U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Hearing on the Leadership Roles of DHS and FEMA in Response to Hurricane Katrina

SPEAKERS:

U.S. SENATOR SUSAN M. COLLINS (R-ME) CHAIRMAN

U.S. SENATOR TED STEVENS (R-AK)

U.S. SENATOR GEORGE V. VOINOVICH (R-OH)

U.S. SENATOR NORM COLEMAN (R-MN)

U.S. SENATOR TOM COBURN (R-OK)

U.S. SENATOR LINCOLN D. CHAFEE (R-RI)

U.S. SENATOR ROBERT BENNETT (R-UT)

U.S. SENATOR PETE V. DOMENICI (R-NM)

U.S. SENATOR JOHN W. WARNER (R-VA)

U.S. SENATOR JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN (D-CT) RANKING MEMBER

U.S. SENATOR CARL LEVIN (D-MI)

U.S. SENATOR DANIEL K. AKAKA (D-HI)

U.S. SENATOR THOMAS R. CARPER (D-DE)

U.S. SENATOR MARK DAYTON (D-MN)

U.S. SENATOR FRANK R. LAUTENBERG (D-NJ)

U.S. SENATOR MARK PRYOR (D-AR)

WITNESSES:

MICHAEL BROWN,

FORMER DIRECTOR,

FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

PATRICK RHODE,

FORMER ACTING DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND CHIEF OF STAFF,

FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

ROBERT STEPHAN,

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION,

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

MATTHEW BRODERICK,

DIRECTOR FOR OPERATIONS COORDINATION,

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

[*]

COLLINS: The committee will come to order. Good morning.

Today, in our 18th hearing on Hurricane Katrina, the committee will examine how the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA coordinated and led the federal preparations for and response to Hurricane Katrina.

Our first panel this morning consists of Michael Brown and Patrick Rhode, who were FEMA's director and acting deputy director in the days leading up to and following the storm.

As Katrina neared the Gulf Coast, Mr. Brown dispatched to Louisiana, leaving Mr. Rhode as the top-ranking official at FEMA headquarters.

Today, we will discuss their leadership of the agency during this enormously challenging period.

Our second panel consists of two senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

Robert Stephan is the assistant secretary for infrastructure protection and one of the chief architects of the National Response Plan.

Matthew Broderick runs the department's Homeland Security Operations Center, which serves as the eyes and ears of top DHS officials, particularly during times of crisis.

Secretary Chertoff relied heavily on Mr. Stephan and Mr. Broderick during Katrina's aftermath. We will discuss their roles and their views of FEMA from the top of the organizational chart.

Our panels today separate witnesses from a federal agency, FEMA, from those of its parent organization, DHS. The separation is deliberate. It reflects, in part, the differing perspectives on Katrina that we have heard consistently from officials of the two entities. It also reflects tensions between the two that predate the storm: tensions over resources, roles and responsibilities within the department.

This tension is clear in Mr. Brown's response when committee investigators asked him why FEMA was not better prepared for Katrina.

COLLINS: Mr. Brown responded, quote, "Its mission had been marginalized. Its response capability had been diminished. There's the whole clash of cultures between DHS's mission to prevent terrorism and FEMA's mission to respond to and to prepare for responding to disasters of whatever nature," end quote.

By almost any measure, FEMA's response to Katrina has to be judged a failure.

I must say that I've come to this conclusion with a sense of remorse because I've been struck throughout this investigation by the extraordinary efforts of many FEMA professionals in the field, as well as some FEMA and DHS officials at headquarters, who literally worked around the clock to try to help bring relief to the people in the Gulf states. But the response was riddled with missed opportunities, poor decision-making and failed leadership.

The responsibility for FEMA's, and for that matter the department's failed response, is shared. While DHS's playbook appears designed to distance the department's leaders and headquarters as much as possible from FEMA, the department's leaders must answer for decisions that they made or failed to make that contributed to the problems.

One problem that manifested itself in a variety of ways was the department's lack of preparedness for the Katrina catastrophe. Instead of springing into action or, better yet, acting before the storm made landfall, the department appears to have moved haltingly.

COLLINS: And, as a result, key decisions were either delayed or made based on questionable and, in some cases, erroneous assumptions.

The day after the storm, for example, Secretary Chertoff named Michael Brown as the lead federal official for the response effort. At the same time, the secretary declared Hurricane Katrina an incident of national significance, which is the designation that triggers the National Response Plan.

The National Response Plan, in turn, is the comprehensive national road map that guides the federal response to catastrophes.

The secretary's action led many to the question why the incident of national significance declaration had not been made earlier.

But in reality, the declaration itself was meaningless because, by the plain terms of the National Response Plan, Hurricane Katrina had become an incident of national significance three days earlier when the president declared an emergency in Louisiana.

The lack of awareness of this fundamental tenet of the National Response Plan raises questions about whether DHS leadership was truly ready for a catastrophe of this magnitude. And I think it helps explain the department's slow, sometimes hesitant, response to the storm.

Similarly, we will learn today that FEMA's leaders failed to take steps that they knew could improve FEMA's ability to respond more effectively and quickly to a catastrophe.

In the year or so preceding Katrina, Mr. Brown was presented with two important and highly critical assessments of FEMA's structure and capabilities.

COLLINS: Both included recommendations for improvement.

The first was a memorandum produced by a cadre of FEMA's top professional operatives, known as the federal coordinating officers. Among other things, the memo warns of unprepared emergency response teams that had no funding -- zero funding -- for training exercises or equipment.

The other was a study conducted by the MITRE Corporation of FEMA's capabilities. The study, commissioned by Mr. Brown, was designed to answer such questions as, "What's preventing FEMA from responding and recovering as quickly as possible?"

The MITRE study is eerily predictive of the major problems that would plague the response to Hurricane Katrina.

The study points out a lack of adequate and consistent situational awareness across the enterprise, a prediction that became reality when you look at all of the missed opportunities to respond to the levee breaks; an inadequate ability to control inventory and track assets -- we saw that over and over again with essential commodities not reaching the destination in time; and undefined and misunderstood standard operating procedures.

Despite this study, key problems were simply not resolved and, as a result, opportunities to strengthen FEMA prior to Katrina were missed.

As this committee winds down its lengthy series of hearings and more than five months of investigation into the preparedness for and response to Hurricane Katrina, we increasingly reflect upon what can be learned from the thousands of facts we have gathered.

One thing that I have found is a strong correlation between effective leadership and effective response.

COLLINS: Unfortunately, I have also found the converse to be true.

Senator Lieberman?

LIEBERMAN: Thanks very much, Madam Chairman. Thanks not only for your excellent opening statement, thanks for the leadership that you have given this investigation over five months and now almost 20 public hearings in my -- this is now my 18th year privileged to be a member of the United States Senate.

