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S. Hrg. 109–863

HURRICANE KATRINA: RECOMMENDATIONS

FOR REFORM

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MARCH 8, 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 

AMY L. HALL, Counsel 

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Minority Staff Director and Counsel 

ROBERT F. MUSE, Minority General Counsel 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Minority Professional Staff Member 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Opening statements: Page 

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

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 5

Senator Lautenberg .......................................................................................... 10

Senator Coleman .............................................................................................. 24

Senator Levin .................................................................................................... 29

WITNESSES

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2006

Hon. Barbara A. Mikulski, a U.S. Senator from the State of Maryland ............. 6

Hon. David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, U.S. Government Accountability Office ............................................................................. 11

Richard L. Skinner, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Homeland Security ......................................................................................................................... 14

Bruce P. Baughman, President, National Emergency Management Association, Director, Alabama State Emergency Management Agency ..................... 33

Frank J. Cilluffo, Associate Vice President for Homeland Security, Director, 

Homeland Security Policy Institute, The George Washington University ...... 38

Herman B. Leonard, Ph.D., Professor of Public Management, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard 

Business School, Harvard University ................................................................. 42

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Baughman, Bruce P.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 33

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 132

Cilluffo, Frank J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 38

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 140

Leonard, Herman B., Ph.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 42

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 148

Supplemental testimony with an attachment ................................................ 166

Mikulski, Hon. Barbara A.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 59

Skinner, Richard L: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 110

Walker, Hon. David M.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 11

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 62

APPENDIX

Donald F. Kettl, Director, Fels Institute of Government, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelpha, PA, prepared statement with an attachment .............. 178

John R. Harrald, Ph.D., Director, Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk 

Management, The George Washington University ........................................... 187

Questions and responses for the Record from: 

Mr. Walker ........................................................................................................ 193

Mr. Skinner ....................................................................................................... 202

Mr. Baughman .................................................................................................. 220

Mr. Cilluffo ........................................................................................................ 224

Mr. Leonard ...................................................................................................... 233

(1)

HURRICANE KATRINA: RECOMMENDATIONS 

FOR REFORM 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2006

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Hon. Susan M. Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Collins, Coleman, Lieberman, Levin, Carper, 

and Lautenberg. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS 

Chairman COLLINS. The Committee will come to order. 

Today, the Committee holds its 21st hearing on Hurricane 

Katrina. As this is our final hearing on Katrina, I would like to 

take this opportunity to thank all of my Committee colleagues, particularly my Ranking Member, Senator Lieberman, for their outstanding commitment to a matter of such importance to our Nation. 

I truly believe that this has been a model of a bipartisan investigation, and I am very grateful to Senator Lieberman for his leadership and cooperation. 

I would also like to express my deep appreciation to the Committee staff for their extraordinary efforts during this exhaustive 

and, at times, exhausting investigation. 

Eighty witnesses will have testified at our hearings. In addition, 

our staff has conducted more than 300 interviews and reviewed 

some 820,000 pages of documents. 

At our first hearing on Katrina, now nearly 6 months ago, I stated that it was this Committee’s intention to conduct a thorough, 

deliberate, and fair review of the preparation for and response to 

this disaster at all levels of government, and we have done just 

that. 

I also pledged that we would ask the hard questions in order to 

learn why local, State, and Federal authorities did not work together as one cohesive and effective unit. A structure crafted with 

great investments of time, energy, and money after the attacks of 

September 11 failed its first major test. We now have a far better 

understanding of why the system failed the people of the Gulf region. 

The excuse that we have heard from some government officials 

throughout this investigation has been that Katrina was an unforeVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
2

seeable ultra-catastrophe. While Katrina was, indeed, the worst 

natural disaster in our country in modern times, it had been anticipated for years and was specifically forecast for days. 

That justification also misses the point that we need to be ready 

for the worst that nature or evil men can throw at us. Powerful 

though it was, the most extraordinary thing about Hurricane 

Katrina was our lack of preparedness for a disaster so long predicted. 

Our 20 hearings to date have taken us from the front lines of 

search and rescue to the top of the Department of Homeland Security. They have provided us with a tremendous body of knowledge 

about the emergency preparation and response tactics that worked 

and those that did not. 

Now it is time to turn this tactical knowledge into a new strategy. Thus, today, we turn our attention to the recommendations for 

reform. This is not the first time that the devastation of a natural 

disaster brought about demands for a better, more coordinated government response. In fact, this process truly began after a series 

of natural disasters in the 1960s and into the 1970s. 

One of those disasters was Hurricane Betsy, which hit New Orleans in 1965. The similarities between Betsy and Katrina are striking: Levees were overtopped and breached, severe flooding, communities destroyed, thousands rescued from rooftops by helicopters, 

thousands more by boat, and far too many lives lost. 

In a report published in 1993, a year after Hurricane Andrew hit 

Florida, the GAO wrote, ‘‘The response to Hurricane Andrew raised 

doubts about whether FEMA is capable of responding to catastrophic disasters and whether it had learned any lessons’’ from 

previous disasters. 

One could simply substitute Katrina for Andrew, and unfortunately, the same conclusions would be valid today. And that is very 

disturbing. 

Indeed, during the last half century, the Federal Government has 

experimented with eight different emergency management structures from the Housing and Home Finance Administration of the 

1950s to the latest incarnation of FEMA within the Department of 

Homeland Security. Katrina has revealed that this kaleidoscope of 

reorganizations, unfortunately, has not improved our disaster management capability during these critical years. 

Our purpose and our obligation now is to move forward to create 

a structure that brings immediate improvement and continual 

progress. This will not be done by simply renaming agencies or 

drawing new organizational charts. We are not here to rearrange 

the deck chairs on a ship that, while perhaps not sinking, is certainly adrift. 

This new structure must be based on a clear understanding of 

the roles and capabilities of all emergency management agencies. 

It must establish a strong chain of command that encourages, empowers, and trusts front-line decisionmaking. It must replace ponderous, rigid bureaucracy with discipline, agility, cooperation, and 

collaboration. 

It must build a stronger partnership among all levels of government, with the responsibilities of each partner clearly defined, and 

3

it must hold them accountable when those responsibilities are not 

met. 

We know our goal. I look forward to the views our witnesses will 

offer today on how to achieve it. I have a number of questions that 

I am going to be raising. I am going to insert them in the record 

in the interest of time. 

I am particularly pleased that we are going to hear today from 

our distinguished colleague, Senator Mikulski of Maryland. She is 

a dedicated advocate for reform of our emergency response system. 

Due to her work on the Appropriations Committee, she brings a 

great deal of knowledge to this issue. 

We are also fortunate that our other witnesses today will provide 

a wide range of experience and expertise that will help us craft a 

national emergency management system that will better serve the 

American people during disasters, whether they are acts of nature 

or acts of men. 

The hearings that the Committee has conducted form a solid 

foundation for the work that lies ahead. As we proceed, we would 

do well not just to bear in mind what we have learned in this room, 

but also to take to heart what many of us have seen in the ruins 

of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and in the devastated neighborhoods of New Orleans. 

The suffering in those places is great, but the determination of 

the people there to rebuild their lives is even greater. Our determination to build a truly effective national emergency management 

system must be just as strong. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Collins follows:]

PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS 

Today, the Committee holds its 21st hearing on Hurricane Katrina. As this is our 

final hearing, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my Committee colleagues, particularly the Ranking Member, Senator Lieberman, for their outstanding commitment to a matter of such importance to our Nation. 

I also would like to express my deep appreciation to Committee staff for their extraordinary efforts during this exhaustive (and at times exhausting) investigation. 

Eighty witnesses will have testified at our hearings. In addition, our staff has conducted more than 300 interviews and reviewed some 820,000 pages of documents. 

At our first hearing on Katrina, now nearly 6 months ago, I stated that it was the 

Committee’s intention to conduct a thorough, deliberate, and fair review of the preparation for and response to this disaster at all levels of government. We have done 

that. 

I also pledged that we would ask the hard questions in order to learn why local, 

State, and Federal authorities did not work together as one cohesive and effective 

unit. A structure crafted with great investments of time, energy, and money after 

the attacks of 9/11 failed its first major test. We now have a far better understanding of why the system failed the people of the Gulf Region. 

The excuse that we have heard from some government officials throughout this 

investigation has been that Katrina was an unforeseeable ultra-catastrophe. While 

Katrina was the worst natural disaster in our country in modern times, it had been 

anticipated for years and was specifically forecast for days. That justification misses 

the point that we need to be ready for the worst that nature or evil men can throw 

at us. Powerful though it was, the most extraordinary thing about Katrina was our 

lack of preparedness for a disaster so long predicted. 

Our 20 hearings to date have taken us from the front lines of search and rescue 

to the top of the Department of Homeland Security. They have provided us with a 

tremendous body of knowledge about the emergency preparation and response tactics that worked, and those that did not. 

Now it is time to turn this tactical knowledge into a new strategy. Thus, today, 

we turn our attention to the recommendations for reform. 

4

This is not the first time the devastation of a natural disaster brought about demands for a better, more coordinated government response. In fact, this process 

truly began after a series of natural disasters in the 1960s and into the 1970s. One 

of those disasters was Hurricane Betsy, which hit New Orleans in 1965. The similarities with Katrina are striking: Levees overtopped and breached, severe flooding, 

communities destroyed, thousands rescued from rooftops by helicopters, thousands 

more by boat, and too many lives lost. 

In a report published in 1993, a year after Hurricane Andrew hit Florida, the 

GAO wrote that, and I quote, ‘‘the response to Hurricane Andrew raised doubts 

about whether FEMA is capable of responding to catastrophic disasters and whether 

it had learned any lessons’’ from previous disasters. One could simply substitute 

‘‘Katrina’’ for ‘‘Andrew,’’ and, unfortunately, it would be valid today. 

Indeed, during the last half-century, the Federal Government has experimented 

with eight different emergency management structures, from the Housing and 

Home Finance Administration of the 1950s to the latest incarnation of FEMA within 

the Department of Homeland Security. Katrina revealed that this kaleidoscope of 

reorganizations has not improved our disaster management capability during these 

critical years. 

Our purpose and our obligation now is to move forward to create a structure that 

brings immediate improvement and that guarantees continual progress. This will 

not be done by simply renaming agencies or drawing new organizational charts. We 

are not here to rearrange the deck chairs on a ship that, while perhaps not sinking, 

certainly is adrift. 

This new structure must be based on a clear understanding of the roles and capabilities of all emergency management agencies. It must establish a strong chain of 

command that encourages, empowers, and trusts front-line decision-making. It must 

replace ponderous, rigid bureaucracy with discipline, agility, cooperation, and collaboration. It must build a stronger partnership among all levels of government 

with the responsibilities of each partner clearly defined, and it must hold them accountable when those responsibilities are not met. 

We know our goal. I look forward to the views our witnesses will offer today on 

how to achieve it. To that end, it is essential that we hear their views on such questions as: 

How do we design a comprehensive emergency management structure that is focused on all-hazards mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery? 

What role should the Federal Government play in ensuring that State and local 

governments are prepared to respond to disasters? 

What is the best use of the Federal Government’s resources when a disaster 

strikes? 

What is the appropriate role for the Department of Defense in a domestic disaster? 

What changes might be needed to the Stafford Act so that there are no statutory 

impediments to carrying out the preparedness and response functions, so that Federal actions can start well before State and local resources are overwhelmed? 

What will be required to make the FEMA Director’s position one that will be 

sought by experienced professional emergency managers? 

And, central to the Committee’s oversight responsibilities, what changes are needed so that DHS will become more effective in all stages of emergency management—

prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery? 

I am especially pleased to welcome our distinguished colleague, Senator Mikulski, 

to the Committee. Senator Mikulski is a dedicated advocate for reform of our emergency response system. Our other witnesses today also provide a wide range of expertise and experience that will help us craft a national emergency management 

system that will better serve the American people during disasters, whether acts of 

nature or terrorist attacks. 

The hearings that the Committee has conducted form a solid foundation for the 

work that lies ahead. As we proceed, we would do well not just to bear in mind what 

we have heard in this room, but also to take to heart what many of us have seen 

in the ruins of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi or in the devastated neighborhoods of 

New Orleans. The suffering in those places is great, but the determination of the 

people there to rebuild is even greater. Our determination to build a truly effective 

national emergency management system must be just as strong.

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Lieberman. 

5

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Madam Chairman. I 

join you in welcoming our dear friend, distinguished colleague Senator Mikulski, and the other witnesses. 

After 21 hearings over the past 2 months and after hundreds of 

interviews conducted by our staffs and hundreds of thousands of 

documents, we are nearing the end of our investigation into one of 

the worst natural disasters in American history. A disaster whose 

effects and echoes will carry far into the future, making our work 

today that much more important. 

I want to join in the thanks that you expressed at the beginning 

of your remarks, and I begin with you. This has been actually an 

extraordinary experience in my 18 years now in the Congress. 

It has been a first-rate investigation. It has been nonpartisan. It 

has been professional. It has been thorough. And that all starts 

with the tone and substance that you have set as the Chairman of 

the Committee, and I can’t thank you enough for that and the good 

working relationship that we have had. And I know that we are 

going to stick together to finish this work and make the soundest, 

most constructive recommendations that we possibly can. 

I join you in thanking the other Members of the Committee, who 

have gone on this long march with us and contributed greatly, 

Members of both parties, to our work, and the staff. And I have to 

really say staff in the singular. One of the good aspects of this 

Committee is that we don’t have a Democratic staff and a Republican staff. We have, in this investigation, a staff working together 

to find out the truth and to help us learn from it. 

I thank them. Their work, like ours, is not done. As a matter of 

fact, they have a lot of work to do in putting together the enormous 

amount of information that this investigation has gathered and in 

helping us to express it in an informative and compelling way to 

our colleagues in the Senate and to people in the public generally. 

So we are concentrating on writing that report to try to explain 

to the American people what went wrong in the run-up to Hurricane Katrina and to its aftermath. And our hope, of course, is that 

in telling that story with as unwavering a commitment to the truth 

as we can marshal, we will help people learn lessons—those in 

power and those who are not—so that from knowledge and information will come change. 

It already has begun to happen in the Federal Government and 

the State and local as well. But just as importantly, we have a responsibility ourselves, having gone through this experience, to try 

to put forth our best ideas on what needs to be done to make sure 

that the next time—and there surely will be a next time—our government is better prepared to protect the American people. 

Today, we are going to hear from Senator Mikulski and other 

witnesses who have been working to improve our Nation’s preparedness for disasters, whether caused by terrorists or acts of nature, and they can help us enormously. 

The fact is that the failures of government associated with Hurricane Katrina were overwhelming, and they occurred at all levels. 

That is clear from our investigation and I know is self-evident at 

this point to the American people. Government’s response to 

Katrina was a national disgrace, and it has shaken the confidence 

6

1The prepared statement of Senator Mikulski appears in the Appendix on page 59. 

of the American people in their leaders’ ability to protect them 

when they most need that protection. 

However, out of this catastrophe, which has been followed, I am 

afraid, by a painfully slow and flawed recovery, we have a chance 

together to show the way to the creation of a new system of disaster preparedness, response, and recovery that learns from those 

agencies that worked very well, like the Weather Service and the 

Coast Guard, while reforming those that did not, like FEMA. That 

is our charge. 

I thank the witnesses. I hope that they will be bold in the recommendations that they make to us because the consequences, as 

we have seen in Katrina, of a lack of adequate preparation are severe to literally hundreds of thousands of people and to a great region of our country and one of the great cities of our country. 

And if we are not prepared to think boldly about how we can do 

better the next time, shame on us. So it is with that sense of high 

expectations that I look forward to this final, but very important, 

hearing in our Katrina investigation. 

And again, Madam Chairman, I thank you for your leadership. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

Senator Mikulski, we are delighted to have you with us today, 

and I would ask that you proceed with your statement. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. BARBARA A. MIKULSKI,1 A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND 

Senator MIKULSKI. Thank you very much, Chairman Collins and 

Ranking Member Lieberman. Thanks so much for inviting me to 

testify, and my kudos to the Committee. 

First of all, wherever the word ‘‘reform’’ rings out within the Congress, it seems to come to Government Ops to do the jobs. And you 

have been leading the way, both you, Senator Collins, and your colleagues, whether it was intel reform. And then after that, I thought 

you were going to get a breather this summer. Then, of course, now 

the Katrina reform and lobbying reform. 

This is obviously the reform committee and why I wanted to 

come and testify. You should be congratulated for the reputation 

the Committee has gained for its fairness, its thoroughness, its 

pragmatism, and also its collegiality and civility. Maybe if we all 

worked like this together, we would achieve reform. 

So I contacted the Committee after Katrina in September to see 

if I could offer my services to the Committee because in the 1990s, 

early 1990s, I was the Chair of the VA/HUD and Independent 

Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee that funded FEMA. And to 

offer what we did in terms of reform because of Hurricanes Hugo 

and Andrew, to see what were the lessons learned, why did FEMA 

lose its way, and some observations. 

In 1989, I became the Chairperson of the VA/HUD Subcommittee. FEMA was in the jurisdiction. Senator Garn, my wonderful colleague, was my ranking member. Well, what we found 

was that FEMA was a Cold War relic, and we went to work on a 

bipartisan basis, transforming it from a relic of the Cold War into 

a professional, prepared, all-hazards agency. 

