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Skriven 2006-02-23 23:33:28 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0602235) for Thu, 2006 Feb 23
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Press Briefing by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and
Counterterrorism Frances Fragos Townsend
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 23, 2006

Press Briefing by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and
Counterterrorism Frances Fragos Townsend
James S. Brady Briefing Room



11:05 A.M. EST

MS. TOWNSEND: The President's most solemn obligation is to protect the
American people. Every day and night millions of men and women in the
federal government, both military and civilian, work to achieve that
objective. Given the dangerous world we live in, they do an outstanding
job. Despite all we do, however, Hurricane Katrina was a deadly reminder
that we can, and will, do better.

This is the first and foremost lesson we learned from the death and
destruction caused by the country's most destructive natural disaster. No
matter how prepared we think we are, we must work to improve our
performance every day.

When you look at prior natural disasters -- and I direct you to pages 6 and
7 of the report, which are graphs that really make the comparison -- the
scope of the devastation, the size of the disaster area was extraordinary.
The second lesson we learned, and we hope everyone listening today will
learn, is that it will take all of us working together to put out country
in the best position to be prepared for, to defend against, to respond to,
and to recover from future natural disasters or terrorist attacks. And I
really do mean all of us. It will require not only federal, state and local
governments, it will require schools and churches, individual citizens,
communities, workplaces all across our nation.

Those of us in government must take the lead, and President Bush made clear
he is doing just that. Like all Americans, he was not satisfied with the
federal response to Hurricane Katrina and he accepted responsibility for
the shortcomings in the federal response. He demanded that we find out the
lessons, that we learn them and that we fix the problems, that we take
every action to make sure America is safer, stronger and better prepared.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what this Hurricane Katrina Lessons Learned
Review has been all about.

Before moving on to the lessons -- the 17 lessons learned, before talking
in greater detail about what went wrong -- and as you know, much did -- I
must say for a moment, I'd like to speak about what went right. In Appendix
B of the report, we go through in some detail, particularly state and local
efforts. There were thousands of lives saved by the United States Coast
Guard and the United States military, and they put their own lives at great
risk to save others stranded on rooftops, to rescue them in boats, and
otherwise to bring them to safety.

The Coast Guard alone rescued or evacuated over 33,000 people, which is
over six times the number that they do in an average year. Volunteers,
charities and other non-governmental organizations were outstanding
partners, and we need to treat them as the valued partners that they are.

In addition to ground operations, a joint Homeland Security,
Transportation, and Department of Defense airlift successfully evacuated
over 24,000 people, constituting the largest domestic civilian airlift on
U.S. soil in our history.

So the much that did go right, the President has made clear we will build
on and we will duplicate it in the future. But now let us turn to the
lessons learned.

In any emergency there is a before, a during, and an after, and we've got a
lot of work to do in all three areas. In total, we've identified 125
specific recommendations in 17 general categories that -- and these 17
categories, by and large, fall into each of the three phases of a response.

First, preparation and planning before. Our National Response Plan is a
600-page government document, complete with organization charts,
procedures, rules of engagement, annexes, and enough government acronyms
and jargon to make your head spin. The answer is, I know a lot of work went
into the NRP -- the National Response Plan -- and I know that it was
well-intentioned. The fact is it didn't measure up. In the response to
Hurricane Katrina, the National Response Plan came up short.

Unfortunately, the one thing that the government tends to be best at is red
tape, but what we know is when we're fighting a deadly hurricane or a
terrorist threat, red tape can no longer be tolerated or accepted. So we
need to rewrite the National Response Plan so it is workable and it is
clear. We will require officials at all levels to become familiar with it.
We will draw from the expertise at the state and local levels to ensure
that we get it right. And we must exercise it before the next event.

We will train personnel like we do in the military, through the creation of
a new national Homeland Security university, based on the successful model
of the National Defense University. And part of this planning must involve
better lessons learned, both internally to the federal government in all of
our operating agencies and departments, as well as from the private sector.

We heard time and again from the private sector that plans to protect and
restart power plants and other critical infrastructure was woefully
inadequate. We also learned from the private sector that they have
state-of-the-art systems in supply chain management, inventory tracking,
and real-time delivery of commodities. We will work with them on all of
these. FedEx can track a package anywhere in the world, real-time. FEMA
should be able to do the same thing for ice, water and food.

Evacuation. President Bush publicly urged evacuation of the region, and
many people who heard and could evacuate did follow that urging. But not
enough people heard the call, or had the means to evacuate. Evacuation is
primarily a responsibility of state and local governments, but in events
like Katrina, and those where resources at the state and local level are
overwhelmed, the federal government must be in a position to ensure people
are moved to safety.