I've not been in a more thorough nonpartisan and, I'd say, important investigation. And I thank you for setting the tone, showing exactly the leadership that you just described in another sense.

And I thank our joint staff for the extraordinary work that they have done interviewing more than 200 witnesses, compiling and obtaining hundreds of thousands of documents.

Today and Tuesday we're going to hear directly from the top leadership of both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its parent, the Department of Homeland Security.

Our hearings are now reaching the concluding phase. To date, I think the previous hearings have set the stage for the panels we're going to hear today and Tuesday. We've broken much new ground. On today and Tuesday, we have some tough and important questions to ask.

In my opinion, our investigation has shown a gross lack of planning and preparation by both the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. And that guaranteed that the response to Hurricane Katrina -- or, for that matter, any other catastrophe that might have happened -- was doomed to be uncoordinated, inadequate and, therefore, more damaging than it should have been.

We have heard from a large number of witness who've spoken of the full range of failures during Katrina. We have learned of one failure after another: in evacuation, search and rescue, law and order, emergency medical treatment, and deployment of assets.

And we have learned that the federal government was simply not prepared to overcome these predictable challenges in this predictable, and predicted, hurricane.

Even those responsible acknowledge that they did not meet the desperate needs of the people of the Gulf Coast. FEMA and DHS official have told us that in interviews and testimony and in evidence gathered by our staff.

And I want to read just a few of those that are on that chart.

For Michael Lauter (ph), FEMA's deputy director of response, who in an August 27th, 2005, e-mail -- two days before Katrina hit landfall -- said, and I quote, "If this is the New Orleans scenario" -- which was the way they described the big hurricane arriving -- "we are already way behind."

From Scott Wells, a FEMA federal coordinating officer, quote: "This was a catastrophic disaster. We don't have the structure. We don't have the people for a catastrophic disaster. It's that simple," end of quote.

From FEMA federal coordinating officer Bill Lokey, the top man for FEMA in Louisiana, quote: "Communications and coordination was lacking. Preplanning was lacking. We were not prepared for this," end of quote.

LIEBERMAN: From former FEMA Director Michael Brown, who we'll be hearing today, when asked the question before Katrina, "Was FEMA ready for this kind of catastrophe?" Mr. Brown said, simply and directly, "I don't think so."

And, finally, from Secretary Chertoff, who we will hear from Tuesday, quote, "But I also think Katrina tested our planning, and our planning fell short."

The fact is that when DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, was create in 2002 in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, I said -- and I know that I spoke for most members of Congress -- that I hoped to see a coordinated, consolidated and accountable Department of Homeland Security.

In this investigation, unfortunately, we have seen so little effective coordination and consolidation that we must hold the Department of Homeland Security accountable and ask urgently that it do a lot better.

We hoped that the department would quickly evolve into a world- class agency that had the planning, personnel and materials in place to respond swiftly and effectively in a disaster, natural or terrorist. Katrina showed us that the Department of Homeland Security has a lot of work to do on itself.

Despite ample warnings that New Orleans is a bowl covered by inadequate levees that would be overtopped or breached in a big hurricane, despite the specific warnings of the mock Hurricane Pam exercise, done a year before Katrina hit, that government at all levels was unprepared to protect New Orleans from the expected big hurricane, and despite the specific mentions of emergency preparedness and rescue responsibilities in the National Response Plan of January 2005, the fact is that when Katrina hit, America's government was largely unprepared to protect the people of the Gulf Coast.

LIEBERMAN: Nature hit New Orleans hard, but also gave its people a break by hitting hardest 15 miles to the east. Because of the failure to effectively evacuate the poor and infirm who could not evacuate themselves, if Katrina had hit New Orleans head-on, the death toll probably would have been in the tens of thousands, as Hurricane Pam exercise had predicted.

Here are a few of the things that came to pass.

In the days before the storm, FEMA failed to prestage personnel in New Orleans, other than a single public affairs employee, or move adequate amounts of crucial supplies of food, water and medical supplies to the scene.

The Department of Homeland Security failed to implement the catastrophic incident annex to the National Response Plan early enough, and that would have triggered a more aggressive, timely federal response.

The Department of Homeland Security failed to develop an effective plan to maintain accurate situation estimates at the Homeland Security Operation Center, which was set up to be the nation's nerve center during a disaster. And that failure led to the ignoring of reports that the levees were being breached and overtopped and that the city had flooded with people already trapped in attics and on the rooftops.

FEMA was late in bringing in search and rescue teams, and then pulled them out for security reasons, even though other agencies continued to stay and do search and rescue.

DHS failed to stand up until the day after landfall the Interagency Incident Management Group, that senior-level interagency group charged with helping to coordinate the federal response to a catastrophe, that was required once the president declared an emergency on Saturday morning.

Yesterday, we heard from General Bennett C. Landreneau of the Louisiana National Guard, who told us that the buses promised by FEMA before the storm for post-landfall evacuation and then at different points again on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after the storm did not arrive until Thursday. And that, unfortunately, contributed to the human suffering that the world saw at the Superdome and the convention center.

All those mistakes meant time was lost and lives were threatened or lost.

Time is, obviously, everything in a crisis like Katrina or in, God forbid, a terrorist attack. New Orleans Superintendent Riley told us that earlier this week, and he's right. People were drowning in flooded streets and yards, breaking onto their rooftops with axes to await rescue, starving in attics and feeling that they'd been abandoned and losing all hope as their ventilators and medical support systems failed for lack of power.

LIEBERMAN: Those lucky enough to escape made it to the Superdome or convention center. And we all saw the grim pictures of human neglect there.

Because timing and situational awareness is so central to the response to every catastrophe, today's hearing is going to look at what the most senior officials in the federal government knew about the flooding of New Orleans and the breaking of the levees and when they knew it.

A little less than a week after Katrina made landfall, Secretary Chertoff said, and I quote, "It was on Tuesday that the levee -- may have been overnight Monday to Tuesday -- that the levee started to break. And it was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap and that essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city. I think that second catastrophe really caught everybody by surprise," end of quote.

We're going to talk to Secretary Chertoff about that next Tuesday.

Today, we will ask some of his senior staff how the news media, including a New Orleans radio station early Monday morning, numerous federal agencies, the American Red Cross, could be aware of growing and catastrophic floods in New Orleans all day Monday, August 29th, the day of landfall, while the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for disaster response somehow didn't know about it.

In our exhibit book, we have Exhibit Q that details more than 25 reports of flooding, levee breaches and desperate citizens seeking refuge from rising floodwaters that began coming in as early as 8:30 a.m. on Monday, August 29th. A selection of them are shown on the boards here to my left.

