back, our visitor here who 

couldn’t stand the frustration spoke aloud, respectfully, about 

wanting to see something happen. In the last 2 weeks, we had several hundred—in the last 10 days, several hundred people from 

New Orleans come in here and crowding the room, SD–G50, that 

we have in this building, it is our largest meeting room, just asking 

for some relief, some help. They can’t understand why approaching 

the sixth month since this terrible disaster hit, why it is that we 

still can’t find our way out of the morass and get things done, 

whether it is the trailers or it is who did what to whom. I think 

the gentleman was correct in raising it, maybe out of sorts with our 

meetings here, but that is all right. We forgive him for that. We 

understand what he wanted to say and what he wanted to do, and 

I would like to see us get it done. 

But starting from a point in time when the President of the 

United States on Friday after the disaster struck on Monday, he 

said that Brown, in his familiar vernacular now, was doing a heck 

of a job. ‘‘Brownie, you have done a heck of a job.’’ Now, what possessed—what can you imagine gave the President the opportunity 

to do that? He must have had some knowledge of something, and 

I am not defending Brown. I am not going to defend anybody here 

because when this tragedy hit, there isn’t anything of this kind of 

magnitude that doesn’t end up including mistakes, accidents, etc. 

It doesn’t excuse it. We have got to be better at it. 

What, do you think, possessed the President to give that pat on 

the back? I mean, he had to be familiar with what was happening. 

It was 5 days later. It wasn’t like it happened 2 hours ago and the 

guy jumps in the water to rescue somebody. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t want to speak for the President, but 

I can just tell you in general in dealing with these kinds of circumstances, I think whatever, speaking for myself, I viewed or was 

beginning to view as Michael Brown’s shortcomings, everybody was 

44

very tired, working with very little sleep, away from their families, 

and it is easily understandable to me that in a larger—for people, 

the message you want to send is a message of encouragement and 

recognition of the fact that, whether people are being successful or 

not, they are certainly operating under difficult circumstances. 

So I didn’t regard the comment as a real judgment, and I didn’t 

view it as limiting me in my ability to remove Mr. Brown, which 

is what I did over the weekend. I viewed it as a courteous effort 

to make—kind of buck the troops up. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Well, the thing was so replete with mistakes made accidentally or intentionally or otherwise. This wasn’t 

an ordinary citizen. This was the President of the United States 

saying you have done a good job, a pat on the back to ameliorate 

a disaster, it didn’t seem right and thereby forces me to ask the 

question, well, could Brown have been as bad as everybody says or 

is he, again, the designated scapegoat? 

I think it is critical that the happenings of August 29, 2005, be 

reviewed by an independent commission. There is too much fodder 

here for the political functioning which takes place. People are interested in the legitimate questions that are raised. Though almost 

everything has been said, everybody hasn’t said it, and that is 

standard around here. 

Were you aware of the transportation decisions on, let us say, 

Amtrak, the decision on Amtrak? Amtrak had a train sitting there 

that could have taken 600 people out. Do you know why it didn’t? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t. I guess they pulled out on Saturday. I became aware of that, and I don’t know if I ever really 

learned the reason why they did that. I don’t know whether it was 

because people didn’t know to show up or whether Amtrak pulled 

back too quickly. I know I actually worked very hard with people 

at DHS to get Amtrak back in during the middle of the week after 

landfall so we could expedite the departures, but I can’t tell you definitively why that train moved out on Saturday with empty 

spaces. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Well, I heard from Secretary Mineta that 

the train was there and nobody would get on. I think they wound 

up with less than 100 people. And once again, somebody is pointing 

fingers at someone else. 

The statement that you made earlier may have been confusing—

it was for me—about when you learned of the size of this disaster. 