We must work with state and local governments to ensure that evacuation
plans work. And DHS has already begun that process. Those plans must
especially include accommodating the ill, the elderly, and the disabled,
those who may require additional assistance on the part of state, local, or
federal government.

Ultimately, evacuations will only work if people are aware of them and they
follow the evacuation orders, which leads me to public communications. One
stunning fact that we learned during the course of the lessons learned
review was that the emergency alert system -- the old system that most of
us are familiar with is the Emergency Broadcast System, that sound on your
television when the screen goes black -- was not activated in a fulsome
way, as fully as it could have been, prior to landfall. The National
Hurricane Center did a magnificent job in trying to communicate the urgency
of the threat, but we didn't use the public communications that we had
available in the emergency alert system to the extent that we could have,
and should have. We need to look at 21st century technology and utilizing
that to better communicate with the American people, whether that means
using cell phones, pagers, and satellite TV and radio.

The second category during a crisis is response to the actual event. One of
the most important lessons that was learned was the departments and
agencies with the response mission had real problems obtaining situational
awareness -- military-speak for knowing exactly what is going on, where it
is going on, and when it is going on. Every decision made in an emergency
can only be as good as the information you have at the time. In the fog of
war and confusion in the early hours of this event was an issue.

To address this we will develop a more comprehensive national emergency
communications system that ensures survivability, operability, and
interoperability. We will be ready to employ all federal communications
capabilities for major events, and have more redundancy in our
communications systems. We will have more equipment -- more satellite
phones, more radios, and more ways to get the information we need to make
critically important decisions.

We found during the course of the lessons learned that we had not utilized
all the federal assets that we had available to us. We need to understand
what's available; we need to be able to deploy it effectively so that we
can make the best possible decisions for the American people.

There were two missions that worked well that would benefit from more and a
better integrated and more comprehensive system of deployment. One was
search and rescue; the other were public health and the national disaster
medical teams. In both instances, these first responders were real heroes
of Hurricane Katrina. But in both instances, we owe them a more integrated
system that deploys them effectively with the supplies they need, and so
that when you drop off a rescued victim you do something better for them
than merely taking them to high, dry ground, but you're taking them to a
place where they can get the attention that they need from officials.

A mission which needs improvement was ensuring law enforcement and
security, both during and immediately after the event. Local law
enforcement officials were overwhelmed by the storm and many, in fact, were
victimized by it. While the National Response Plan called for federal law
enforcement capabilities to be available to backfill that vacuum, the
response was slow and disjointed.

One key recommendation is that the Attorney General take the lead in fixing
this problem, and put in place a deputization process so federal officials
can immediately be deployed, so that we know what federal law enforcement
assets are available, and that we have the capacity to surge them. This
isn't the first place that state and local officials will go when they need
law enforcement backup; this is, again, primarily a state and local
responsibility. But when they're overwhelmed, they have neighbors and
National Guard to look to for state and local law enforcement assistance,
and then the federal government needs to have a plan, to understand what
surge capability we have, and efficiently and effectively surge it to the
disaster area.

Finally, we need a better structure at the White House to ensure that all
aspects of the response are moving forward, a process to cut through the
red tape and to referee any needless disputes that arise in the heat of an
emergency. Under the auspices of the Homeland Security Council, we will
form the Disaster Response Group, which I will personally oversee. The
Disaster Response Group will be very much modeled along the same type of a
group that we have that deals with terrorism threats and responses in the
Counter-Terrorism Security Group.

In the end, we must do a much better job at preparation, at planning, and
improve our response. But even if these all go flawlessly, people will
still need help in the wake of a crisis, so recovery is critical. First and
foremost is human services. This includes creating a truly integrated
one-stop assistance process that is disaster-victim oriented. The federal
government needs to organize and deploy itself to meet the needs of our
citizens in their hour of crisis, not to have several locations where
individual victims must go to seek the assistance that the government can
provide. It includes setting up voluntary registry for people so that they
can access -- they have a place to store personal information that they can
access, should important documents be unavailable to them.

Key to this is public health and medical support. And while I said that
this was an example of success, many people were treated by emergency
public health officials, we need a system of vast deployment with supplies.
And Secretary Leavitt already has a process underway to address this need.

People who evacuate must have someplace to go that is safe for themselves
and for their families, which is why housing and sheltering are so
important. You have heard in recent days Secretary Chertoff talk about
working with the American Red Cross to have a system of registration at
shelters so we can track people when they move between shelters or out of
shelters, so we can facilitate their receiving of benefits that they
require, or assistance, and that we can use it to reunite separated family
members.

