Playboy Interview: Michael Brown

Over the course of several horrific days a year ago, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, went from relative obscurity to fame and then, just as quickly, from fame to infamy. On August 29 Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast and devastated more than 90,000 square miles. New Orleans was flooded, and more than 1,800 people died. In addition to causing death, injury and displacement, the storm caused approximately $75 billion in damage. At first President George W. Bush famously lauded Brown, saying, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job." Within days, however, Brown was forced to resign after what was generally viewed as his, and the government's, incompetence.

Brown was vilified. Editorial writers, politicians and citizens called him everything from "an embarrassment and a menace" to "an unqualified political appointee" who was "utterly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster." "The more one learns about him, one is surprised he is in that job in the first place," said conservative commentator William Kristol on Fox News after Time magazine accused Brown of falsifying his résumé. Aaron Broussard, president of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, told CBS's 48 Hours that Fema under Brown "has committed murder here in New Orleans." The late-night comedians had a field day at Brown's expense. Jon Stewart said Brown's performance had been downgraded from "heckuva" to "Faulknerian idiot man-child."

The barrage didn't end when Brown stepped aside. A House committee investigating the response to Katrina released more than 1,000 damning e-mail messages sent between Brown and his staff. In one Brown is preoccupied with finding a sitter for his two dogs. In another, one of his assistants advises him to modify his appearance before talking to the press. "Even the president rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow," she wrote. "Roll up the sleeves." During the worst of the hurricane Brown wrote to a co-worker, "I am a fashion god. Are you proud of me?"

The Bush administration might have wished Brown would quietly go away, but he has not. Instead, after a series of congressional hearings and the release of videotapes showing him briefing the president during Katrina, he has been partially vindicated. Contradicting the view of Brown as inept, uninvolved, egotistical and unqualified, the videotapes show he was informed and engaged, though frustrated in his attempt to get the administration's attention and support. Brown has refused to be the administration's fall guy. Instead he has fought back, charging that the government's preoccupation with the war on terror distracted the nation and drained resources from Fema, that his boss at the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, restricted his ability to manage the disaster and that the New Orleans and Mississippi governments were dysfunctional.

Brown, 51, was born in Guymon, Oklahoma, where his father worked as a printer. He attended Central State University and received a law degree from Oklahoma City University in 1981. After graduating he worked as an assistant to the city manager of Edmond, Oklahoma. His résumé stated he had emergency-services oversight in that position, but Time reported that the head of public relations for the city denied Brown had oversight over anybody, noting, "The assistant is more like an intern." (The spokesperson later claimed that comment was taken out of context.)

Brown also served as staff director of the Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma legislature, and he was elected to the Edmond City Council but resigned to practice law. He ran for Congress in 1988 and lost. Brown next became the judges and stewards commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association. After Bush took office, in January 2001, Brown joined Fema as general counsel, hired by his longtime friend Joe Allbaugh, then Fema director, who had run Bush's 2000 election campaign. Allbaugh later named Brown to the post of Fema deputy director; when Allbaugh resigned, Bush appointed Brown as director, in January 2003.

Brown is married and has two children, and he divides his time between an apartment in Washington, D.C. and homes in Taos, New Mexico and Boulder, Colorado. He has started a new business, a consulting firm for disaster preparedness, but it will not be an easy ride. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote, "No sane person would trust Brown to plop an egg into a pot of boiling water without screwing it up." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch added, "After you hire Brownie, you might want to hire Typhoid Mary to help you avoid infectious diseases."

Anticipating the emotional anniversary of Katrina---a time when the nation will remember the dead and look ahead to determine how well we are poised for the next disaster---we tracked Brown down for an interview. Contributing Editor David Sheff met with him in Boulder.

"After the public shellacking he had withstood, I was surprised to find that not only is Brown still standing, he is thriving," reports Sheff. "Brown is now a sought-after advisor on disaster preparedness to companies and communities, as well as a media commentator on everything from earthquakes to terrorism to avian flu.

"As he was described during Katrina---a characterization repeated in congressional hearings---Brown sometimes looks like a deer staring into headlights, but he also appears serious, thoughtful and concerned. After spending a day with him---during which, between interview sessions, he fielded endless phone calls and e-mails and appeared on Neil Cavuto's show on Fox News Channel---I was struck by how far up he has fallen. Only in America can a reputation for ineptitude lead to stardom plus a career that requires authority, trustworthiness and leadership."

Playboy: Looking back on Katrina one year later, do you agree with the Senate subcommittee that concluded Fema should be scrapped?

Brown: One third to two thirds of the subcommittee's recommendations mirror almost word for word the points I had been trying to make to Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff and the president for three years. Now, God forbid, they aren't going to admit Mike Brown was right. He has to continue to be the scapegoat. Now they say they want to abolish this dysfunctional agency and create a new one. The way they work, they'll probably change the name and do nothing else. I don't think anything will change. I think it will fall on its face. [groans] It's incredibly frustrating.