They include, at 9:14 a.m., the National Weather Service issues a flash flood warning, reporting, and I quote, "that a levee breach occurred along the Industrial Canal at Tennessee Street. Three to eight feet of water is expected due to the breach," unquote.

Then, two hours later at 11:13, the White House Homeland Security Council issues a report that says, in part, "Flooding is significant throughout the region, and a levee in New Orleans has reportedly been breached, sending six to eight feet of water throughout the 9th Ward area of the city."

The Homeland Security Operations Center reports that, "due to rising water in the 9th Ward, residents are in that attics and roofs." That's a quote from White House Homeland Security Council at 11:13.

Then at 8:34 in the evening Monday, the Army Corps of Engineers issued a situation report that, quote, "There is flooding in St. Bernard Parish, with reports of water up to roofs of homes," end quote, and that, quote, "all Jefferson and Orleans Parish pumping stations are inoperable as of 29 August," end quote.

Finally, Marty Bahamonde, I believe our first witness -- certainly one of the first witnesses last fall before the committee -- the FEMA employee who Director Brown, I believe, had dispatched to New Orleans was there early, testified that he had taken a flight on a Coast Guard helicopter over New Orleans at approximately 6:30 p.m. Eastern.

A report from 10:30 that, "There is a quarter-mile breach in the levee near the 17th Street Canal about 200 yards from Lake Pontchartrain, allowing water to flow into the city. An estimated two-thirds to 75 percent of the city is under water. Hundreds of people were observed on the balconies and roofs of a major apartment complex in the city. A few bodies were seen floating in the water. And the Coast Guard pilots also reported seeing bodies, but there are no details on locations."

LIEBERMAN: That's the end of the report from Marty Bahamonde.

He took this picture that afternoon. And it shows a great American city under water. And still somehow the highest officials at the Department of Homeland Security, and perhaps at the White House, were under the impression as Monday, August 29, ended that the city had dodged the bullet.

Madam Chairman, we've got to ask some tough questions today because we've got to have answers if we're to make the changes that we all want to make at DHS.

In the early aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, former FEMA Director Michael Brown was singularly blamed for the inadequate federal government response. Our investigation confirms, in my opinion, in fact, that Mr. Brown did not do a lot of what he should have done.

But he was not alone. In fact, there was a massive failure by government at all levels, and by those who lead it, to prepare and respond as they had a responsibility to do.

And in the case of the federal government response to Katrina, with the exceptions -- proud exceptions of the National Weather Service and the U.S. Coast Guard, there was a shocking consequential and pervasive lack of preparation, response and leadership.

Mr. Brown, I understand that you are prepared this morning to answer our questions fully and truthfully. I appreciate that very much. I thank you for it.

In doing so, I believe you will be serving the public interest and this committee's nonpartisan interest in finding out exactly why the federal government failed so badly in its preparations and response to Hurricane Katrina, so that together we can make sure it never happens again.

LIEBERMAN: Katrina has passed, but the clock is reset and ticking again. We know that we will have to respond to another disaster, natural or terrorist. We cannot and will not let the clock run out on us again.

Thank you very much.

COLLINS: Thank you, Senator. And thank you for your generous comments.

Our first witness panel this morning includes the top two FEMA leaders at the time of Hurricane Katrina's landfall.

Michael Brown was the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, from March of 2003 until he resigned from that position in September of 2005.

Patrick Rhode was chief of staff at FEMA from April 2003 until recently. At the time of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Rhode was also serving as the acting deputy director of FEMA. Soon after that, he returned to his former position as chief of staff.

I would ask that the witnesses rise so I can administer the oath.

Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give to the committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

BROWN: I do.

RHODE: I do.

COLLINS: Thank you.

Mr. Brown, I understand that you have some brief remarks that you would like to make.

BROWN: I do, Chairman Collins, thank you.

In 1989, a congressman wrote a letter to the Washington Times and that letter said that there is a fatal flaw if we separate preparedness from response. That congressman's name was Tom Ridge.

We reached that fatal flaw in 2003 when FEMA was folded into the Department of Homeland Security.

BROWN: I would encourage the committee to look at a 1978 study done by the National Governor's Association in which -- and I'll quote very briefly -- "As the task of the projects were pursued, it became evident that the major finding of this study is that many state emergency operations are fragmented. This is not only because uncoordinated federal programs encourage state fragmentation, but because the strong relationship of long-term recovery and mitigation of future disasters must be tied to preparedness and response for more immediate disasters, and that is not always adequately understood."

Madam Chairman, I tell you that what occurred after FEMA was folded into the Department of Homeland Security -- there was a cultural clash which didn't recognize the absolute, inherent science of preparing for disaster, responding to it, mitigating against future disasters and recovering from disasters.

And any time that you break that cycle of preparing, responding, recovering and mitigating, you are doomed to failure.

And the policies and the decisions that were implemented by DHS put FEMA on a path to failure. And I think the evidence that we'll have before you today will show the actions that were taken that caused that failure.

And I beg this committee to take corrective action to fix that so these disasters don't occur in the future.

Thank you.

COLLINS: Mr. Rhode?

RHODE: Good morning, Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman, Senators.

I would like to make just a very brief opening statement, if I could.

My name is Patrick Rhode. I served as chief of staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, from April 2003 until January of 2006. I served under both former Director Brown and the current acting director, David Paulison.

I'm happy to be appearing before you today voluntarily as you continue your important work in reviewing the collective governmental response to Hurricane Katrina and assessing possible changes in emergency management.

At the outset I would like to observe, if I could, that Hurricane Katrina was a truly catastrophic event. It was an American tragedy on numerous levels.

RHODE: The magnitude of the disaster was unlike anything we had previously faced as a nation. The storm compromised 90,000 square miles of the United States Gulf Coast, an area almost the size of Great Britain.

On the professional level of emergency management, it was unprecedented. On the personal level, my heart went out to those who were suffering and, indeed, my heart still goes out to those who continue to deal with the aftermath of Katrina.

Many people in the emergency management community, including myself, tried to do the very best they could under very difficult circumstances. The dedicated public servants working on this issue at the federal, state and local level were doing their very best to help as many people as they could under the existing framework for emergency management.

As in all things, there are lessons to be learned from this experience. I hope that these hearings will produce just such learning and lead to the creation of new legislation that can improve on the current system of disaster management.

If we can apply those lessons so as to make things better for the next emergency situation, I want to do all that I can to contribute appropriately to that effort.

As you know, in addition to appearing here today voluntarily, I have fully cooperated with your staffs by participating willingly in several interviews with them.

In addition, I would like respectfully to note that any statements I offer today in response to questions about how to improve the emergency management system are the opinions of one private citizen. As I sit before you today I am no longer a government employee, but have returned to private life with my wife and 6-month- old daughter.