On housing, we did not maximize and leverage the expertise of the Housing
and Urban Development Department to the extent we might have. HUD has got
great expertise in public housing, but we did not have an inventory of
federal housing assets that were available and that the federal government
owns. That's not good enough. Katrina was rare because it was the biggest
dislocation of Americans since the Dust Bowl. But we have to be better
prepared. A dirty bomb, a pandemic, or other unfortunate, but potential
threat would bring similar challenges in housing, and we have to be ready.
We have to know what federal housing assets and stock are available; we
have to make those options available to the victims.

Fortunately, we were blessed by the true spirit of America through
volunteer and charitable organizations, which will continue to play an
enormous role in this area. But even then, their efforts were burdened by
confusion and no clear direction from the government on where they could be
most effective. We have already begun discussions with charitable
organizations, faith-based groups, and will ensure that they get the best
information in the most direct fashion, hopefully from one person. We look
to state and local partners and their best practices in this area.

In the states of Florida and North Carolina, they have volunteer
coordinators in their state emergency operations center, and this has
proven to be a very effective tool in coordinating volunteer efforts.

Finally, there is debris cleanup. We can, and will, do more contracting
before the disaster to do a better job and facilitate the quick removal of
debris immediately following disaster. Too often we heard the frustrations
of governors and mayors that the slowness in debris removal inhibits the
sense and the speed of recovery.

Let me close with two important and overriding challenges that we face
going forward. One which you've heard is the proper role of the military,
and the second is the overall transformation of our national preparedness
capability. In truly catastrophic events, state and locals may be
incapacitated or overwhelmed, or even worse. The fact is that the United
States military may be the only entity available to the federal government
to protect the American people.

Both the state and National Guardsmen -- and there were over 50,000 at the
height of the response -- and America's active duty military forces
performed magnificently on behalf of the victims. But we need a greater
integrated use of the military. There are very good reasons why the United
States military does not, in the first instance, do homeland security. But
we -- and we fully respect and want to preserve those bright lines. But we
also recognize we have the United States Northern Command, who works as a
partner with the Department of Homeland Security on homeland defense
issues, and when state and local first responders are overwhelmed or
incapacitated, it may be that our military is the last and only resort. We
need to plan and prepare for the Department of Defense to play a
significant supporting role during future catastrophic events.

And finally, transformation. In the transformation section of the report,
you will find a discussion of developing the concept of jointness in the
homeland security community. We take the time to go through in that section
the military's experience, tracking from the National Security Act of 1947
and the Goldwater-Nichols Act, and the benefits of developing a joint
community, of requiring joint assignments, that is between and among
federal agencies with homeland security missions, and also
inter-governmental with our state and local partners. That will be part of
the objective of establishing a national homeland security university. And
we believe that we need to have that sense of jointness so we understand
within the federal government and with our state and local partners what
the capacity and capabilities are that are available and how most
effectively to deploy them.

The second part to transformation is creating a culture of preparedness.
This is preying on fear. This is talking about what the current threats are
that we face as a nation, and how best individuals, communities and
governments can prepare for them. What the threat is to Biloxi will be
different than what the greatest threat is to Manhattan or Los Angeles. We
need to understand that. We need to respect that, and we need to work with
our state and local partners about preparing America's communities.

I think it's fair to say to you that it's not only because I am the mother
of two small children, but our kids will lead us in this effort. I venture
to say that any of you who have small kids know you can't get in your car
without putting on your seatbelt without being corrected by your children,
and that's a result of the "Click It or Ticket" campaign in our education
system.

Secretary Spellings has been very supportive. We've talked to the
governors, and we will talk to them when they're here in town next week
about state and local efforts in the education system to make preparedness
a part of sort of our national approach so that we're not discussing it,
you're not hearing about it for the first time amidst a crisis, but it's
something that we have thought about, planned for, and all have
participated in.

With that -- that's a brief overview, and you'll notice that I have not
touched on all the 17 issue areas. I'm happy to take your questions and
discuss it in that context.

Q I had a question. After the storm, Louisiana Governor Blanco and
President Bush argued for several days about the control of the military in
Louisiana, delaying the arrival of federal troops for I think it was five
or six days until after the storm. How does your recommendation for a more
aggressive use of federal troops balance the need for state sovereignty?

MS. TOWNSEND: I'm not sure that I accept your recitation of the facts,
frankly. But let me address the integrated use of the military because
that's really the lesson learned, and the recommendation goes to that.

First and foremost, it talks about training, equipping and resourcing state
National Guards. They live in our communities. There was, at the height of
it, more than 50,000 National Guardsmen there. And whether you are a
National Guardsman or active duty military officer, it is not really
relevant to the people who need the help. They see an individual in uniform
who is there. And so in the first instance, we need to man, train and equip
our National Guard who will get there quicker.