Playboy: You have blamed everyone for Fema's failures during Katrina---the Department of Homeland Security, the administration and the local governments in New Orleans and Mississippi. But most people still blame you.

Brown: I know, and that's something I live with every day. The truth has come out, though. It all comes down to the clash between Fema and the Department of Homeland Security.

Playboy: What is the nature of this clash?

Brown: The DHS and I had a personality clash, for lack of a better term. Of its 185,000 employees, well over 180,000 are focused on terrorism prevention. The other very small group concentrates on how to respond when the big one happens. This creates an inherent clash. The bulk of the money goes to prevention. In D.C. who do you think gets all the attention? He who has the biggest pot of gold. Preparation gets the attention; dealing with disasters gets little.

Playboy: DHS secretary Michael Chertoff has charged you have tried to drive a wedge between the nation's interests in preparing for disaster and preparing for terrorist attacks. How do you respond?

Brown: It's nonsense. Terrorism has to get the resources it needs but not at the expense of natural disasters, which we know are coming---earthquakes, hurricanes. Chertoff keeps trying to shift the blame back to me, which solves nothing.

Playboy: And you point the finger back at him.

Brown: My point is, if we don't acknowledge the problems with the system and fix them, we're in trouble. Nothing will ever change.

Playboy: A year later have we begun to fix them?

Brown: No.

Playboy: That's a serious accusation.

Brown: It is.

Playboy: Let's make this perfectly clear: Are you suggesting we didn't learn from Katrina and are not better prepared for another disaster, whether a terrorist attack, hurricane or earthquake?

Brown: We are less prepared now than before Katrina. The mistake was the kneejerk reaction after 9/11. Politicians always want to show they're doing something: "We're going to rearrange everything. We're going to redo the organizational chart." All the buzzwords. "We're going to create these synergies." As a result it's more of a mess than ever.

Playboy: After 9/11 and Katrina, that's a scary thought.

Brown: People should be scared, and they should demand more of the government than this kind of half-assed way of doing things.

Playboy: If we're not better prepared for a natural disaster, are we at least ready for a terrorist attack?

Brown: No.

Playboy: Haven't we made new plans based on 9/11?

Brown: Let's say the next 9/11 is a similar attack. Terrorists take planes and tear buildings down or they bomb buildings; it happens as it did in New York, but in Los Angeles. There are some really good people in L.A., but who's going to show up on behalf of Fema? Who's going to show up on behalf of the DHS? Who's going to be in charge?

Playboy: Wouldn't Chertoff take charge? And if so, is that a good thing?

Brown: I don't think it would be a good thing. Chertoff is a bright man, but he's an appellate court judge. He tends to manage the way you do court decisions: "Put the brief in front of me, and I'll make a decision." You need more of a strategic point of view. You need dynamism, leadership and a plan.

Playboy: Which he lacks?

Brown: [Nods] In my opinion.

Playboy: Should he have been fired or, like you, asked to resign?

Brown: I always thought so.

Playboy: Why wasn't he?

Brown: I think it goes back to inertia. The president's not going to do anything.

Playboy: Wouldn't it make him look decisive to fire Chertoff?

Brown: I don't know. Go ask him.

Playboy: Do you maintain it was a mistake for the Bush administration to put Fema under the DHS?

Brown: It was.

Playboy: But you were part of the team that integrated the agency under the DHS.

Brown: I thought I could make it work. I've now done a 180-degree turn. It's not going to work.

Playboy: If everyone agrees Fema failed during Katrina, why the resistance to dramatic change?

Brown: There are three things. I'm going to make everybody mad when I say them. First is inertia. The government doesn't move fast. Second are the turf battles in Congress. Everybody wants a piece of that pie. The DHS doesn't want to give up any of its turf. Third, pulling Fema out of the DHS now is tantamount to admitting a mistake. This administration does not want to admit mistakes.

Playboy: Even at the expense of America's ability to respond to future disasters?

Brown: Yes.

Playboy: Exactly why is Fema ineffective under the DHS?

Brown: Pre-DHS the Fema operation center used to pull together all the emergency support functions during a disaster. If we needed the Department of Transportation or the U.S. Postal Service to do something, like an orchestra conductor, we just tapped and said, "Go do it." We could say to the Department of Defense, "I want you to take 50 Black Hawk helicopters to the scene of the disaster." It worked on April 19, 1995 with the Alfred P. Murrah building in the Oklahoma City bombing. It worked on 9/11 when former Fema director Joe Allbaugh and I totally integrated with the FBI, the New York City police and fire departments and the city's emergency management. At the Pentagon we integrated not only with urban search-and-rescue teams but with the U.S. military. Fema was seen as the disaster expert.

Playboy: What changed?