I do not and cannot speak for FEMA. Anything I have to offer is my own personal opinion, for whatever the committee may deem it to be worth. And I want to take care to be clear that it does not reflect the official views of the agency or the federal government.

In short, I applaud the committee for taking on the challenges of assessing what kind of support is needed for and what changes should be made to the country's emergency management system.

I'm hopeful that together we can contribute to enhancements and improvements that best assist disaster victims in the future.

With that, I welcome any questions or comments you may have.

COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Rhode.

Mr. Brown, in my opening statement, I mentioned a study that you commissioned from the MITRE Corporation. It's under exhibit 2 in the exhibit book.

MITRE Corporation gave you its findings on March 2005. And I'd like to read just some of the key findings of this consultant.

COLLINS: "Unclear lines of responsibility lead to inconsistent accountability. There is no deputy to you with operational experience, and there are too many political appointees, not enough senior management emergency experts, lack of adequate and consistent situational awareness across the enterprise."

I also mentioned that earlier in 2004 that a group of senior FEMA operational professionals, the federal coordinating officers cadre, wrote to you a memo outlining their grave concerns. The memo cautions of unprepared teams and zero funding for training, exercises and team equipment. It suggested reestablishing a single response and recovery division at FEMA to facilitate the refocusing that is necessary to regain some of the efficiency that has been lost at FEMA.

We've received testimony that in response to both of these warnings, which were very explicit in identifying serious problems within FEMA, that you did not take any action.

My first question for you is, what action did you take in response to the warnings from these senior career people and the outside consultant?

BROWN: Madam Chairman, the first thing I think the committee needs to understand is that I indeed did commission those studies. In fact, I asked for both of those documents, from the FCOs and from the MITRE Corporation. We had to literally go scrape together the money just to get the initial work done by MITRE.

But I had come to this conclusion. After three years of fighting, the articles you see in The Washington Post about my attempts to try to get the FEMA mission put back on track and how that was rebuffed consistently by the Department of Homeland Security, that I had reached this conclusion: that in order for FEMA to work effectively I had to have something that would give a road map to either future FEMA directors, because I was intending to leave, and/or to the Department of Homeland Security, other than me saying it, that would point out these problems.

As I said, we had to fight to get the money just to do the MITRE study. Once we received the MITRE study, we were in the process of trying to figure out how to complete that, get that into a document that would say, "Here's what we need to do, A, B, C," so I could present that to Secretary Ridge and then Secretary Chertoff to implement those.

We were never given the money, we were never given the resources, we were never given the opportunity to implement any of those recommendations.

COLLINS: So you're testifying that you were rebuffed in your efforts to remedy these problems by the Department of Homeland Security.

COLLINS: Did you ever discuss these concerns about budget, authority, organization, personnel with individuals at the White House?

BROWN: Yes, ma'am. I did.

COLLINS: And with whom did you discuss those concerns?

BROWN: I discussed those concerns with several members of the president's senior staff.

COLLINS: And would you identify with whom you discussed those concerns?

BROWN: Before I do, Madam Chairman, may I just make a few comments and ask for the committee's recommendation?

COLLINS: Certainly.

BROWN: On February 6, 2006, my counsel, Andy Lester, of Lester, Loving & Davies, sent to Harriet Miers, counsel to the president, a letter asking for direction for what I should do when or if this kind of question is posed to me by the committee.

Like Patrick, I'm a private citizen. The president has the right to invoke executive privilege in which confidential communications between his senior advisers are not subject to public scrutiny or discussion.

It's my belief, Madam Chairman, that I don't have the right of executive privilege; that I cannot invoke that. Yet I understand that the president, the White House, the executive, is a coequal branch of government, and that right of executive privilege resides with the president.

I also recognize that as a private citizen, I am here to truthfully and honestly answer any questions you may ask.

So in response to the letter, which did not -- and I want to make sure we understand that the letter did not request that I be granted executive privilege. The letter requested guidance on what the other equal branch of government wanted me to say or not say when these kinds of questions were posed. So despite reports in the press to the contrary, the letter speaks for itself. It did not request executive privilege, but guidance.

I received that guidance by letter, again, to counsel to Mr. Lester, from White House Counsel Harriet Miers in a letter dated February 9, 2006.

BROWN: And I'll just read you the last paragraph.

"The president's views regarding these executive branch interests have not changed. I appreciate that your client is sensitive to the interests implicated by potential disclosure of confidential communications to which he was a party as a senior official in the administration, as reflected in his recent responses to congressional committees and their staffs, and request that he observe his past practices with respect to those communications."

In my opinion, Chairman Collins, the letter does not answer our request for direction on what is to be done.

So I am here as a private citizen stuck between two equal branches of government, one which is requesting that they're not going to invoke executive privilege, but that I respect the confidentiality of the concept of executive privilege; and on the other hand appearing before you, again as a coequal branch of government, under oath, sworn to tell the truth, without guidance from either one.

So, Madam Chairman, I would ask you for guidance in what you would like Michael Brown, private citizen of the United States, to do in this regard.

COLLINS: Does the letter that you have from the White House counsel direct you to assert executive privilege with respect to your conversations with senior administration officials?

BROWN: It does not, and nor do I believe that I have the right to assert that privilege on behalf of the president. I am a private citizen.

COLLINS: Has the White House counsel orally directed you to assert executive privilege with respect to those conversations you've had with senior administration officials?

BROWN: They have not to me. And to the best of my knowledge, they have not directed that to my counsel either.

That's correct.

COLLINS: These conversations clearly could be subject to an assertion of executive privilege. In fact, if such a privilege were to be asserted by the White House, I would, in all likelihood, rule that the privilege applied to those conversations, and I would instruct you not to answer the questions, so that we could further explore the privileges with the White House.

However in, the case of conversations between the presidential advisers, the privilege is for the executive branch to assert, not the legislative branch.

And because you have testified that the White House Counsel's Office has chosen not to assert this privilege, there is no basis for you to decline to answer the question about your conversations with presidential advisers.

So I would direct you to respond to the question.

STEVENS: Madam Chairman?

COLLINS: Senator Stevens?

STEVENS: Has anyone contacted the staff or yourself from the White House requesting that executive privilege be recognized in this area?

COLLINS: Yes. I had a lengthy discussion last night with the White House counsel, in which I advised her to either send Mr. Brown a clear letter asserting executive privilege or to send it to this committee, or to have a member of the White House Counsel's Office present today to object to questions. And Ms. Miers declined to do either.

STEVENS: Well, I just want to say for the record, as a former general counselor of an executive department, I believe executive privilege is in the best interest of the country.

And in a situation like this, if this witness testifies and there's a difference of opinion, then we're faced with a question of whether the White House wants to send someone down to challenge the statements that have been made.