Secondly, the President did commit federal forces. And as you know, General
Honore was there very quickly after landfall, moving in right behind the
storm. He also had troops moving in behind him to support him. The answer
is, what we want to be sure is, as we move both National Guardsmen and
active duty forces in, that they have interoperable communications, that
they're able to deploy efficiently and effectively. And we will need to
work both with the Department of Defense, DHS, and our governors to do that
in a way that respects state sovereignty, but gets the American people the
help they need when they need it.

Q The GAO said the number one problem was a lack of reporting from the
principal federal officer to the White House. There was too much
bureaucracy within DHS, especially between FEMA Director Brown and
Secretary Chertoff. Past FEMA Directors, successful ones who were deployed
in other disasters say that's the number one problem right now. Why don't
you address that here?

MS. TOWNSEND: I'm not sure that I agree with you. One of the things we
looked at, and you'll see in the report is, what is the authority of the
principal federal officer, and making sure that they have the authority to
meet their mission requirement. We know from Director Brown's testimony
that Secretary Chertoff reached out for him a number of times. It wasn't
that there was bureaucracy between them, it was that he didn't -- he's
testified that he didn't want to deal with the Secretary.

The answer is, what we need is a system that gets the information and the
needs of the people in the disaster area up to the decision-maker, who is
Secretary Chertoff, who is responsible for the department. Those operations
aren't run out of the White House; they never are. It's in the Department
of Homeland Security. Obviously, people here at the White House are
available and do support the efforts of the Department of Homeland Security
and will continue to do that. That's one of the reasons for the
establishment of the Disaster Response Group, to make sure that if there
are any disagreements, or any bureaucracy, there's a mechanism here at the
White House to break through that.

Q In the report there's a lot of assignments of responsibilities to other
agencies that have been -- mostly work through Homeland Security. Do you
think it was a mistake to have so many of the response functions sort of
directed to Homeland Security? Or was it mismanaged by Homeland Security,
and therefore, you're now redirecting to HUD, to Justice, to these other
agencies, major responsibilities that had been primarily handled through
Homeland Security previously?

MS. TOWNSEND: I think the best way to capture the sentiment that you're
referring to is, there's a lot of expertise resident in the federal
government. The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is the
President's incident manager, federal incident response manager, but you're
going to ask him to do things in a crisis that he doesn't normally do, or
his department normally doesn't do day-to-day. Why not leverage the
expertise where he can coordinate it, he can task other agencies. He can
pull in that expertise and get it done more effectively than having to have
responsibility in his department just there.

Q Looking at the recommendations for the Department of Homeland Security
itself to implement, they're extensive, and there's a deadline for many of
them of the 1st of June. Given that Secretary Chertoff's behavior has been
described as disengaged, and his department's performance was described as
alarming and non-functional by some of the senators, is a Department of
Homeland Security under Secretary Chertoff one in which you can have
confidence to get this work done by the 1st of June?

MS. TOWNSEND: Secretary Chertoff enjoys the confidence of the President. He
has been a tremendous partner. And I will tell you, in coming to the 125
recommendations, the Secretary, personally, and his department played a
large role in working with us to identify the shortfalls and what we need
to work on.

You'll notice in the epilogue -- look, 125 recommendations is a lot of work
we have to do, and we had to prioritize. We went to the commanders in the
field like Admiral Allen and General Honore, and we said do them, what are
the things we need to do first? What are the things we absolutely need to
get done before June 1st? And you'll find in the epilogue, there are 11
laid out there that the operators from the field, the commanders from the
field have told us, those are the critical ones to get right. It won't
surprise you -- integrated command at the field level; communications
capability -- the things we've talked about.

Q Are you going to need a change in the law to have more military
involvement in these kinds of disasters in the future? And as you said, how
do you go about preserving the bright lines on one hand, and on the other
hand, having the military be more integrated?

MS. TOWNSEND: There are two issues. When I say preserving the bright lines,
we're talking about posse comitatus and law enforcement authority. If you
have an integrated use of National Guard and active duty forces, this
shouldn't be an issue. National Guardsmen are trained and have -- can
support law enforcement functions in a way that active duty military do
not. And so you can preserve the bright lines and not seek additional
authorities.

In terms of the deployment of active duty forces, we looked at the
President's current authorities, and it was -- at least in the review of
this group, we did not believe the President needed additional authority.
There will be -- as you go through the 125 recommendations, there will be
some legislative change required. I've had the privilege of talking to, on
a number of occasions, Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman. And we look
forward to working with our colleagues on the Hill in going forward.

