No Experience Necessary, Cont.

Amidst all the cat-5 scale spin that is going on inside-the-beltway over who is to blame for the disaster of New Orleans, some facts about the Federal Emergency Management Agency are nevertheless coming out.

The picture that has been emerging is an agency whose mission was underappreciated by Bush administration higherups obcessed with terrorism; whose budget and staff were cut; which suffered in the bureacratic deck shuffle that created the Department of Homeland Security; whose most experienced top personel departed and were replaced by patronage hires.

The Washington Post reports: that "Five of Bush's Eight top FEMA appointees are "Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience: 'Brain Drain' At Agency Cited"

Meanwhile the FEMA employees union is speaking out:

"All of us were just shaking our heads and saying, 'This isn't going to be enough, and the director has to know this isn't going to be enough.' But nothing more seemed to be happening," said Leo Bosner, president of the FEMA Headquarters Employees Union.

Bosner has been with FEMA since it began 26 years ago. He says the agency has been systematically dismantled since it became part of the massive Department of Homeland Security.

"One of the big differences I see," said Bosner, "besides taking away our staff and our budget and our training, is that Homeland Security now, in my view, slows down the process."

The union warned Congress in a detailed letter about FEMA's decline a year ago. State emergency managers also warned Capitol Hill and Homeland Security just weeks ago that DHS was too focused on one thing -- terrorism.

In an editorial The New York Times adds:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced this week that it didn't want the news media taking photographs of the dead in New Orleans. A FEMA spokeswoman talked unconvincingly about the dignity of the dead. But the bizarre demand, a creepy echo of the ban on news media coverage of the coffins returning from Iraq, is simply the latest spasm of a gutted federal agency.

It's not really all that surprising that the officials who run FEMA are stressing that all-important emergency response function: the public relations campaign. As it turns out, that's all they really have experience at doing....

The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that neither the acting deputy director, Patrick Rhode, nor the acting deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, came to FEMA with any previous experience in disaster management. Ditto for Scott Morris, the third in command until May.

Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience.... Mr. Morris was a press handler with the Bush presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush campaign commercials....

The Times further observes that

"President Bill Clinton appointed political pals at FEMA who actually knew something about disaster management. The former FEMA director James Lee Witt, whose tenure is widely considered a major success.... had run the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services. His top staff came from regional FEMA offices....

But President Bush chose to make FEMA a dumping ground for unqualified cronies.... What America needs are federal disaster relief people who actually know something about disaster relief.