7

Coming back to Katrina, sure, Katrina was the storm we all 

feared. In the hours and days after Hurricane Katrina, like all of 

you, I watched in disbelief and absolute frustration. Why? At the 

Federal Government’s befuddled and boondoggled response, blowing it. 

The people of the Gulf Coast were doubly victimized—first, by 

the hurricane; second, by the slow and sluggish response of our 

government. And I thought, how like Hugo, how like Andrew. I 

didn’t know about Betsy. So this, of course, has prompted reform. 

Well, back in 1989, when we took a look at this, what did I see? 

What I found out, as I took over the chairmanship of that subcommittee was that FEMA was a Cold War agency. It focused only 

on worrying about if we were hit by a nuclear attack. 

It was out of date. It was out of touch. It was riddled with political hacks. If you had to give somebody a favor job, whether it was 

at the Federal level or the State level, put them in civil defense. 

It was called ‘‘civil defense.’’

And many of us of my generation remember where we used to 

practice by hiding under those desks if war came. Well, that is the 

way the bureaucrats were. Any time there was a question, they hid 

under their desks. So we set about reform. 

They were focused on something called ‘‘continuity of government.’’ It was incompetent leadership, and they had ridiculous 

ideas. In the event of a nuclear war, stop first at the post office and 

leave your forwarding address to these three shelters. Oh, right. 

Absolutely. So you get a sense of what it was like. 

But Senator Garn and I looked at it, and then what happened 

was Hurricane Hugo hit the Carolinas, particularly South Carolina. 

FEMA’s response was very poor. The military had to come in to get 

the power back up in Charleston. The people went over a week 

without basic functions. Sound familiar? 

Our former colleague Senator Hollings had to call the President’s 

chief of staff, John Sununu, to get help and called the head of Joint 

Chiefs, then General Colin Powell, just to get generators from the 

Army. 

And it was like the Keystone cops. ‘‘Are you in charge?’’ ‘‘No, I 

am not in charge.’’ ‘‘Do you have the generators?’’ But they didn’t 

ask. It was all of that. In the meantime, there was no water. There 

was no utilities in Charleston. 

We began then to examine what steps we should take in reform. 

Along the way, we were hit by Andrew. Andrew was, again, the 

worst disaster. FEMA’s response was so bad, and they were so 

inept, that President Bush sent in Andy Card, then his Secretary 

of Transportation, to take over. 

I remember seeing a woman named Katie Hale saying, ‘‘Where 

in the hell is the cavalry? We need food. We need water. We need 

people.’’

So, having said all of that, it was very clear to Senator Garn and 

me that our job was to protect lives, protect people, and now, of 

course, protect the homeland. Working with Senator Garn, then 

with Senator Bond, we worked to change it. We commissioned 

three studies, and I would ask you to go take a look at them. 

One was a GAO study. The other was the National Academy of 

Public Administration, and then FEMA’s own IG—they do a specVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
8

tacular job, and I know you are going to hear from IG Skinner 

later. So we looked at all of this, and we wanted to be able to prevent, do what we could for prevention, and to do what we could to 

respond. 

Our goals then, and they continue now, are these. And they will 

go to reform. We said, first of all, FEMA had to be professionalized. 

You need a professional director and a professional staff. That whoever runs FEMA has to have a background in crisis management, 

either to come from emergency response at the State level, the way 

James Lee Witt and Joe Allbaugh did, or to come from the military 

or the private sector, where they have done crisis management and 

know how to organize large numbers of people. 

But not only professionalize Washington, but to insist that there 

be professionals at each State level. And I would emphasize reform 

must be also directed at the States because no matter how good 

James Lee was, no matter how dedicated Joe Allbaugh was, that 

if they didn’t have the States functioning well, it wouldn’t work. 

And as we know, the genius of our system is that each State will 

have a different type of threat. The terrain is different. The threat 

is different. And they need to be ready. So the professionalization. 

And the way was that each State submit a plan, and if you don’t 

do the right plan and do tabletops, you are not going to get the 

money. And I think you have to have a muscular way of having 

State plans that are in place with professional people and where 

there are benchmarks for measurement and then use the ultimate 

withholding. 

That is tough. But let me tell you, it worked. So that is why we 

go for the professionalization of FEMA. 

The second was we focused on it being a risk-based agency. That 

means to be prepared for any risk that Americans are most likely 

to face. Because we thought then that the threat of the Cold War 

was coming to an end. The wall was coming down in Berlin, but 

the wall wasn’t coming down in the Federal bureaucracy. 

So we said what are the risks? Well, threats were natural disasters. In our State, and we are coastal senators—I share a coastline 

with my colleague from Delaware—we are threatened by hurricanes. As soon as June comes, we are on our hurricane readiness 

thing. 

So regardless of what the threat is, and now it is even more important because whether it is an earthquake in California, a tornado in the Midwest, or, of course, the terrorist attack. 

Third, to be ready for all hazards. And again, it is the States that 

we get ready, with Washington offering command and control and 

the ultimate back-up of send in the cavalry should the States collapse. All hazards means to be prepared, like when we had a fire 

in the Baltimore tunnel that we didn’t know was predatory or not. 

A hazardous chemical spill. A hurricane. A tornado. Or even a dirty 

bomb. 

If we practice the three Rs of readiness, meaning that if we are 

ready, and we are ready at the State level, then we can respond 

where the threat occurs, and then you have the infrastructure 

ready for recovery. 

We were able to put the State plans, professionalize the agency, 

in place. What was never really ultimately addressed, though, was 

9

the Federal back-up if there is a complete collapse. That is something that I believe needs to be very carefully examined because of 

two things. 

First, I recall Governor Chiles of Florida when Andrew hit. He 

said, ‘‘We need NASA satellites to tell me what my coastline looks 

like. We can’t even call the first responders. The firehouses are 

under water.’’ And you know all of the great tragedies that you 

heard. 

There does come a time when there is only the Federal Government that can bring in under some kind of doctrine of mutual aid, 

really come in, and provide the resources necessary. We lost cities. 

We had never lost an entire city, except back to Betsy. That has 

to be dealt with. 

The other was the role of the Vice President, and our earlier recommendation was that the Vice President always backed the President up. But when a big disaster, like ‘‘the big one’s hit,’’ that the 

Vice President move to the Situation Room and really take charge 

to be ensured that the governors can handle the job, that the governors next to the States affected can provide mutual aid, and so 

on. 

Because it also is an appropriate role for the Vice President. 

Should the President be out of the country, the Vice President 

would be prepared. And also should the Vice President ever have 

to take over for any reason, the Vice President would know the 

complete working of the FEMA disaster plans and how it should 

work. 

There are those other questions, too, of legal authority, when the 

government takes over. So our three Rs have to be readiness, response, and recovery. To do that, we have to have professionalization, risk based, all hazards. 

Hurricanes are predictable. Terrorist attacks are not. And we 

have to be ready. And Madam Chairman and colleagues, I am concerned that whether it is avian flu, whether it is another hurricane—getting ready for the season—or something else, we don’t 

know the question ‘‘who is in charge?’’ That question has never 

been answered. Who manages the disaster? And most of all, who 

manages the panic around that, and who speaks? 

Your HELP Committee members have just done a tabletop on 

bioterrorism. It is the same. So I believe, first, maybe FEMA ought 

to be an independent agency. Take a look at that. Second, maybe 

we need a disaster response agency which handles this. But I also 

think that we need to take a look at what would be our response 

and how we would handle these others. 

Like avian flu, are we going to call FEMA in? Is FEMA going to 

be avian flu? I don’t know, if we have to respond. I don’t think so. 

I would hope not. 

But should we have a new framework for that? What are the 

legal authorities? Can a President supersede a governor, if necessary? These are the big questions. But I believe we can create the 

right infrastructure. We can be ready for the natural disasters and 

so on. 

I am going to conclude by saying when we work together—I don’t 

mean just us—it really works. We know how we have worked with 

Delaware. 

10

Just the other night, there was a terrible accident in a factory 

in West Virginia. The closest search and rescue team with helicopters was Maryland with our State police. But because they had 

worked together, because they had trained together, because they 

knew each other, they talked to each other, trusted each other, my 

wonderful Maryland State troopers were able to go fly that 90 

miles. 

The Coast Guard was too far away. This is up near our Appalachian region. And in pitch blackness, with power lines around 

them when they couldn’t see, they went down and were able to rescue two. And for the third, they weren’t sure whether he was going 

to get into the little basket that they have. But they stayed to 

make sure they were going to leave no one behind. 

Our State troopers did it, but they did it because they were professional. They were trained. They had worked together. They had 

trusted. That is what they did. 

That terrible night in West Virginia 48 hours ago should be a 

model of what we need. Let us work together, train together, and 

trust each other. 

Thank you very much. And I hope this has been useful. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much for your excellent testimony. It was, indeed, very useful, and we very much appreciate 

your sharing your experiences with us. 

I know you are on a tight schedule. So I am happy to dispense 

with any questions, unless any of my colleagues have a question? 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Just a quick statement. How refreshing it 

is to hear from someone who is not afraid to call a spade a shovel 

and whatever other language is suitable for the moment. 

But Senator Mikulski and I have served together for almost 20 

years, and she is always there in a leadership mode describing reality of what has to be done. She is more than ‘‘woe unto us,’’ and 

I thank Senator Mikulski for the respect that she brings to the 

Senate and for the affection in which we all hold her because of her 

thoughts and her words. Thank you. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Thank you, Senator Lautenberg. 

I am in this for the long haul. So as you look at your reform, 

through our conversations together, please count on me to be available for discussion, conversation, and to move a reform package. 

Thank you very much, and good luck with your work. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

I would now like to welcome our second panel of witnesses. David 

Walker began his 15-year term as Comptroller General of the 

United States in 1998. As Comptroller General, Mr. Walker is the 

Nation’s chief accountability officer and the head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. 

Richard Skinner is the Inspector General of the Department of 

Homeland Security and has been with the DHS IG office since it 

was established in 2003. Previously, and this is very helpful to our 

deliberations, he served in the FEMA IG office from 1991 to 2003. 

Because we are doing an ongoing investigation, we are swearing 

in our witnesses. So I will ask that you please rise. 

11

1The prepared statement of Mr. Walker appears in the Appendix on page 62. 

Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give to the 

Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 

truth, so help you, God? 

The WITNESSES. I do. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Mr. Walker, we will begin with 

you. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HON. DAVID M. WALKER,1 COMPTROLLER 

GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. WALKER. Chairman Collins, Senator Lieberman, other Senators, it is a pleasure to be back before you this time to speak on 

GAO’s preliminary observations regarding preparedness, response, 

and recovery issues dealing with Hurricane Katrina. 

As has been mentioned by the Chairman, GAO has been in this 

business for many years. Unfortunately, as Yogi Berra said, it’s 

‘‘Deja vu all over again,’’ in certain regards. 

It is important to note that we have done a tremendous amount 

of past work. We also have over 40 engagements under way right 

now. We have interviewed numerous people and looked at thousands of documents. I, myself, have had the opportunity not only 

to go to the region, but also to speak with all of the governors, with 

Mayor Nagin, and with the key responsible Federal officials in 

order to try to help provide you some of our insights as to what 

we have found to date. 

At the outset, as the Chairman mentioned, Katrina was of unprecedented size, scope, and magnitude, at least with regard to recent history for natural disasters in the United States. I might also 

note that a year ago, I had the opportunity to go to Indonesia and 

to view firsthand the devastation in Banda Aceh due to the tsunami, and Southern Mississippi looked very much like Banda Aceh. 

But for the twice flooding of New Orleans, I think the headlines 

would be about Southern Mississippi. Nonetheless, we are where 

we are. 

It is clear that due to the size, scope, and magnitude of Hurricane Katrina, that Federal, State, and local capabilities were overwhelmed. At the same point in time, we should have done better, 

and we should have learned from lessons past. Unfortunately, 

many of the recommendations the GAO made back in 1993 in the 

aftermath of Hurricane Andrew had not been adopted at the time 

that Hurricane Katrina hit. 

We found that there are four key lessons at this stage that need 

to be learned. I would respectfully request, Madam Chairman, that 

we include my full statement in the record. There are numerous 

observations and recommendations contained therein, and I will 

move to summarize them. 

First, leadership. Who is in charge? Who is responsible for what? 

There is a clear need to better define and communicate key leadership roles along with the related responsibilities and authorities, 

especially in connection with catastrophic events. I would respectfully suggest that putting aside the acronyms that proliferate in 

12

Washington, that there are at least three key roles that must exist 

when you are dealing with a catastrophic event. 

First, you need at least one Level 1, or Cabinet level, official, possibly even the Vice President, who would be designated by the 

President of the United States to be his or her point person. This 

person would look from the strategic perspective and coordinate the 

overall Federal response. This person would work with Cabinetlevel officials here in Washington, along with governors, mayors, 

and other key officials to make sure that the Federal Government 

did its part in connection with catastrophic events. 

If they are not at least Level 1, I would respectfully suggest they 

are not in a position to be successful. Because no matter how capable the person might be, level matters in this town, unfortunately, 

especially with regard to certain departments and agencies like the 

Department of Defense. Hierarchy is real. 

There needs to be a person who has overall responsibility and is 

deployed on the front line in the region to coordinate the overall 

operational activities of the Federal Government across geopolitical 

subdivisions, which, in this particular case, there were two States 

that were primarily affected, and four total States that were directly affected by the disaster. Many others were also affected later 

in dealing with those individuals who were displaced. 

Finally, we obviously need contracting officials in each of the respective geopolitical subdivisions to coordinate Federal contracting 

activities. So leadership is key. 

Second, the National Response Plan must be clarified. Inconsistencies must be addressed. And common sense must be applied. In 

particular with regard to the Catastrophic Annex, the idea that we 

would be less proactive in dealing with a known natural disaster 

just defies common sense. We must be proactive as soon as we can 

be, and therefore, it is important that situations like known Category 4 and 5 hurricanes be handled quickly and in advance of the 

actual catastrophic event taking place. 

I, myself, have been through a Category 4 hurricane. So I know 

what they are all about. The National Weather Service, in this particular case, did their job and provided adequate warning. Unfortunately, the government didn’t act quickly enough to respond to 

those warnings. 

Third, there must be additional planning and robust training and 

exercise programs involving the total force. The total force is Federal, State, local, military, and civilian as well as not-for-profit and, 

in some case, private sector for-profit entities because, let’s faceit, 

they have resources and capabilities that, in some cases, were mobilized in Katrina and could be mobilized to a greater extent in the 

future. Logistical capabilities and other types of assets that are 

needed in the aftermath of an event. 

Finally, we must strengthen our response and recovery capabilities. We must be more adequately resourced. We should consider 

pre-contracting arrangements negotiated not when we face an imminent crisis and have to buy things, but we should pre-contract 

and issue task orders in the event a catastrophe occurs. 

We should also employ pre-positioning strategies to a greater extent than we did in this case. If the military can do it to deal with 

military contingencies around the world, why can’t we do it to deal 

13

with natural disasters domestically? We should be pre-positioning 

to a greater extent than we have. 

We also must move beyond business as usual, bureaucratic approaches in the aftermath of a disaster. There were too many circumstances that I saw where people were trying to, ‘‘Well, this regulation says you have got to do this’’ before you can enter this 

building or before you can end up positioning something in a particular location. 

When we have a catastrophe, this is not a business as usual approach. Some of these changes may require legislation in order to 

allow agencies to otherwise override established regulations on a 

temporary basis in situations where certain provisions may make 

imminent good sense under normal circumstances. In the event of 

a catastrophe, we need to do things differently. 

A few sum-up comments. Risk management is of critical importance. We must employ a threat and risk-based approach to our actions and better target the limited resources that the government 

has. This government ran a $760 billion deficit on an accrual basis 

last year, an all-time record in the history of the United States. We 

need to employ more threat and risk-based approaches to our resource allocation decisions in order to get the most return on investment with whatever resources we have. 

There is some controversy about whether or not FEMA should 

continue to be in DHS or whether it should be spun out. There are 

pros and cons to that. But I would respectfully suggest that the 

quality and capabilities of FEMA’s leadership—and that is more 

than one person, I might add—as well as the adequacy of FEMA’s 

resources will probably have more to do with their ultimate success 

than whether or not they are in the Department of Homeland Security. 

Let us keep in mind that the Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Therefore, merely because one is or is 

not in the Department of Homeland Security is not, in and of itself, 

dispositive. 

Last, the rebuilding efforts are going to take a long time, and we 

are off to a slow start. But the State and local governments have 

the primary responsibility for pulling together a plan. At the same 

point in time, the Federal Government clearly has a vested interest 

because we know that the Federal taxpayers are going to be asked 

to contribute significantly to this overall effort. 

In that regard, it is very important that the State and local governments work together to develop a comprehensive and integrated 

plan that can be presented to the Federal Government to determine its appropriate role. It is important that we start talking 

about what should be rebuilt, where, when, and based upon what 

standards? Who is going to pay for what and based on what conditions? What type of oversight will be in place in order to make sure 

that the taxpayers get value for money and to minimize the possibility of fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement? 

These are just a few of the key issues that are contained in my 

fairly extensive written statement, and I really do appreciate the 

opportunity to be here. I would like to commend this Committee for 

the work that you have done. There is not enough oversight and 

14

1The prepared statement of Mr. Skinner appears in the Appendix on page 110. 

investigation being done, but this Committee is clearly leading by 

example, and I would like to commend all of you for that. 

Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Mr. Skinner. 

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD L. SKINNER,1 INSPECTOR GENERAL, 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. SKINNER. Madam Chairman, Ranking Member Lieberman, 

Members of the Committee, thank you for having me back here 

again today. 