Brown: The Fema operation center still exists, but now you have the DHS operation center, and it competes with the Customs and Border Protection operation center and the Transportation Security Administration operation center. It's chaos and everyone is fighting for power and control and no one responds and nothing gets done. After Katrina hit, I met with Governor Haley Barbour to find out what he needed in Mississippi. I got back on the G5 jet to head to Baton Rouge, and Chertoff caught me on the phone. He said, "I've been trying to reach you. I'm tired of you flying around everywhere. I want you to go to Baton Rouge and plop your butt down in Baton Rouge and not leave." I was in the middle of a disaster, attempting to respond, in this case working with the Mississippi governor, and Chertoff was screaming because I hadn't called him back.

Playboy: How did you react?

Brown: I was dumbfounded. It was the most ludicrous order. I was speechless.

Playboy: Did you do as he said---plop your butt down in Baton Rouge?

Brown: I finally gained my composure and said, "Do you really want me to tell Haley Barbour and Governor Riley of Alabama and Governor Blanco of Louisiana and Senator Thad Cochran, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, 'I can't see you because I have been told to stay in Baton Rouge?'" And he said yes.

Playboy: What were you thinking when this was happening?

Brown: At that point I didn't think to myself, I'm being set up. I thought, There's no way I can win this.

Playboy: But did Chertoff have a point? Could you have done your job better by staying put than by flying around?

Brown: My job was to get out there and find out what was happening. The only way to cut bureaucratic red tape is to go find the red tape. I'll give you an example. In Florida during Hurricane Andrew, I was going to different counties with Jeb Bush. We split up, and I decided to go to a feeding station where there were Navy recruits. We had people lined up. I got there, and everybody was sitting around twiddling their thumbs. I was panic-stricken. I had a line of people, and it was hot. They needed ice. They needed water. They needed food. They were frustrated to begin with because of the disaster, and now they were more frustrated because the state and federal governments weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing. I was furious because my people in the field were sitting there. "We can't find anything," they said. They were complaining they weren't getting what they needed. Well, why the hell weren't they doing something about it? Seeing that, I was able to break the red tape. I got on my cell phone. I started yelling at my federal coordinating officer, "I'm at such and such a place. I don't know what's happening, but we have a breakdown here. Fix it, and fix it now." Within an hour I had helicopters coming in and stuff happening, bringing in supplies so they could get that line going again. That's what the Fema director is supposed to do.

Playboy: In retrospect, what prompted Chertoff to take you out of the field?

Brown: I don't know. Ask him. I think he was just thinking, I can't reach you on the phone [snaps fingers] right when I want you. Well, sometimes I would look at my phone and see it was Chertoff. I would think, I don't have time for this. I've got a disaster to run. I wouldn't call him back instantaneously. Apparently this upset him.

Playboy: Was Chertoff trying to put you in your place? Did he think you weren't being effective, or did he simply want to control you?

Brown: I think it was all of those things. Suddenly this was the biggest thing to hit the country. He was already being criticized because he was off at some avian-flu conference. He wasn't engaged. There was this feeling that he had to get control of me. It totally hamstrung me and sent me spiraling into disaster.

Playboy: You're spreading blame around, but it sounds as if you reserve your most bitter censure for Chertoff.

Brown: Yes.

Playboy: Did you consider ignoring his order to stay in Baton Rouge?

Brown: I did. I wish I had.

Playboy: Why didn't you?

Brown: I had a lot of good people around me. But with the exception of one or two, they were all too young and too D.C.-focused. These young turks work for the administration. They're not experienced. They're sometimes scared of their own shadow.

Playboy: But you were supposed to be in charge.

Brown: I know. I am so mad at myself for not saying, "Screw you." But everybody around me was like, you know, "It's the DHS." Yes, I wish I had said, "Screw it."

Playboy: Chertoff obviously has another version of events.

Brown: The e-mails bear me out.

Playboy: We'll get to the e-mails. First, you have said the administration would not have fumbled this disaster as badly if it had been a terrorist attack. Do you still hold that position?

Brown: Yes.

Playboy: What would have made the difference?

Brown: For one thing, the president would have shown up on the first day. He wouldn't have stayed in Crawford.

Playboy: How would that have changed the circumstances?

Brown: The president has the bully pulpit. I can do 1,000 interviews, but if the president had shown up, if he had been standing next to me, it would have been different. You would've had the entire federal government saying to the president, "What does Brown need?"

Playboy: Bush has been accused of failing to recognize the seriousness of the Katrina problem. Did he?

Brown: I believe the president thought, We have another hurricane coming. Brown did four of them last year back-to-back. Why is this one different? I don't think he grasped the catastrophic scope of Katrina. The president had confidence in me. "Brown'll take care of it."

Playboy: Wasn't it your job to make sure he understood?

Brown: The videotapes prove I informed the president and his staff.

Playboy: Even if Bush had shown up, managing the disaster would still have fallen into your hands. What specifically would have been different if this had been a terrorist attack?

Brown: Chertoff would have asserted himself, and we wouldn't have had multiple chains of command. I would have gotten the Department of Defense faster. The DOD would've been [snaps fingers] right there. I was getting some DOD support, but I wasn't getting this varrrump that I wanted. I wrote an e-mail saying, "Where is the blankety-blank Army? I want the Army now," in all caps. I was desperate and furious. If the president had been there, they would have responded instantly.

