http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/washington/30fema.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON,
Oct. 29 — A fake news conference at the Federal Emergency Management Agency has
produced, along with outrage and ridicule, its first personnel casualty.
John P. Philbin, until last week the agency’s public
relations chief, was supposed to start work Monday as the new director of
public affairs for the nation’s top intelligence official, Mike McConnell.
But he learned instead that he would not.
“We do not normally comment on personnel matters,” said a
statement issued for Mr. McConnell, the director of national intelligence.
“However, we can confirm that Mr. Philbin is not, nor is he scheduled to be,
the director of public affairs.”
Last Tuesday, two days before Mr. Philbin left the FEMA job,
the agency’s deputy administrator held a televised news conference about the California
fires where members of the agency’s staff, pretending to be reporters, asked
him a series of easy questions.
No one has suggested that anybody at the agency set out to
create a bogus event. But officials gave reporters only 15 minutes’ notice to
show up at agency headquarters and then set up a telephone line that allowed
them to listen in, but not ask questions.
With no reporters in the room — only television camera crews
— FEMA’s public affairs department decided to go ahead with the event anyway.
The agency’s own staff played the role of the press corps, posing unusually
respectful questions for the deputy administrator, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson
Jr., retired. “Are you happy with FEMA’s response so far?” one asked.
In an interview Monday, Mr. Philbin said there had been no
intention to deceive the public, just a desire to get information out quickly.
In retrospect, he said, when he realized that no reporters
were in the room and it was the agency’s staff that was asking questions, he
should have called off the news conference.
“I should have jumped up regardless of how awkward it would had
been and said, ‘Wait a minute, time out,’” he said. “My mistake.”
The agency’s administrator, R. David Paulison, who was in
California at the time, has come to the defense of Admiral Johnson, a retired
Coast Guard officer, saying he was “put in a position” by mistakes of the
public affairs staff that have unfairly raised questions about his credibility.
In a memo to FEMA employees Monday, Mr. Paulison said of M.
Philbin, “The failure to properly schedule, or to cancel a press conference
that had no press in attendance, or capability to ask questions telephonically,
represented egregious decision making by the director of external affairs and
his staff.”
From now on, Mr. Paulison said, reporters will always get
adequate advance notice of news conferences.
“Finally, under no circumstances will anyone other than
media be allowed to ask questions at press events,” Mr. Paulison’s statement
said.
So far, it looks as if no others will lose their jobs over
the incident, but the public affairs office is being reshuffled. As of Monday,
Russ Knocke, the press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security,
FEMA’s parent, has been temporarily transferred to the agency to supervise the
press operation.
The development has been enormously embarrassing for the
agency, which is still struggling to rebuild its reputation after its
universally criticized response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