When would you say your first reliable awareness came? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I knew about the hurricane when the 

hurricane hit, and obviously even a Category 3, almost Category 4, 

hurricane hitting is in and of itself a huge disaster. I think as it 

relates to this substantial breach of the levees, I learned about that 

on Tuesday morning at—between 6 and 7 a.m., approximately 7 

a.m. when I got the report. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. OK because there were wires—that is old 

fashioned—e-mails sent out, one of them August 29 that Senator 

Levin talked about. This one was sent out at 9 a.m., Monday, August 29, from a man named Dabdoub, Louis Dabdoub, to Michael 

Waters, other people at DHS, and it says, getting bad, major flooding in some parts of the city, people calling in for rescue, trapped 

in attics, means the water is 10 feet high there already. Trees 

45

1 Exhibit A appears in the Appendix on page 173. 

blowing down. Flooding is worsening every minute. Infrastructure 

issues are rapidly being taxed and most of the area has lost electricity.1 This is Monday morning, 9 in the morning, and you didn’t 

learn about this, Mr. Secretary, until Tuesday morning? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, let me separate flooding, which, you 

know, from over-topping in a hurricane and also a tremendous 

amount of rain, that I don’t think anybody was in doubt was happening on Monday. I think the critical issue was the breach of the 

levee because the breach of the levee is what amplifies the danger 

from the hurricane. This particular communication didn’t reach me. 

It doesn’t look like it is directed to DHS. One of the things I have 

said is the idea that what you do is send e-mails around FEMA 

without making sure that copies are getting to the operations center is, I think, part of the core of the reason I didn’t know these 

things. 

The second issue, of course, is you get a report from one person. 

You don’t know what the basis of the report is. I vividly remember, 

because I was on duty on September 11, unbelievable rumors that 

floated around on September 11 about stuff that was going on, 

bombs in Washington, and all that stuff had to be run down before 

you communicated with higher-ups. So there is always a tension 

between getting preliminary reports and figuring out what the 

truth is, but there is no doubt that part of the problem here was 

a disconnection between the FEMA channel of communication and 

the DHS channel of communication. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Well, if I may help, it was sent to Michael 

Waters, Headquarters, DHS, Mark Milicich, Headquarters, DHS, 

John McLaren, DHS. This was a general distribution to people at 

the top of DHS. Now, was there some kind of a thing that says, 

don’t disturb the Secretary or that these things didn’t come to you? 

One of the complaints was that Brown didn’t communicate with 

your office, he communicated directly, so he said, with the White 

House. Even bouncing off that wall would be to you. 

I find it, to use your word, astonishing that you didn’t really 

learn about the severity because whether it was the breach of the 

levees or whether it was just water coming in from wherever, people were standing with luggage on their heads, kids on their heads, 

and trying to save themselves from drowning. So unless there is 

some protocol that says, well, you don’t disturb the Secretary until 

X-point, Y-point, or whatever it is——

Secretary CHERTOFF. I would have to say quite the contrary, and 

I was not at all bashful about disturbing people in the operations 

center about what was going on. I think the challenge they had 

was is the report based on a reliable observation? Is it, you know, 

what are the actual facts on the ground? I think General Broderick 

explained it. I have been through the circumstance of hearing a lot 

of reports that come in that turn out to be untrue on numerous occasions in every element of my job in government. 

I can tell you emphatically the policy is the exact opposite of 

don’t disturb the Secretary. The criticism is most often, in general, 

why didn’t you call me earlier? My general rule is if I have seen 

it on TV and I haven’t heard about it first, I am going to be anVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:59 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 027032 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\27032.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
46

noyed, not just with respect to this but with respect to a whole host 

of things. I have made that clear, and frankly, we have gotten better. I get an earlier trigger on things, which is good. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Madam Chairman, there are several more 

questions, and rather than hold everybody up, I would like the Secretary to confirm that any questions that we submit in writing will 

be responded to, and I urge you, Mr. Secretary, to see a report that 

in 1996 was printed in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper about 

what happened when James Lee Witt was responsible for FEMA 

and that had been noted as a dumping ground for political figures. 