I think it's a very difficult ground we're on. I don't know where Mr. Brown's going, but it does worry me that there is a legitimate basis for executive privilege. If they have not asserted it to you, then that's their problem.

(LAUGHTER)

COLLINS: The senator is correct.

And I invited the White House to provide me with that assertion last night. They declined to do so. Invited the White House to have an attorney present to make the assertion.

I have reviewed the letter. And we will put both the letter from Mr. Brown's lawyer and Ms. Miers' response into the record. And the letter does not assert the executive privilege.

STEVENS: Is there White House counsel present?

COLLINS: There is not a White House counsel present that I am aware of. I suspect there are White House staffers here, however.

(LAUGHTER)

LIEBERMAN: Madam Chairman...

COLLINS: Senator Lieberman?

LIEBERMAN: Madam Chairman, if I may, first, I want to tell you I both appreciate and support your ruling in the context of -- even if executive privilege had been asserted, we are a coequal branch of government.

LIEBERMAN: And in this case, we are doing an investigation on a totally nonpartisan basis that goes to the heart of the public safety of the American people. So we have an interest in obtaining the truth. We're not out to get anybody. We're out to get the truth.

That would be my opinion even if executive privilege had been asserted. But executive privilege has not been asserted.

And therefore, I think the privilege and responsibility, let alone the right, of Congress as representatives of the American people to get the whole truth about Katrina really is the priority value that we have to honor. And I thank you, Madam Chairman, for doing exactly that in your ruling.

COLLINS: Mr. Brown, I would direct you to answer the question. And I am going to reclaim the time that I had before we had to resolve this issue.

BROWN: Chairman Collins, I'm happy to answer those questions.

Could you restate the question?

(LAUGHTER)

COLLINS: I asked you with whom you talked at the White House about the budget, authority and personnel problems that you perceived were hindering your ability to carry out your mission.

BROWN: At various times I had conversations with Deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, before he moved over to OMB. And I had numerous conversations with Deputy White House Chief of Staff Joe Hagin and occasionally conversations with Chief of Staff Andy Card.

I've also had conversations with both former White House Homeland Security Adviser General John Gordon, and with current Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend.

COLLINS: Thank you.

Mr. Brown, exhibit 6 is a series of e-mails about conditions in New Orleans on Monday morning. We know from testimony before this committee that Marty Bahamonde of FEMA first received a report of the levee's breaching on Monday morning at about 11 o'clock. He later in the day overflew the area and saw it firsthand. The e-mails also talk about all of the other problems in the city.

By 10 o'clock on that Monday morning, August 29th, you had received a report from Mr. Bahamonde that there was already severe flooding in the area, that the water level was, quote, "up to the second floor of the two-story houses," that people were trapped in attics, and that the pumps for the levees were starting to fail.

COLLINS: What action did you take in response to that information and to pass that information along to the secretary of homeland security?

BROWN: Two things, Chairman Collins. First and foremost, I alerted headquarters as to those reports and asked them to get in contact with Marty to confirm those reports. And I also put a call in and spoke to -- I believe it was Deputy Chief of Staff Hagin on at least two occasions on that day to inform him of what was going on.

COLLINS: Was there anyone else that you called at the White House to inform them of these developments?

BROWN: It would have been either Andy Card or Joe Hagin.

COLLINS: DHS officials tell us that they did not know of the severity of the situation in New Orleans until Tuesday morning. That's almost 24 hours after you received the information that I referred to about the severe flooding in New Orleans.

They also assert that they believe you failed to make sure that they were getting this very critical information.

I'd like you to respond to that criticism.

BROWN: First and foremost, I find it a little disingenuous that DHS would claim that they were not getting that information, because FEMA held continuous video telephone conferences -- I'll refer to them as VTCs -- in which at least once a day, if not several times a day, we would be on conference calls and video calls to make certain that everyone had situational awareness.

Now, I'm sitting in Baton Rouge, so I'm not sure at all times who is in the video conference, on the VTC, but the record indicates that on numerous occasions at least Deputy Secretary Jackson and at least Matthew Broderick or Bob Stephan, someone from the HSOC, the Homeland Security Operations Center, is in on those conversations on those VTCs.

So for them to now claim that we didn't have awareness of it I think is just baloney. They should have had awareness of it because they were receiving the same information that we were.

It's also my understanding that Mr. Rhode or someone else on his behalf sent an e-mail either directly to the DHS chief of staff or perhaps to the HSOC about that information.

But in terms of my responsibility, much like I had operated successfully in Florida, my obligation was to the White House and to make certain that the president understood what was going on and what the situation was, and I did that.

BROWN: And the VTCs were the operational construct by which DHS would get that situational awareness. They would get that through those VTCs.

COLLINS: Mr. Rhode, were you aware of when the levees had broken on Monday morning? And what did you do with the information?

First, when were you aware of the problems with the flooding as a result of the levees breaching?

RHODE: Madam Chairman, I believe that I first heard about the issues with the levee -- at least partial information -- during the early hours of Monday morning, or mid-morning, I want to say, somewhere between 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock or so.

I believe that I came across an e-mail that was sent to me that suggested that perhaps there was a levee breach. I don't think there was a whole lot more information than that.

And I endeavored to -- as was always my practice; whenever someone was sending me operational information, I tried to make sure that that information made it directly to the operators.

Our protocol within FEMA was to make sure that operations team had any sort of situational information.

Again, my role was in Washington, D.C. I was not in Louisiana. But as that information became available and as I became aware of it, I wanted to make sure that the operations team had it within Washington so that it could then be transmitted to the Homeland Security Operations Center, as there were many situational reports, obviously, throughout the day.

COLLINS: But that's exactly why I'm asking you. You were in Washington...

RHODE: Yes, ma'am.

COLLINS: ... you were now the top FEMA official. Did you take any steps to ensure that Secretary Chertoff was aware of this information?

RHODE: As the information became more and more apparent, Marty Bahamonde later that day helped orchestrate a conference call that I participated in.

And at the conclusion of that conference call, I sent an e-mail to the Department of Homeland Security in addition to what I thought was operational people that were also on that call that were making sure the Homeland Security Operations Center had that information.

COLLINS: Mr. Brown, it isn't only DHS officials who say that they were unaware until Tuesday that the levees had collapsed. I've also been told that exact same thing by Admiral Timothy Keating, the head of Northern Command, who is responsible for homeland defense for DOD.

He, in an interview, told me that he was not aware until Tuesday morning that the levees had breached and that the city had flooded.

Was there any communication from you or did you take any steps to ensure that Northern Command was informed of this catastrophic development?

BROWN: I would have not, at that point, have called Admiral Keating directly. But, through the FEMA Operations Center, there is a military liaison there, so they would have had that same operational situational awareness to pass back up their chain of command so that Admiral Keating or Secretary Rumsfeld or any of those could have had that same situational awareness.

