After FEMA employees posed as journalists at an October 23 press conference on the agency’s response to the California wildfires, some expected heads to roll - particularly after DHS Secretary Chertoff promised to have “appropriate disciplinary action taken against those people who exhibited what I regard as extraordinarily poor judgement.”

That seemed to be the case when John “Pat” Philbin, the agency’s Director of External Affairs, and then FEMA press secretary Aaron Walker submitted their resignations. FEMA Administration R. David Paulison implied that Walker’s resignation was a disciplinary action when he told the Washington Post he anticipated no “other” disciplinary actions. But, then we learned…

The rest of the story

According to CBS News, Walker “had been planning to leave his job since September and seek a job in the private sector.” Likewise, Philbin had planned long ago to leave FEMA the week of the press conference.

So it looks like no heads have actually rolled. There was one planned departure and one ‘resignation’ as part of a planned departure. (CBS News)

Rather, it looks like FEMA once again has misled the public, and that is hardly the end of it. According to a FEMA spokesperson, Walker and Philbin bore the “greatest degree of responsibility for the planning and execution” of the news conference and “had the greatest ability to stop that train from going down the track (CNN).” But, FEMA is not saying who ordered the train to leave the station.

DA Harvey Johnson would have us believe that he knew nothing of the plan for FEMA staff to pose as reporters questioning him; however…

Two career employees signed statements saying that Walker told them either that he told or planned to tell Johnson before the event that questions would be choreographed. (Washington Post)

FEMA helpfully informs us that other aides could not recall if Johnson had been informed in advance and one aide reportedly said Johnson was not informed. But, that conflicts with the video described by CBS News blog Primary Source.

[I]f, as the [Washington] Post reports, the internal inquiry into the press conference could not corroborate accounts that Harvey Johnson, the second in command at FEMA, was told ahead of time that he would be asked questions not by reporters but his own staff and as Pat Philbin himself told Primary Source that Johnson did not realize it was FEMA staffers asking the questions, why is it that in the video of the press conference Johnson is seen calling to one if his staffers by name in the “press” gallery to ask a question? [CBS, 11-8-07]

FEMA Director Paulison insists that subordinates bear the burden of responsibility for substituting agency shills for reporters.

“Those are career people. They should have stepped up and said something, they really should have. But their bosses said ‘Do this,’ and they did it — some reluctantly, but there’s no excuses for that,” Paulison said. He called the impact on FEMA’s credibility “devastating.”

Despite this admission that senior officials at FEMA/DHS displayed bad judgement, Paulison does not identify the decisionmakers or propose to discipline them. Paulison’s assertion that staff had a duty to disobey supervisors ignores the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos that gave agencies carte blanche to dismiss employees for doing exactly as he proposed. Indeed, those who refuse to go along with wrongdoing (AKA “whistleblowers”) typically are dismissed or harassed into leaving ‘voluntarily.’ The 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act, intended to be a refuge for ethical federal workers, is instead a house of horrors, replete with mazes and trap doors.

FEMA asks citizens to believe that the outrageous behavior displayed on October 23 resulted from a “lack of training.”

[Russ] Knocke said employees of the FEMA press office will also be receiving training from public relations and press organizations on various subjects, including ethics.

That suggests that FEMA public affairs staff were grossly incompetent - ignorant of the most basic rules of their profession and bereft of common sense. But, since FEMA successfully held press conferences on earlier occasions, the official explanation doesn’t ring true.

Congressional investigation needed

The inconsisentencies and gaps in FEMA’s explanation beg for a Congressional investigation. In the process, Congress also should examine the extent to which FEMA public affairs policies were influenced by John “CZ” Czwartacki, appointed to head the Public Affairs Division in November 2001. Now at Verizon, Czwartacki was described in a FEMA press release as “a former spokesman and communications strategist for federal lawmakers and the Republican Party.”

FEMA/DHS might have avoided a credibility debacle if they had implemented recommendations posted on the website of the Disaster Accountablity Project, a nonpartisan watchdog. DAP’s website includes recommendations (# 82, 83, 84, 158, 59, 162, 160, 159, 163, 169*, 170*, 171*) for communications, and transparency and accountability (# 8, 34, 35, 37, 41, 87, 226, 30), available here. Below is an excerpt from Recommendation #158.

Critical Challenge: Public Communications
Lessons Learned #10, Page 109
The White House’s Lesson Learned: The Department of Homeland Security should develop an integrated public communications plan to better inform, guide, and reassure the American public before, during, and after a catastrophe. The Department of Homeland Security should enable this plan with operational capabilities to deploy coordinated public affairs teams during a crisis.

For now, the FEMA Public Affairs’ webpage reports that policy updates are still “to come.” Hopefully, a policy of openness and public inclusion will be among them.