It is my hope that lessons learned from the response to Hurricane Katrina will form the foundation for critical improvements 

necessary for the Nation to prepare for and respond to any disaster, natural or man-made. 

As far back as 1992, when Hurricane Andrew devastated Southern Florida, my office has completed a number of reviews related 

to FEMA preparedness and response operations. These reviews 

identified serious deficiencies in FEMA’s disaster preparedness and 

response programs. Yet today, many of these weaknesses still have 

not been adequately addressed, which, in my opinion, contributed 

to many of the problems that we experienced after Hurricane 

Katrina. 

Today, I would like to focus my remarks on five of these problems where I believe improvements are needed immediately. First, 

the Department needs to clarify, better define, train, and exercise 

disaster responders at all levels of government on protocols and 

operational use of the National Incident Management System 

(NIMS) and the National Response Plan. 

Both NIMS and the National Response Plan are watershed planning concepts that restructure how Federal, State, and local emergency responders conduct disaster response and recovery activities. 

They had been exercised only once when Katrina struck, and the 

flaws that had been identified during that exercise were still unresolved. 

For example, with regard to the National Response Plan, the use 

of incident designations, the role of the principal Federal official, 

and responsibilities of emergency support coordinators were not always well understood, causing confusion on the ground, which, in 

turn, impeded FEMA’s initial response efforts. 

Under NIMS, the response demonstrated some positive features 

of the incident command structure, particularly in Alabama and 

Mississippi. Louisiana, on the other hand, had difficulty fully implementing an incident command structure with Federal, State, 

and local officials. Needless to say, the limited incident command 

structure in Louisiana significantly undercut response efforts at all 

levels of government. 

Many of the command and control problems that existed during 

Hurricane Andrew more than 13 years ago were the result of inadequate pre-disaster planning, training, and exercising of large-scale 

catastrophic type disasters. Unfortunately, the same could be said 

of Hurricane Katrina. 

15

Second, top officials of other Federal agencies need to be more actively involved in the planning, training, and exercises of their respective agency’s disaster response plans. And DHS needs to do a 

better job of partnering with their Federal counterparts to ensure 

the efficient and effective delivery of disaster aid. We should not 

be creating protocols for NIMS or taking crash courses on the contents of the National Response Plan in the heat of the battle. 

The Department’s most recent TOPOFF exercise, conducted in 

April 2005, highlighted a fundamental lack of understanding at all 

levels of government regarding the principles and protocols set 

forth in the National Response Plan and NIMS. Guidance and procedures defining how each function interrelates with one another 

were absent. 

DHS needs to develop operating procedures under both NIMS 

and the National Response Plan, and it needs to offer training on 

those procedures to all levels of government, including DOD. 

DOD participation is essential so that it may solidify its role and 

responsibilities under the National Response Plan to facilitate an 

enhanced understanding among the Federal, State, local, and nonprofit organizations that participate after a disaster. They must 

have a clear understanding what DOD’s role is. 

It is imperative that every Federal agency, not just DHS and 

FEMA, maintain a readiness posture consistent with their responsibilities under the National Response Plan. That does not exist 

today. 

Furthermore, to effectively address disaster response, recovery, 

and oversight, Federal interagency data sharing and collaboration 

are a must. However, data sharing arrangements between FEMA 

and other Federal agencies to safeguard against fraud and promote 

the delivery of disaster assistance are not in place. 

Critical tasks, from locating missing children and registered sex 

offenders to detecting duplicate payments and fraudulent applications, have all been hindered because mechanisms and agreements 

to foster interagency collaboration do not exist. 

For example, we believe that pre-existing data sharing requirements or arrangements with the Social Security Administration to 

verify an applicant’s Social Security number or the Postal Service 

to verify an applicant’s address or residence, especially if the data 

can be shared in real time or on a real-time basis, would not only 

facilitate the delivery of assistance to disaster victims, but also it 

would be a major factor in preventing fraud, waste, and abuse in 

FEMA’s disaster relief programs. 

Third, to effectively support requests for assistance and carry out 

its logistics mission, FEMA needs to incorporate asset visibility, automation, and standardization into its resource ordering process. 

FEMA is responsible for supplying commodities, equipment, personnel, and other resources to support emergency or disaster response efforts of affected States or localities. Therefore, FEMA’s 

ability to track resources is key to fulfilling its mission. 

In response to Hurricane Katrina, Federal, State, and local officials continually expressed frustration with the lack of asset visibility in the logistics process. 

Officials indicated that they had ordered water, ice, and mealsready-to-eat in quantities far greater than what was actually delivVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
16

ered. Yet when they attempted to determine where additional 

quantities were in the delivery process, they were told the commodities were simply in the pipeline. 

According to FEMA field officials, on average, Mississippi received less than 50 percent of the commodities that it had requested between August 27 and September 5, 2005. 

Similarly, during the 2004 hurricane season, when four hurricanes struck the State of Florida, when asked about the delivery 

status of requested ice and water, Federal logistics personnel told 

us they could only tell State officials and local officials that commodities were en route. In essence, they had no idea where the 

commodities were or when they would be delivered, only that they 

had been ordered. 

In a recent OIG report dated September 2005, we point out that 

FEMA’s inventory management system provides no means to track 

essential commodities, such as ice and water. As a result, FEMA 

cannot readily determine its effectiveness in achieving specific disaster response goals and whether or not there is a need to improve. 

Fourth, FEMA needs to establish a common information management system to collect, consolidate, and publish disaster-related 

facts that can be used to ensure that critical needs are identified 

and met. Because it did not have a common information management system, FEMA had difficulty obtaining, verifying, and reporting basic disaster information during Hurricane Katrina, such as 

the levees breaches, the spontaneous sheltering of victims in the 

New Orleans Convention Center, the status of commodity deliveries, and the number of victims in shelters. 

Unreliable information and conflicting reports directly impacted 

the speed of the response and constrained the information that 

could be provided to disaster victims, the public, and the media. 

This problem is similar to the one that FEMA’s OIG made in January 1993, just after Hurricane Andrew, when it recommended that 

FEMA develop an online information system to consolidate disaster 

information. 

Also, in April 2005, during the TOPOFF 3 exercise, DHS had difficulties in compiling and analyzing disaster information. And 

again, we recommended that DHS develop such a system. Information management is a recurring problem that requires long-term 

solutions. 

Another widely reported communication problem during Hurricane Katrina was the operability of telecommunications equipment. 

Others have testified before this Committee about the effects that 

Hurricane Katrina had on telecommunications lines, towers, antennas, and call centers. 

We support the recommendations by the White House task force 

to improve the planning and strategy for communication restoration and to develop a deployable communication capability within 

DHS. We also support strengthening FEMA’s mobile emergency response support teams to surge for catastrophic disasters. 

However, when we look at communications operability, we need 

also to remember the issue of communications interoperability. 

During Hurricane Katrina, the need for interoperable communications equipment was overshadowed by basic operability. There just 

was no communications. All lines were down. 

17

Nevertheless, the lack of interoperability also hindered disaster 

response efforts, particularly with regard to search and rescue and 

law enforcement missions. As we learned after the September 11 

terrorist attacks, the inability of first responders to communicate 

across disciplines and jurisdictions can lead to the tragic loss of 

life. 

Fifth, FEMA needs to do a better job of engaging or partnering 

with the national media in getting critical and potentially life-saving and life-sustaining information to victims in the affected area 

and to victims dispersed across the country. FEMA must work aggressively in partnership with the media to provide accurate and 

timely information to the public about the status of the disaster relief operations. 

A combination of problems—poor communications systems, conflicting situation reports, inadequate staffing, organizational confusion between the role of FEMA’s Office of External Affairs, in the 

Department’s Office of Public Affairs and a lack of coordination 

with Louisiana—all created a situation where FEMA’s media affairs efforts were not as effective as it could have been. This, in 

turn, inhibited FEMA’s ability to be proactive in its messaging, undermined public confidence in FEMA’s operations, and diverted 

media attention from FEMA’s victim assistance programs. 

Finally, I would like to comment briefly on the recommendations 

made in the White House report on Hurricane Katrina. The report 

identifies deficiencies in the Federal Government’s response and 

presents lessons learned and recommendations for corrective action. All in all, we agree with and endorse the 17 critical challenges 

in the report. 

However, we have serious reservations with two of the report’s 

recommendations affecting human services and housing. According 

to the report, the Department of Health and Human Services 

would take the lead for developing and coordinating a system to deliver human services and the Department of Housing and Urban 

Development would take the lead for the provision of temporary 

and long-term housing of evacuees. 

In my opinion, these recommendations, as proposed, may create 

a greater bifurcation in the timely and consistent provision of assistance to victims of disasters than currently exist. I believe that 

FEMA is best positioned to coordinate with Federal, State, and 

local governments, as well with nongovernmental organizations, to 

assist victims as they seek disaster assistance in transition from 

shelters to more temporary and longer term housing. 

FEMA has long-standing and established relationships, well over 

30 years, with other Federal agencies, States and locals, and voluntary organizations to provide disaster assistance. Transferring 

these responsibilities to other Federal entities with little or no experience in coordinating government-wide disaster relief operations 

could hinder rather than help victims with their post disaster 

needs. 

Rather than redefining FEMA’s role as only responsible for mass 

care and sheltering, I believe more attention and resources need to 

be focused on FEMA’s coordination with its emergency management partners and its case management activities to facilitate and 

expedite disaster victims’ recovery. 

18

I would like to make one last point before I close. The many recent reports and deliberations dealing with Hurricane Katrina have 

not included discussions about the importance of and need for improved disaster mitigation efforts. This element is critical as reconstruction efforts begin in the Gulf region. 

Mitigation eliminates or lessens the likelihood that a disaster 

can cause loss of life or serious property damage. Elevating homes 

in flood plains, building structures that can withstand hurricaneforce winds, and restricting construction along the coastline are 

just a few examples of mitigation activities. Mitigation was a top 

priority for FEMA in the 1990s and resulted in measurable savings. 

As we implement the recommendations for improving the Nation’s disaster preparedness, response, and recovery capability, we 

must not overlook the importance that sound mitigation projects 

and strategies can have on our national emergency management 

system. 

Madam Chairman, that concludes my remarks. I would be happy 

to answer any questions you or the Committee may have. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you both very much for your excellent 

testimony. 

Mr. Walker, I think you hit upon an absolutely key point in your 

testimony. Our investigation has clearly demonstrated that Katrina 

is all about a failure of leadership. A failure of leadership at all levels of government. 

And I think those who believe that the answer to the problems 

of Katrina is to simply transfer FEMA out of the Department of 

Homeland Security have missed the point that if you still have 

poor leadership and inadequate resources, you are going to have 

the same results. 

And I think your suggestions for a Level 1 official, for a person 

with overall responsibility to be deployed to the front line, hits on 

problems that occurred that would not be remedied by simply moving FEMA out of the Department. 

Mr. Skinner, you have been in an unusual situation because you 

have been with FEMA when it was a separate agency, and you are 

now IG of the overall Department containing FEMA. So I want to 

get your thoughts on this issue as well. 

One of my concerns is that if we move FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security, we will be getting away from an allhazards approach and that DHS will end up having to duplicate 

within the Department many of the same capabilities that FEMA 

would be providing for natural disasters outside of the Department. 

But could you give the Committee your assessment of this issue? 

Mr. SKINNER. Yes, you are absolutely right. What we would be 

doing, in essence, is stovepiping our preparedness capability. 

There is a certain synergy that the Department brings to a disaster by having FEMA, Preparedness, CBP, ICE, and other functions within the Department, that is, all of these functions can be 

brought to bear under the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security. By taking FEMA out, we would lose a lot of that 

synergy that the Department can bring to bear. 

One point I would like to make, my experience when I was with 

FEMA: The problems that we experienced in Katrina are the same 

19

problems that we experienced when it was a standalone agency. 

They have been magnified now, only because of the magnitude of 

Katrina. 

Transferring FEMA out of the Department, in my opinion, would 

be a major mistake. We are simply transferring the problem. We 

need to address the problems that put us in this position where we 

failed in our response after Katrina. 

We definitely need, as Mr. Walker said, leadership. Over half of 

the leadership positions in FEMA right now are vacant, are being 

filled with acting positions. Over the years—and FEMA knew 

this—in the 1990s, there was a tremendous attrition, a loss of personnel, of key assets because of retirements that occurred between 

1995 and 2005. 

We never prepared ourselves to replace that expertise. So, 

whether FEMA is outside of the Department or inside of the Department, that is still going to be a challenge that we need to deal 

with. 

The issue of preparedness is something else I would like to comment on. After Hurricane Katrina, we did a tremendous job of improving our capabilities through our preparedness activities. We 

developed a Federal Response Plan. We developed a property management system. We developed a disaster information management 

system. But they all had their individual flaws. We never did perfect them. 

Chairman COLLINS. You didn’t mean after Katrina, I don’t think? 

Mr. SKINNER. I am sorry. After Andrew in 2003. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

Mr. SKINNER. We made tremendous progress. Then in the late 

1990s, we started to focus on mitigation so that we can prevent disasters from having a major impact. With regard to preparedness 

for a catastrophic disaster, that is something we never did do. 

Our bar was set at the Andrew level. It was never set for anything higher than that. I would suggest that if Katrina hit 7 years 

ago, 8 years ago, when FEMA was a standalone agency, we would 

have failed just as miserably as we did today. We simply were not 

prepared at that level. We have not invested in catastrophic preparedness with the resources, the finances, the training, and the 

exercises. 

And to compound matters, we changed our Federal Response 

Plan to a National Response Plan, and we changed our incident 

command structure to the National Incident Management System, 

which had never been fully exercised. Also, we never trained our 

State and local partners or our Federal partners. This compounded 

the issue. 

Chairman COLLINS. That is a great segue to an issue that I want 

to ask Mr. Walker about. One of the issues that I think emergency 

managers at all levels of government are struggling with is how to 

define the Federal role versus the State role versus the local role? 

And what do we do when there is a mega disaster such as Katrina? 

As you know and as Mr. Skinner just said, the Department of 

Homeland Security never completed its planning for a catastrophe 

that overwhelmed State and local governments. How do we better 

define the roles of the players at all levels of government, and what 

specifically should we do differently to accelerate Federal assistVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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ance when there is a catastrophe that overwhelms the State and 

local level? 

Mr. WALKER. Madam Chairman, a vast majority of natural disasters don’t fall into the catastrophic category. Therefore, in most circumstances, I think you will find that agencies, whether they be 

State, local, or Federal, will not be overwhelmed. However, we have 

to be prepared for these catastrophic events. 

Based upon our work and based upon my personal conversations 

with the governors and the other officials, I think there is a clear 

feeling that State and local officials should be primarily responsible 

for dealing with natural disasters. However, with regard to large, 

especially catastrophic events such as Katrina, the Federal Government must be prepared in advance, not after the fact, to provide 

support and capabilities necessary to supplement what State and 

local agencies might otherwise have available to them. 

I think one of the other things that we need to do is that when 

we are learning the lessons of Katrina, and we are finalizing and 

revising the National Response Plan and other types of operational 

documents to try to make that a reality, we need to provide more 

clarity as to who is going to be responsible and accountable for 

what. 

We also need to link resource allocations to whether or not people actually have done what they need to do in accordance with the 

overall plan. One of the things that we can leverage to a greater 

extent is that if the Federal Government is going to provide assistance through grants or whatever, we make sure that certain conditions are met as a condition of receiving those funds. 

I will give you one example that deals with the recovery that is 

timely. State and local officials need to take the lead on determining what is going to be rebuilt, based on what standards in 

what locations. They are, however, looking for assistance from the 

Federal Government. 

But before significant funds flow, there needs to be a plan that 

the Federal Government can buy into. We should also condition 

some of our support based upon having that plan in place to provide incentives for people to do what otherwise needs to be done 

and appropriate accountability if they don’t. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Lieberman. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Madam Chairman. 

Thanks, Mr. Walker and Mr. Skinner, for very helpful testimony. 

I said in my opening statement that the government’s response 

to Katrina was a national disgrace. But it is one that, hopefully, 

we can learn from. And it seems to me in your testimony and the 

exchange you have had with Senator Collins encourages me to believe that, generally speaking, we might explain the disgrace, the 

failures, in four categories. 

One was the enormity of the storm, of Katrina. The second was 

a failure of leadership. The third was a failure of organization on 

its various forms. And then the fourth was an inadequacy of resources. There may be others. And of course, a failure to prepare 

can come under all of those, inadequate organization, bad leadership, etc. 

On the first, I just want to say, which is the enormity of Hurricane Katrina, it was beyond what might be called the normal disVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
21

aster. It was a catastrophe. We hope and believe that natural disasters of that immensity will not happen too frequently. 

But the sad and painful and real fact is that we live in an age 

of terrorism, and there are many terrorist attack scenarios on the 

United States that are catastrophic. And of course, the difference 

is that in most cases, particularly if our intelligence does not discover the plans in any sense before they are carried out, there is 

no warning. 

We had the National Weather Service warning us clearly here. 

History warned about this particular catastrophe. So we said here 

in this Committee room, in one of the earlier hearings, somebody 

said if terrorists had planted bombs at the levees around New Orleans and they had blown up the levees, the effects would have been 

relatively comparable. 

So we are living in an age, I want to say first, where we have 

to be ready to respond to catastrophes, and that generally means 

the Federal Government. You are absolutely right. But I want to 

set that aside and come back to it. 