Q Is there anything that you have -- that you would point to that you think
is a really new revelation? Many of these ideas have been talked about in
various forums since Katrina hit. Is there one thing, whether it's a small
observation or an overarching thing, that you think is a new way of looking
at this disaster?

MS. TOWNSEND: I actually think that the transformation section is not
something that we've heard talked about. And I think that the whole
transformation of national preparedness, which calls for really an
integrated approach that the military has found to be incredibly
successful, is probably the biggest new idea here.

Many of these are bringing together, as you point out, observations from
field commanders. I talked to all the governors involved, and many who are
in receiving states. We talked to lieutenant governors and mayors of little
towns and big cities. We really threw a very wide net -- we talked to
academia and think tanks, NGOs, private sector people -- because what we
wanted to do was bring together the best ideas.

I don't claim that every one of them was mine. They're not. I had a
terrific group of people, all experts, all professionals working on it, and
then we reached out beyond that group.

Q Will there be additional money for the National Guard to play a greater
role in domestic response to disasters?

MS. TOWNSEND: The Secretary of Defense has spoken to the National Guard, as
has the President when he spoke at the National Guard Bureau. The President
has said he will man it to their recruitment capability, to the ceiling.
And we will work U.S. Northern Command, Admiral Keating and General Blum to
make sure that the training and equipping that they need to do the homeland
security mission takes place.

Q Is there actually money --

Q Has the effort to get the military -- the federal military more directly
involved and integrated begun already? Or is it still in the talking stage?
Is the Pentagon already working on any plan to become better integrated
with the National Guard?

MS. TOWNSEND: Absolutely. And you'll see in the 125 recommendations which
go into greater detail than I have, the Joint staff, Chairman Pace has been
tremendous and had a tremendous investment. In fact, they talk about making
the National Guard a joint activity, incorporating to a greater extent the
National Guard into the U.S. Northern Command. They've already begun the
planning for that, as well as they've assigned a strategic planner over to
DHS, so that they can cut through -- you'll see in the report where --
you've heard the horror stories, as I have -- a request for assistance can
go through a 21-step process. Well, we've got a strategic planner over at
DHS today working through how do you cut through that red tape so, in a
crisis, it doesn't take a 21-step process to get the assets you need.

Dana.

Q Can I ask you about a different subject, and that is the port issue? As
the President's Homeland Security Advisor, when were you made aware of
this? And also, isn't it a requirement because we're talking about a
state-owned company, that there should have been an extra 45-day review?

MS. TOWNSEND: I'm going to answer it backwards. No, there is only an extra
45-day review if one of the participants in the CFIUS process -- that is
the review process, the mandated review process -- has an objection or a
concern. Nobody in this instance did that. In fact, as is now public, DHS,
to the extent they had any concerns, engaged directly with the company, got
an additional security agreement in place, and they were satisfied. So
there was no -- there was no need for an additional 45 days or an
investigation.

The intelligence community was involved; Treasury chaired the process. I
was not personally involved. I don't sit on the committee. But I will tell
you that the homeland security and national security concerns or issues are
well represented. You've got the National Security Advisor on the board,
you've got DHS involved. And I will tell you that the United Arab Emirates
is a tremendous ally in the war on terror; that's been acknowledged both by
the intelligence community, and General Pace himself talked about the
extraordinary military relationship.

I think we need to step back for a minute and just make clear, this is not
about outsourcing port security, which is in the very capable hands of the
United States Coast Guard and the Customs and Border Patrol. This is about
commercial operations at a port. Many are foreign-owned. This was a British
-- it was controlled by a British company before, and there are other ports
in this country owned by other foreign concerns.

Q If I could just maybe follow up, given the political sensitivities that
are now blatantly obvious, do you wish that somebody would have given you a
heads up, as the President's Homeland Security Director, so that perhaps
you could have said what you just said to us perhaps to members of Congress
a little bit earlier?

MS. TOWNSEND: Well, we're looking at how we can communicate better with
members of Congress. There are briefings going on today, we're getting them
the facts, and I think once people are satisfied that they have the facts
-- and we've got to look at that process going forward -- they'll be
satisfied that the security concerns have been addressed.

Q A two-part question on this aspect that she just raised. The top of page
one headlines this morning report, "Bush learned of port deal from press."
This news also reported that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Treasury
Secretary John Snow both say they didn't know about it until it was
approved. And my question, first of two: What will be done, if anything, to
those responsible for this being done without the knowledge of the
President or the Secretaries of Defense and Treasury?