COLLINS: What is so troubling is we have heard over and over again -- from top DHS officials, from top DOD officials, from the leadership throughout the administration -- that they were simply unaware of how catastrophic the hurricane's impact had been because of the breaching of the levee.

Can you help us understand this enormous disconnect between what was happening on the ground -- a city 80 percent flooded, uncontrolled levees, people dying, thousands of people waiting to be rescued -- and the official reaction among many of the key leaders in Washington and in Northern Command that somehow New Orleans had dodged the bullet?

BROWN: Chairman Collins, let me frame an answer a little different way.

It's my belief that had there been a report coming out from Marty Bahamonde that said, "Yes, we've confirmed that a terrorist has blown up the 17th Street Canal levee," then everybody would have jumped all over that and been trying to do everything they could.

But because this was a natural disaster, that has become the stepchild within the Department of Homeland Security.

And so you now have these two systems operating: one which cares about terrorism, and FEMA and our state and local partners, who are trying to approach everything from all hazards.

And so there's this disconnect that exists within the system that we've created because of DHS.

All they had to do was to listen to those VTCs and pay attention to those VTCs, and they would have known what was going on.

And, in fact, I e-mailed a White House official that evening about how bad it was, making sure that they knew, again, how bad that it was, identifying that we were going to have environmental problems and housing problems and all of those kinds of problems.

BROWN: So it doesn't surprise me that DHS officials would say: Well, we weren't aware. You know, they're off doing other things. It's a natural disaster, so we're just going to allow FEMA to do all of that.

That had become the mentality within the department.

COLLINS: Senator Lieberman?

LIEBERMAN: Thanks, Madam Chairman.

Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Brown. We're going to get back to those comments. Obviously, our hope was that the department would be ready to deal with natural disasters and terrorist attacks, and the impact of a terrorist bomb on the levees would have been exactly the same as the hurricane was to flooding the city.

Let me go back to that day, because this is very important, and your comments just now highlight it. And this is about Marty Bahamonde. He takes the two helicopter flights, 5 p.m., 6 p.m. Central Time. He sees the devastation. And he told us that immediately after those helicopter rides he called you and reported his findings to you.

Is it correct that Mr. Bahamonde told you on that during the helicopter rides on that Monday evening he could see New Orleans flooding?

BROWN: It's correct.

LIEBERMAN: Is it also correct that Mr. Bahamonde told you that during the helicopter ride he could see that the levees had broken? Is that right?

BROWN: That's correct.

LIEBERMAN: Mr. Bahamonde told us that after he finished giving you that devastating information, you said you were going to call the White House. In your staff interview you said that you did have a conversation with a White House official on Monday evening, August 29, regarding Bahamonde's flyover.

Who was that White House official?

BROWN: Two responses, Senator Lieberman. There is an e-mail, and I don't remember who the e-mail was to, in response to the information that Marty has given me. In my e-mail -- because I recall this quite vividly -- I'm calling the White House now.

LIEBERMAN: In other words, you were e-mailing somebody at the White House?

BROWN: No, I was actually e-mailing somebody in response to Marty's information...

LIEBERMAN: Got it. OK.

BROWN: ... back to FEMA...

LIEBERMAN: Right.

BROWN: ... in which I said: Yes, I'm calling the White House now. And I don't recall specifically who I called, but because of the pattern of how I usually interacted with the White House, my assumption is that I was probably calling and talking to Joe Hagin.

LIEBERMAN: Joe Hagin, who's the deputy chief of staff...

BROWN: Who was the deputy chief of staff who was at Crawford with the president on that day.

LIEBERMAN: He was at Crawford. And you called him -- it's surprising you wouldn't remember exactly. But to the best of your recollection, you called Joe Hagin. And is it right that you called him because he had some special responsibility for oversight of emergency management?

BROWN: No, it's because I had a personal relationship with Joe, and Joe understands emergency management. Number one.

Number two, he's at Crawford with the president.

LIEBERMAN: Got it. And you quite appropriately and admirably wanted to get the word to the president...

BROWN: That's correct.

LIEBERMAN: ... as quickly as you could.

Did you tell Mr. Hagin in that phone call that New Orleans was flooding?

BROWN: I think I told him that we were realizing our worst nightmare, that everything we had planned about, worried about, that FEMA, frankly, had worried about for 10 years was coming true.

LIEBERMAN: Do you remember if you told him that the levees had broken?

BROWN: Being on a witness stand I feel obligated to say that I don't recall specifically saying those words. But it was that New Orleans is flooding, it's the worst-case scenario.

LIEBERMAN: Right. And maybe that's the bottom line, that you said this was the worst-case scenario, the city of New Orleans is flooding.

Did you ask Mr. Hagin for any particular action by the White House, the president, the administration in that phone call?

BROWN: They always asked me: What do you need? Joe was very, very good about that.

The difference is, in 2004 -- the best way to describe it, Senator, if you'll bear with me for a minute -- is in 2004, during the hurricanes that struck Florida, I was asked that same question, "What do you need?"

BROWN: And I specifically asked both Secretary Card and Joe Hagin that on my way from Andrews down to Punta Gorda, Florida, that the best thing they could do for me was to keep DHS out of my hair.

And if I could just finish...

LIEBERMAN: Yeah.

BROWN: So what had changed between 2004 and 2005...

LIEBERMAN: Katrina, right?

BROWN: Yes. Between the hurricanes of '04 and now Katrina, was that there was now this mentality or this thinking that, no, now this time we were going to follow the chain of command.

LIEBERMAN: Which was -- put you in charge?

BROWN: Which put me in charge, but now I have to feed everything up through Chertoff or somehow through DHS.

LIEBERMAN: I got you.

BROWN: Which just bogged things down.

LIEBERMAN: So you don't have any recollection of specifically asking Mr. Hagin for the White House to take any action at that time.

BROWN: Nothing in specific. I just thought they needed to be aware of the situation.

LIEBERMAN: Understood.

Mr. Brown, on the evening of landfall you appeared on the 9 p.m. edition, that is that same evening, of MSNBC's "Rita Cosby Live & Direct." You said then, very explicitly, that you were deeply concerned about what was happening in New Orleans. And I quote, "It could be weeks and months before people are able to get back into some of these neighborhoods," end of quote, because of the flooding.

You also said, and I quote, that you "had already told the president tonight that we can anticipate a housing need here of at least in the tens of thousands," end of quote.

LIEBERMAN: You were correct.

Did you, in fact, speak to President Bush that night, August 29?

BROWN: I really don't recall if the president got -- I mean, normally during my conversations with Deputy Chief of Staff Hagin, sometimes the president would get on the phone for a few moments, sometimes he wouldn't. And I don't recall specifically that night whether he did or not.