If we are talking about a failure of leadership, a failure of organization, a failure of resources, as you have looked at it, I suppose 

we would all say there were failures in all three of those areas that 

caused the disgrace that was the government’s response to Katrina. 

But if you had to prioritize it, what would you say was the most 

consequential cause of the disastrous response to this disaster—

bad leadership, bad organization, or inadequate resources? 

And I ask that question because it may help us to shape our response to what we should do to make sure that the next time there 

is not such a disgrace. Mr. Walker, do you want to try that one 

first? 

Mr. WALKER. It is tough to say which was the most significant. 

Let me say this. The thing that was the most shocking to me was 

the fact that for a type of natural disaster where we had advance 

warning, such as a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, that we were somehow saying that since that was a known potential catastrophic 

event, that we would not be leaning forward and being as proactive 

as otherwise we might be in some other circumstance. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. We agree. I mean, as the testimony we 

heard went on and on, that was probably the point of greatest frustration to anger because the warnings were clear and explicit. 

Mr. WALKER. So my view is that was probably No. 1. The fact 

that we had a situation that we knew. It wasn’t a matter of if it 

was going to hit, it was only a matter of where and when it was 

going to it. And yet we were not nearly as proactive as we should 

have been. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. If I may put that into my categories, you 

correct me if you think I am wrong, that sounds to me like a failure 

of leadership? 

Mr. WALKER. It clearly has to do with leadership, I agree. But 

it also has to do with the National Response Plan, which was my 

second category. The National Response Plan, this was the first 

time it had ever been tested. 

The Catastrophic Annex, there are still people debating whether 

or not the Catastrophic Annex was supposed to cover this type of 

22

event. I would argue whether it was supposed to or not, it should 

have. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Right. 

Mr. WALKER. Common sense says that when you have more advance notice, you should be doing more sooner than otherwise you 

would do if you didn’t have advance notice. So I would say leadership is an issue, but also the fact that we need to be leaning forward with regard to these types of activities to much greater extent. 

With regard to leadership, I would reinforce that different types 

and levels of leadership are necessary. In this particular case, in 

my view, based upon what I have seen, we did not have the Level 

1 or higher strategic leadership that needed to be in place here. 

What happened was when the President called the Department 

of Homeland Security and designated the Secretary, the Secretary 

then delegated that responsibility to the FEMA director. The difficulty with that is it probably would have overwhelmed anybody 

in this circumstance. But the strategic type of activities need to be 

done by no lower than a Level 1 official. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. So, in this case, it should have been Secretary Chertoff? 

Mr. WALKER. Presumably, it would have been Secretary Chertoff. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Designated by the President under executive order and implicitly by the Homeland Security Act as the key 

official to coordinate the Federal response to a disaster? 

Mr. WALKER. Especially when dealing with agencies like the Department of Defense. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Right. 

Mr. WALKER. You need to have a Level 1 official dealing with 

their peers in providing a strategic and integrated approach to 

meet the needs on the ground in the affected areas. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Let me go to Mr. Skinner because I have 

just got a couple of minutes. In addition to answering that question, let me pose one other to you. 

The need for the Federal Government to respond to a catastrophe 

is a very difficult need to organize to meet, and I want to ask you 

to talk about that a little bit. In other words, it requires a lot of 

standby. You can’t, on one model, be staffed up fully in FEMA or 

DHS to deal with a catastrophe because, thank God, catastrophes 

don’t come that often. 

And I wanted to ask you if you have any thoughts about how we 

should handle that. Is it just a question of preparing, training, exercising to bring a lot of different Federal resources, not ones that 

are directly in FEMA, but DOD, National Guard, Coast Guard, all 

of DHS, into the field at a moment of a catastrophe? 

Is there some other—for instance, somebody suggested to me the 

other day that maybe we would want to create a kind of ‘‘homeland 

security guard’’ that trains on weekends and is ready to be summoned to a catastrophe. Maybe the National Guard should have a 

division that would be focused just on that. 

What thoughts do you have both about the first question and 

then about the one I have just asked? 

Mr. SKINNER. That is the beauty of the NIMS, the National Incident Management System and the National Response Plan. It is 

23

very flexible in that we can grow it or we could shrink it, depending on what our requirements are. 

The important thing that we need to do is to be able to identify 

what all of our assets are. What can we bring to bear, depending 

on the nature of the event, whether it is a terrorist event, whether 

it is Katrina, or whether it is simply a flooding event in West Virginia. What resources can we tap into? 

They don’t all have to be Federal resources. We could have preprescribed contracts. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Right. 

Mr. SKINNER. What I refer to as ‘‘call contracts.’’ There is no liability to the government until we make the phone call and order 

something. Those should be in place. We need to define what types 

of contracts we need, what types of resources we will need from 

those contractors, and what type of commodities they can make 

available to us. 

Right now, we do not have a complete inventory in the Federal 

Government or in the private sector as to what resources we can 

bring to bear to different situations. That is very important. 

Exercising is very important. Training is very important. And it 

is just not exercising and training at the local level or at the lowest 

level possible. We need to get top officials within the Federal Government involed. When Secretary Chertoff makes a phone call to 

Secretary Rumsfeld, he has to understand and his chain of command has to understand how they can bring DOD assets to bear. 

Or if we contact the Department of Transportation, they should 

not be learning on the job. A lot of that has happened during 

Katrina. We also experienced that also in our TOPOFF exercises, 

that is, top officials, those that can make decisions, were not full, 

active partners or participants in those exercises. So, therefore, 

they were learning the ropes in the heat of battle. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. OK. That is a very important and helpful 

answer that there ought to be a lot of pre-catastrophe arrangements with other agencies of the Federal Government to spring 

into action and contracts with private sector service providers to 

also spring into action. 

Incidentally, one change that in organization that has been 

talked about in response to Katrina is to move FEMA out of DHS. 

I agree with Chairman Collins and, I gather, the two of you that 

this makes no sense at all. There is a synergy in DHS. Why would 

you want to take FEMA away from the Coast Guard and all of the 

other agencies that can be helpful under the leadership of the Secretary in responding to a disaster, natural or terrorist? 

So I appreciate your statements, and I agree with them. Thank 

you. 

Mr. WALKER. If I may, Madam Chairman? 

Chairman COLLINS. Yes. 

Mr. WALKER. With regard to leadership and FEMA, I think one 

of the things that needs to be considered—not just for FEMA, but 

for selected other positions in government—is depending upon the 

nature of the position and depending upon the mission of the agency, we may want to have a PAS appointee in the position, but we 

may want to have statutory——

Senator LIEBERMAN. Define PAS for us. 

24

Mr. WALKER. Presidential appointee with Senate confirmation. I 

apologize. I said don’t use acronyms, and I used one. I apologize. 

You may want to have a PAS person heading FEMA, but you 

may want to consider statutory qualification requirements that an 

individual might have to meet. Second, you may want to consider 

a term appointment such that you have a pro who is going to be 

there as long as they do a good job for a reasonable period of time. 

I think this is a concept that we ought to be considering in government to a greater extent for positions that we want professionals to do who are politically acceptable, but who are first a professional rather than a politico. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

Mr. WALKER. I am not talking about any particular individual. 

I don’t want to personalize any of this. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. We all agree that this model has worked in 

the case of the comptroller general. [Laughter.] 

Mr. WALKER. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate that endorsement. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Coleman. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

It has been fabulous testimony. My only comment to the last 

comment of Mr. Walker is that I think you have got to be careful. 

Rudy Giuliani may not have passed the qualifications test, but 

what about his leadership? And so, sometimes we channel ourselves in ways that say we want clearly at some level the folks in 

there who have the specific background. We have got to be very 

careful. There was a failure of leadership. 

And as I said, I use the mayor as an example. He did a heck of 

a job in responding to crisis. Didn’t have a lot of emergency management background, but he had good leadership. I think we have 

to be careful about that. 

Mr. Skinner, you talked about things in the pipeline, en route. 

And one of the things that frustrates me a little bit is we, as consumers, when we buy something—I bought a pair of shoes at a 

store at the airport the other day, and I wanted to find out where 

they were, and it took me one phone call. 

FedEx can tell you exactly where things are. UPS can tell you 

where things are. Well, the Federal Government has greater resources than FedEx and UPS, and our consumer experience tells 

us that there is an expectation that, in 2006, we shouldn’t have a 

situation where somebody can’t tell you where something is en 

route. 

So is it a cost issue? It is certainly not a technology issue. Why 

isn’t the Federal Government in a position to do what most American businesses can do today and tell you where something is when 

it is in the pipeline or it is en route? 

Mr. SKINNER. Yes, I absolutely agree. I mean, FEMA is in an 

analog world or have analog systems, and we are in a digital society. They are, in fact, right now piloting a program that will allow 

us to be able to track our trucks and our commodities. As a matter 

of fact, FEMA experimented, I understand, with a little of that in 

Katrina. But it just did not go far enough, and we have a long way 

to go. 

25

There are a couple of issues I think that may be slowing us 

down: One, it may be financial, budgeting constraints; and, two, it 

may also be human resource constraints, that is, having people 

dedicated to updating our system so that they are in the 21st Century. 

Senator COLEMAN. Well, I would hope that FEMA would sit 

down with, again, I use FedEx, UPS. We have had those folks talk 

to us. 

Mr. SKINNER. I can say that Secretary Chertoff has made this 

one of his top priorities. He recognizes this issue and has already 

publicly announced that he is going to fix this. Hopefully, we can 

have this fixed before the next hurricane season. 

Senator COLEMAN. It is pretty basic technology in 2006. 

Mr. SKINNER. It sure is. 

Senator COLEMAN. Mr. Walker. 

Mr. WALKER. Senator Coleman, you make a good point. Let me 

just note that FEMA is not the only agency with this problem. The 

Defense Department has had a long-standing similar problem, and 

many times it is multiple legacy, non-integrated information systems. Everybody has their own independent system that they want 

rather than moving to a modern and integrated information system. 

Part of our challenge is not just financial and human resources, 

it is dealing with cultural barriers, and it is forcing people to move 

to a unified solution. In some cases, that might mean denying resources to wants and focusing resources to needs. 

Senator COLEMAN. I hope we move beyond that. I mean, to me, 

I just find it so stunning. A couple of weeks ago, I was at the border. I was at an Arizona military base and watched a UAV flying 

at 5 miles up in the air, 15,000 feet, shine a laser beam on an individual on the ground. To our agents, they were like lit up in a spotlight, and we can’t track where ice is. And it just doesn’t make 

sense to me. 

If I can, Mr. Walker, one of the things that you talked about and 

the point has to be made is in talking about the response, you 

talked about the total force, public sector, clearly at every level of 

government—State, Federal, local, county, and municipal. You 

talked about the nonprofit community. 

I was a former mayor, and I can tell you that in the last case 

with the private sector, when I was mayor, I talked about the three 

legs that kind of held us there were the public sector, the private 

sector, and the nonprofit. And my question is can you talk a little 

bit, very practically, about your vision of training? 

My concern is that are we going to set up some federally directed 

courses in which we are going to try—it would be very hard to go 

into St. Paul, Minnesota, with somebody from FEMA and pull together the critical players in the private sector, the public sector, 

and the nonprofit sector. They wouldn’t know who they are. You 

may not get a response. 

Because I would like to see this happen, can you tell me your vision of how we make this actually work? 

Mr. WALKER. I think if we look at what actually happened in 

Katrina, we will see that there were examples of Federal, State, 

local, private sector, and not-for-profit sector people working toVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
26

gether to try to meet the needs of people. But in many cases, it 

wasn’t pre-planned. In many cases, it was just people trying to do 

the right thing. 

My point is that there are capabilities that exist in the not-forprofit sector. There are capabilities that exist in the private sector 

such as logistical resources, etc., that we ought to integrate into an 

overall plan and that we ought to have lead players in each of the 

major areas who are going to spring into action in the event of a 

catastrophic event. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean the Federal Government is going 

to be the lead. This could be part of the State and local emergency 

plans that they develop in coordination with the Federal Government. But I do think that there needs to be some exercising based 

upon the total force concept at some point. 

Keep in mind that some of the players who are involved here 

would not work in certain areas of the city and would not work at 

night. That is a gap that we need to understand up front and to 

be able to fill as appropriate in order to meet total needs. 

Senator COLEMAN. My concern then, my admonition here—and 

again, the vision is the right vision. But as we move forward that 

we don’t make the mistake of saying we are going to have in place 

a requirement to bring together the private sector and nonprofit all 

together, but we don’t do it in a way that is not very effective. 

That, in the end, we get the resource out to the folks at the local 

level, who have the capacity to do this, who know who the players 

are, who know how to make this work. And so, great concept. I just 

hope in implementation that we don’t end up missing the opportunity. 

Mr. WALKER. I think local government needs to be the lead. They 

are the closest to knowing who the key players are. 

Senator COLEMAN. I share that perspective. Thank you. 

And I do want to associate myself with the comments of the 

Chairman and the Ranking Member regarding this issue of FEMA 

and leadership. Michael Brown came before us and said when 

FEMA was placed in Homeland Security, it was doomed to failure. 

Yet we heard the Coast Guard, which is part of Homeland Security, and they didn’t fail. And they pre-positioned, and they exercised leadership. 

And I think we need to be very careful about a rush to judgment 

about whether it is a structural problem here or the leadership 

problems and that we don’t change things for the sake of making 

change. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Lautenberg. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Thanks very much, Madam Chairman. 

We started this hearing at 9:30. I was the first one here. And it 

is now an hour and a half later, and I appreciated hearing all of 

my colleagues and their questions and their reviews, but I think 

it is important to watch the time as it is used because all of us 

have many other things to do. 

And I appreciate the testimony of the witnesses and the review 

by Senator Mikulski, which was succinct and to the point in describing what the problems are. 

And I ask you, according to a summary of the House Republican 

report earlier that presidential intervention could have sped up the 

27

response because the President is the one that has the capacity to 

cut through the red tape, if we can do it in fairly short fashion, 

what might the President have done, if we can think of a couple 

of things, at an earlier moment? 

Not to castigate the President, but to learn from this tragic experience that we have had. What do you think, Mr. Walker? 

Mr. WALKER. First, on Sunday afternoon before the hurricane 

hit, there was a designation by the President of Secretary Chertoff 

to take the lead in this area. My view is, it should have happened 

earlier. 

I mean, we are talking about a circumstance here where the National Weather Service, in general, and Max Mayfield, in particular, was on the telephone—not just with regard to key Federal 

officials, but also State and local officials—saying that this is going 

to be a major catastrophic event. I think that we could have and 

we should have acted quicker than we did. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Let me ask you a question that I think relates very directly. There are two things I have in mind here. No. 

1 is the Federal Government encourages building by either its absence from participation in terms of what State and locals do because Federal Government picks up the bill. So if someone builds 

in vulnerable places, and we see it all across the country. I don’t 

think any States are exempt. And then we know whether it is 

below sea level or whether a hurricane or some other disaster could 

take over, aren’t we positioning ourselves in a way that says we are 

going to have disasters? 

And no matter how much money and how much thought, a disaster is an unanticipated event. You said ‘‘catastrophe’’ might not 

be the word to use in all of these. What defines a catastrophe? And 

should the Federal Government say, OK, we are going to supply 

the flood insurance and just build where you want, knowing darned 

well that some day there is going to be a problem there? 

Mr. WALKER. First, Senator, I would say you have natural disasters, which come in different sizes, scopes, and magnitudes, most 

of which are not catastrophes. Some of which, like Katrina, are a 

catastrophe because of those factors. 

You raise a good point. I have testified once before the Senate, 

and I am going to be testifying again in the near future, on the National Flood Insurance Program, which is now $23 billion in the 

hole, largely because of Katrina and Rita. It is probably going to 

be added to our high-risk list in the very near future. 

One of the things we have to look at is what are we doing with 

regard to redrawing the new flood plain maps? What are we doing 

with regard in certain situations to potentially creating perverse 

incentives for people to build in areas where there is a very high 

likelihood that there is going to be devastation and that, ultimately, the cost may have to be borne by the National Flood Insurance Program? 

Now, for many years, the National Flood Insurance Program has been self-sustaining. But now it is $23 billion in the hole. Therefore, ultimately, the taxpayers are at risk for a potential bailout for 

programs like that. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. And I am not suggesting that we eliminate 

flood insurance. I am saying that where we have permitted it, 

28

where we have encouraged it, that is our responsibility. But in 

terms of future planning, I think that there has to be a look at 

what the vulnerabilities are for these places. 

Otherwise, another question is how about evacuation? We had a 

train sitting there, an Amtrak train sitting there, couldn’t find 

enough people to fill it up for whatever reason. 

Don’t we run a significant risk of compounding the danger from 

a disaster, be it a natural disaster or an attack by a terrorist 

group, by eliminating the fact that some of these rail lines are 

under terrific pressure and that we could accommodate a lot more 

of our post disaster need if we had facilities like that as part of a 

national security scheme? 

Mr. WALKER. First, I would say that with regard to Katrina, 

clearly, there were major problems with the evacuation in the New 

Orleans area. Not just with regard to the poor, but also with regard 

to the special needs population. I am talking about hospitals and 

nursing homes in particular. Clearly, additional steps need to be 

taken to deal with that. 

But I also would respectfully suggest that we need to look at 

multiple modes of transportation, and not just modes of transportation that are owned by the government—Federal, State, or 

local—but also modes of transportation that may be available to 

the private sector, whether it is trucks, buses, or other types of 

transportation. 

