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October 27, 2007

FEMA Follies: Fake News Conference

Rick Moran
It's like something out of the pages of a KGB handbook.

The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) held a press conference yesterday, detailing their efforts to help the residents of Southern California with the disasterous consequences flowing from the spate of wildfires that have hit the area.

Trouble, is, they only gave the press 15 minutes notice of the presser. So when no reporters showed up (almost certainly planned that way), they used FEMA staffers as reporter stand ins.

Predictably, the questions were softballs, easily handled by FEMA management.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said it was not appropriate that the questions were posed by agency staffers instead of reporters. FEMA was responsible for the "error in judgment," she said, adding that the White House did not know about it beforehand and did not condone it.

"FEMA has issued an apology, saying that they had an error in judgment when they were attempting to get out a lot of information to reporters, who were asking for answers to a variety of questions in regard to the wildfires in California," Perino said.

"It's not something I would have condoned. And they — I'm sure — will not do it again." She said the agency was just trying to provide information to the public, through the press, because there were so many questions.

"I don't think that there was any mal-intent," Perino said "It was just a bad way to handle it, and they know that."
Perrino should have gone to the podium and simply said "They're all fired," and walked away.

This egregious action by FEMA has, for once, united right and left as each side tries to outdo each other in the level of condemnation directed against FEMA. It is simply mind boggling that any agency of the federal government would contemplate such a deception much less actually carry it out.

Heads must roll here - no matter who and no matter how tangentially they were involved in the fakery. Staffers who participated could have said no and should be severerly reprimanded if not let go. Management who led the effort should be fired immediately.

God help the President if it should emerge that this was orchestrated from the White House. At the moment, it appears that the blame falls on FEMA. But if it should ever come out that there was coordination with anyone in the Administration, the consequences would no doubt be enormous.

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