Playboy: What would the DOD have been able to accomplish if its forces had arrived earlier?

Brown: I'd have gotten people out of the Superdome faster. It would've been full steam ahead---a helicopter evacuation, Humvees and personnel carriers, boat rescue, whatever. I should have called Donald Rumsfeld and Gordon England, the deputy secretary, myself. I should have said, "Look, guys, this is one big f'ing deal. We've got to fix this now." They would have responded. I am also disappointed in myself for playing along with DHS public affairs, Fema public affairs and White House public affairs. They were all crafting the message, a lie. I was torn between trying to make it work their way and basically saying, "Screw you." At one point my deputy chief of staff told me he'd received a call from the White House in which he was told, "Get Mike to talk up the secretary more." I was thinking, We have a catastrophic disaster on our hands here, and people are worried about who I am or am not talking up at a press conference? Screw it!

Playboy: A White House e-mail quoted the president as being happy that you were getting the flack, not him. When did you get a sense that you would be the fall guy?

Brown: I remember telling my wife I wasn't going to come out of this. Whatever I had accomplished in the previous three years had just gone down the tubes.

Playboy: What had you accomplished? By your own admission Fema was a disaster.

Brown: We had made progress. I had tried to fix things. We had scenarios planned for four big catastrophes: a San Francisco earthquake, another terrorist attack on New York City, a category-5 hurricane in the Gulf and an earthquake on the New Madrid Fault, which goes through Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and parts of Ohio and Kentucky. With all due respect to my predecessors at Fema, James Lee Witt and Allbaugh, both of whom I greatly respect and admire, the agency had never done catastrophic disaster planning. I pushed and pushed to do it. I asked for $100 million to get started. The DHS gave me $20 million, so I had to cut back. My hands were tied.

Playboy: Could you have gone around the DHS?

Brown: By going to the White House, saying, "These knuckleheads won't give me the money"? You can't do that in Washington for very long.

Playboy: How had you prepared for the 2005 hurricane season?

Brown: We thought we were ready. We started watching what would become Katrina when it was still out in the Atlantic. We thought it would hit Miami like Hurricane Andrew. But it skirted Miami and went back into the Gulf. Then we were panicked. The storm still had enough internal pressure that we thought it was going to grow. The question was, Where is it going? Galveston? Gulfport? New Orleans? We started moving all our stuff into the Gulf four or five days before landfall. The cone got narrower and narrower. It was going to be New Orleans. I sent an urban search-and-rescue team, a national-disaster medical team, a federal coordinating officer and a public-affairs person. Only one guy made it, my public-affairs guy, Marty Bahamonde. The medical teams finally got there, but they decided to evacuate because it was getting worse and worse. On Sunday afternoon, putting it off as late as I could, trying to make sure I had everything lined up, I went out to Andrews Air Force Base, jumped on military air and squeezed under the radar into Baton Rouge. I immediately went to the evacuation operation center, met with Governor Blanco and then went back to the hotel room to ride it out. By late Monday morning we were beginning to get reports of flooding.

Playboy: Meanwhile Bush famously said, "No one anticipated the breach of the levees."

Brown: My jaw dropped.

Playboy: Was Bush ignorant of the situation, or was it intentional deception?

Brown: He doesn't have an incredible command of the English language. Maybe he meant "None of us really wanted this to happen."

Playboy: "None of us really wanted this to happen" is far different from "No one anticipated the breach of the levees."

Brown: Yes. My friends in the Republican Party---the bullies---jumped all over Clinton about parsing words. Now the president was parsing words. "Are the levees going to breach?" "Are they going to top?" Who cares? We were going to have flooding in New Orleans, and we knew New Orleans was a fishbowl.

Playboy: Is it conceivable the president didn't know the levees could breach?

Brown: I had been having regular conversations with Andy Card, Bush's chief of staff, and Joe Hagin, Bush's deputy chief of staff.

Playboy: Were you feeling more isolated from the administration?

Brown: I was feeling totally out of control.

Playboy: Did you call the president at that point?

Brown: I spoke to Andy Card. I'll never forget what he said to me, because it was so unlike him. He said, "Well, Mike, I don't know what to tell you, other than try to follow the chain of command and see if we can make it work." Chain of command? We had thousands of people in the Superdome, maybe 12,000. We had planned for 2,500. We had enough food and water for 24 hours. Chain of command? We had people on rooftops. The airlines agreed to come in and start flying people out, but the TSA, which handles airport security, told me, "We can't do that yet because we don't have a way to screen these people." Screen them? I didn't give a shit about screening people. "Well, you know, we've got to run this back up the chain of command." Oh God!

Playboy: The TSA is under Chertoff too. Did you call and ask him to intervene?

Brown: Many times. If it had been answerable directly to me---but those people weren't answerable to me.