But I never worried about whether I talked directly to the president because I knew that in speaking to Joe I was talking directly to the president.

LIEBERMAN: Well, it's surprising, again, to me, that you wouldn't remember whether the president was on your call to Joe Hagin.

BROWN: I don't want to appear arrogant, but I talked to the president a lot. And so sometimes when he's on the phone or not on the phone, I just wouldn't recall.

LIEBERMAN: All right.

So that maybe you were inflating a little bit or being loose with your language when you told MSNBC that you had already told the president that night about...

BROWN: No, because when I say that I've told the president -- if I've told Joe Hagin...

LIEBERMAN: I got it.

BROWN: ... or told Andy Card, I've told the president.

LIEBERMAN: Yes, I have this problem here in the Capitol, too, when somebody says, "Senator Warner told me to tell you," and then I found out it was a staff member...

(LAUGHTER)

... or I told Senator Warner.

BROWN: Well, you need to get as good staffers as Hagin and Card, because, trust me, they tell the president.

LIEBERMAN: OK.

Let now, let me go to Secretary Chertoff, because you talked about the chain of command that you were asked to follow.

Did you speak to Secretary Chertoff after your call with Marty Bahamonde and tell him about the severity of the situation in New Orleans on Monday evening?

BROWN: I don't recall specifically if I talked to Chertoff on that day or not.

LIEBERMAN: Why would you not have if that was the chain of command?

BROWN: Because I'm still operating that I need to get things done, and the way I get things done is I request it from the White House and they happen.

LIEBERMAN: Well, then, did you tell anyone else at the Department of Homeland Security in a high position, Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson, for instance?

BROWN: I think that Michael and I may have had a conversation.

LIEBERMAN: Monday evening?

BROWN: Yes.

LIEBERMAN: Which would have been along the same lines.

BROWN: Exactly.

LIEBERMAN: Am I right that at some point on Monday evening there was either a phone conference call or a video conference call that you were on reporting on the situation from New Orleans?

BROWN: Yes.

LIEBERMAN: And do you know whether anybody from the Department of Homeland Security was on that call?

BROWN: They were on all the calls.

LIEBERMAN: OK. Secretary Chertoff on that call? Don't remember.

BROWN: I don't recall.

LIEBERMAN: Do you know where he was that evening?

BROWN: As I went back through my e-mails, I discovered that he was either gone or going to Atlanta, to visit the FEMA Region 4 offices and to visit CDC.

LIEBERMAN: We're going to ask him about that. Because, obviously, the number one man in terms of the responsibility for the federal government response to this disaster, for some reason did not appreciate that it was such a disaster, that he got on a plane and went to Atlanta for a conference on avian flu.

I want to go back to Sunday, the day before. Am I right that there was a video teleconference on that Sunday in which President Bush and Secretary Chertoff were on the conference?

BROWN: I specifically recall the president being on the conference because he was in the skiff (ph) at Crawford.

LIEBERMAN: Right.

BROWN: But I don't specifically recall seeing Secretary Chertoff on the screen.

LIEBERMAN: OK.

And on that Sunday video conference call, am I right you were still in Washington then?

BROWN: That's correct. I left that afternoon.

LIEBERMAN: But you described the catastrophic implications of the kind of hurricane that Dr. Max Mayfield and all the other forecasters were predicting that day.

BROWN: I told the staff -- and if you don't have the transcripts of that VTC, then we need to get them for you.

LIEBERMAN: No, I want to give you a phrase. You described it as a "catastrophe within a catastrophe."

BROWN: That's correct.

This was why I was screaming and hollering about getting money to do catastrophic disaster planning. This is why I specifically wanted to do New Orleans as the first place to do that. This is why I was so furious that once we were able to do Hurricane Pam that I was rebuffed on getting the money to do the follow-on. This is why I told the staff during that video conference call...

LIEBERMAN: The day before the hurricane.

BROWN: ... the day before the hurricane struck that I expected them to cut every piece of red tape, do everything they could, that it was balls to the wall, that I didn't want to hear anybody say that we couldn't do anything -- to do everything they humanly could to respond to this, because I knew in my gut, Senator, this was the bad one.

LIEBERMAN: Thanks, Mr. Brown.

Time's up for me.

COLLINS: Senator Coleman?

COLEMAN: Thank you, Madam Chair.

And, again, like, I think, all my other colleagues, my thanks to you for your leadership. This has been extraordinary.

I have to make a couple of observations, as I listen to testimony, Madam Chair.

We hear a lot and we've seen in this committee a lot of discussion about structural problems. We've had hearings where local folks and federal folks and state folks all pointed at each other and saying, "Well, they were in charge, they were in charge."

Any time you get a disaster like this, a disaster not just of Katrina, but the disaster of the response, you get the analysis that we're getting here, of literally hundreds of thousands of pages of review of information.

COLEMAN: But I'm going to be very, very blunt here. What we had -- and having been a mayor and been involved in situations that could have been terrible, that weren't so terrible -- in the end, when things go bad, we do the analysis and we see all the structural inadequacies. But when you have good leadership oftentimes even with structural inadequacies things don't go bad.

And my sense as I listen to this is we had almost the perfect storm of poor leadership. We had a governor who was indecisive, met with the president, met with the mayor and didn't make a decision; wanted more time. We had a mayor, though well-intentioned, is holed up in a hotel room without communications; again, good intentions, wants to know what's going on, on the ground, but nobody's in charge.

And, Mr. Brown, the concern that I have is, you know, from your perspective I'm hearing "balls to the walls," but I'm looking at e- mails and lack of responsiveness. Marty Bahamonde, on sending an e- mail about situation past critical -- this is on Wednesday at this time -- hotels kicking people out, dying patients. And your response is: "Thanks for the update, anything I need to do to tweak?"

We have questions on...

BROWN: Senator, with all due respect, you take that out of context. Because you do that on the fly saying, "Yes, is there anything else I need to tweak?" And what you ignore is what's done beyond that, which is calling the White House, talking to the operations people and making certain that things are getting done.

And I'm, frankly, getting sick and tired of these e-mails being taken out of context with words like,"What do I need to tweak?" Because I need to know: Is there something else that I need to tweak? And that doesn't even include all of the other stuff that's going on, Senator.

So with all due respect, don't draw conclusions from an e-mail.

COLEMAN: And, Mr. Brown, I would maintain that, in fact, the context of the e-mails are very clear: that they show a lack of responsiveness, that they show a disconnect. That's the context.

I'm not going to take individual ones. But if you look at the entire context of the e-mail discussion, you're getting information on Monday, 11:57, a message saying, "New Orleans reported 20-foot wide breach. It's 11:57." E-mail, not out of context, coming back, saying, "I'm told here water not over the breach." At that point, obviously, it hasn't hit the fan for you.

