Former FEMA director Michael Brown's Credentials

Below are 2 versions of the background and history of Michael Brown, who was appointed by the president to be the Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response (EP&R) in the newly created Department of Homeland Security in January 2003. He previously served as as FEMA's Deputy Director and the agency's General Counsel. He was also appointed by President Bush to these positions. The 1st version is from the official web site of the White House and the 2nd is from Wikipedia. There is also a time article at the bottom on this topic. You may wonder what exactly the responsibilities of the Federal Emergency Management Association are? Well, the mission statement from their official website is below:

FEMA Mission

DISASTER. It strikes anytime, anywhere. It takes many forms -- a hurricane, an earthquake, a tornado, a flood, a fire or a hazardous spill, an act of nature or an act of terrorism. It builds over days or weeks, or hits suddenly, without warning. Every year, millions of Americans face disaster, and its terrifying consequences.

On March 1, 2003, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). FEMA's continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program.

As you read the articles below, party affiliation aside, try to objectively ask yourself if Michael Brown had the proper background and experience to lead FEMA.

Official White House Biography of Michael Brown

Michael D. Brown was nominated by President George Bush as the first Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response (EP&R) in the newly created Department of Homeland Security in January 2003. Mr. Brown coordinates federal disaster relief activities, including implementation of the Federal Response Plan, which authorizes the response and recovery operations of 26 federal agencies and departments as well as the American Red Cross. He would also oversee the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration, and initiate proactive mitigation activities.

Additionally, as Under Secretary, Mr. Brown will help the Secretary of Homeland Security ensure the effectiveness of emergency responders, and direct the Strategic National Stockpile, the National Disaster Medical System and the Nuclear Incident Response Team.
Previously, Mr. Brown served as FEMA's Deputy Director and the agency's General Counsel. Shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Mr. Brown served on the President's Consequence Management principally Committee, which acted as the White House's policy coordination group for the federal domestic response to the attacks. Later, the President asked him to head the Consequence Management Working Group to identify and resolve key issues regarding the federal response plan. In August 2002, President Bush appointed him to the Transition Planning Office for the new Department of Homeland Security, serving as the transition leader for the EP&R Division. Mr. Brown currently chairs the National Citizen Corps Council, part of the President's USA Freedom Corps volunteer initiative.

Prior to joining FEMA he practiced law in Colorado and Oklahoma, where he served as a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court. He had been appointed as a special prosecutor in police disciplinary matters. While attending law school he was appointed by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma Legislature as the Finance Committee Staff Director, where he oversaw state fiscal issues. His background in state and local government also includes serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight and as a city councilman.

A native of Oklahoma, Mr. Brown holds a B.A. in Public Administration/Political Science from Central State University, Oklahoma. He received his J.D. from Oklahoma City University's School of Law. He was an adjunct professor of law for the Oklahoma City University.

Wikipedia Version

Michael DeWayne Brown (born November 8, 1954) was Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response (EP&R), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a position generally referred to as the director or administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He was appointed in January 2003 by President George W. Bush and resigned September 2005.

On September 12, 2005, in the wake of what was widely believed to be feckless handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and facing allegations that he had falsified portions of his résumé, Brown resigned, saying that it was "in the best interest of the agency and best interest of the president." [1]. Earlier, he was discharged from his functions as coordinator of the federal efforts in New Orleans and Gulf Coast by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and was sent back to Washington to continue FEMA's central operations. President Bush, who had appointed Brown in 2003, praised Brown shortly after the storm hit, saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," but later deflected questions about the resignation, except to deny having discussed the resignation with him.

At least one reliable source, The Economist, recognized the likelihood that Brown was "pushed" out by the administration rather than having resigned voluntarily, although internal e-mails from Brown indicated that he was already planning to leave FEMA at the time Hurricane Katrina hit. [2] [3] The same suggestion was made by at least one member of Congress during a hearing on what went wrong during Katrina. Brown concentrated his testimony at that hearing on alleging that Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin bore most if not all the blame for the failures in the response to Katrina, and that his own only fault had been not to realize sooner the inability of Blanco and Nagin to perform their duties. This testimony drew harshly skeptical responses from some members of the Congressional panel, and by the next day was alleged by Governor Blanco to have committed perjury under oath.
After his September 12 resignation, Brown continued working for FEMA as a contractor to help the agency assess what went wrong in the response to Hurricane Katrina.

On September 27, 2005, Brown testified before the House Select Committee on Katrina Preparation and Response that he was paid an annual salary of $148,000 at FEMA.

On November 2, 2005, Brown ended his contract early (it had been extended to mid-November by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff) and left the federal government.

On January 18, 2006, Mr. Brown recanted his earlier attempts to shift blame, and accepted more personal responsibility for the failures of FEMA to handle the disaster, during a speech to National Weather Service meteorologists. [4] On February 10, 2006, Brown again testified before Congress, this time placing blame on the Department of Homeland Security for the poor handling of the disaster, asserting that the anti-terrorism focus of the Department had caused it to deny resources needed to FEMA. In his February 2006 testimony, Brown also contradicted earlier claims that the White House was unaware of levies having breached, stating "For them to claim that we didn't have awareness of it is just baloney."[5]

On March 1, 2006, AP re-released a recording of Michael Brown and the President in a video conference in which the vulnerability of the levy system was raised with a great deal of concern over potential loss of life. The President has denied any awareness of the possibility of a levy-related catastrophe.