Playboy: At the time, you said the governments of Louisiana and New Orleans were dysfunctional. Would other cities have responded more effectively?

Brown: I got blasted in the media, but it's the truth. There was an incompetent political structure, corruption and ignorance.

Playboy: Ignorance?

Brown: Not ignorance but ignoring the problems down there. I'm not going to say it publicly anywhere, but in my mind I know some states are better prepared.

Playboy: What's your opinion of R. David Paulison, who currently runs Fema?

Brown: Joe Allbaugh and I brought him in. We had a couple of choices. We were looking for some people to run the U.S. Fire Administration, and our first choice didn't work out. So we found Dave and brought him in.

Playboy: Are you saying he isn't qualified for the position?

Brown: I don't know. About seven or eight people turned down the job. Good people. I had tried to hire some of them before, and they turned me down because they didn't want to work for the federal government. I don't blame them. I wish Dave well, but I think he's been set up for failure.

Playboy: Why is he set up for failure?

Brown: He has the same problems I had, plus now it's a demoralized agency with the same structure I was fighting. He's in a position where he can't really make any decisions.

Playboy: You've come out fighting, but couldn't this have destroyed you? Did you consider running away? Suicide?

Brown: No, it never crossed my mind. (continued on page 140) Michael Brown(continued from page 52) Suicide isn't my style. It's not in my nature.

Playboy: When did it dawn on you that your career was in shambles?

Brown: Right after I was sent home. Sent home---what a stupid phrase. Like a child. I'd been going 24 hours a day; the cell phone and the BlackBerry were literally attached to me 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I had the top-secret phones, and I was talking to the president of the United States. To go from that to zero miles an hour....

Playboy: What was the effect of the blame and humiliation?

Brown: Of being scapegoated? When everyone tried to shift all the blame for everything that went wrong onto my shoulders? What do you think? It's a heavy burden to carry.

Playboy: It was a high fall from the president's nationally televised accolades, when he said, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job.

Brown: That didn't mean anything to me. It's typical of the president. He's a cheerleader. You know what the comment did? How many people in the world do you think have ever called me Brownie? His name's George W. Bush. When he used that nickname, a lot of people in the media went, Is he an insider? Do they know each other? What's the deal here? That's when Time started researching my résumé and came up with the totally false story about my having inflated it.

Playboy: The story was that you lied on your résumé, not just inflated it.

Brown: Yeah, and it was because the media thought I was the president's buddy.

Playboy: The buddy who was completely unqualified for the Fema post---that the job was patronage.

Brown: Yeah, and I had to live with that in the middle of everything else.

Playboy: On your résumé you claimed to have been the assistant to the city manager in charge of emergency preparedness in Edmond, Oklahoma. Your boss told Time it was untrue. He said you were basically an intern.

Brown: Right, which has been proven totally false. I was in charge of emergency police and fire departments and was a liaison to the Emergency Services Division. I was on the committee to develop the new emergency operations center, which is still running. The spokesperson has since submitted an affidavit saying the magazine totally took what she was saying out of context.

Playboy: You were also accused of inventing a professorship.

Brown:Time totally skewed those things.

Playboy: If the story proved untrue, did Time print a retraction?

Brown: It never printed a retraction. People said, "Why don't you sue them?" Why waste my time on that?

Playboy: But it would have been far from irrelevant if the person appointed to handle the disaster in New Orleans had lied on his résumé and was unqualified.

Brown: If it were true, it would be absolutely relevant.

Playboy: What about the charge of patronage? Exactly how did you get the job?

Brown: Joe Allbaugh was Bush's chief of staff as Texas governor and his national campaign manager in 2000. We've known each other since college days. He called me, said the president was going to nominate him as director of Fema and wanted me to be his general counsel. After 9/11 the president turned to me and said, "Hey, you're doing such a good job, why don't you be the deputy director?" When Joe left, I became director.

Playboy: Do you maintain you were qualified to head Fema?

Brown: Yes.

Playboy: Yet you admit you were unable to lead the organization in the way it needed to be led---to remake Fema in ways that would have prepared it for this catastrophe.

Brown: In the middle of the disaster I thought about quitting---after the first few days. I thought about saying, "If this is the way we're going to do it, fine. Send somebody else in. They've got eight hours to show up and I'm out." But then I thought, People are dying, people are suffering; I can't leave. It was a no-win situation. So I truly had to be the scapegoat. Throw all the sins on this goat and send him over the cliff. Okay, but I refuse to let them chop my head off. I keep coming back. I'm their worst nightmare.

Playboy: It's true that you haven't gone quietly. What made you decide to fight back so publicly?

Brown: I'm a fighter, and I believe I'm right. When I lost my job and everyone was piling on, my wife and a couple of good friends said to me, "We know you're down in the dumps now, but you're going to be judged by history for two things: whether you respond to this in a dignified way and whether you do it at the right time." I made the determination to bide my time and, when the time was right, to come out fighting. The time has come.

Playboy: As far as you know, at some point did the administration decide you would be the fall guy?

