Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael, does our vacation from you start at ten o'clock
this morning or one pm tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I would think that a P one listener like she
is would understand that my vacation time started when.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Dragon, uh, Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I was going to say tuesday, just to be you know,
to cover all my bases, and we're not talking about
next Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
We're talking about.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Last Tuesday, last Tuesday exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yes, I've been in vacation mode since well actually since
I put the request in.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
If he won't know the truth.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
He's here physically, but emotionally and mentally.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Nah, And so Dragon, I have to go, which is
just a total third world problem to take a whiz.
We have to walk down on the stairwell. It's terrible
to the third floor where you know those people reside.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
It's smelly down there where.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
All they do is tell Wiener jokes. And there was
somebody watering plants down there this morning them. Yeah, I
don't know what was going on. I was like, I
want because I didn't know whether it was a contractor
like what. But we don't have plants, so it must
have been in it, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I was just about to say, we have plants I
know we used to.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Remember we had some mad we come around water all
the plants and things. All that went away.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, yeah, so then somebody there's there's one person working
on the third floor, and then I come up, you know,
through the other hallway and then walk through the pit
that's been a grand canyon for three days now.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, nobody, I mean nobody, nobody's gone.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Nobody, nobody. Yes, I will, I will, I'm working uh tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
You know, there are people who like me, they really
really like me.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
There are people that like you. Yes, the tammer and
the dog. Well, the dogs don't dogs.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
That's right, don't don't don't hey, do rethink that.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
You caught yourself on that one? I took the dog.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I took the dogs to the dry cleaner's lat yesterday
and I finally picked them up at one o'clock. Their
appointment was at one o'clock, and I remember thinking when
they scheduled it from one o'clock, I thought, this is
unusual for you to schedule anything after you know, we
(02:41):
tried to do it like ten thirty. So if Camber
can't take a mic and take it, yeah, because it
usually takes about six hours.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Today it's a big job for those two puppies.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Well, it was almost seven o'clock last night before I
got the Yeah. I gave her a big tip last night,
big tip. I genuinely felt sorry for her.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Do you want to talk about this stuff now? Do
you want to do it later?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I mean, I suppose so we can.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Dragon came to me two weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
You did, give or take it?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Give or take.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Two weeks ago, Dragon came to me. Came in for
our pre production meeting, which is now a very formal affair.
We have someone bring in uh croissants, donuts, tea and donuts,
and we sit here and we usually have a nice
flower arrangement and Dragon sits and he can't wait to
(03:37):
hear my wisdom for the morning. He just comes in
and he's like, oh, I'll wake go. What's he going
to tell me today? That's just going to brighten my day?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And first thing I said, what was I remember.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
The word hate was somewhere involved.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Happy crituia today.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yes, well, the couple of weeks ago, what was the
first thing you said?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I do that one? I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I don't know something about missus Redbeard and I watched
something last night, and she's really upset.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
She was.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Yeah, she was pretty pissed off as to how Hulu
treated you in that documentary.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
There are two documentaries out. Hulu's done one and well,
I'm not quite sure who the producers were or the
director was.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
On the Hulu they were named I didn't.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Re National geographic, so whoever, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
It was not Gil, but I didn't recognize the names.
On the Netflix one, which was released on Wednesday, it
Spike Lee is the executive producer on all three episodes,
and he's the producer and director on the third episode
(04:51):
and the director on all three episodes. Sam's the third
one is someone that I've known of for some time.
I watched the Hulu one with a little trepidation because
of what missus Redbeard said, which was primarily, it's.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
All Brownie's fault. Huh, It's all Brownie's fault, all.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
My fault, all my fault.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And so I watched it and I was furious, furious
about it because it's a great example of how you
take snippets. There was and I now, actually this was
not in the Hulu when this was in the Netflix one,
(05:39):
because in the Hulu one, I have said and there's
documentary evidence of it, because Netflix actually put part of
it in, not all of it, but part of it.
When I could not get Mayor Nagan or Governor Blanco,
(05:59):
who's now just seized and by the way, Ray Nagan
did jail time for corruption.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Yeah, it was kind of interesting in the Hulu documentary
that they were saying that they did the.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Little end paragraph or whatever.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Yeah, they lumped him the criminal, and then immediately following
that was you, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
The non criminal exactly. But I could not get them.