MS. TOWNSEND: Okay, the first question. I can't speak to what will be done
to them. I will tell you that there are tens of these every year. They are
handled and they only come up to the President and to the senior -- to the
members of the Cabinet if there's an objection, if the concerns can't be
addressed in some way and can't be resolved. This is how the process has
worked, and so I can't speak to, having -- I wasn't personally involved in
it, so I can't speak to what the process -- how it performed.

Q On page 11 of the 9/11 Commission's report that you're undoubtedly
familiar with, it says, "From 1999 through early 2001, the United States
pressed the United Arab Emirates, one of the Taliban's only travel and
financial outlets to the outside world, to break off ties and enforce
sanctions. These efforts achieved little before 9/11." And my question: Why
should we now give this nation any control of our ports, which so refused
to help in stopping a worse killing of Americans than at Pearl Harbor?

MS. TOWNSEND: There is no question that their performance has changed since
2001 in the war on terror. They have been critical allies in Afghanistan.
They have been critical allies in fighting the financial war against
terror. They've been critical allies in terms of our military-to-military
relationship, as General Pace has talked about.

I don't take issue with the 9/11 Commission's characterization prior to
September 11th, but I will tell you, prior to September 11th, Pakistan also
recognized the Taliban. They, too, are now a critical ally in the war on
terror, without whose support we would not have enjoyed some of the
successes we've enjoyed, in terms of capturing or killing some of al
Qaeda's leaders. So I would caution you against judging forever one's
performance prior to 9/11.

Q What will happen if Congress overrules -- what if Congress overrules the
President?

MS. TOWNSEND: That was two. You've got other colleagues. Yes, sir.

Q You're talking about cutting through red tape. Brown has indicated that
he wanted to deal directly with the White House. I'm wondering, why would
it make it worse to take FEMA back out of Homeland Security, make it its
own entity, directly reportable to the President? Why would that make the
response worse, if FEMA were back in that situation?

MS. TOWNSEND: The whole idea, when, as part of the Homeland Security Act,
FEMA was put into the Department of Homeland Security, the judgment at the
time was -- and I think correctly, even looking back -- was that what you
needed was a closed loop of preparedness and response and assessment. You
needed that to be all-hazards. Many of the capabilities that you're trying
to build, in terms of preparedness and homeland security grants, apply
regardless of what caused the crisis. Whether the crisis was caused by a
natural disaster or an act of terrorism, you need search and rescue
capability, you need emergency medical response, you need an emergency
alert system. All of these things you're going to need.

And so what you wanted is that capability in the very department that was
going to be called upon to manage the federal response so that they could
help build the capability, help build the preparedness, and then
understand, when they were called upon to respond, or manage the response,
what the capability was.

Q But given also -- if I can follow up -- given that the Homeland Security
-- the main thrust was -- it was established to respond to terrorism
attacks. Do you think that there was too much focus at the highest levels
of Homeland Security on responding to terrorism, and not enough on natural
disaster? Was that a problem, and is that being corrected, if it was?

MS. TOWNSEND: No, and I think -- that's why in my opening statement I said,
what the problem is -- the greatest threat to Biloxi will be different than
the greatest threat to New York -- is an acknowledgment to you that Biloxi
worries much more about the hurricane season starting on June 1st. One of
the reasons to strengthen -- you'll see in the recommendations -- calling
for strengthening of FEMA's regional offices, it's the regional offices
that are closest to the states, each of the states, that can work with them
on a common list of priorities.

I'll tell you, this also goes to the grant system. That's one of the areas
we need to work with Congress. Much of the grant system is tied to either
terrorism or disaster preparedness. We need to get those strings off. We
need to have a grant system that is entirely risk-based, regardless of
whether the greatest risk to your state is natural disasters or terrorism.
And then we need to hold state and locals accountable. Much like we do in
other federal programs, if you're given money to build a capability against
whatever the greatest threat in your state is, we need to then know how do
you build that capability. We need to assess that. We use the example in
the report of the President's management agenda, where we assess federal
programs as red, yellow, or green, in terms of building capabilities and
meeting goals. We need to do the same thing, we need to be good stewards of
the federal treasury and do the same thing with federal grant monies.

Q Given the scope of the changes you're looking for and the failures that
you noted, what do you think the reality is of making some of these very
significant changes by the start of the hurricane season? We have a short
legislative year, we've got the whole House up for reelection, and it's
going to be a tough environment to get a lot done. Can you talk a little
bit about the obstacles that you see and what plans, if any, you have to
try to work with them to get them accomplished?