This needs to be part of a more comprehensive and integrated 

strategic plan for dealing with catastrophes. I am familiar with 

your situation where there were certain resources available, but yet 

governments didn’t get the people to the resources. Therefore, they 

were under utilized. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. A lack of training, a lack of leadership was 

quite apparent. 

What would you say, either of you, in terms of what kind of skills 

do we bring to the management of an agency like FEMA? How 

would you define it? Should it be military leadership, or what kind 

of people should we bring in there? 

Mr. SKINNER. When we were most successful, our leaders were 

emergency management specialists, the people that had made 

emergency management a career, and it was a passion. It was 

something that they have done all of their lives. 

We are seeing that now beginning to degrade through attrition 

because people are now leaving the Federal Government and retiring. We have not adequately trained and brought up those behind 

them to make sure that as leaders leave, they can be replaced. So 

it certainly is someone with emergency management. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. But Mr. Skinner, how about those that we 

bring in? Have we generally seen the kind of skills that we like to 

see at the top of an agency like that, this crisis management agency? 

Mr. SKINNER. Such as FEMA? 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Yes. 

Mr. SKINNER. I would suggest that leadership can be defined 

many different ways, and you don’t want to pigeonhole an individual, saying because you have never worked a disaster, therefore, 

29

you are not qualified to lead FEMA. And I think we would be leaving a lot of potential leaders out. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Yes, but they could have been trained. 

Mr. SKINNER. Yes. Clearly, the people directly below them, and 

I suggest that includes all of our regional directors who are now 

political, that these people could be or should be career emergency 

management types. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. I have a last question here. 

Chairman COLLINS. I would be happy to give the Senator additional time to do another question even though he is over his time. 

Please go ahead and proceed. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Well, Madam Chairman, our Ranking 

Member ran 4 minutes over, and there was no regard for the clock. 

Chairman COLLINS. There was. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. So I don’t want to be rude, but Mr. Walker, has GAO encountered any problems in obtaining access to the 

documents and the people in the Executive Branch that it needs to 

speak with in its investigation? 

Mr. WALKER. We have gotten most of what we have asked for, 

but not all, Senator. I think part of that is because there are multiple investigations that have been going on at once and that DHS 

is somewhat overwhelmed. 

But I can assure you that I will let you and the Chairman and 

the Ranking Member know if we experience a problem that we 

don’t believe will be satisfactorily resolved. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. I would appreciate that. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Levin. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN 

Senator LEVIN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you again, 

and the Ranking Member, for your leadership in holding these 

hearings. It has been absolutely superb and really critically important to the future well-being of our country. 

Mr. Walker, you stated a little bit earlier that you thought that 

the presidential designation of the point person should have come 

earlier. You also testified, I guess, to the House that, as you had 

recommended in 1993, you continue to believe that a single individual directly responsible and accountable to the President must 

be designated to act as the central focal point to lead and coordinate the overall Federal response in the event of a major catastrophe. 

I thought that when we passed the Homeland Security Department bill that we actually did that designation so that it is in law. 

Whether the President was late or not late and whether or not 

there was any formal designation at all, the Title 1 of the Department of Homeland Security Act specifies that this is the primary 

mission of the Department, to act as—actually, using the same 

words that you used—a focal point regarding natural and manmade crises and emergency planning. 

And that is what the presidential directive also says in the 

Homeland Security Presidential Directive, HSPD–5. It says the 

Secretary of Homeland Security is the principal Federal official for 

domestic incident management. Now why should there need to 

even be a wait for a designation? Why isn’t that automatic? 

30

Mr. WALKER. I am familiar with that provision, Senator, and I 

think you make a good point. That, in theory, has already been 

done. 

From a practical standpoint, Senator, what I would respectfully 

suggest is while that is hard-coded in the law and in theory should 

not require any special action by any individual, I would respectfully suggest that by the President, whomever that person might 

be, getting involved at the outset, making it clear that this is the 

case, such that this individual—be it the Secretary of DHS or 

whomever it might be—has got the affirmative backing of the 

President at that time and that communication not only goes to the 

Secretary of DHS in the circumstances, but all other Cabinet-level 

officials, so that they understand that this person is operating on 

behalf of the President. 

I will tell you this, Senator, it is very clear to me in some of the 

conversations that I have had and the documents that I have seen 

that there were expectation gaps and miscommunications that took 

place between State and Federal officials with regard to resource 

requests. 

Senator LEVIN. Was that because of any doubt as to who it was 

that was the federally designated focal point for management of 

this disaster? 

Mr. WALKER. Yes. 

Senator LEVIN. There was doubt in people’s minds, despite the 

fact that there is a law? 

Mr. WALKER. Well, the State officials, of course, wouldn’t necessarily be as familiar with a Federal law. I am talking about State 

officials in communicating with Federal officials. 

Senator LEVIN. So there is a purpose to be served by the President making public what is already in the law in terms of everyone 

understanding what they should know, but which, apparently, 

there is some doubt about. But in terms of both his designation on 

Sunday or Saturday, whenever that was, and the law, there is no 

doubt where the responsibility focal point lay in this case. Is that 

right? 

Mr. WALKER. Under the current law, under the Homeland Security Act, it is my understanding it is the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. 

Senator LEVIN. So that when we talk in abstract about ‘‘failure 

of leadership,’’ the ultimate point for leadership under law and 

under the reminder of the President on Saturday or Sunday, whenever that was, is the leadership had to come from the head of the 

Department of Homeland Security? 

Mr. WALKER. I think there is a shared responsibility for absence 

of leadership, but you are correct. That is what the law says, Senator. 

Senator LEVIN. OK. Now in terms of the coordination of the National Guard and active duty forces, and this is an area which all 

of us are on the Armed Service Committee, so we have a particular 

interest in this. There is a lot of uncertainty and confusion in 

Katrina as to the role of the National Guard, both in terms of who 

would be in charge of the National Guard in Louisiana and from 

other States, what their status was, whether it was going to be coordinated, who would command them, and so forth. 

31

The National Response Plan says that ‘‘National Guard forces 

are providing support to the governor of their State and are not 

part of Federal military response efforts.’’ Now I assume that applies to the National Guard forces from any State that come in to 

a State under the agreement which the governors have reached. 

So we have in our National Response Plan a statement that our 

Guard forces are not part of the Federal military response efforts, 

but they are providing support to the governor. It seems to me, and 

I wonder if you would react, that the National Guard response was 

poorly integrated here. There was no coordination. Unclear command for a length of time. And that it is essential that they be integrated in the plan or that a pathway be clear and automatically 

triggered for our National Guard forces to be integrated with the 

active duty response to comprise an overall Federal military response. 

I would like it if both of you or either one of you would comment 

on that? 

Mr. SKINNER. You are absolutely right. That did create problems, 

particularly in Louisiana. The National Guard is an asset of the 

State, 99.9 percent of the time that is not ever going to be a problem because we don’t bring in the military, or the Department of 

Defense. 

In this case, we did bring them in. However, we do not have 

guidelines. We do not have procedures. Nor had we exercised the 

two together so that they would know in advance what their individual roles would be. 

Yes, there were duplication of effort. Yes, they were bumping 

into each other occasionally. Yes, there was no clear lines of communication. And yes, there was no communications interoperability, that is, their systems could not even communicate. 

Senator LEVIN. And the Northern Command was not integrated 

into this process because, ultimately, there were active duty forces 

which were deployed. 

OK. Mr. Walker, I wonder if you would quickly comment? 

Mr. WALKER. I will quickly comment. First, the National Guard 

is an integral part of the total force. With regard to the four States 

that were affected by Katrina and Rita, it is my understanding 

that only Louisiana requested and, therefore, received active duty 

support. All four States used National Guard troops not just from 

their State, but in some cases, because of the interstate compact, 

they also received troops from other States. 

I will tell you that the governors unanimously felt, the four that 

I spoke with, that they are in charge of the National Guard. That 

to the extent that the National Guard cannot handle it, then the 

active duty should be a supplement to the National Guard, not a 

substitute for the National Guard. But I agree that we need to 

have clearer definition and more effective integration as a result of 

learning from this experience. 

Senator LEVIN. Well, to say point blank that they are not part 

of a Federal military response effort, it seems to me, is an overstatement under certain circumstances. 

Mr. WALKER. I think what that is intended to mean, Senator, is 

that the National Guard works for the governor. 

Senator LEVIN. Well, that is clear. 

32

Mr. WALKER. Right. Therefore, not that they won’t be part of it, 

but they won’t be deemed to be Federal. 

Senator LEVIN. I understand that. But to say they are not part 

of something when they have to be coordinated and at some point 

may become part of—as a matter of fact, under certain circumstances, they will be part of if they are federalized. 

But, in any event, my time is up. I would only make a request, 

because my time is up, for the record that you tell us how we can 

do——

Chairman COLLINS. Feel free if you would like to proceed. 

Senator LEVIN. Your good nature, I appreciate that. But I really 

have been troubled by the fact we have had so many missing children and missing adults not accounted for. We have had 158 unresolved cases of children missing, 2,800 unresolved cases of adults 

missing. We have got to do better in terms of just keeping track 

of people. 

This tragedy is immense for all kinds of reasons. But the idea 

that we still have people that are unaccounted for in these numbers is totally unacceptable. A lot of those people, I think, hopefully, all of them, but a lot of them are alive somewhere, but unaccounted for. 

And any suggestions that you have for the record, if you haven’t 

looked into this, if you would. There is a major missing link here, 

at least one. The process in place for law enforcement to obtain information from FEMA’s disaster assistance files is inadequate according to, I believe, your report, Mr. Skinner? 

Mr. SKINNER. That is correct. 

Senator LEVIN. Because of FEMA’s rigorous guidelines. There is 

something in those guidelines which make it difficult for us to 

track missing people. And if you would make some suggestions for 

the record as to how those guidelines might be amended so we 

don’t run into this ever again, it would be appreciated. 

Mr. SKINNER. Yes. We have a review under way, and you will be 

receiving a report shortly. 

Senator LEVIN. Thank you. I appreciate that. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

I want to thank our witnesses from this panel for their excellent 

testimony. We all have so many other questions we would like to 

ask you, and I am sure some will be submitted for the record, and 

we will continue to have discussions with you. But since we have 

a vote at 11:30, I am going to proceed to the next panel. Thank you 

so much. 

I would now like to welcome today’s second panel of witnesses. 

Bruce Baughman is the President of the National Emergency Management Association and the Director of the Alabama State Emergency Management Agency. Mr. Baughman served as Director of 

the Office of National Preparedness from 2001 to 2003 and, prior 

to that, was FEMA’s Director of Operations for a number of years. 

I would note for the record that Mr. Baughman visited me with 

Maine’s emergency management director, and I was so impressed 

with his background and his insight that I asked my staff to be 

sure to invite him for this hearing. We are very pleased to have 

him here today. 

33

1The prepared statement of Mr. Baughman appears in the Appendix on page 132. 

I am also very pleased to welcome our other two distinguished 

witnesses. Frank Cilluffo is the Associate Vice President for Homeland Security at the George Washington University and is Director 

of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at the university. He 

joined G.W. from the White House, where he served as special assistant to the President for homeland security. 

And finally, we are very pleased to have with us Dr. Herman 

Leonard, who is the George F. Baker, Jr., Professor of Public Management at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. His current research concentrates on crisis management, corporate social responsibility, and performance management. 

As I have indicated, we are swearing in all of our witnesses 

throughout this investigation. So I would ask that you all stand 

and raise your right hand. 

Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give to the 

Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 

truth, so help you, God? 

The WITNESSES. I do. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Mr. Baughman, we are going to 

begin with you. 

TESTIMONY OF BRUCE P. BAUGHMAN,1 PRESIDENT, NATIONAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION, DIRECTOR, ALABAMA STATE EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. Thank you, Madam Chairman, Members of the 

Committee, and Ranking Member Lieberman. 

I appreciate having the opportunity to testify before the Committee on these important issues. As the Chairman mentioned, I 

am Bruce Baughman. I am Director of the Alabama Emergency 

Management Agency. I am also the President of the National 

Emergency Management Association (NEMA), which represents 

emergency managers throughout the country, District of Columbia, 

and the territories. So I will be speaking from a NEMA perspective. 

I do want to mention that prior to my appointment in Alabama, 

I did serve, as the Chairman mentioned, as director of the Office 

of National Preparedness within FEMA and the director of operations within FEMA. In that position, I was responsible for over 

100 disasters to include the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City 

bombing, the Pentagon, and numerous hurricanes. 

I was also responsible for and primary author of the Federal Response Plan, which is the precursor to the National Response Plan, 

which, in fact, was the operative plan in FEMA up until 3 years 

ago, when it was superseded by the National Response Plan. All in 

all, I bring over 32 years of experience in emergency management 

to the table. 

In the last few months, we have seen all the finger-pointing relative to who was responsible for Katrina. At this point in time, 

what I would like to see is an effort to move the country forward 

to resolve some of the problems immediately. My concern is we are 

about 80 days out from the advent of hurricane season, and we 

34

don’t have any of the fixes in place yet. So what I am looking for 

is to get some fixes in place. 

To do this, however, we need to include all the members of the 

team—Federal, State, and local. I think we have heard time and 

time again that there were failures at all levels of government. 

However, this collaboration can’t become hamstrung by unfunded 

mandates and unnecessary Federal strings tied to funding aimed 

at State and local emergency management’s preparedness efforts. 

It is interesting, every couple of decades we have a disaster like 

Hurricane Andrew a few years ago, and we see the same recommendations coming up over and over again, as Senator Mikulski 

mentioned this morning and others. Sometimes I question our ability to step forward with a national plan to resolve those and to 

have some consistent Federal policies and funding in that area. 

Emergency management is almost like the military was up until 

the Gulf War. In between wars, we kind of let it atrophy. And then 

when we need it, we try to throttle it up. Emergency management 

can’t work that way. The main player in this is FEMA. Unfortunately, in the last couple of years, we have stood by and watched 

FEMA become a shell of its former self. 

At this point, we are at the same point as we were after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, questioning organizational structures, leaderships, role of Federal, State, and local government, and the role 

of DOD. When FEMA was included in DHS, the agency was not 

protected by the firewall similar to those that protected the Coast 

Guard and Secret Service. 

Somebody mentioned today the Coast Guard performed well. I 

think Senator Coleman did. However, their basic structure, the 

basic structure of Secret Service was not messed around with prior 

to Katrina. Preparedness was, in fact, pulled out of FEMA. 

Several things that I think resulted in this was the FEMA director lost his direct coordinating relationship with the President. Preparedness and preparedness grant programs, such as the emergency management performance grants and the fire grants, were 

pulled out of FEMA. The agency experienced Department-wide hiring freezes, which did not allow them to hire in key critical positions at a time that they needed to. There has been a reprogramming of FEMA dollars for homeland security that has had a major 

impact on FEMA’s budget. 

As a matter of fact, today, we are talking about an agency that 

is fulfilling its post-September 11 mission with $63 million less 

than what it had in 2000 in its 2006 budget. Yet no agency is more 

statutorily qualified and structurally qualified than FEMA to help 

our Nation respond. FEMA had the direct-line relationships with 

State and local governments through its preparedness grant programs, which the Stafford Act authorizes. 

FEMA is the only agency authorized under the Stafford Act. Reorganization Plan No. 3 issued in 1978 gave FEMA the responsibility for all functions of emergency management and response. 

FEMA is and should be the agency of choice to coordinate the functions of the Federal Government in response to disasters, regardless of cause. 

FEMA currently has the ability to tap into the first responder 

community to build relationships in training and exercises. They 

35

also have the ability to tap into the expertise and the assets of 

other Federal agencies. They were given that. That has been practiced and should have happened during Hurricane Katrina. 

However, these areas need to be strengthened. There needs to be 

a greater focus on all-hazards response and one for catastrophic 

disasters. FEMA recognized this 10 years ago and started moving 

in that direction. However, funding was not provided to get catastrophic plans in place to deal with this. 

As Senator Mikulski said this morning, the time to stop the endless reorganization should be over. We need to have a systematic 

process in place to improve the agency’s and the Nation’s ability to 

respond to all kinds of disasters. We look forward to working with 

Congress in coming up with a structure that will meet that requirement. 

In any organization, leadership is a critical ingredient. However, 

when we were talking about FEMA, several reforms need to be 

made to ensure the FEMA director is successful. Regardless of 

where FEMA is located, NEMA has recommended that the FEMA 

director has a direct reporting relationship to the President. 

Now this relationship could be structured like the Chairman of 

the Joint Chiefs. During times of war, even though the Chairman 

of the Joint Chiefs is under the Department of Defense, during 

times of war, he reports directly to the President. We suggest that 

there might be a similar relationship in reporting to the President 

by the director of FEMA during times of crisis. 

Other things that we recommend is that the director of FEMA 

have emergency service or emergency management or similar related experience. Senator Coleman mentioned this morning that 

Mayor Giuliani wouldn’t qualify meeting that criteria. I dare say 

that Mayor Giuliani responded to dozens of disasters before he actually responded to September 11 and gained a lot of experience 

through that. 

The candidate for the job ought to have executive-level management experience, governmental administration and budgeting, an 

understanding of legislative process, and most importantly, demonstrated leadership. More congressional consideration and scrutiny should be given to the nomination process to ensure that the 

nominee meets established criteria. And a fixed term of appointment of not less than 5 years should be considered, similar to the 

model for the FBI director. 

