According to Bloomberg, a FEMA staffer notified the White House Situation Room of the 17th Street Canal breech at 10:30 pm Eastern time on Monday 29 August via e-mail: in a fly-over, she saw "a quarter-mile breach in the levee near the 17th Street Canal about 200 yards from Lake Pontchartrain allowing water to flow into the city." This is earlier than official statements made during the crisis.

What Bloomberg did not say : A National Guard timeline recorded the breech at 3.00 am Central (19+ hours earlier). And local officials publicly confirmed the breech at 2 pm Central on Monday -- 8+ hours before the FEMA staffer e-mail. However, AP notes that "28 federal, state and local agencies reported levee failures on Aug. 29."

Yet, on 2 September - four days after the storm hit, President Bush insisted that "[t]he levees broke on Tuesday in New Orleans."

Brown "thinks" he told the White House about the breech on Monday, according to testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Today the problem, according to Brown, was the Department of Homeland Security: "There was a cultural clash that didn't recognize the absolute inherent science of preparing for a disaster... The policies and decisions implemented by the DHS put FEMA on a path to failure."

What the have forgotten: Being interviewed on CNN, September 2004, Brown asserted that FEMA was prepared for that season's hurricane: "We have all the manpower and resources we need. President Bush has been a very great supporter of FEMA."

Also, after his resignation (but-while-still-on-the-payroll), on 26 September 2005, Brown told Congress: "My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional."

Nevertheless, Brown may have a point, although one with the benefit of hindsight. Knight-Ridder reported about two weeks after the hurricane that DHS/FEMA had not followed the National Response Plan. Not only was the agency's 36 hour post-landfall declaration of "incident of national significance" unnecessary, DHS/FEMA could have acted as soon as President Bush declared a state of emergency, which he did on Saturday - two days before landfall.

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