I heard this on Democracy Now this morning.
Amy Goodman who has been doing amazing coverage on Katrina had among her guests this morning was Judd Legum, he is the Research Director at the Center for American Progress and co-editor of the Progress Report.Well.
An excerpt from the transcript below the fold, bold highlights are mine.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask Judd Legum about Joe Allbaugh, who you were just talking about, the man who was quite close to President Bush, former head of FEMA, who could stand to profit from the catastrophe in the Gulf region. I just want to read you our headline yesterday. "President Bush tapping Allbaugh to head FEMA after he served as Bush's campaign manager during the 2000 election." He is Brown's predecessor. "He headed FEMA until March 2003, just as the U.S. was launching the invasion into Iraq. Then Allbaugh helped form a lobbying firm called New Bridge Strategies in order to help, clients, quote, `take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.' Now, New Bridge Strategies was also formed by several top executives from the lobbying firm then known as Barbour Griffith and Rogers. The head of that firm was Haley Barbour, who is now the Mississippi Republican governor. Earlier this year, Joe Allbaugh signed on as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary KBR in order to, quote, `educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues.' Just last week, the federal government announced Halliburton would be hired to repair the Gulf Coast military bases damaged by Katrina and now the Washington Post is reporting Allbaugh is also helping Louisiana, quote, `coordinate the private sector response to the storm.'"
JUDD LEGUM: Yes, that's right. And what's interesting is that Allbaugh actually beat Michael Brown, the current director of FEMA down to Louisiana. He was there far in advance of when Michael Brown came down, in Louisiana, essentially securing private contracts for his clients. And he recently, although the contract was signed before he started representing Halliburton, secured the agreement of the government to tap into that contract to clean up naval bases in the Louisiana area. So, he's already paying dividends for Halliburton, certainly, and probably will for a lot of his other clients as this very large disaster relief effort continues
Earlier in the interview they went over the background of the top three officials at FEMA:
AMY GOODMAN: Well, why don't you go through the list, the list of the top men at the head of FEMA?
JUDD LEGUM: Well, right at the top you have Michael Brown, and as you mentioned, just a while ago, he was the Commissioner of Judges at the International Arabian Horse Association. To give you an idea of what he did there, he spent a year investigating whether a breeder performed liposuction on a horse's rear end. So, I think that clearly that 11 years he spent there probably didn't serve him too well when he transferred over to FEMA.
AMY GOODMAN: Was he fired from his job as heading up the International Arabian Horse Association?
JUDD LEGUM: Well, he was asked to resign, and I think that he was asked to resign, then he offered his resignation. So, whether that's firing or not I guess no one will ever know, but it was a result of a lot of litigation that stemmed from his oversight of the association. And that's essentially what caused him to have to step down.
AMY GOODMAN: Judd, how did he end up as head of FEMA? JUDD LEGUM: Well, as far as I can tell, his primary qualification seems to be that he was the college roommate of Joe Allbaugh, who was the outgoing FEMA director, because prior to that, besides a short stint in a very small suburb of Oklahoma in the 1970s involved with emergency management, he really has no experience. Besides being a member of this horse association or the Commissioner of Judges of this horse association, he was an estate planning lawyer, a tax lawyer. So, it seems to me that he knew the guy who was leaving, and that's pretty much how he got the job.
AMY GOODMAN: And the number two and three men in the agency in FEMA that's supposedly in charge of dealing with this disaster?
JUDD LEGUM: Well, the number two at FEMA, he was actually head of advance for the Bush-Cheney campaign. So, essentially what he was charge of is planning events. And what's interesting is the FEMA response actually reflects his experience. Because what happened when there were -- you know, when Mike Brown made the request and said finally, you know, we need a thousand members from the Department of Homeland Security to come down and help out, they were really, you know -- they were charged with, you know, representing and putting a good face on the relief efforts. And that was explicitly what Mike Brown asked for.
And then when these firefighters volunteered from all around the country, they were put -- made public relations officers. So I think really the experience of the number two guy there, the chief of staff, and even as you go down the line, the number three really was a media strategist, did work for Maverick Media, which is the company that did campaign ads for the Bush-Cheney campaign. So, if you really look at the operation and how FEMA responded to it, they really responded to it more like a political campaign than a disaster.
If this doesn't speak volumes to the modus operandi of this administration and it's cronies, I don't know what does