Even at Cheney's Holiday Party, CIA Chief Faces Interrogators

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'Don't I Know You?'

FEMA Deputy Administrator Harvey E. Johnson finally fessed up yesterday to Congress that he had his suspicions about the disaster relief agency's Oct. 23 fake news conference even as he was presiding over it.

Johnson, who was facing a confirmation hearing, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that he realized that the first five questions he was asked came from employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The sixth and final question also came from a FEMA worker, he learned later, he said, and not from a real reporter. Members of the news media were listening in via a telephone conference call and were barred from speaking.

"If I had a press conference and walked in and my staff was asking me one question, red flags would go up. . . . Why didn't you just say, 'Hold it, what's going on?' " Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) asked.

Johnson said that he recalled thinking "it was odd" that his staff was asking questions, and that he expected reporters to follow up. "I've certainly gone over in my mind a number of times the actions that I should have taken -- could have taken, that could have changed the course of that press conference," he said, acknowledging what he has called "clearly a regrettable error in judgment."

The committee hopes to vote next week on Johnson's nomination. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said at the hearing that she will not vote for him unless he shows he could be "an agent of change."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has called the fake news conference "one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government." FEMA's press secretary has since resigned, and the agency's director of external communications at the time of the phony news conference was denied a similar job at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.