Time article on the issue from September 8, 2005

Posted Thursday, Sep. 08, 2005When President Bush nominated Michael Brown to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2003, Brown's boss at the time, Joe Allbaugh, declared, "the President couldn't have chosen a better man to help...prepare and protect the nation." But how well was he prepared for the job? Since Hurricane Katrina, the FEMA director has come under heavy criticism for his performance and scrutiny of his background. Now, an investigation by TIME has found discrepancies in his online legal profile and official bio, including a description of Brown released by the White House at the time of his nomination in 2001 to the job as deputy chief of FEMA. On Friday, Brown, who became director of FEMA in 2003, was relieved of his duties handling the Katrina response and was replaced in that role by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen.

Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him." Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. "Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."
In response, Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA's office of public affairs, insists that while Brown began as an intern, he became an "assistant city manager" with a distinguished record of service. "According to Mike Brown," she says, "a large portion [of the points raised by TIME] is very inaccurate."

Brown's lack of experience in emergency management isn't the only apparent bit of padding on his resume, which raises questions about how rigorously the White House vetted him before putting him in charge of FEMA. Under the "honors and awards" section of his profile at FindLaw.com, which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices, he lists "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University". However, Brown "wasn't a professor here, he was only a student here," says Charles Johnson, News Bureau Director in the University Relations office at the University of Central Oklahoma (formerly named Central State University). "He may have been an adjunct instructor," says Johnson, but that title is very different from that of "professor." Carl Reherman, a former political science professor at the University through the '70s and '80s, says that Brown "was not on the faculty." As for the honor of "Outstanding Political Science Professor," Johnson says, "I spoke with the department chair yesterday and he's not aware of it." Johnson could not confirm that Brown made the Dean's list or was an "Outstanding Political Science Senior," as is stated on his online profile.

Speaking for Brown, Andrews says that Brown has never claimed to be a political science professor, in spite of what his profile in FindLaw indicates. "He was named the outstanding political science senior at Central State, and was an adjunct professor at Oklahoma City School of Law."

Under the heading of "Professional Associations and Memberships" on FindLaw, Brown states that from 1983 to the present he has been director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home in Edmond. But an administrator with the Home told TIME that Brown is "not a person that anyone here is familiar with." She says there was a board of directors until a couple of years ago, but she couldn't find anyone who recalled him being on it. According to FEMA's Andrews, Brown said "he's never claimed to be the director of the home. He was on the board of directors, or governors of the nursing home." However, a veteran employee at the center since 1981 says Brown "was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here."
The FindLaw profile for Brown was amended on Thursday to remove a reference to his tenure at the International Arabian Horse Association, which has become a contested point.
Brown's FindLaw profile lists a wide range of areas of legal practice, from estate planning to family law to sports. However, one former colleague does not remember Brown's work as sterling. Stephen Jones, a prominent Oklahoma lawyer who was lead defense attorney on the Timothy McVeigh case, was Brown's boss for two-and-a-half years in the early '80s. "He did mainly transactional work, not litigation," says Jones. "There was a feeling that he was not serious and somewhat shallow." Jones says when his law firm split, Brown was one of two staffers who was let go.

What "famous" person said the following?

And I do quote,

"This is not the Old Testament, I emphasize, but St. Paul.... The core of his message is that government--however you want to limit that concept--derives its moral authority from God... Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral.....I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: It is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing his life, in exchange for the next?.... For the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life to end his existence. What a horrible act!

The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible. We have done that in this country (and continental Europe has not) by preserving in our public life many visible reminders that--in the words of a Supreme Court opinion from the 1940s--"we are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."... All this, as I say, is most un-European, and helps explain why our people are more inclined to understand, as St. Paul did, that government carries the sword as "the minister of God," to "execute wrath" upon the evildoer. "

So, who said this:

a) David Koresh
b) Alan Keyes
c) Antonin Scalia
d) Jerry Falwell

You should be surprise and I really hope deeply disturbed that this is a quote from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia during a speech given at the University of Chicago Divinity School on the subject of the death penalty in January of 2002. I guess I don't know what I find more confounding about the quotation above but 3 things come to mind:

1. The statement that the more Christian a country is, the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Really? I consider myself to be a Christian but if me and Antonin are in any way part of the same club, he has not been talking to the same people I've been. I just got understand how anyone who has any sort of moral compass whatsoever would not find this is to be more than a bit distressing. Not only is Scalia put Christianity and the death penalty in the same breath but he also makes the strong insinuation that for a non believer (whatever that means) to believe in the death penalty is a horrible sin but for a Christian it is OK.
2. The fact that Scalia is giving this speech at all. The definition of objective is defined as being 'uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices.' In this instance, Scalia is obviously not objective at all. In fact, this doesn't sound like a speech but a lecture from a preacher who seems to think they are omniscient. I mean does anyone think this man would vote against the death penalty under any circumstance? As a judge, you are supposed to look at the evidence and make a decision, not rely on your "faith", beliefs or religion. There is no doubt in my mind that Scalia would vote for the death penalty even if the evidence showed that 50% of those that are on death row are innocent. After all, the "minister of God," who I guess is our legal system would get the other 50% of "evildoers."
3. The fact that he uses as a basis for his "beliefs", and make no mistake that there is nothing factual about what Scalia is saying because these are his beliefs, a 1940's Supreme Court opinion in the year 2002. Surely, nothing has changed in the last 50+ years.

A few things to ponder in closing,

• How would you feel if this man was to speak at your son's high school during government or history class? Would you complain?
• What if this man taught Sunday school to your child?
• What do you think this man would do if his son brought home a Jewish woman or man for that matter and introduced him or her as his significant other? Take a minute to laugh because I would love to be a fly on the wall for that introduction.

Well, this man is on the US Supreme Court and has a lot to say about the laws that are passed in this country and that should really bother you.