Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown (hidden partnership)

[donsu]

http://realnews.org/rn/content/index1e49.html?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&itemid=9


-snip-

But Michael Brown will forever remain the poster child for federal incompetence. And the central question has yet to be answered: who was Michael Brown, and how did he end up at the helm of the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Indeed, how did he and his predecessor and mentor, Bush political operative Joe Allbaugh, manage to turn FEMA, a once proud and effective agency, into a national laughingstock?

-snip-

"Brownie" had done no known political work for George W. Bush. He was not an industry figure. He was not even among the many longtime allies of the Bush family. The only answer the public has ever gotten in the aftermath of Katrina as to why Michael Brown headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency was a peculiar and highly dissatisfying one: Joe Allbaugh wanted him there. Allbaugh is the brash and powerful but little-known Bush confidant who preceded Brown as FEMA director. When Allbaugh came to Washington, he brought Brown with him and rapidly promoted him until Brown was positioned to take over the agency.

But why Michael Brown? Why, out of all the people Allbaugh had met over three decades as a GOP operative, did he place such confidence in a failed lawyer whose last job was a troubled tenure with an obscure association of show horse owners?
When pressed, the taciturn Allbaugh tersely replied that Brown was a lifelong friend in whom he had confidence. To this moment, that has remained the official, indeed only, explanation of how and why Michael Brown was running FEMA when Hurricane Katrina struck.

But a Real News Project investigation, encompassing scores of interviews and hundreds of documents, has uncovered another reality. It begins with this astonishing fact: nearly all of Joe Allbaugh's friends and acquaintances say they had never heard of Michael Brown, never met him, never even seen the two men in each other's presence. To them, Michael Brown is a complete stranger. Allbaugh's explanation of why he chose Brown as his heir apparent at FEMA baffles one and all.

The truth, RealNews has learned, is that the relationship between the two is a decades-long hidden partnership designed to advance both men's business and personal interests. By all appearances, that relationship encompassed Allbaugh's decision to ask Bush to let him run FEMA, and then his decision to turn the place over to Brown so he could profit from their ties.
-snip-
-----------------------------------


do read on

[BR_Parkway]

1. I'm not surprised in the least! K&R