MS. TOWNSEND: I will tell you, I've been very sort of encouraged by the
members that I have spoken to. I spoke -- Senator Lieberman called me back,
it must have been 11:00 p.m. last night, or it was very late, and we had a
detailed discussion. And he gave his commitment that he was looking forward
to working with us, that -- we've had an ongoing dialogue with that
committee. I've reached out for Senator Collins; I look forward to speaking
with her. I think the members of, in particular, the Senate Government
Affairs and Homeland Security Committee, take this very, very seriously.
And we want to work with them to make sure that the most critical things we
need to get done -- many of them don't need legislation, so I should be
clear about that -- and those we're moving forward with today. Some will
need -- some of the longer-term ones probably will need legislation. We're
looking, for example, the Secretary of Homeland Security has already begun
to look at the Stafford Act. One of the recommendations in the report is,
we ought to be able to use federal monies for reimbursement; if it's a
warned event, we ought to be able to begin that process before landfall.
And that will require a change in the Stafford Act. And those are the sorts
of things that we're working to identify now so we can work with the Hill.

Q Just one follow-up. You mentioned the Senate Committee now and the
senators a couple of times. You haven't mentioned the House lawmakers who
are involved in putting together what was a fairly critical report that
came out last week. What kind of contacts do you have with those people
over there? Is that a different kind of relationship than you're having
with Senators Lieberman and --

MS. TOWNSEND: No. I've spoken to Chairman Davis in the past -- I've not
spoken with him in the last 24 hours. I have reached out for him. My deputy
has been up there to talk with he and his staff on two occasions. We have
an ongoing dialogue with him. I should have mentioned I spoke with Chairman
King last night and went through in great detail the recommendations in the
report.

This is not -- there isn't one committee that we're working with. We really
-- we need all the allies on the Hill that we can. And people -- I've been
very heartened, I mean, I think people look at this not as a political
issue, this is about what can we do to make the country better and
stronger.

Q On page 40, it says violent crime was less prevalent than originally
reported. In New Orleans we had heard there were murders in the Superdome;
we had heard of rapes and things of that nature. Is that, indeed, the case
in what you're finding through this report?

MS. TOWNSEND: What we found was -- let me tell you what the lesson learned
was, because I think it's the best way to explain what we found. What the
lesson learned was we need to do a better job of understanding that there's
a 24/7 news cycle, that we need to have people deploy in the public
communications arena with our responders, with our joint field office, with
people like General Honore and Admiral Allen, to make sure they are there
so we can get -- we can respond to media inquiries and we can get accurate
information to you as you're reporting.

What happened is we didn't have that capability. And so people were
reporting things that were being heard either out of the Superdome or out
of the Convention Center. I do not want to misrepresent -- it was a very
difficult situation there. But many of the reports even from government
officials turned out to be inaccurate, that many of the reports of --
specific reports that came out during the crisis we couldn't corroborate,
we couldn't find out, we couldn't corroborate that they had actually
happened.

That's not to say -- I want to be clear -- that's not to say that it was a
good environment in either place. All we are saying, all the reports says
is there were inaccurate reports of lawlessness and violence that we could
not go back and corroborate.

Q So were you able to corroborate a murder or rape -- as we have heard that
there was at least one murder in the Superdome; we'd heard there were
multiple rapes. Had you -- had that been corroborated about the murder?

MS. TOWNSEND: I'd have to go back and look at the specifics. I would
encourage you -- what we did, where there was specific details like that --
that's why there's 66 pages of endnotes -- what we tried to do is if we
found corroborating information, or we make a reference to a report in the
body of the narrative, we have noted it and put it in the endnotes. And I'd
have to go back, I can't recall off the top of my head, standing here. I'm
sorry.

Q A lot of this is reassigning a task to other agencies. What's to prevent
in the next major disaster to have similar kind of bureaucratic errors now
-- instead of it being then Homeland Security's primary fault, it will be
Housing and Urban Development, or Transportation and the other agencies?
What are you -- is there going to be sufficient funds for these agencies,
first of all, and why is it not simply sort of a bureaucratic shuffling
instead of actual change?

MS. TOWNSEND: What this -- what the report suggests is assigning to
agencies with expertise the responsibility that matches both their
expertise and their authorities. It does not dilute in any way the
responsibility of the Secretary of Homeland Security to manage the federal
response in an incident, and in fact, it creates a body here in the White
House, an interagency body that he can access to resolve disputes if he's
not satisfied that we're taking action quickly enough.

Q One of the mysteries of the Katrina aftermath was why the buses did not
arrive. They were asked to be -- ordered up, we are told. And at the
hearing, Michael Brown contends that he has no idea why the buses didn't
appear. Do you know why they didn't come?

MS. TOWNSEND: There were efforts made at the state and local level to
assure that there were buses there. There was flooding that prevented that
from happening. The Department of Transportation did assist in getting --
ensuring that buses were there, and many of those were the very buses that
evacuated people to Houston.