By 1996, and he came in 1992, that it was one of the best performing agencies for that kind of disaster situation and that James 

Lee Witt went to the trouble to get it fixed and get it operating 

properly. 

I urge, Mr. Secretary, that we get on with trying to solve the immediate problem. People are still displaced, whether it is the trailers that are now sinking in the mud or evacuation or distribution 

of funds that are essential, that we get on with that because the 

delay only compounds the mistakes that were made in the first 

place. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

Mr. Secretary, I realize that you are expected over at the House 

side for a hearing before the Appropriations Committee. All of us 

have many more questions that if you were able to stay, we would 

pose to you. But since you do have the obligation on the House 

side, we are not going to do a second round. 

We will, as Senator Lautenberg asked, expect you to respond to 

additional questions for the record, and because our next stage is 

going to be to compile a report, I would ask that questions from 

members be submitted by close of business tomorrow night and 

that you respond to us by close of business on February 28 so that 

we can proceed. Do I have your commitment on that? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes, and I appreciate the work the Committee has done, and I appreciate the opportunity to appear. I 

think that we have a lot of work to do together. I don’t want to 

minimize the amount that has to be done. There is a lot of preparation, but I think out of this, the redeeming value will be we will 

have been force-fed some very important lessons. 

Chairman COLLINS. That is absolutely true, and by learning 

those lessons, our goal is to improve our emergency preparedness 

for the next disaster, whether it is a man-made disaster, such as 

a terrorist attack, or another hurricane or natural disaster, and 

that has been our goal, as well. 

I am going to submit my full closing statement for the record in 

the interest of time, but I do want to take this opportunity to recognize the very hard work of the Committee staff under the leadership on this side of the aisle of Michael Bopp and David Flanagan. 

They have reviewed some 820,000 pages of documents. We have 

done interviews with more than 270 witnesses. We have held 20 

hearings. We probably will only have one or two more hearings. 

This concludes the major hearings, and we will now begin a report. 

I also want to thank Senator Lieberman for being such a terrific 

partner. Every interview, every hearing has had good participation 

from both sides of the aisle, such as our friend, Senator Akaka, 

47

who has worked very hard on this, and it has been the kind of bipartisan oversight investigation that this Committee has the proud 

heritage of accomplishing. 

We are going to proceed with our report with findings and recommendations. I want to thank you and the members of your Department for your cooperation in the investigation. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Collins follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS 

I would like to thank Secretary Chertoff for his testimony. The topics discussed 

in today’s hearing go to the heart of the shortcomings in the response to Hurricane 

Katrina. But lest we forget, the next hurricane season is right around the corner 

and, of course, a terrorist attack could happen any place, at any time. Unfortunately, I am not confident that we as a Nation are prepared to respond to either 

threat. 

This Committee’s investigation revealed systemic problems hindered the Department’s response to Hurricane Katrina. The Committee’s report will detail its findings and offer recommendations to fix problems—those problems must be fixed, and 

fixed promptly. 

Perhaps the problem that most concerns me is the report of apparent infighting 

and turf battles within DHS. The mottto of the Department is ‘‘One Team. One 

Fight.’’ But in direct defiance of that motto, the situation this Committee has unveiled looks more like a free for all at the Department. Be assured that this Committee will aggressively oversee your efforts to better integrate the various components into one team. 

I look forward to working with you to implement reforms to ensure that as a Nation we are better prepared and will respond more effectively to the next catastrophic event. 

The hearing record will be held open until close of business tomorrow, February 

16, for the submission of questions or other materials.

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Lieberman. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Madam Chairman. Let 

me join you, first, in thanking our staff, which has done an extraordinary job, and let me thank you personally because you, as Chairman, have really set the tone. So much around Congress these days 

descends almost immediately into partisanship. This is not a partisan inquiry, and it should not be. We all have an interest in improving the Federal Government’s performance the next time disaster strikes, and that is the tone that you have set. It has been 

a pleasure, as always, to work with you. It always seems so foolish 

that our staffs go separate ways when we all have the same goal, 

and in this case, our staffs have worked together to maximize our 

realization of that goal. 

