Phony FEMA Presser

With wildfires raging in California, it was time for the folks at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to face the press in a televised news conference on Tuesday. There was press listening in on the phone, but there was none in the press room. The Washington Post’s Al Kamen reports that FEMA deputy administrator Vice Adm. Harvey Johnson went to the podium and answered questions from.. other FEMA staffers! That’s right, there weren’t any reporters in the room. The questions being lobbed at Johnson were from other FEMA staffers pretending to be reporters. In one instance, a public affairs officer even “interrupted” the press conference to announce there would only be “two more questions.”

How could they try to pull that stunt after their failure with Katrina? FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs Mike Widomski, who played one of the reporters, was quoted as saying, "If the worst thing that happens to me in this disaster is that we had staff in the chairs to ask questions that reporters had been asking all day…trust me, I'll be happy."

Others in the Administration aren’t happy about it. A spokesperson for the Secretary of Homeland Security, who oversees FEMA, called the press conference "inexcusable and offensive." And Vice Adm. Johnson later apologized for the “error of judgment.” It takes a lot of stupidity to not see the error beforehand, and then think no one would notice.