And so I don't think it's out of context. I think the context of the e-mails -- and not just the e-mails, by the way, but the things that we as Americans saw. To me it's absolutely still stunning that on -- you got people at a convention center that are suffering, all of American knows that. All you got to do is watch TV, doesn't matter what channel you watch. And what we have you saying at that time is, "We've just learned" -- this is a CNN interview, September 1; not out of context -- "And so this, this catastrophic disaster, continues to grow. I will tell you this, though: Every person in that convention center, we just learned that today. And so I've directed we have all available resources."

I knew a couple of days ago...

BROWN: Senator?

COLEMAN: And so let me finish the comment.

What I hear here is you saying, "Well, the structural problem follows with the MITRE report, in which it was laid out very clearly the structural inadequacies." And your testimony today is that you had conversations. You pushed that forward.

Can you show me where, either in the e-mails or in the record, your very clear directives to go, quote, "balls to the walls," to clear up this situation, to fix it? Do you have anything that I can look at as a former prosecutor in writing that gives substance to what you've testified to today?

BROWN: Absolutely. Absolutely.

I've testified in front of the House that I misspoke on that day regarding that e-mail. We learned about the convention center on Wednesday and we started -- because the convention center was not planned for. It was not planned for. It was not in anyone's plans, including the city and the state's.

And when we learned about it on Wednesday night we immediately started demanding the Army and resources to take care of that. And there are e-mails in the packages that you have where I'm screaming, "Where's the Army? I need the Army now. Why hasn't it shown up?"

And because I misspoke about when I learned about the convention center, after being up for 24 hours, you want to take that out of context. And, Senator, I'm not going to allow you to do that.

COLEMAN: Let me ask you about a conversation that Mayor Nagin came before us, this committee, and he talked about going over to Zephyr Stadium.

And Mayor Nagin's comments to this committee, and I quote, "I was so flabbergasted. I mean, we're in New Orleans. We're struggling. The city was touch and go as it relates to security. And when I flew out to Zephyr Stadium, to the Saints' facility, I got off the helicopter and just started walking around and I was awestruck. We had been requesting portable lights for the Superdome because we were standing at night and all over. To make a long story short, there were rows of portable lights. We all knew sanitary conditions were so poor we wanted porta-toilets. They had them all over the place."

Were you with Mayor Nagin at the time?

BROWN: I don't know whether I was with him on that particular date or not. But I know the area he's talking about.

COLEMAN: And can you explain to this committee, if there had been obvious deep concerns about sanitary facilities, about lighting, why those facilities, those concerns, had not been met?

BROWN: Because the United States Army, the National Guard, was having difficulty getting those supplies into the Superdome.

You need that understand that there are media reports of shooting, there are media reports of looting and everything else going on. And if the Army moves in there, the Army kills people. And so they had to be very careful about moving those things in there.

By the same token, you had civilians who began to move things in there and couldn't get them there.

So, yes, there were things stockpiled, and as that supply chain continued to fill up, Zephyr Field was full of a lot of stuff.

BROWN: And those things were continuing to go on the other end, to get into the city.

And so for you to take a snapshot of Mayor Nagin going there and being there for a few minutes and seeing all of that, and him screaming in his typical way about, "I want all of this stuff in the city," again, is taking it out of context, Senator.

COLEMAN: When did you order that food and water be delivered into the convention center?

BROWN: The day that we learned about it, that Wednesday. We immediately ordered that stuff to be moved.

Whether it was or not -- whether it was actually done or not, is the question you should be asking. And if it wasn't, you need to be asking why.

Because we didn't have the capacity within FEMA ourselves to do that, and we needed the 5th Army or the 1st Army to move that stuff in there.

Plus, I will also remind you that there's no...

COLEMAN: Mr. Brown, just on that point alone, and that's what my notes indicate, and I just wanted to check the records. Records that have been produced to the committee by DHS indicate that FEMA did not order -- did not order -- food and water for the convention center until 8 a.m. on Friday, September 2.

BROWN: I can tell you unequivocally, Senator, under oath, that the minute that I learned that there were people in the convention center, I turned to Bill Lokey, my individual, my operations person on the ground and said, "Get MREs, get stuff moving in there."

COLEMAN: Did you ever do any follow-up to find out whether that happened?

BROWN: Senator, I continued to do operations as best I could all along, throughout that time. And I would continually ask questions: "Are things happening? Are things happening? Are things happening?"

COLEMAN: The record is very clear as to when the order was given. It was given on Friday.

And my concern is this, Mr. Brown. Again, I understand there are structural problems. I understand some of the concerns that have been raised about the function of DHS and the integration of FEMA.

But as I listen to your testimony, you're not prepared to, kind of, put a mirror in front of your face and recognize your own inadequacies and say, "You know something? I made some big mistakes. I wasn't focused. I didn't get things done."

And instead, what you've got is, "I was going to -- the problems are structural. I knew it up front. I really tried to change it."

The record, the entirety of the record, doesn't reflect that. And perhaps you may get a more sympathetic hearing if you had a willingness to, kind of, confess your own sins in this.

Your testimony here is that you're going to communicate to the president as to what he understood. I'm not sure what you understood. I'm not sure you got it.

I've got to tell you the record, not the e-mails, but the record reflects that you didn't get it, or you didn't, in writing or some way, make commands that would move people to do what has to be done until way after it should have been done.

BROWN: Senator, with all due respect, what do you want me to say? I have admitted to mistakes publicly. I've admitted to mistakes in hearings. What more, Senator Coleman, do you want from me?

COLEMAN: Well, I think...

BROWN: What do you want from me? I'm asking you. What do you want from me?

COLEMAN: What I'm hearing today and what I heard from your testimony as coming in and talking about all these structural things that the die was cast. That was your testimony today. And by the way, I have my own questions about the integration of FEMA into DHS.

COLEMAN: But what I heard today from you, that the die was cast.

BROWN: It was.

COLEMAN: And what I'm saying, Mr. Brown, I'm saying that, in fact, no leadership makes a difference. You didn't provide the leadership. Even with structural infirmities, strong leadership can overcome that. And clearly that wasn't the case here.

BROWN: Well, Senator, that's very easy for you to say sitting behind that dais and not being there in the middle of that disaster watching that human suffering and watching those people dying and trying to deal with those structural dysfunctionalities, even within the federal government.

And I absolutely resent you sitting here saying that I lacked the leadership to do that, because I was down there pushing everything that I could. I've admitted to those mistakes. And if you want something else from me, put it on the table and you tell me what you want me to admit to.

COLEMAN: A little more candor would suffice.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

BROWN: How much more -- what more candor -- ask me the question, Senator. Ask me the question.

COLEMAN: Thank you.

But I think my time is up.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The hearing continued after that point.