They had an evacuation plan New Orleans had in the
state of Louisiana had an evacuation plan, and during a
secure conference call with all the affected governors from Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas,
(06:48):
and I think we included Georgia, probably Kentucky, Tennessee, and
maybe Arkansas in that conference call also, so we had,
you know, at least five to eight governors on the conference.
All we had Bush on the conference call that this
is all audio and visual, and Crawford in his secure facility,
(07:10):
I'm in the operations center, a secure facility, and Dacan
announces that now this is a couple of days before landfall.
They've already missed the window to do a mandatory evacuation.
I will say that in both documentaries they do for
(07:33):
the first time take some twenty freaking years, but for
the first time after twenty years, they show evidence, and
then there is some admission on part of some of
the players that the reason they did not order a
mandatory evacuation was because the year before, in two thousand
(07:54):
and four, Hurricane Ivan had hit New Orleans or I
should say Louisiana in general. It wasn't a direct hit,
and they ordered a mandatory evacuation, and it was a
fiasco because it ended up not being much of a hurricane.
(08:16):
It was like a Category one or something, but it
just there was no need for a mandatory evacuation. So
people were very upset about having had to evacuate. The
politicians now understand the next year, despite all the warnings
from the National Hurricane Center, despite all the warnings and
(08:36):
the poleas from me, despite actually I actually I remember
I remembered distinctly making this phone call from my town
home in Virginia, in Alexandria, and I called the president
directly while he was in Crawford. The deputy Chief of Staff.
(08:57):
Joe Hagen answered the phone. I told Joe, you know,
because he carries the phone from Bush. I told Joe,
I need to talk to the boss. And of course,
being good chiefs of staff, they always want to know
before they hand the phone off to the boss. What
do you want to talk to me about? I said,
I've got to get him to call the mayor or
(09:17):
the governor or both. I don't care, but I can't
get these yahoos to order a mandatory evacuation. And Hagen
handed the phone off to Bush. They were out cutting
brush or something, and I explained to the President what
I needed him to do, and it was something to
(09:39):
the effect mister President, I really need you to make
a phone call. We've got the numbers ready to go.
The White House switchboard, can the Situation room can connect you.
I need you speak to the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco,
the mayor of New Orleans Ray Egan. I'm spelling out
all the details and the the window has closed for
(10:01):
a mandatory evacuation and they still haven't done it, but
we still need them to do it to get as
many people out of the city as we can. And
there's a what seems like fifteen seconds, because you know,
if you if I stopped talking for fifteen seconds, alarms
go off. Well, he may have sat there on the
(10:22):
phone for like five seconds, and I'm thinking, do I
lose its mection? And before I can say anything, he
finally chimes in and says, seriously, do you want me now?
I'm interpreting this as you want me the freaking president
of the United States of America. You want me to
call a governor and a mayor and tell them that
(10:43):
they need to order a mandatory evacuation. That's their job.
And I'm like, yeah, that's what I really need you
to do. I'm asking you to do that for me.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
I think that's what's lost in a lot of these
documentaries is that nobody really says whose job it was to.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Tell these people to leave?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Right right?
Speaker 4 (11:04):
I don't recall in either of them saying anything of
that that nature. That the the thing that pissed me
off was that they were They showed Bush in the
Netflix documentary, hey listen to your local leaders, and he
walks off right like you No, No, there was a
longer speech than that. But all you're going to show
(11:25):
is listen to your local leaders.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Right, he walks out, well, or are you standing there?
And they start with I've talked to Under Secretary Brown
and you know this is really dangerous. You need to
listen to your local state leaders and follow their instructions.
And he walks off.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, that's all nothing beforehand? Wait what?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
That it's as if he walked out, talked for fifties,
walked off.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Who does he think he is? Joe Biden?