Finally, a vetting process should be established that includes a 

role for input by emergency management constituent organizations 

similar to the American Bar Association does in looking at judicial 

nominations. 

Further, I personally believe that the true all-hazards grant program should be established within FEMA. That gives it a direct relationship with State and local government. Currently, FEMA does 

not have that. That has been pulled out and put over in the Preparedness Directorate. 

Let me talk a little bit about the role of DOD in disasters since 

I came up this morning. NEMA does not support an increased role 

for active duty military in disaster response. The Nation’s governors have direct and legal authority for the protection and safety 

36

of their citizens. The appropriate role for active duty military is to 

provide assistance and support to civilian authorities. 

The National Response Plan identifies DOD as a support agency. 

NEMA’s position is in line with the National Governors Association 

policy. The same issue was raised following Hurricane Andrew, and 

the 1993 National Academy of Public Administration report that 

Senator Mikulski mentioned this morning that was completed for 

Congress did not recommend an increased role for DOD. 

Let me talk about the relationships of State and local government. The Federal Government should never become the first responder. It should remain focused on providing a stronger funding 

for preparedness, emergency response, maintaining capability, and 

coordinating Federal resources that can be drawn upon in a catastrophic event. 

The Federal role is in support and coordination function and assists with resources, expertise, and response capabilities that assist 

State and local governments when they are overwhelmed. It is not 

their duty to become the first responder. 

Federal efforts should be directed at augmenting State and local 

operations, never superseding the governor’s responsibility. The 

most important and critical component for reform is funding. And 

I would like to use my State as an example. 

Funding for a natural disaster is just not there. In my State alone, we get $28 million to prepare our State, six counties in our 

State, for a chemical stockpile incident. We get $4.5 million to prepare our State for a nuclear power plant incident. I get $26 million 

to prepare the State to respond to a terrorist event. I get less than 

$3 million to prepare the State for natural disasters. Yet our State 

has been hit 31 times with presidential disaster declarations in the 

last 10 years. 

EMPG is, in fact, the most important and the only program right 

now in the Federal arsenal that deals with all-hazards planning. 

It is the only one that allows State and local emergency management to deal with natural disaster preparedness. Right now, this 

year, the Administration in their budget proposes slashing that by 

$13 million, which means that it will be funded at $170 million. 

We have spent $3.5 billion in the last 2 years dealing with responding to a terrorist event, and so we are only spending $170 

million for all 56 States and territories to deal with natural disaster preparedness. Something is wrong. 

National Response Plan. I recently sent the Chairman and Ranking Member a letter regarding the need for changes to the National 

Response Plan. Some of our suggestions we hope you will consider 

in your upcoming report. 

Let me just cut to the chase and get to a couple of things that 

I think are important with the National Response Plan. First off, 

the Federal coordinating officer, which is spelled out in the National Response Plan, must have the authority on the ground to 

carry out the responsibilities of the position. 

The FCO’s authorities and responsibilities are clearly delineated 

in the Stafford Act. The statute outlines the functions and the appointment of the FCO. The NRP needs to follow the Stafford Act. 

These authorities empower the FCO to serve on behalf of the President in the declared area. 

37

And I might mention that during the 1990s, what we did, we 

talk about having a Level 1 Cabinet position, James Lee Witt as 

director of FEMA was, in fact, Cabinet status. In the field, the Federal coordinating officer on a large disaster like Hurricane Katrina 

was an experienced senior executive out of FEMA headquarters 

with a trained team. It wasn’t a pick-up team like FEMA did during Katrina. 

I headed up one of those teams. We had three of them with 125 

personnel that were trained, that knew where to go to get the assets from the other Federal agencies and knew what they were 

doing. 

The role of the principal Federal official needs to be made clear. 

If it is maintained, we need to delineate between what the role of 

the principal Federal official is and the FCO. Basically, in Louisiana, we had two people in charge. We had the principal Federal 

official, and we had the Federal coordinating officer. And it wasn’t 

real clear what the roles and responsibilities of each were. 

The NRP should maintain the ESF structure. The ESF structure 

has been there since 1994. It is reflected in the National Response 

Plan. There is some talk, my understanding, within DHS about 

doing away with the emergency support functions within the plan 

itself. We are opposed to that. The emergency support functions 

clearly delineate within the plan what the responsibilities are of 

the various agencies that FEMA can tap into. 

And last, it is unclear as to what a declaration of national significance gets you. There is presidential disaster declaration. I am not 

sure legally when the Secretary declares an incident of national 

significance what that does, what more that brings to the table. So 

that needs to be clarified. 

In conclusion, I think the Congress needs to look for innovative 

ways to address emergency management needs in this post-September 11 environment. We must immediately influx the system 

with resources and innovation in order to face the challenges of the 

day. 

I leave you with a statement from the 1993 NAPA report. ‘‘Without bold action, America’s frustration with the timeliness and quality of governmental response to natural disasters will very likely 

continue.’’

Federal, State, and local governments must have adequate funding for baseline emergency preparedness so that exercises and 

training can ensure that plans and systems are effective before a 

disaster. And again, you don’t want to exchange business cards in 

the middle of a disaster. 

I thank you for this opportunity to testify and look forward to 

taking any questions. 

Chairman COLLINS. Well said. Thank you for your testimony. 

We are more than half way through the period for a roll call vote. 

So we are going to have to recess the hearing for 15 minutes. We 

will return in 15 minutes to resume with Mr. Cilluffo’s testimony. 

Thank you. 

[Recess.] 

Chairman COLLINS. The Committee will come to order. 

Again, I apologize to our witnesses. Unfortunately, we can’t control the floor activity today, and ironically, it is on a bill, the lobVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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1The prepared statement of Mr. Cilluffo appears in the Appendix on page 140. 

bying reform bill, that came out of our Committee. So we are really 

pulled in two directions today. 

Mr. Cilluffo, we will now proceed with your statement. 

TESTIMONY OF FRANK J. CILLUFFO,1 ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR HOMELAND SECURITY, DIRECTOR, HOMELAND 

SECURITY POLICY INSTITUTE, THE GEORGE WASHINGTON 

UNIVERSITY 

Mr. CILLUFFO. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you for the 

opportunity to appear before you today. 

Let me echo everyone’s sentiments in that the Committee is to 

be commended for its comprehensive and bipartisan hearings into 

the public and private sector responses to Hurricane Katrina. 

These hearings, I think, are truly vital to further developing the 

Nation’s preparedness and response policies. 

Once again, we find ourselves evaluating and debating national 

preparedness policies through the lens of the most recent catastrophe. The pendulum has swung from a post-September 11 focus 

on terrorist attacks back to natural disasters. 

Katrina’s impact was devastating, and our natural reaction is to 

focus on preventing a repeat of events. And we must. The fulcrum 

has shifted, and what was primarily a focus on preventing and preparing for terrorism following September 11 has given way to an 

equally intense focus on catastrophic natural disasters. 

While perfectly understandable, we need to rebalance the scales 

and foster a culture of preparedness that is truly all hazards and 

risk based in nature. Preparedness is not an either/or proposition. 

We can’t focus on one to the exclusion of the other. We need to plan 

for and prepare for all hazards and build our capabilities to respond to the widest possible threats. 

We need to ask ourselves two fundamental questions. What are 

the end-state capabilities and capacities needed to meet the needs 

of our customers? And how is success measured, and how is it defined? 

The need for a scalable and agile response is a given. When the 

President or a governor turns to the cupboard in time of crisis, he 

or she must not find it bare. Response is response is response is 

response. At the end of the day, we are talking about execution and 

enabling those on the front lines to respond effectively. What matters is saving lives, not the color of uniform of the men and women 

doing so. 

Let me take a moment to address the issue of where FEMA 

needs to fit into this effort. Outside of this hearing room, as you 

eloquently laid out, Madam Chairman, the ongoing debate has 

been where FEMA sits and fits on the Federal organizational chart. 

While well intended, I believe that stripping FEMA from DHS is 

a politically expedient ‘‘quick fix’’ that does not advance our national preparedness and response and, in fact, obscures the real 

issues. 

In my opinion, to re-create FEMA as an independent agency further obfuscates and bifurcates an already too complex system-ofsystems approach. To have State and local governments—and we 

39

need to look at it from the back end—to have State and local governments, and first responders plug into one system to respond to 

bad weather and another system to respond to bad people is unrealistic. There is no reason to have competing systems in an environment of limited resources. 

The problem is not really one of organizational design. The requisite policy and law exist. The challenge is one of management 

and leadership. FEMA supports a system of systems. It is part of 

an all-hazard preparedness team. Therefore, the debate should not 

center on FEMA. It should be focused on what is needed from the 

customer’s perspective, those on the front lines charged with the 

awesome responsibility of turning victims into patients and survivors. 

There are numerous customers with different needs. Disaster victims, first responders, State, and local governments, NGOs, and 

the private sector. What they have in common is the need to receive the right thing—be it service, piece of equipment, or support 

personnel—at the right time and in the right place. 

This requires inter- and intra-agency coordination among all levels of government and the private sector. Therefore, form must follow function. Over the longer term, the Committee may want to 

consider integrating the response and recovery missions into the 

newly established Preparedness Directorate. 

For this morning’s discussion, I would like to offer three recommendations. First, our national preparedness and response system must be based on end-state capabilities and outcomes to support State, local, nongovernmental, and private sector customers. 

And the system must be requirements driven. 

As General Dwight Eisenhower once said, ‘‘In preparation for 

battle, I have often found plans to be useless, but planning to be 

indispensable.’’ This is not to say that there shouldn’t be plans. The 

challenge is to turn the NRP, the national preparedness goal, and 

State plans into living, breathing documents. 

Only through unified planning, training, and exercising can the 

requisite capabilities and capacities be identified and developed. 

The NRP must be scalable as well as flexible and agile, able to 

morph and adapt to new technologies, new threats, and new scenarios. 

We need to empower those on the front lines, State and local government officials and first responders, and translate the strategy 

from where it is now at the 10,000-foot level all the way down to 

the ground, down to the muddy boots. 

To pick up on one of Senator Lieberman’s comments earlier, I 

think you are absolutely right. We can’t look at this as break glass 

when something bad happens. What we really need to be able to 

do is ramp up from the ordinary to the extraordinary. If you are 

not dealing with it every day, you are not going to be able to deal 

with it in a time of crisis. 

Everyone involved in supporting our response efforts must be fluent in the language of NIMS. The bottom line is understanding 

who has authority, where, when, and to what extent. And there are 

technical challenges. We must have robust, redundant, and reliable 

communications infrastructure. Before we have interoperability, we 

40

need operability. We need a dial-tone, if you will, and I think that 

is absolutely crucial. 

This Committee has also recognized the importance of integrating the private sector and its sophisticated supply chains and 

extensive resources into preparedness and response. As we saw following Katrina, we need to do a better job of this. The Business 

Roundtables’ innovative Partnership for Disaster Relief is off to a 

promising start, matching corporate donations of personnel, equipment, and funding to domestic and international relief efforts. 

Hurricane Katrina also highlighted the need for government 

agencies and NGOs to take a page from the private sector playbook—FedEx, UPS, Wal–Mart, and DHL. As Senator Coleman 

raised, when it comes to nimble, timely, and effective supply 

chains, I think it is fair to say that FedEx ran circles around the 

Feds, and that is, in large part, due to its supply chain infrastructures. 

Similarly, the military model offers us a number of applicable operating principles. Underlying the capability outcomes approach, 

there needs to be a requirements system based on identifying the 

need rather than specifying the request. For example, instead of 

asking for 30,000 MREs to feed 10,000 people three meals a day, 

a requirement-based system would state the need to feed 10,000 

people for a day and achieve that in whatever means possible. 

Also, as Senator Lieberman mentioned, the Coast Guard was a 

stellar performer during Katrina. The reason why is that it functions on a daily basis as a true interagency joint asset. The Coast 

Guard thinks purple every day of the year. They have been part 

of the military. They have had to deploy and be part of mass mobilizations, and they couldn’t compete with the other services. So 

they always found ways to add value within the military structure. 

And the challenge of successfully executing interagency coordination, as we know, is age old. Although we shouldn’t transpose, and 

I agree with Mr. Baughman, a military model into the civilian context wholesale, there is merit in looking to the military context in 

this case. 

The Goldwater-Nichols Act in particular of 1986, which reorganized DOD and institutionalized the concept of jointness. The 

structure was streamlined, unified, and budgets were ultimately realigned accordingly. It seems to me that we need a Goldwater-Nichols equivalent for the homeland context. And not only at the Federal level, but also between and among States themselves. 

Second, I recommend that DHS be regionalized, an issue I did 

not hear discussed this morning, for the dual purposes of empowering those on the front lines to act and clarifying the role of the 

Federal Government. Effective response cannot, cannot, cannot be 

micro managed from Washington. 

As a practical matter, the vast majority of the disasters are responded to by State and local governments, with the Federal Government stepping in to provide support in limited circumstances. It 

only makes sense to push decisions closer to the action, where situational awareness is most acute and local knowledge is greatest. 

This is most significant in the fog of war and in the fog of disaster. 

Only by marrying up situational awareness with the authority to 

act do we create a solid foundation for a truly effective and inteVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
41

grated national system of response. As Mr. Baughman said, we 

should not be exchanging business cards on game day. This structure needs to be in place now. This is spring training. So that 

working relationships have been forged and plans have been exercised, tested, and revised. And most importantly, trust can be built 

and expectations gauged. 

A regional approach best serves these needs. In fact, regionalizing our national preparedness system is the very linchpin that 

connects all of the elements of our preparedness and response. Involvement of State and local officials and entities in the regionalization process engages them as true partners, not simply outsiders 

trying to access the system when something bad happens. 

Robust regionalization works in the best interest of the States 

and their governors by providing them with one-stop shopping. Not 

only does it offer States an all-purpose Federal access point closer 

to home, that Federal point of contact is also steeped and, therefore, versed in the specifics and particularities of the relevant area. 

A Federal leader in the field with authority to access Federal 

interagency resources to support preparedness and response capacities at the State and local levels provides distinct advantages. 

First, this individual would be a known quantity to State and local 

officials. He or she could provide the DHS secretary with important 

feedback and insight into progress being made, performance measures, to advance preparedness efforts. 

They would be able to draw not only upon DHS-wide assets during a heightened alert or response, but also Federal Governmentwide resources. Additionally, this pool of key officials would provide 

knowledgeable and experienced candidates to serve as the principal 

Federal official during future crises. 

Regions need to link to DOD and HHS assets. Consideration 

should be given to co-locating field components of DOD with the regional components of DHS. Let me be clear. I am not suggesting 

that the DHS regional office control DOD assets, but that they 

forge strong partnerships at the regional level before disaster 

strikes. 

Given DOD’s planning, logistical, and transportation experience, 

there is much that DHS and State and local governments can learn 

and incorporate from the DOD culture. Also, co-locating with HHS 

regional assets can have significant benefits with regard to the 

management and deployment of the strategic national stockpile 

and the National Disaster Medical System. 

To operationalize a muscular regionalized system, we need a 

comprehensive inventory of assets at all levels of government as 

well as regionally. Without that, we will never achieve liftoff. All 

capacities must be accounted for, including equipment and personnel. 

Interstate agreements must be in place ahead of time to ensure 

access to these assets, as we have for wild fires, for example. Such 

a framework institutionalizes and has embedded in it the sound 

logic and practice that States and regional assets be marshaled and 

mobilized efficiently, at least to the extent possible in a given scenario, before drawing down upon Federal stock. 

In the larger context, regions provide us with the ability to 

prioritize funding across multiple jurisdictions. Not every jurisdicVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
42

1The prepared statement and supplemental testimony of Mr. Leonard with an attachment appears in the Appendix on pages 148 and 166 respectively. 

tion is going to require the same needs, the same hardware. This 

requires a mind-set of cooperation and coherence rather than competition among jurisdictions. 

Undoubtedly, tough choices will arise as we try to put our money 

where our mouth is, but we cannot allow parochialism to trump 

here. 

Finally, we must build a culture of preparedness that starts with 

individuals and communities. Time and again, research has confirmed that only a fraction of the American public has taken the 

basic steps to prepare themselves and their families in the event 

that outside help is not available for the first few days following 

a disaster or attack. 

Empowering people to know how to care for themselves and their 

families lessens the burdens upon the first response community 

and the 911 system. Along with this effort, government officials at 

all levels need to recalibrate and manage public expectations about 

what can realistically be expected in terms of services and support. 

And I do not necessarily agree with the findings that we need to 

have a one-size-fits-all national preparedness campaign, combining 

all of our preparedness efforts. I actually think all research will 

show you that you need a trusted messenger, not only message, to 

deliver that message. And those messengers are going to be different, depending upon the circumstances. 

Let me conclude with the reminder that policy and strategy without resources is rhetoric. The process of building capabilities and 

capacities at all levels will require sustained funding, leadership, 

and political will. Congress needs to act, in my eyes, to make regions a reality by amending the Homeland Security Act of 2002. 

Even with resolve, we cannot accomplish everything overnight. 

We will have to prioritize our objectives over the shorter and longer 

term, bearing in mind the nature and probability of the threats at 

hand using an all-hazards, risk-based approach. And we need to 

define how we measure success. What gets measured gets done, but 

we need to make sure that we are measuring what really matters. 

In closing, I would like to recognize the Committee and staff for 

their professionalism, and my colleagues and I at the Homeland 

Security Policy Institute stand ready to help in any way we can. 

