The “Journalists” at the FEMA “Press” Conference
October 27th, 2007A FEMA press conference on the California fires didn’t actually involve the press at all. There were no reporters. The entire thing was staged. The people asking the questions were FEMA employees who were pretending to be reporters. (Of course, would be little difference between the reporters working government beats and these shills at the fake press conference.)
So, we have a FEMA press conference (with no reporters actually in attendance), the body of Russell Lane Daves, an arson suspect shot dead by police, and a bunch of federal guidelines that grounded the firefighting aircraft as California burned:
As wildfires were charging across Southern California, nearly two dozen water-dropping helicopters and two massive cargo planes sat idly by, grounded by government rules and bureaucracy.
How much the aircraft would have helped will never be known, but their inability to provide quick assistance raises troubling questions about California’s preparations for a fire season that was widely expected to be among the worst on record.
It took as long as a day for Navy, Marine and California National Guard helicopters to get clearance early this week, in part because state rules require all firefighting choppers to be accompanied by state forestry “fire spotters” who coordinate water or retardant drops. By the time those spotters arrived, the powerful Santa Ana winds stoking the fires had made it too dangerous to fly.
And what do you think the real story is with William Brock? Why would a guy, who’s on probation in Los Angeles County for narcotics violations, want to impersonate a firefighter and drive around in the fire zone? Just another lone nut, I guess:
A 44-year-old man dressed in full fire gear was arrested Wednesday afternoon after deputies found him in an evacuated area of Fallbrook.
William Brock was laying a fully-charged hose attached to a hydrant across Live Oak Park Road near Gumtree Lane around 4 p.m. in an area where fires were still smouldering, sheriff’s officials said. There were no other firefighters in the area.
Brock told deputies that he was a firefighter who had been sent to help extinguish hot spots and that he was allowed to pass through the check points .
According to the Sheriff’s Department, he was driving a pickup truck with a personalized firefighter plate loaded with fire hoses and other fire gear. He was wearing a blue shirt that had the word “firefighter” on it. In his truck, officials found a blue shirt with a Morongo Valley Fire Department patch on it, a firefighter badge and a name tag with his name on it.
Deputies checked and found that Brock did not work for the Morongo Valley Fire Department or any other. They also found that he is on probation in Los Angeles County for narcotics violations.
Brock was taken into custody. He will face charges of impersonating a firefighter, entering a closed area and obstructing officers in the performance of their duties, sheriff’s officials said.
Blah, blah, blah. Just more things to forget about for those of us who were dumb enough to look in the first place.
Via: Washington Post:
FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing.
Reporters were given only 15 minutes’ notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA’s Southwest D.C. offices.
They were given an 800 number to call in, though it was a “listen only” line, the notice said — no questions. Parts of the briefing were carried live on Fox News (see the Fox News video of the news conference carried on the Think Progress Web site), MSNBC and other outlets.
Johnson stood behind a lectern and began with an overview before saying he would take a few questions. The first questions were about the “commodities” being shipped to Southern California and how officials are dealing with people who refuse to evacuate. He responded eloquently.
He was apparently quite familiar with the reporters — in one case, he appears to say “Mike” and points to a reporter — and was asked an oddly in-house question about “what it means to have an emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration” signed by the president. He once again explained smoothly.
FEMA press secretary Aaron Walker interrupted at one point to caution he’d allow just “two more questions.” Later, he called for a “last question.”
“Are you happy with FEMA’s response so far?” a reporter asked. Another asked about “lessons learned from Katrina.”
“I’m very happy with FEMA’s response so far,” Johnson said, hailing “a very smoothly, very efficiently performing team.”
“And so I think what you’re really seeing here is the benefit of experience, the benefit of good leadership and the benefit of good partnership,” Johnson said, “none of which were present in Katrina.” (Wasn’t Michael Chertoff DHS chief then?) Very smooth, very professional. But something didn’t seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA’s greatness.
Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We’re told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of external affairs, and by “Mike” Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John “Pat” Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin.
Asked about this, Widomski said: “We had been getting mobbed with phone calls from reporters, and this was thrown together at the last minute.”
But the staff did not make up the questions, he said, and Johnson did not know what was going to be asked. “We pulled questions from those we had been getting from reporters earlier in the day.” Despite the very short notice, “we were expecting the press to come,” he said, but they didn’t. So the staff played reporters for what on TV looked just like the real thing.
