Brown's Turf Wars Sapped FEMA's Strength

"He fought being part of DHS from Day One," another top DHS official recalled.

Brown got his way on the name; Ridge and his brand-conscious aides had to admit that "FEMA" sounded better than "EP&R." But when Brown sent a memo urging Ridge to defy Congress and move the ODP into FEMA, Ridge refused.

Brown further alienated Ridge's team when he argued that DHS did not need an emergency operations center at its headquarters because FEMA already had one. DHS built its own command center anyway, with Coast Guard officers in charge. "Everybody wanted a toy," Brown grumbled. "Fancy screens and all that kind of stuff."

Brown was the only undersecretary who did not work at DHS headquarters, and he wanted to keep it that way. "There was so much spinning of wheels," he said. "The meetings just drove me nuts."

But Ridge's team saw only that Brown cared more about FEMA than about DHS. "We started from the notion that we're always going to be looking for ways to bring things together," Neely said. "Anybody from the leadership team who embraced that notion was part of the inner circle."

So Brown was frozen out.

Minnow Swallows the Whale

---

Ridge ultimately did decide to move the ODP and its preparedness grants -- but not to FEMA, as Brown had proposed. Instead, Ridge moved the ODP into his own office -- and began moving FEMA's preparedness grants into the ODP. He agreed with Brown's argument that there ought to be a "one-stop shop" for grants, just not that the shop belonged in FEMA.

That's when Brown wrote his September memo to Ridge. He emphasized that the White House originally intended to put the ODP into FEMA, even though its latest budget endorsed Ridge's new plan. He also argued that it would help Ridge thumb his nose at Congress, in order to set a precedent for future clashes .

But mostly he aired the substantive concerns of FEMA's staff members, who worried that Ridge's plan would separate emergency preparedness from response and endanger their relationships with first responders. At the state and local level, he noted, the people responsible for responding to disasters were the same people responsible for preparing for them.

"FEMA learned the hard way that disjointed efforts between preparedness and response create significant problems in effectively managing disasters," he wrote.

Brown insisted that "my sole motivation regarding these topics is to ensure that you have the benefit of all perspectives," and he pledged that regardless of Ridge's decisions, "the dedicated employees of EP&R/FEMA will work diligently to implement them." But when Ridge continued to balk, Brown appealed again to his White House contacts, especially Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph W. Hagin and personnel chief Clay Johnson III.

The White House often took the side of rival departments against Ridge, but it took Ridge's side against Brown. Eventually, Johnson told Brown to back off.