Secretary Chertoff, I thank you for your testimony here today. 

You know, I appreciate the fact that, in some sense, in response to 

the questions that I raised in my opening statement, you acknowledged your legal responsibility as the Nation’s primary official in 

charge of preparation and response to disasters and you acknowledged that the preparation for Hurricane Katrina was inadequate, 

you said particularly with regard to transportation. 

Of course, I agree with you. I think one of the most pathetic moments of our hearing was last week when Mr. Brown was in and 

I asked him why, in response to General Landreneau of the Louisiana National Guard who asked him for buses desperately to get 

those people out of the Superdome, out of the Convention Center, 

out of New Orleans, and he said he would deliver them, and he 

didn’t deliver them until late Wednesday night or Thursday morning, and they went through those 3 days of hell that we all saw. 

48

But unfortunately, there were failures in a lot of other areas. I 

know you cited transportation, maybe because of its consequences, 

and search and rescue and deployment of assets and helping special needs people, law and order, medical needs, and then finally 

in communications and situational awareness. 

Personally, I don’t like the ‘‘fog of war’’ term in this regard. Fog 

of war is a term that comes from Clausewitz. I always thought it 

meant the inability to have what we now call situational awareness 

on a battlefield because so much was going on. But this is the 21st 

Century. Clausewitz was a long time ago. We have the most extraordinary technological capability, and you should have known. 

I guess what I want to say in response to all of this is that you 

had the capability. It wasn’t used well, and it wasn’t used early 

enough. I will tell you, I know maybe it is not appropriate to do 

it in public, but I hope you are really furious about the fact that 

your Department let you go to bed on Monday night not knowing 

that the levees were broken, notwithstanding a little bit of conflicting evidence, but most of the evidence, we have got 15 different 

communications that went direct to your operations center in which 

we invest millions of dollars every year, and somebody should have 

told you much earlier on. 

The Coast Guard, very briefly, was cited, and they were a star 

here. And part of what they did is what we would have hoped the 

whole Department did, and they testified to us that is just what 

they do and they did it on their own. They had no authority, no 

special permission from anybody. They prepositioned assets as they 

listened to the Weather Service on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 

When the hurricane struck, they were right there that afternoon. 

And that, I hope, will be the model and the standard that you and 

we will take forward as we try to make this better. 

I will say, to end on a note of encouragement, which in some 

ways also is an indictment of the performance of the Department 

and the Federal Government during Katrina, when Hurricane Rita 

was coming, you led exactly the kind of pre-landfall aggressive effort by the Department and the Federal Government that really 

put us in a position to protect people, which is what, looking back, 

surely should have happened before Katrina. 

So thank you for your testimony, and as you said, we have got 

a lot of work to do together. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. This hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:08 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(49)

A P P E N D I X 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH 

Chairman Collins and Senator Lieberman, thank you for your tireless oversight 

work investigating the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. 

Secretary Chertoff, I appreciate your being with us today. 

It has become clear that there were serious and regrettable deficiencies in the response at every level of government during the days leading up to and following the 

unprecedented catastrophe in the Gulf Coast. 

My hope is that we can move past the finger pointing to make useful adjustments 

at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Secretary, the most important thing 

you can tell us today is that the Department of Homeland Security has learned the 

difficult lessons from this tragedy. I would like to be assured that, under your leadership, the Department is doing everything it can to address its shortcomings so 

that in the future, DHS and FEMA will be able to effectively assist State and local 

governments in responding to catastrophic events. I hope we can all work together 

in the coming months to identify and implement the appropriate modifications to 

improve our Nation’s disaster preparedness and response capabilities. 

Thank you.

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