Thank you. And I would be pleased to try to answer any questions you may have. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Mr. Leonard. 

TESTIMONY OF HERMAN B. LEONARD, Ph.D.,1 PROFESSOR OF 

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, 

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

Mr. LEONARD. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Ranking Member Lieberman. 

It is a great pleasure to be before you today and to have this opportunity. Thank you for coming back. [Laughter.] 

I want to say that my research work in recent years has been 

focused on crisis management issues, and the research has been 

43

done jointly with my colleague Arn Howitt from the Taubman Center of Government at the Kennedy School. We have looked both at 

private sector and public sector crisis management. 

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to appear before a 

committee which is conducting an objective and nonpartisan, factbased and especially forward-looking analysis of the past so that 

we can build a better future. 

I have a very simple message. The message has been repeated 

here earlier today: We weren’t ready in August 2005, and we are 

not ready today. 

We have most of the capabilities that we need to be ready. But 

we do not have in place the systems and processes that we need. 

We do not have in place the trained and experienced and selected 

cadre of expert response leaders and professionals. And finally, we 

don’t have the needed apparatus and structure of coordination that 

would enable us and a whole variety of different kinds of organizations to come together in the event of a catastrophe of the size of 

Katrina. 

Hurricane Katrina, as has been said repeatedly here and elsewhere, was the biggest disaster the United States has faced. That 

is certainly true. I refer to it as a ‘‘Katrina-class’’ event. It defines 

a new category for us. 

Many have also said that it was the worst-case scenario, and 

that is not quite true. New Orleans, in particular, got lucky right 

at the end when the storm moved a little bit to the east. If New 

Orleans looked the way Biloxi and Gulfport looked, we would have 

been in even worse shape. We literally could have lost tens of thousands of people overnight in New Orleans. 

Now that tells us we are on notice that there can be very significant catastrophic events and that we are not ready for them. 

Katrina showed us failures at every level and on every time scale. 

For centuries, we have put too much value in intrinsically vulnerable places. For decades, we have failed to produce adequate protections for those values that we have put in harm’s way. 

For years, we have failed to build large enough and nimble 

enough response systems to be able to deal with a catastrophe of 

this size. In days before Katrina, we didn’t react fast enough to get 

things moving, and in days after, we didn’t move very effectively. 

So at every time scale and at every level, we have work to do and 

much to address. 

Now much has been said about failures of leadership, and there 

were plenty of failures of leadership. But I want to ask us to think 

about when exactly those leadership failures took place. 

In the days immediately before Katrina came ashore, did we adequately mobilize? No. There was more we could have done. In the 

days immediately after, did we move fast enough? Did we get the 

systems that we had going? No, we can do much to improve that. 

But I don’t think you should start on Monday, August 29, and 

I don’t think you should even start on Friday, August 26. I think 

you should start at least on September 12, 2001. Because, as of 

that terrible morning after, anybody who was paying attention was 

on notice that significant catastrophic events could befall the 

United States, whether man-made or natural, and that we did not 

have systems that were adequate to the task. 

44

Now we all knew at that point that we might have to, in the case 

of a natural disaster where we had some warning, pre-deploy rescue and situational awareness and other assets into a disaster 

area. Or if we didn’t have warning, in the case of a terrorist event, 

that we would have to surge security apparatus, situational awareness apparatus, assets through which we could form a common 

operational picture and begin, as quickly as possible, picking up 

the pieces. 

We had at least 4 years to begin to develop those systems and 

to put them in place. In fact, we had many years before that, if you 

want to pay attention to the historic record of hurricanes. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 put us on notice about this. It wasn’t a 

Katrina-class event, but it was close enough to let us know that we 

had much more work to do. 

Let me give an example of what I have in mind when I say that 

we weren’t ready. The White House report has some interesting 

passages in it. It is generally good and has a lot of good recommendations. On page 47, there is a passage about the coordination of Federal law enforcement efforts in the immediate aftermath 

of Katrina. It says this. 

‘‘The formation of Federal coordination entities also improved 

law enforcement operations. On September 6,’’ I emphasize the 

date. ‘‘On September 6, the two senior Federal law enforcement officials, each representing the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, respectively, established a law enforcement coordination center in New Orleans to help coordinate law 

enforcement personnel in the city and surrounding parishes.’’

‘‘For the first time during the hurricane response, New Orleans 

now had a unified command for law enforcement comprised of the 

New Orleans Police Department, the Louisiana State police, the 

National Guard, and all Federal law enforcement personnel.’’

This event, for sure, began at the latest on August 29—August 

30, August 31, September 1 to September 6. [Witness holds up 8 

fingers.] September 6 was 8 days after Katrina came ashore. It 

should not take 8 days to know that we need, nor to assemble, a 

law enforcement collaboration across all the different law enforcement organizations that were responding. That is far, far too slow. 

Maybe that was the fastest they could do it, given the apparatus 

that existed. But that tells us something about the apparatus that 

we need to create in advance. The right day for doing this was 

about day minus 2. So we were 10 days late in being able to assemble. And that is a very basic, but I think very poignant, example. 

What would being ready actually look like? First of all, it would 

look like fewer people and less property in intrinsically vulnerable 

and hazardous places. Second, it would look like better building 

codes, stronger buildings, and stronger levees. Third, it would 

mean much more effective capacity to actually mobilize an evacuation if you actually need to do so. 

We have never really tried to evacuate an entire major city before. And we learned that it was only partially successful. Eighty 

percent is actually pretty good for the first round, but what does 

that tell us? It tells us there is another 20 percent to go, which is 

going to be much harder, take much more planning, take much 

more resources. 

45

Additionally, being ready would mean that we would have had 

pre-positioned assets for security and for the immediate re-establishment of situational awareness. In the immediate aftermath of 

any high-intensity event, we know that we are going to be blind, 

deaf, and mute. 

We are not going to be able to see very well into the area that 

was affected. We are not going to be able to hear from the people 

who were in that area. And we are not going to be able to say very 

much to them, unless we act in advance to put in place hardened 

communication assets through which we can see and through 

which we will be able to communicate both into and out of the 

area. We need to have the capacity to pre-position. 

And finally, we need an infrastructure of coordination. We need 

the ability to bring together many different kinds of agencies to be 

able to work smoothly and effectively together. 

It has been emphasized this morning, but I want to say it again. 

We don’t want to be exchanging business cards in the aftermath. 

You want that apparatus of agreements and the contractual arrangements and understandings of how we will work together 

formed long in advance. 

Now what does this mean that we need to do before the next 

Katrina-class event takes place? I am going to say four things. 

First, we need to implement, truly implement, the National Response Plan and the National Incident Management System. We 

have currently a plan. We can argue about details in the plan. It 

is not perfect. There are some things that we can improve about 

it. 

Having a plan is a good start. But just having a plan doesn’t get 

the job done. It is only the framework within which people would 

be able to do things if we had practiced, if we had the right folks, 

if we were really ready to go. So the first thing we need to do is 

to implement the plan by building that serious capacity. 

What does that mean? It means four essential elements. First, 

capabilities. I think we have most of the capabilities. There are 

some specific ones we can argue about. But most of the general capabilities exist. We are a very big country, have lots of resources. 

If we were able to organize and deploy those resources, we would 

have the capabilities. 

What we don’t have is the second element: The structures and 

systems, a scalable process. We have a name for it, the National 

Incident Management System. But we don’t have the practice in 

actually deploying it. So we need the structures and systems. 

Third, we need people who are trained professionals, who have 

exercised, who have practiced, who have been selected for their capacity to operate in this kind of environment. Now we have that 

in some areas. We have it in firefighting, for example. We don’t 

have it across the board in an all-hazard sense for disaster response. 

Two important things happen when you begin to put people in 

a systematic process of building training and experience to build 

professionals. The first is that the people get better. They learn 

stuff individually. But the second and probably more important 

thing is we figure out which ones of them are really good at it, and 

46

we promote them. So we don’t, at the last minute, wind up with 

people who don’t actually know what they are doing. 

I think Thad Allen is a very good example of this. He has accumulated over a lifetime of experience a set of capabilities and attributes as an individual. He is a terrific leader in this kind of circumstance. But he was also selected for that. We have had a 

chance to see Thad Allen before. And so, it wasn’t a random event 

that Thad Allen was available at the time the Nation needed him. 

The Nation needs, and it has been said before, but I want to emphasize it again, a cadre of trained, practiced, experienced professional command teams to operate in response situations. 

The fourth element in building and truly implementing the National Incident Management System and the National Response 

Plan is building an apparatus of coordination. I want to say there 

are four forms of coordination we need to emphasize. 

First, Federal to Federal. We need much better apparatus at the 

staff and professional level for being able to get Federal agencies 

to work together, aligned with the Incident Management System, 

aligned with each other, and able to coordinate. 

Second, Federal to State and local. We need much better communication and pre-existing examples of practice and opportunities to 

work through exercises. 

Third, State and local to State and local. State and local governments are not a paragon of capacity to coordinate with each other 

at this stage. They need to develop that capability. That is something the Federal Government may be able to help with. 

Fourth, but also very important, is government to nongovernment coordination. We spend, I think, too much time when we look 

at the response of government thinking only about the things the 

government does. But part of what the government can do is to either obstruct or help to mobilize the enormous assets of the NGO 

community and of the private sector and of the faith-based community. So all of those elements of advanced coordination—building 

the infrastructure, the agreements, the arrangements, the practice, 

the relationships—all of that we need much more work on. 

We also need to emphasize two different kinds of coordination. 

First, a technical coordination. The ability of these people to get together and actually deliver the details and make the trucks run on 

time and so on. 

Second, we need political coordination. Political coordination 

means being able to get the political leaders who are involved in 

this to be able to have some shared understanding of what is going 

on, to be working from something like the same operational understanding, and to coordinate to some extent. This is not always possible to do because they will have different points of view. They are 

known for that. But we need to have at least some ability to coordinate their perspectives and what they are saying. 

One key thing I want to emphasize is that when we say we want 

more leadership at the top and to have more political leaders having more responsibility, I want to be very clear that what you don’t 

want to do is to elevate the technical command of response to the 

political level. The politicians are not selected for their capacity, 

and shouldn’t be selected for their capacity, to operate this kind of 

system. You want trained professionals doing that. 

47

So keep the politicians doing the politics, which is very important 

and which, in my view, is actually what Rudy Giuliani was doing 

in New York City on September 11, 12, 13, and 14. He wasn’t running the technical apparatus. He had a well-practiced, trained technical apparatus, some of which had been destroyed, but the rest of 

which came forward, that was taking care of business. 

And he was, meanwhile, standing up in front of the public of the 

world, modeling the capacity to deal with a traumatic event. That 

was an enormously important part of leadership in that moment, 

but it wasn’t technical leadership. That was political and emotional 

leadership. 

First, we need to build the National Incident Management System in a serious way, as I have just described. Second, we need to 

make sure we have an all-hazards agency. If we do this within 

DHS, which I think most people are suggesting to you we should, 

we need to have an organization that is looking across all possible 

hazards, all possible Katrina-class events. 

We want to keep preparation and response closely aligned with 

each other, and we want to keep response to be ‘‘all hazards plus.’’ 

When I say ‘‘all hazards plus,’’ Katrina-scale events are more similar to each other than they are different from each other, but they 

each also have some specific features. 

As a particular example, if we were to have an earthquake, that 

would have different effects on infrastructure than Katrina did. So 

we also need the specific response for specific hazards. We want 

the basic response to be an all-hazards response. We also want to 

be prepared for specific hazards. That is why I refer to it as ‘‘all 

hazards plus.’’

The third element of the model has to be coordination. We live 

in a society constitutionally constructed to have different structures 

of authority that don’t all come to the same point. And absent declaring martial law in the entire country, we aren’t going to have 

an integrated system, and I don’t think any of us wants to try that 

approach for the first time and have to hope it is going to work either. 

So we need to emphasize a model that includes coordination. It 

will have elements of command and control. That is very important. But we need unified commands across agencies, levels of government, and across different sectors rather than trying to get unitary command. 

And finally, my last point, I want to make sure that we don’t delegate upwards to politicians the task of trying to run the technical 

aspects of the response. We want to distinguish between political 

work and technical work, and we want a cadre of professionals that 

can do the technical work. 

I hope that our political institutions can help us to prepare better 

for the next round than for the last one. Human beings are intrinsically a little myopic, and we hope our political institutions, like 

the ones represented so well here today, are going to be up to the 

task of having us be at our best and being forward looking. 

Today, we are still making some of these same mistakes of planting value in harm’s way and not having the systems built. We still 

have some time, but we don’t know how much time. So I urge us 

to get going right away. 

48

It is my pleasure to be with you. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Thank you all for excellent testimony. 

Mr. Cilluffo, I want to go back to your issue about the need for 

a regionalized approach. One of the striking aspects of the response 

to Katrina that I have noticed is that FEMA deployed to the region 

people from New England, for example, who had no knowledge of 

the region, who didn’t know the local players, who were literally 

exchanging business cards in the midst of the crisis. 

These were hard-working, good people, but they lacked the understanding of the geography, of the people, of the culture. I think 

that made it much more difficult for them to perform effectively. 

Secretary Ridge has met with me and talked to me about his 

plan for regional offices of the Department of Homeland Security, 

which unfortunately was put on the shelf and not implemented. 

And I think that was a mistake, but I think we need to go even 

further. 

And what I am considering as a recommendation to share with 

my colleagues on this Committee, and Senator Lieberman and I 

have had some discussions about this, is whether we should have 

interdepartmental task forces based in the region who would exercise with State and local officials, with nonprofits, with the for-profits, but regionally based. So people know each other. They train together. They exercise together. But also so that the DOD person 

isn’t meeting the FEMA person for the first time. 

I think it needs to go beyond the Department of Homeland Security. So I would like to ask all three of you your reaction to establishing regional task forces, interdepartmental, that would work 

with State and local governments, but also with the private sector 

and nonprofit sector. 

Mr. Cilluffo, we will start with you. 

Mr. CILLUFFO. Madam Chairman, I agree 100 percent. I think 

that is absolutely necessary. And when I say DHS regions, I am 

saying at least make sure we can get across the full assets and 

make sure the whole is greater than the sum of its parts for the 

Department of Homeland Security itself. 

I do think that synching that up with the Department of Defense 

and synching that up with HHS and synching that up with others 

and then making the big mistakes on the practice field, not Main 

Street USA when it matters, is absolutely crucial. 

There is an old Marine adage, ‘‘Fight as you train. Train as you 

fight.’’ There is another one that says, ‘‘Amateurs talk strategy. 

Professionals talk logistics.’’ And I think it does come down to logistics, logistics, logistics. And I am not suggesting that we have a 

permanent—but you want to be able to draw upon the full assets 

not just of the Federal Government, but beyond. 

You had many in the private sector, many in the NGO community that were trying to plug in and find the way to get in. But you 

can’t do that unless you are preparing in advance and you are part 

of the system, not trying to find a way into the system. So I think 

that is a bold recommendation and one that I think is critical. 

Chairman COLLINS. Mr. Baughman. 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. Yes, I certainly agree with that. As a matter of 

fact, during the late 1990s, there were things called regional interVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00052 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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agency steering committees within each one of the FEMA regions, 

which were interagency in nature. And they formed the cadre of 

the emergency response team that went out and worked with those 

States. 

So they were the folks that met with the States day in and day 

out—be it DOD, HHS, whatever the agency was—and worked 

through a lot of these issues. A lot of that has gone away now in 

FEMA. 

Chairman COLLINS. Mr. Leonard. 

Mr. LEONARD. I absolutely agree. I think it is important to notice 

that most of this is not rocket science. Most of what you need to 

do is pretty straightforward. You need to go at it in an organized 

way. Incident management is a good way to organize that. 

What you need is to forward deploy in every region of the country the local capacity to do that. You need to back it up with additional resources, but you need to practice and train that in local 

areas. 

So you could have had long-standing agreements. You could have 

had practice events where these different folks had worked with 

each other before. That would have made an enormous difference 

in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. I really think that would be such 

a good recommendation for us to make and would have the kind 

of practical effect that you have talked about. 

And you made a good point, Dr. Leonard, that with the exception, I would argue, of in the communications area, it is not that 

we lack the capabilities, it is that we don’t bring them together in 

a coordinated way. And that is why I keep looking. I think that is 

the true organizational issue before us, rather than where FEMA 

ought to be. 

Mr. Baughman. 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. Senator, I wanted to mention, it takes some resources to do that. 

Chairman COLLINS. Absolutely. 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. The wildland fire community has had 20 incident management teams that they use on major incidents, 18 of 

which are fire, two of which are all hazards. That is where we were 

going in the late 1990s with our emergency response team-nationals. 

We picked out the best and brightest within FEMA and the 

interagency community, and they were the ones that——they 

weren’t a pick-up team. These were people that trained together. 

The problem that we had is we did not have adequate money for 

training of those teams. 

If you look at what the wildland fire community does, they spend 

an immense amount of time in training and exercising those teams. 

Chairman COLLINS. Very good point. Mr. Cilluffo. 

Mr. CILLUFFO. Madam Chairman, could I add one point as well? 

And I do so at great risk, suggesting what the members of this esteemed body could be looking at as well. But it is also making sure 

that our appropriations are aligned to the authorizers and making 

sure that the various committees in the interagency process see the 

common good, the common purple here. 

50

And I would go one step further, and we need the war college 

equivalent. At the Department of Defense, you have a war college 

where people understand their promotion paths at the Army War 

College, and you have got the national war colleges. There, you 

want to expand that in the interagency process. 