We have looked at having -- in fact, you'll see in the report a
recommendation about the Department of Transportation. We had -- we enjoyed
extraordinary success in terms of the airlift operations, and we need to
extend that and understand -- the Department of Transportation has very
good relationships with transportation providers and we need to leverage
that to ensure that next time not only are we providing for road
transportation, but again, just like with logistics, we know where the
buses are and when they're going to be there.

Governor Blanco was very frustrated because we couldn't -- we weren't able
to tell her during the course of the crisis where they were, when they
would arrive, and what the capacity would be. And we need to do a better
job at that.

Q Fran, in sort of trying to mediate disputes, insofar as we already know
that Mr. Brown and Mr. Chertoff weren't exactly on the same page at times,
why wasn't the White House able to mediate that back then? Why create a new
structure now looking forward, as opposed to having settled it at the time?

MS. TOWNSEND: Well, even as Mr. Brown said, Secretary Card told him to go
back to Secretary Chertoff. And so I think it's pretty clear -- I would use
the analogy, oftentimes there is communication -- the President will reach
out to a combatant commander, for example, out in the field and have a
conversation. The combatant commander understands very well that's not
interference in the chain of command. The President oftentimes wants to
have a conversation to make sure he gets additional facts or an
understanding. And in the United States military, they know very well what
their chain of command is up through the Secretary of Defense, and wouldn't
consider that being abrogated.

It wasn't any different here. Michael Brown chose not to follow his chain
of command. The can't happen again. That has to be very clear. Secretary
Chertoff has taken -- accepted responsibility for the actions of his
department, and we are committed to ensuring that we have a qualified,
competent and committed Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
that respects and responds to the chain of command.

Q Separately, if I may, you also specifically mentioned that the emergency
alert system was not utilized properly. Can you just walk us through why it
wasn't utilized properly?

MS. TOWNSEND: That was one of the most difficult things to get all the
facts, and I will tell you, I don't know that we were able to get every
single fact related to it.

It looked to me, as we were assembling the report, that there were radios
that -- radio announcements that did go out, some local television
announcements that did go out, but it wasn't the sort of wholesale use of
it that -- at least when I was growing up, your TV screen went black, and
you heard the noise and you knew you had to listen, and it was going to
give you instructions.

There was a -- we make a reference in the report to a local official who
called Governor Blanco -- and she testified about this -- where he said he
had been at a baseball game, and the people didn't really seem to
understand the importance of it. And so what we're suggesting is we have to
find a communications ability that actually reaches out to public arenas,
to your cell phones and pagers, that takes advantage of the many
communications -- much in the way of communications technology, that we
just didn't use in this sense.

And the fact is -- you'll find in the report, one of the graphics shows you
that over the many years of disaster response, we've gone from a place
where there were many deaths and little destruction, to now we've seen in
disasters there is great destruction but, generally speaking, fewer deaths.
That's a tribute to the importance and the emphasis we put on evacuation.
We've got to use every tool we've got to make sure that we do evacuations
right and that we're communicating the importance of them with the American
people, because that's the best way to save lives.

I've got time for one more.

Q Is that a federal function or a local function?

MS. TOWNSEND: Both. Both.

Yes, ma'am. In the back.

Q Speaking about lessons learned, could you point out one or two majors
actions that, if had been taken, would have made a difference?

MS. TOWNSEND: The two that come immediately to mind, one is communications.
That is, not only the technical capability to get the information, but a
reporting flow of information so that we have a picture that is fully
integrated of state, local and federal assets that are deployed to the
region, and what the gaps are. You'll see in the report there is a
recommendation for a national operations center, and the idea is, the
Secretary of Homeland Security ought to be able to see that picture. That
picture also ought to be able to be exported here to the White House
Situation Room. So regardless of whether the President and the Secretary
are in the same place, they can see the same picture.

The other piece, the second piece to that is you have to have an integrated
unity of effort at the tactical field level. What we've found was the joint
field office was set up in Baton Rouge, 80 miles from New Orleans, the site
of the crisis. You'll hear me say, you can't manage -- you cannot manage an
operation in the field from Washington. You don't do much better 80 miles
away in Baton Rouge.

What that resulted in was the operators understood it, and people started
moving forward, but they moved forward separately. And so no one place --
there was no one place there where you had an integrated picture. We are
committed to doing that. I've spoken to the Secretary. The Secretary is
already putting plans in place to ensure that happens. And this is one of
the things that if you talk to General Honore, he will tell you is one of
the single most important things that will make a difference.

I'm sorry I've got another event. I'm sorry.

END 11:54 A.M. EST

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