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NEW ORLEANS, Sept 9: The Bush administration moved to quell a political storm on Friday by replacing the embattled head of emergency operations along the Gulf coast, as rescue workers in New Orleans ended recovery efforts and began collecting the dead victims of Hurricane Katrina. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced he was appointing Vice Admiral Thad Allen, chief of staff of the US Coast Guard, to take charge of recovery operations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and recalling Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown to Washington to coordinate the response to other possible disasters.
“We have to have seamless interaction with military forces,” Mr Chertoff told a news conference in Baton Rouge. “Mike Brown has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to this unprecedented challenge. I appreciate his work, as does everybody here.”
Mr Brown had been the target of furious bipartisan criticism for the government’s slow initial response to the hurricane and some of both political parties have called for his firing.
But President George W. Bush publicly praised Brown last week for doing a “heck of a job.” The last straw appeared to come Friday with published reports that Brown had padded his resume, although Chertoff refused to acknowledge a question on these reports.
Mr Bush, facing his biggest crisis since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, vowed to overcome the disaster.
“America is a strong and resilient nation. Our people have the spirit, the resources and the determination to overcome any challenge,” he said at a State Department ceremony before Brown was called back to Washington.
CREDENTIALS QUESTIONED: Even as he spoke, Bush faced renewed criticism for packing FEMA with political cronies and saw his approval rating fall to 40 percent, down four points since July to the lowest point the Pew Research Centre has recorded.
The Washington Post reported that five of the top eight FEMA officials had little experience in handling disasters and owed their jobs to their Republican political ties to Bush.
It quoted a local official as saying a prior job in Edmond, Oklahoma, was “more like an intern” than a manager.
Brown is a friend of former Bush campaign director Joe Allbaugh, the previous FEMA head who was a major Bush fund-raiser. Last week, as criticism of his response to the disaster swelled, Bush gave him a public vote of confidence, saying, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
Mr Brown’s biography on the agency Web site said he had once served as an ‘assistant city manager with emergency services oversight’, but Time quoted an official in Edmond as saying the job was actually ‘assistant to the city manager’, with little responsibility.
“The assistant is more like an intern,” city spokeswoman Claudia Deakins told the magazine. “Department heads did not report to him.”
Republican House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay told a news conference at the Houston Astrodome he “vehemently” disagreed with any proposal to set up an independent commission to look at botched aid effort.—Reuters