You want to make sure that there are career paths that people 

can know how they can be promoted. They can understand the 

other arms and legs of a big department, and the alphabet soup of 

Washington, and all the Federal agencies that have a role. So I 

think that is the linchpin to sustain that. I think the start is to 

regionalize, but I think there are some congressional challenges. 

Chairman COLLINS. Mr. Leonard. 

Mr. LEONARD. If I could just add one small note on this? This 

may sound like it is a resource-intensive idea, but I don’t think it 

is. You have most of the resources available, as you said before, 

Madam Chairman. 

Arranging collaboration is not an expensive thing to do. Arranging the ability for people to work together is not expensive. You 

will have to have some resources. You will have to have some 

training and so on, but that is what it means to be building a professional cadre of people who can actually do this. So that is exactly what you want to do, and in the regions is where you want 

to do it. 

Chairman COLLINS. Let me turn quickly to another issue, and 

that is what functions FEMA ought to have. 

Secretary Chertoff, as you know, has split off or proposed to split 

off the preparedness function from FEMA. And I have always felt 

that was a mistake because I have always felt that preparedness 

and response are two sides to the same coin and also that State 

and local officials who deal with preparedness also deal with response. So that is one issue I would like you all to comment on. 

But the second issue is whether or not it was a mistake to take 

away from FEMA some of the grant-making process. It seems to 

me that you can more fully align what the State and local governments do with Federal funds if FEMA is controlling the grant process in that area. 

But those are issues that we are going to need to address in our 

report. So I would like if each of you could discuss it. 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. I would like to take that on because the National Emergency Management Association has an official position 

on that. To me, even when you look at the Incident Command System, planning is an integral part of incident management. You 

have got to have the people that are planning on that same team. 

The preparedness that FEMA had was to prepare operational 

plans so that when it came time to execute, they were able to execute those plans. The Coast Guard has not given up its preparedness responsibilities to the Preparedness Directorate. Secret Service has not given up their preparedness to the Preparedness Directorate. 

Frank mentioned earlier maybe response and recovery ought to 

go over there. Why not pull preparedness as it pertains to response 

and recovery to disasters back into FEMA? My opinion is that is 

where it belongs. 

51

The problem that you have had is when you talk preparedness 

in the homeland security context, there are two elements. There 

are preparedness and protection of ports and things like that that 

clearly doesn’t belong in FEMA’s job jar. But the preparedness for 

response and recovery to disasters, all hazards, does belong I think 

within a single agency, be it FEMA or whatever else. But response 

and recovery, mitigation, and preparedness belong together. 

Chairman COLLINS. And the grant issue? 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. The grant issue. The grants provide the mechanism for FEMA to be involved in the development of the plans and 

the exercising of those plans. Otherwise, the only time we see the 

FEMA staff is when we have a disaster. They are not involved. 

Chairman COLLINS. Mr. Cilluffo, those two issues? 

Mr. CILLUFFO. Madam Chairman, I think those are excellent 

questions. And I am not so sure if it is a FEMA question or if 

FEMA ever fully embodied the DNA and the wherewithal and the 

full capacity of the Department of Homeland Security. I don’t have 

a clear answer for you. 

I think if you look at it from the outcome perspective, capability 

perspective, clearly you want to align those capacities and capabilities together. And in terms of grant making, again, policy without 

resources is rhetoric. You want to be able to put people’s feet to the 

fire to be able to also get if you don’t meet a certain standard, you 

have the potential of not drawing down on Federal funds. 

There can’t be a ‘‘thou shalt’’ from Washington, but that is one 

area where I think there is some authority that hasn’t been fully 

exercised. And I think if you have the regions’ perspective, that 

would happen in and of itself, irrespective of whether it is FEMA 

or preparedness and response component of the Department that 

is fully brought together. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Dr. Leonard. 

Mr. LEONARD. The most critical alignment for high performance 

in response is the alignment between the way you prepared to respond and your ability to execute that. So the idea that you want 

to separate those things seems to me to be organizationally very 

hard to understand. Why would you want to do that? 

I think Bruce Baughman made the right point, which is that the 

word ‘‘preparedness’’ is a big tent, and there is a lot of different 

stuff under it. So if what you mean by preparedness is the prevention of terrorism, well, that is very different than preparing to respond to an event that has taken place. 

So the preparedness for a response and response, you absolutely 

want to have aligned and integrated. If you want to hive off anything from that, you take the recovery part because that is the part 

you have time to think about. It is the response part you don’t have 

time to think about. You have to have it ready to go, and you need 

that directly aligned with preparedness. So that would be my view 

on that. 

In the grants area, I think FEMA was actually making progress 

in trying to get people to exercise together and emphasizing things 

on a regional basis. I think we need more of that, which was your 

earlier point. 

And who exactly controls the grants to do that? I think it makes 

sense for there to be, whoever is doing that to understand the allVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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hazards challenges and to make sure that we are practicing on a 

broad bandwidth of things that might take place that might threaten the security of Americans. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Lieberman. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thank you. Thanks for your really excellent, 

helpful testimony. 

A couple of insights along the way that I think describe exactly 

what we have seen. That Eisenhower quote about plans being useless, but planning being indispensable. And we had some great 

plans, which, Mr. Baughman, you had a lot to do with getting 

ready. 

But at least as it transferred from the original Federal Response 

Plan to the National Response Plan, what came out is that there 

wasn’t a lot of work done in implementing the plan so there was 

planning. And therefore, when disaster struck, we weren’t ready. 

And so, that is part of leadership, too, to make sure that those 

plans occurred. 

I thought, Dr. Leonard, your comment or conclusion that we have 

the capabilities, but we don’t have the systems, processes, coordination, and leadership to deliver those capabilities. I think that is a 

very good point. And it is frustrating, but I suppose also, in some 

sense, optimistic because it says if we get our act together, it is 

well within our capacity to deal with these problems. 

Mr. Baughman, in your testimony, you talked about the proposed 

cuts to the Emergency Management Performance Grant Program. 

When Secretary Chertoff was here, Senator Collins led a discussion 

with him about the program, and he really insisted that the cuts 

that the Administration has recommended were justified because 

they had a philosophical view, which was the term he used, that 

it is not a wise investment for the Federal Government to fund 

State and local personnel. 

I wonder if you could respond to that from your experience in 

Alabama and whether you could give some example of how important those grants were to you? 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. Yes, that is primarily because I don’t think the 

Secretary fully understands the implication of the emergency management performance grants. While they can pay for personnel, 

they should be outcome based. 

The intent is to get a plan, procedure, and exercises in place. If 

you have to hire personnel, you ought to allow people to do that. 

But instead, he is looking at it, you use it primarily to fund people. 

I look at my grants with my local jurisdictions and in my State 

as outcome based. I ask them to do certain things for that amount 

of money, to produce a receipt and distribution plan for water and 

ice and things like that. Mutual aid teams, so that their teams are 

able to mobilize and deploy. 

Those are the kinds of outcomes I look at in those grants. And 

if he wants to change it to that, that is fine. But those grants are 

needed to do that level of planning. And I think it is very important that those plans are in place because there is a Federal investment in that. Because if those plans are properly done, they will 

save hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal dollars on the disaster. 

53

Two of my counties, I had one county that had a debris plan in place. It cost us $9.50 a yard for debris removal. Another county 

did not, hadn’t done their work. Had the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers do it. Cost $18. Times 11 million cubic yards of debris. That 

is a lot of money. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. A lot of money. That is a great example. 

Thank you. 

Dr. Leonard, I want to give you a specific example and ask you 

a question based on Katrina. And that is the whole question of 

evacuations. Recognizing that pre-disaster evacuations typically 

have been the responsibility of State and local governments. Here 

we had a case where it was clear to everybody—Hurricane Pam, 

etc.—that there was going to be some significant percentage of the 

population that was not going to get out on its own. 

In that kind of case, what should the Federal Government do? 

What is the appropriate Federal role in getting ready to evacuate 

those people? 

Mr. LEONARD. This is a very delicate question, Senator, because 

the Federal Government at its peril supersedes local authority on 

issues in which the local authorities mainly have control and have 

vastly more local knowledge than the Federal Government officials 

that might be coming in. 

Still, I think Katrina shows us a good example where it might 

be necessary to have some backstop capability to do something 

more. The critical thing that I think the only partially successful 

evacuation of New Orleans shows us is the very great heterogeneity of the population that will not be able to be addressed by 

the kind of ‘‘get yourself out if you can’’ part of an evacuation. 

And it is not just that they are different from the folks who left. 

The folks that are left behind are different from the ones who left, 

and they are very different from each other. There are some who 

didn’t want to go. There are some who wanted to stay because they 

wanted to pilfer their neighbors’ houses. There are some who 

couldn’t get out because they were in hospital beds. There were 

some who had no real connection to transportation systems, and 

there were some who hadn’t heard about it. 

These people are all different from each other. So it is a very 

complex undertaking. And I think, at an absolute minimum, we 

need much more effective planning for evacuation, which should involve a Federal presence. And conceivably, we need to develop a 

Federal capacity to backstop the local capacity and to mobilize 

when we see extreme danger and ineffectiveness at the local level 

for whatever reason. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. So you would say that in a catastrophic situation or in preparing for a Federal Government role in catastrophes that it is probably safe to assume that the State and local 

at a catastrophe level are not going to be able to evacuate everybody, and there ought to be contingency Federal plans to be able 

to do that with that heterogeneous population. 

I think Mr. Cilluffo and Mr. Baughman want to add something 

here? 

Mr. CILLUFFO. Senator Lieberman, I think you address a very 

key set of issues. And if you looked at Hurricanes Rita and Wilma, 

you did have further military assets that were deployed for evacuVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:27 Apr 26, 2007 Jkt 027747 PO 00000 Frm 00057 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\27747.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
54

ation. Obviously, that may be the exception, not necessarily the 

rule. 

But we do, I think, need to focus on the vulnerable populations, 

including not only the lower income families, who don’t have the 

wherewithal to plan for themselves, but also the disabled. And you 

are going to have some specific needs and requirements, and this 

was accentuated with the elderly in some of the nursing homes and 

some of the hospitals. 

And integrating that into the process is absolutely crucial. But 

I have got to ask a question. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. We ask the questions here. [Laughter.] 

Oh, you meant rhetorically? 

Mr. CILLUFFO. A rhetorical question. I am not sure how well 

even under the best of circumstances we can evacuate major metropolitan areas. And I think we need to start asking some hard questions, such as shelter in place, community shielding. 

I haven’t heard too much discussion on the long-term recovery efforts in the Gulf. Why aren’t we designing a perfect community? 

Whether it is on quick sand is a different question. I am not going 

to answer that. But why are we designing a community that 

doesn’t factor in shelter in place, that doesn’t factor in community 

shielding, that doesn’t factor in evacuation planning to the design 

itself, that doesn’t factor in strategic national stockpile distribution, 

that doesn’t factor in the PODs? 

This is a great opportunity to at least build—and I am working 

with someone I believe you have worked with in the past, former 

congressman Richard Swett—to look at how we embed in the actual architecture itself some of these issues, and there is not a 

whole lot of discussion on that. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. It is a very important point that, for instance, in the case of New Orleans, where everyone was worried 

about the big storm that would break the levees or overtop the levees, presumably the exercise of real aggressive preparation would 

have been to have some shelters in place on high ground. Where 

obviously in the other cases, unfortunately, I think you are speaking to a reality, the prospect of evacuating a major American city, 

particularly in the event of a terrorist attack without warning, is 

going to be very difficult. 

So, in those cases, that is a major undertaking to start thinking 

about how do you create a shelter in which people can be protected, 

for instance, from chemical or biological? 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. I would like to address that because we deal 

with three types of evacuation plans in my State—hurricanes, nuclear power plant evacuation, and around our chemical stockpile, a 

six-county area. And there are certain criteria that we have to 

meet to get Federal funds for those plans. 

And so, funding is an incentive to get things done. I don’t receive 

any funding for my hurricane evacuation plans. But one of the 

things the Federal Government did do is to provide me the scientific data to allow me to know what the coastal inundation area 

was, what the wind fields are likely to be on a Category 4, Category 5. That then establishes my clearance times for getting my 

population out of those counties. 

55

So that is my responsibility. That is the governor’s responsibility. 

But the Federal Government’s role in that is to give us the scientific data to make those decisions. In our State, the governor retains the responsibility for mandatory evacuation. We actually did 

that twice without a single loss of life. 

During Hurricane Ivan, 240,000 people evacuated our coastal 

counties, and during Hurricane Dennis, another close to 200,000 

people evacuated the coastal counties. When Hurricane Katrina 

came along, we did not have to do a mandatory evacuation. Public 

education kicked in, and people moved out of the area real smartly. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. That is a good point. Incidentally, in this regard, it may be that we will look back and decide that Tom Ridge 

wasn’t so wrong when he urged people, at least as a first step, to 

go out and get some duct tape and food and water to put in the 

basement. 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. And actually, some of those things are protective 

action. What Frank is talking about is if you have a no-notice release within a major metropolitan area caused by a terrorist event, 

how are you going to do that? In our chemical stockpile area, we 

actually have done that. So duct tape is an option in those particular cases. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. I have a last question, which I may, if I may 

turn tables on you, give you as homework. Unless something really 

jumps to mind and you think we should know today. 

And the question is, obviously, we are not the only Nation to deal 

with the question of how do you respond to disasters, catastrophes 

in this case. We are fortunate that we actually have more resources 

nationally than any other Nation. So my question is, is anything 

happening in any other country that ought to serve as a model, in 

part or in whole, for what we should be doing? Anybody got a quick 

thought? 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. My experience is about 4 or 5 years old. I used 

to sit on a UN committee, so we had the opportunity to look at a 

lot of the other countries’ disaster relief plans. Frankly, ours structurally, if you look at our plan, is far ahead of what the other countries’ are. They, however, have got more executive interest in the 

plans——

Senator LIEBERMAN. Was it more from the political leadership? 

Mr. BAUGHMAN. Political leadership is heavily involved. The 

Netherlands, Norway, Finland, those countries, political leadership 

is very involved in the execution of those plans. 

My job in the last couple of years has been educating, getting my 

governor, and we have had a cabinet-level exercise. We go down. 

We don’t meet with the emergency managers or the emergency 

service personnel because it is political leadership that have got to 

make things happen. We meet with the county commissioners and 

the mayors. They are the ones that I direct my education at. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Mr. Cilluffo. 

Mr. CILLUFFO. I think that is an excellent point, and even though 

I am a big believer in learning from my own mistakes, I am even 

a bigger believer in learning from the mistakes of others. And I do 

think there is a lot——

Senator LIEBERMAN. The latter is more pleasant, too. [Laughter.] 

56

Mr. CILLUFFO. But I just came back from Stockholm, and they 

have the equivalent of a 9/11 Commission looking at the tsunami 

response. It is actually generating attention at the highest levels 

of government and the general public, and I do think they are coming across many of the same sorts of insights we are addressing 

right now. 

I do think the UK can serve, to some extent, as a model, most 

notably from a homeland security perspective, for terrorist response. And I do think there are a lot of things we just take for 

granted that they have in place that won’t necessarily work in an 

event. But I think that that is an excellent way to craft this issue 

and often gets lost in the mix. We should learn from others. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Dr. Leonard. 

Mr. LEONARD. It is an important question, but I do want to raise 

a caution about it as well. Our system of government is very different from that of most other countries. Wonderfully so, I think 

most of us think. 

In our case, the States created the Federal Government and not 

the other way around. So, in other countries, you have a much 

greater capacity to have a unitary response, where the Federal 

Government in its authority role is unobstructed right down to the 

street level. 

That is never going to be true here. And therefore, one of, I 

think, the great strengths of this country is the capacity we have 

in all kinds of different organizations—State and local organizations, nonprofit organizations, private sector organizations—and it 

is going to be our ability to pull those creatively together in the moment. That, I think, is what distinguishes our society in general, 

but also in disaster response. 

And so, I think while it is important to learn lessons from how 

others have organized, I have studied some of the ways the British 

have organized around their terrorist events, how they behaved 

around their version, their July bombing events in the London Underground. It is a very different model. It is a cleaner model in 

some respects. But it is also probably not available to us, given our 

constitutional structure. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much. You have been very 

helpful. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you so much for your testimony. It 

has really been excellent. I think this panel has been a terrific way 

to end what is our final hearing, I hope, on the preparation for and 

response to Hurricane Katrina. 

We are now in the midst of trying to compile recommendations 

for our report and make decisions on what should be included, and 

I hope the three of you will continue to work with us as we go forward because you have a wealth of experience and expertise here 

that will be very helpful in guiding our final recommendations. 

The hearing record will remain open for 15 days, as we submit 

additional questions for the record and other materials. But again, 

I want to thank you for assisting us in what I think is a very important completion of our work. 

And again, I also want to end by thanking our staffs, which have 

worked literally night and day for nearly 6 months now on what 

I think has been an extraordinary job. 

57

Senator Lieberman. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Just to echo 

and second what you have said, thank our staffs. And they and we 

have a lot of work to do now in the weeks ahead to bring together 

all that we have learned in a coherent and compelling fashion that 

ultimately will be constructive. 

And I guess I would end, finally, thank you again. And just to 

end on a note of nonpartisanship that characterizes our deliberations in this Committee, I agree with you that I hope this is our 

last hearing on Katrina. [Laughter.] 

Chairman COLLINS. This hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(59)

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