Brown: Yes, I've been told that.

Playboy: Who said what to whom?

Brown: I can't say anything other than I've been told the conversation took place.

Playboy: Was it as specific as "Let's hang him out to dry"?

Brown: Yeah. They had a plan in place before I was pulled out.

Playboy: As you look back, did the worst attacks on you come from the administration, the media, other politicians, editorial writers, angry citizens calling talk-radio shows or whom?

Brown: All of the above.

Playboy: When was your final conversation with the president?

Brown: On Air Force One, during his last trip when I was still at Fema. I think it was the Wednesday before the Friday I was pushed out.

Playboy: Nothing since?

Brown: Nothing since.

Playboy: On the flight did he betray a sense that you were to be fired?

Brown: No, it was a hardworking session.

Playboy: Did he indicate he was dissatisfied with you?

Brown: No.

Playboy: There were other stunning low points, such as your telling Ted Koppel you had just learned about the crisis at the convention center. Koppel was incredulous and said, "You just learned it? Haven't you been watching television?"

Brown: People can either believe this or not, but this is how it happened. We learned about the convention center on the afternoon people started going in there. I was up that entire night, with the exception of maybe a couple of hours of sleep. I started doing the shows the next evening. Koppel said, "What are you doing about the convention center?" I instantly said, "We just learned about the convention center." I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. I meant "Yeah, I just learned about it when it started happening." After that, one after the other, reporters kept asking the same damn question. I thought, Why do they keep asking this? What's the problem here? When I finished the interviews and walked out, my aide said, "You kept saying you just learned about it, and they were interpreting that to mean you had just learned about it in the past 30 minutes or hour, while they've been reporting it for the past 24 hours." I went ballistic. I was out behind the satellite trucks, screaming, cussing, kicking---I was actually kicking one of the trucks, I was so mad, pounding on the thing. "Well, why didn't one of you guys step in and explain that to me between the breaks?" It was horrible phrasing, but I repeated it three or four times in a row.

Playboy: Which led to descriptions of you as a deer in headlights and---

Brown: "He's out of touch." "He doesn't have a clue what he's doing." "He's incompetent." "He's not qualified for the job." "He's got to go."

Playboy: Was that the worst for you, or was it even worse when the House released your embarrassing e-mails?

Brown: It was all equally bad.

Playboy: Were you horrified when you learned your e-mails had been released?

Brown: I was pissed off because every one of those e-mails was taken out of context. I must have had 100,000 e-mails, and they selectively released ones that made me look bad. Do you remember the famous one about being a fashion god?

Playboy: We do.

Brown: How could you forget that, right?

Playboy: Do you understand how damning it was that you were worrying about your wardrobe in the middle of the crisis?

Brown: I had just eaten lunch with the person I sent that to, and we were laughing about it---we can laugh about it now. She had always bugged me to get rid of the white shirt and put on a Fema T-shirt or Fema cap or something. I would get mad and say, "No, we need to look professional." I wore a Fema shirt that day because that's all I had left. Anyway, she e-mailed me and said something about how fabulous I looked. I e-mailed back, "Yeah, I got it at Nordstrom. Aren't I a fashion god?" Just trying to bring a little levity to the situation. I was making a joke.

Playboy: According to many Americans it was not a time for joking. You were also criticized for your e-mail asking for help finding a dog sitter.

Brown: This ticks me off because it was a serious e-mail. When I left to go to Katrina, my wife left for Scottsdale to see our daughter. We have a Saint Bernard and a dachshund. They were locked up in the house, so I e-mailed my scheduler and asked her to find somebody to watch the dogs for me. People were appalled that I was concerned about the dogs in the middle of a disaster. Well, what was I supposed to do? Leave the dogs there to starve for the next week?

Playboy: Another e-mail was from one of your staffers, who said you needed time for a nice dinner now that Baton Rouge restaurants were open. At a time when people were starving, that didn't go over well either.

Brown: But I didn't even know they were doing it. I mean, that was just stupid. Of course I sent her back home.

Playboy: In another e-mail, a staffer advised you to roll up your sleeves to look as if you were working hard. "Even the president rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow," she wrote. You and your staff seemed preoccupied with your image and personal needs.

Brown: That was the same woman who sent me the e-mail saying, "He needs time to eat."

Playboy: Can you legitimately blame your staff for all these mistakes? You hired these people. You set the tone. One can assume your assistant had reason to believe it was her job to make sure you were well fed and dressed.

Brown: When asked about that in a hearing, I said, "Not one of you sitting up here doesn't have some staff person who walks over before that red light goes on, who adjusts your tie or makes sure the powder is just right." Everybody does it---everybody. Look at who released those e-mails. Who selectively released ones that would make me look bad? Homeland Security.

Playboy: As part of a campaign to discredit you?

Brown: Draw your own conclusions. All I know is the department released certain e-mails. They were selectively released by the department to a Democratic congressman.

Playboy: There were other appalling e-mails. In one you talked about how bad you wanted to go home, walk your dogs and have a margarita.

