NYT/AP: E - Mails Show Brown Disputed Levee Breach

[DeepModem Mom]

E - Mails Show Brown Disputed Levee Breach
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 9, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former FEMA director Michael Brown disputed that floodwaters had breached New Orleans' levees in the early hours after Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, new e-mails released Tuesday show.

The 928 pages of e-mails, obtained and released by the Center for Public Integrity, also portray Brown and the Federal Emergency Management Agency as obsessed with media coverage in the days leading up to and immediately following the Aug. 29, 2005, disaster. At one point early that morning, Brown reported to an aide that he was ''sitting in the chair, putting mousse in my hair,'' as he waited for media interviews to begin.

Later that morning, at 9:50 a.m., a FEMA staffer at the National Hurricane Center sent department brass an alert from a local TV station report ''a levee breach occurred along the industrial canal'' near the Ninth Ward.

More than two hours later, at 12:09 p.m., Brown sent a message back to one of his aides, saying: ''I'm being told here water over not a breach.''

The aide, Michael Lowder, replied: ''Ok. You probably have better info there. Just wanted to pass you what we hear.''...

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Katrina-Brown.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[ixion]

1. brownie belongs behind bars

along with the rest of 'em. :grr:

[uppityperson]

2. so many of them do.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

3. Oh, let's just set fire to all of them

I've had it with this "due process" bullshit. I wanted them piled up on a ........

Brownie was trying so hard, too, to make his "comeback" as the man Fuckface wronged, wasn't he?

They're all pricks. Lying pricks.

[Grateful for Hope]

4. Can't help but think

this is yet another attempt to deflect blame from Chertoff.

[applegrove]

5. I still say somebody took a giant magnet and ran it through all corridors

of governance that day. And the week after. All institutional knowledge was erased. Mysterious.

[Sgent]

6. I'm no Brown fan

but the phrase sheer incompetence comes to mind when I think of him.

Its Chertoff & Bush who are to blame for the governments response -- the impression I get is that Brown had very little to do with it.

[roseBudd]

7. OMG Brownie used a freeperism, I've only seen used like that on Free

Republic.

He said:

''Bill, sorry to ping you, but can you give me some ground info on trailers, etc. in MS? Have what you need? Are they getting them to you? Just a status report. Need to call (Mississippi Sen.) Trent Lott back and want some good Intel before doing so,'' Brown wrote in a Sept. 7 e-mail to one of his staff.

Most tech people know what ping actually is.

[Robb]

8. Hmm...

Could be. He is, after all, an idiot.

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. Nice catch

The freepers are definitely obsessed with the 'ping' thing. They think it makes them special to 'ping' each other.

[roseBudd]

13. Because obviously they have no idea what ping means

Ping is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network. Ping works by sending ICMP “echo request” packets to the target host and listening for ICMP “echo response” replies. Using interval timing and response rate, ping estimates the round-trip time and packet loss rate between hosts.

Any other use for the word ping just souds retarded.

[Igel]

15. I hadn't seen 'ping' used that

way for a while (I haven't gone to FP for quite a while), but a google search turned up that use in hacker (and business) slang. Looks like the meaning of the word's been extended from merely verifying that an address is there.

I can't help but wonder if the IT 'ping' isn't actually calqued from sonar jargon, where a 'ping' was an echo, indicating that something was there.

[roseBudd]

16. The creator of the original UNIX ping program did say he named it after

the sonar sound.

[tanyev]

10. "obsessed with media coverage"

They might as well just outsource our government to a PR agency. Make it official.

[AlCzervik]

11. just a note, i'm downloading the pdf from the Center of public integrity

and it takes quite a while, also the link from the nyt for the docs is wrong, this is the correct one.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/docs/katrina/MikeBrownEmails_Katrina.pdf

[dmr]

18. Thank you n/t

[sabra]

12. k & r

:kick:

[stepnw1f]

14. Bush's Cronies Commit Negligent Homicide

the cowardly GOP way... they hate Americans and here is our proof.

[One_Life_To_Give]

17. Overfocus on Brown, lets guilty go free

The screwups surrounding this disaster go far beyond any one man, or any one level of government. Yet we continue to see the focus on individual minor details of what happened. And miss the systemic issues that will cause this disaster to be repeated.