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Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows
Michael Brown takes the fall: Federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not former FEMA chief Brown.
Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows
copyright Knight Ridder - Tue Sep 13,10:00 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show. Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.
copyright Knight Ridder - Tue Sep 13,10:00 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show. Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.
For more information:
http://news.yahoo.com/fc/world/hurricanes_...
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http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Michael-Chertoff
At the time, few paid attention to this peculiar silencing of Lindh. In retrospect, though, it seems clear that the man coasting toward confirmation as Secretary of Homeland Security effectively prevented early exposure of the Bush/Rumsfeld/Gonzales policy of torture, which we now know began in Afghanistan and later "migrated" to Guantánamo and eventually to Iraq. So anxious was Chertoff to avoid exposure in court of Lindh's torture--which included keeping the seriously wounded and untreated Lindh, who was malnourished and dehydrated, blindfolded and duct-taped to a stretcher for days in an unheated and unlit shipping container, and repeatedly threatening him with death--that defense lawyers say he made the deal a limited-time offer. "It was good only if we accepted it before the suppression hearing," says Harris. "They said if the hearing occurred, all deals were off." He adds, "Chertoff himself was clearly the person at Justice to whom the line prosecutors were reporting. He was directing the whole plea agreement process, and there was at least one phone call involving him."
"It is outrageous that Chertoff didn't allow testimony about Lindh's torture by American forces to come out," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "It is off the charts in terms of morality, and it should definitely be a line of questioning at Chertoff's confirmation hearing: What did he know about Lindh's treatment in Afghanistan, and why did he go to such lengths to silence him about it?" But that might never happen at Chertoff's (as yet unscheduled) hearing, since the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Joe Lieberman, has endorsed the nomination.
Chertoff's judicial office is referring all inquires to the White House press office. Calls there and to the Justice Department, asking for comment, were not returned.
Ratner says Chertoff's role in the Lindh trial could well have contributed to the torture scandal that has so undermined the US effort to win over Iraqis following the invasion of their country. "Had testimony from witnesses under oath about Lindh's torture come out in court in 2002, we might have learned about the government's torture program earlier, and we might not have had Abu Ghraib and other torture scandals," he says.