Brown: The problem is they ignored the work I was doing---the hundreds of other e-mails and the videotapes that prove what was really going on, that I was working against a system set up to fail.

Playboy: In one congressional hearing, Representative Gene Taylor from Mississippi said you couldn't relate to the losses of people hurt by the hurricane. You angrily fired back that you in fact did. Have you personally experienced disasters?

Brown: My earliest childhood memory is of being on my grandparents' farm in Osage County, Oklahoma and running to the shelter, the cellar---which seemed like it took forever, but it was probably 20 yards from the house---to escape a tornado. The next one I remember vividly was in Edmond when I was an assistant to the city manager, the position Time said didn't exist. I went with the fire department on a run one day to a house engulfed in flames, everything totally destroyed; then I watched the family come home. I was devastated by this. I can still smell that fire. I lost a Sunday-school teacher, blown up in the Murrah Building. I lost a friend who was on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. That congressman, that little twerp, said I didn't understand suffering. He said I didn't recognize the death and suffering that was going on. As I told him, I've seen death and suffering. I've smelled death. I smelled death in the tsunami. I know what it's like to lose close friends in disasters. You don't know how many people I've hugged as Fema director---rich people, poor people, all ethnicities, people who lost everything. People who didn't think it was going to happen to them. For that little twerp to claim I didn't understand death and suffering---he can just bite me, for all I care.

Playboy: Representative Kay Granger from Texas asked how you can sleep at night.

Brown: You know what I want to say to Mrs. Granger? "How does Congress sleep at night when you people knew I'd been pointing out these potential failures, yet you did nothing?

Playboy: In a hearing you also had it out with Minnesota senator Norm Coleman.

Brown: I thought that was so chickenshit. He came in there and started saying I didn't show any leadership. He kept chastising me. I said, "Okay, now, ask me a question. Give me the specifics so I can respond to it." And he turned and said, "Well, I'm sorry. I'm out of time, and I've got to go." He got up and left. What kind of man is that? If you don't have the guts to sit there and listen to my response and ask me questions about my leadership, then screw you!

Playboy: You became a national joke on TV. Every comic and talk show host made fun of you.

Brown: I truly didn't hear most of them.

Playboy: Jon Stewart said your prior job with the International Arabian Horse Association was proof the Bush administration is beholden to the Arabian people.

Brown: My line was better---that dealing with horses' asses taught me how to deal with the federal government.

Playboy: Did you appreciate Stewart's description of you as a "Faulknerian idiot man-child"?

Brown: Oh Lord. Thank you for reminding me.

Playboy: How did your family take the attacks on you?

Brown: After all this we were having dinner somewhere, and I said to our son and daughter, "You know, if I've embarrassed you guys, I'm sorry." My son put his silverware down and looked at me eyeball-to-eyeball and said, "Dad, we're proud of you. You haven't embarrassed us at all." It meant a lot.

Playboy: How did your wife handle it?

Brown: She was incredibly supportive. It has brought the family closer together. It made us focus on what's important.

Playboy: Which is?

Brown: The people you love and doing good, meaningful work. You also find out who your real friends are. They step forward to help and offer encouragement. I'm very picky now about who I work with.

Playboy: How were your parents affected?

Brown: My father-in-law was an old country surgeon. Thank God he wasn't alive during all this stuff, because it would have killed him. Oh Lord, it would've killed him. He would've been so mad at the president and others. Oh God. I heard from my mom and dad throughout. There really is nothing greater than a parent's love. No matter how hard someone's stepping on you or rubbing your face in it, "We're still proud of you. We're thinking of you and praying for you. Hang in there." I'm sure it hurt them, but boy, they would never let on.

Playboy: We've covered some of the horrifying moments, but was there one point when you began to feel somewhat vindicated?

Brown: The most vindicating moment was when the videotapes came out. They showed what I was actually doing. Suddenly the mainstream media was saying, "Maybe we had this all wrong." The floodgates opened. I never looked to be vindicated. I was mainly concerned about how to get on with my life. But now, to have been vindicated in this way has been beyond my expectations.

Playboy: Can these turnarounds make up for the attacks? Can your reputation truly be repaired?

Brown: Never 100 percent. It may come as a shock to people in the mainstream media, but a lot of the country doesn't pay any attention to them. Most people don't watch the news; they don't know or care that Katie Couric is about to become anchor of the CBS Evening News. Some of the vindication will never occur.

Playboy: In one tape that turned many people's opinion, Bush seems distracted and uninterested in what you're saying. Much has been made of his not asking you any questions.

Brown: I think that's missing the point. If people want to claim the president wasn't engaged or wasn't grasping the magnitude of the disaster, that's a fair issue to debate. But to use that videotape as proof is the wrong way to do it. He was on the videotape only to give a rah-rah speech. If they want to ask questions about engagement and responsibility, they should look at the fact that after the tsunami I told the president we weren't prepared for that kind of catastrophe. And nothing happened.

