And even more good news:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168915,00.html

FEMA Chief To Return to Washington to Oversee Relief Efforts
Friday, September 09, 2005

WASHINGTON - Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown will
return to Washington to oversee national Hurricane Katrina relief efforts,
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday.

Brown is being sent back to Washington from Baton Rouge, where he was the
primary official overseeing the federal government's response to the
disaster. Brown will be replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, who
was overseeing New Orleans relief and rescue efforts.

"This is a fluid situation . we have to have the best people in the right
place at the right time," Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R- Fla., told FOX News.

And as FEMA grapples with criticism from all sides regarding the speed and
effectiveness of its response to Hurricane Katrina, questions are now being
raised about Brown's background.
Time magazine first reported a discrepancy about Brown's background in
emergency management

A 2001 press release on the White House Web site says that Brown worked for
the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing emergency services
divisions."

Brown's official biography on the FEMA (search) Web site says that his
background in state and local government also includes serving as "an
assistant city manager with emergency services oversight" and as a city
councilman.

But a former mayor of Edmond, Randel Shadid, told The Associated Press on
Friday that Brown had been an assistant to the city manager. Shadid said
Brown was never assistant city manager.
"I think there's a difference between the two positions," said Shadid. "I
would think that is a discrepancy."

Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, also said
that Brown was "an assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a
manager himself, and had no authority over other employees.

Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA's office of public affairs,
told Time that while Brown began as an intern at the job in Edmond, he
became an "assistant city manager" with a distinguished record of service.

"According to Mike Brown," Andrews told Time, a large portion of points
raised by the magazine are "very inaccurate."

The official White House announcement of Brown's nomination to head FEMA in
January 2003 also says he served as "the Executive Director of the
Independent Electrical Contractors," a trade group based in Alexandria, Va.

But two officials of the electrical contractors group told Newsday that
Brown was never the national head of the organization but did serve as the
executive director of a regional chapter, based in Colorado, where Brown has
lived. Click here to read the Newsday story.
Terry Moreland, Brown's immediate successor as the Rocky Mountain executive
director, told Newsday that Brown held the job for less than six weeks
before becoming general counsel for FEMA in 2001.

The electrical contracting group's current top administrator, Larry Mullins
asked, told Newsday that he planned to call the White House to have the 2003
press release that says Brown was the IEC executive director removed.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan referred all questions about
Brown's resume to FEMA.
McClellan said the White House's earlier statements that Brown retained the
president's confidence remain true - but he declined to state that
confidence outright.

"I'd leave it where I left it," McClellan said. "We appreciate the work of
all those who have been working around the clock to respond to what has been
on the worst natural disasters in our nation's history."

On the more general issue of whether FEMA sufficiently responded to the
devastating aftermath caused by Katrina along the Gulf Coast, FOX News
obtained a letter written by the American Federation of Government Employees
to senators in June 2004, warning that FEMA was being degraded and urging an
investigation by the Government Accountability Office. AFGE represents FEMA
workers.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security was
created in an effort to consolidate and streamline many security-related
functions performed by a myriad of U.S. agencies. FEMA was one agency that
was rolled into DHS.

"Over the past three years, FEMA has gone from being a model agency to being
one where funds are being misspent, employee morale has fallen, and our
nation's emergency management capability is being eroded," the letter
states.

The AFGE letter goes on to say: "Over the past three-and-a-half years,
professional emergency managers at FEMA have been supplanted on the job by
politically-connected contactors and by novice employees with little
background or knowledge of emergency management."

It continues: "Numerous state and local emergency officials have complained
that FEMA's emergency management role and functions are continually being
downgraded under the new 'National Response Plan.'"

The National Response Plan mentioned was created by DHS as an effort to
establish a "comprehensive all-hazards approach to enhance the ability of
the United States to manage domestic incidents," according to the DHS Web
site.

"The plan incorporates best practices and procedures from incident
management disciplines-homeland security, emergency management, law
enforcement, firefighting, public works, public health, responder and
recovery worker health and safety, emergency medical services, and the
private sector-and integrates them into a unified structure. It forms the
basis of how the federal government coordinates with state, local, and
tribal governments and the private sector during incidents."

Meanwhile, the director of the National Hurricane Center who claims he made
a personal plea to those involved in disaster relief to make sure they knew
what was coming as Hurricane Katrina came ashore last week.

Max Mayfield now confirms that the day before the storm hit the Gulf Coast,
he was so concerned that he personally called New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin,
(search) Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco (search) and Mississippi Gov. Haley
Barbour (search) to warn them.

"The thing I remember telling all three of them is that when I walked out of
the hurricane center that night I wanted to be able to sleep at night
knowing that I had done everything that I could do," Mayfield said.

Nagin is facing criticism, according to a published report, because the
evacuation order for the city was issued 20 hours before Katrina made
landfall, when researchers believe twice that amount of time was needed to
clear New Orleans (search).

Here's how Nagin described the emergency call from the National Hurricane
Center on Sept. 6.
"I ordered the mandatory evacuation the night that I got a call from the
head of the hurricane center, Max somebody . and he said, 'Mr. Mayor, I've
never seen a storm like this. I've never seen conditions like this.'"

Then there's political fall out for Blanco. The New York Times is reporting
that politics snarled the plans to get military troops into her state, in
part because some in the administration worried about the message it would
send - a Republican president circumventing a southern Democratic governor.
To seize control on the control on the ground, the president would have
relied on what's called the Insurrection Act, which lets him take the reins
in times of unrest and send in troops for law and order. But according to
the report, the belief was that Blanco would resist surrendering control.

FOX News' Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this
report.





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