Playboy: Nothing?

Brown: It is scary. As I have said, things are worse than ever.

Playboy: At exactly what point did you warn the president the U.S. was unprepared for a major disaster?

Brown: Back when I returned from South Asia with Secretary Powell and Jeb Bush after the tsunami. I told the president, "We're not ready for something like that in this country." As horrific as the World Trade Center attack was, it was confined to 16 acres. What would happen if there were an enormous catastrophe like the tsunami? Or what would happen if we were hit simultaneously in two American cities? We are unprepared. We ought to be honest with the American people.

Playboy: What needs to be done?

Brown: Fix the borders. All the focus is on the southern border, but think about how big the Canadian border is. Where's the leadership? We have lost our way. These are perilous times. The radical Islamists are out to destroy our way of life.

Playboy: What changes would help with future disasters?

Brown: First, get every governor and emergency manager, the DHS secretary, every mayor and everyone else and determine their capabilities and map out a strategy. You need to know what they can and can't do. Then drive all your resources to fix what needs to be fixed. Natural disaster or terrorism, you have to plan for as many scenarios as possible. Say Al Qaeda decides it wants to do a bio event. It can't aerosolize smallpox to the point where it can cover a wide area, but it could do a local mall. What capabilities do communities have to deal with that? What capabilities do the feds have to help? Let's see where we are. Assess and make contingency plans for every possible scenario---at least as many as you can imagine. You've got to imagine big, too---100,000 people displaced. We haven't trained people in this country. The alarm bell goes off. What do you do? We need to teach preparedness in grade schools.

Playboy: In your line of work, are you paranoid, always looking for potential danger?

Brown: I am always looking for vulnerabilities. I was sitting in Dulles airport last night after midnight, and the concourse was empty yet all these maintenance people were walking through with big carts full of screwdrivers, tools and piping. I'm thinking, There's a vulnerability. I watch the way the TSA screens. It's archaic. Do we honestly believe that now, with hardened cockpit doors, if somebody charged the cockpit with a knife or gun, the other passengers would sit there? We're still checking old ladies for knitting needles; meanwhile I can get my Montblanc pen on a flight. I could use it to take somebody out---stab you in the jugular. We aren't using our resources very well. We aren't thinking.

Playboy: In preparing for disaster, where is the line between rational and paranoid?

Brown: In the case of a big disaster, whether a blizzard or Katrina or whatever, it may take a firefighter or rescue worker up to 72 hours to get to you. So you should be ready to survive on your own for 72 hours. That's not paranoid. Most of us don't think it's going to happen to us. Disasters are called disasters because they inherently are disasters. There's nothing clean about them. There's nothing easy about them.

Playboy: How worried are you about avian flu?

Brown: I'm not sure we've had an honest, objective discussion about avian flu. Be honest with the public and tell them what it means. We don't know how worried to be.

Playboy: What forms of terrorist attack concern you most?

Brown: Prior to 9/11 we had a lot of discussions at the White House about smallpox. I think they're still debating. Is smallpox a threat? Don't know. There were worries about dirty bombs. We need to think more about how to protect critical infrastructure. No matter how sophisticated we think we are as human beings, in a catastrophic event our humanity is exposed.

Playboy: We often assume we are in control, but we're learning the hard way that the best we may be able to do in many situations is just mitigate the damage.

Brown: That's exactly right. The other point is we are learning we cannot expect our government to do everything for us. If we think we can rely on any level of government to take care of everything for us, we're doomed.

Playboy: Since resigning, you've started a consulting firm for disaster preparedness. Is it true a Louisiana parish considered hiring you to help prepare for the upcoming hurricane season?

Brown: St. Bernard Parish asked me to come down to meet with them. They wanted to hire me. When word got out that I was coming down, a lot of people started complaining about it.

Playboy:The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote, "No sane person would trust Brown to plop an egg into a pot of boiling water without screwing it up."

Brown: That's just gratuitous.

Playboy: Another newspaper said, "After you hire Brownie, you might want to hire Typhoid Mary to help you avoid infectious diseases."

Brown: Another gratuitous one. I just told them, "Look, guys, I'm not coming down. If you ever want to call and ask me questions or want advice, feel free."

Playboy: Obviously, it's not the reaction you want. But isn't it expected?

Brown: Actually, I was a little surprised. I didn't think it would be a cake-walk, but I didn't think there would be a backlash.

Playboy: Do you really expect people to come to Michael Brown, the poster boy for the government's failures around Katrina, to help prepare for disaster?

Brown: But they are coming. Since the videotapes and hearings, people have called and said, "We like how you handled yourself. We're looking for some advice." The hearings made the difference. People saw a stand-up guy. They think, He's been through hell. The big one is coming, and we want him on our side.

The president has the bully pulpit. I can do 1,000 interviews, but if the president had shown up, if he had been standing next to me, it would have been different.

My friends in the Republican Party---the bullies---jumped all over Clinton about parsing words. Now the president was parsing words.