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Right, exactly? So Bush makes that phone call.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
They still dilly delly around and now we're one day
prior to Lamb's all they and they to give them,
I'm straining to give them some credit. Hulu and Netflix,
they at least show the day that Blanco and Nagan
stand at a podium somewhere in New Orleans and Nagan, haltingly, hesitatingly,
(12:23):
with reservation, with no sense of urgency whatsoever, tells people
that he's ordering a mandatory evacuation. And then they cut
to people who are talking about, well, I'm going to stay,
you know, and it's not that serious. And other people
are claiming that it is serious and they are scared,
(12:44):
and they do leave, and they do talk about people
who are unable to evacuate, which was part of their
plan if they had implemented it, and that but that's
why you have to implement an evacuation plan in seventy
two hours before landfall, because their plan included using their
(13:06):
own school district buses to take people out, take people
out of the lower ninth ward who could not who
who did not have the financial resources, who did not
have cars transportation for that matter, people in nursing homes
or hospitals are people who are confined to home because
(13:29):
of health conditions. So that's part of their plan, But
you have to practice it. You have to have the
people to implement it and do it, and they didn't
have any of that, and then I get blamed for
not ordering a mandatory evacuation. I've always bitched about the
fact that I went on national television and I had
(13:54):
a phaylanx of reporters from all the cables, all the
networks overseas everywhere outside op Center, and I walked out
and I said something to the effect that despite the
calls for the lack of calls for an evacuation, if
(14:15):
I lived in New Orleans, I would be getting my
butt out of New Orleans right now. This is serious.
And I go through all the things about storm surge,
the National Hurricane Center, YadA, YadA, YadA, and so I'm
making a personal plea, without any authority to order anything,
a plea for people to evacuate New Orleans. They play
(14:38):
out of that entire presentation, if you will, to national media,
what would you guess Dragon, Do you remember that particular part?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Yeah, but they did say I would get I think
they'd say that if I were there, I would get out.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
They played because I said that numerous Yeah, they played
I'm guessing five seconds of that.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah, that was about it. That was the only thing there.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, five seconds of it out of probably what was
a ten minute press conference with here's the danger, here's what.
Because we had just had the conversation, and I'm explaining
to the governors, and I've got Max Mayfield from the
National Hurricane Center explaining how bad this is, storm surge,
everything else, concern about the levees. You know, we're really
(15:27):
concerned about the levees, blah blah blah blah, and nobody
does anything. It is astonishing to me. And this is
why I'm adamant about you know, everybody being a really
good consumer of news because you can. You can edit things,
you can cut things, you can omit things, you can
(15:50):
any do any number of things. And I'm not trying
to sit here and say I didn't make mistakes. I
clearly made some mistakes. But the failure of state and
local government is first and foremost the domino that starts everything.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Real quick jump back to the editing thing that really
frustrated me with this Netflix documentary. In the first couple
of episodes, they would have the two box you being
interviewed by the news anchor news anchored. Ask a question,
you'd answer the question. News anchored ask a question, You'd
answer the question. News anchored ask a very important question,
(16:29):
and then cut go off to something completely different.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Wait wait, wait, wait wait wait what was his answers.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
To the answer to that f What was the answer
to that important question?
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And they did that multiple times. That just pissed me off.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
What I what I really find most interesting about Dragon's
conversation with me about all of this is, of course
his reaction. But he and I see each other way
too much. We see each other five days a week.
There's more than we can stand. Even though you have
a great respect for each other. But miss shut up.
(17:03):
But Missus Redbeard and I see each other maybe twice
a year at the most. I mean, that's probably about it.
And so we don't have the relationship. Missus Redbeard and
I don't have the relationship that Dragon and I have.
But she was fully pissed off, which I just found adorable,
absolutely well, because because she knows that well, you know,
(17:28):
she could have she could have married up.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
You know, are they being so mean to Brownie?
Speaker 3 (17:36):
I did not.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
I've turned down every interview I In fact, I even
I was turning them down as late as last night London.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Times.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
They were reaching out, they were desperate to talk. The
only thing I agreed to do was an op ed
in the in US. Not agreed, but I decided to
do an op ed in USA today. And I've told everybody,
if you want to know what I have to say,
you can read the up ed.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
And that's it. Michael.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
I remember from that Katrina disaster that you were involved in,
Ray Nagan complaining about the fact that he would not
move his people with school buses. He wanted more luxury transportation.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
What a fool.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
And Bush is typical in his situation, dropping the ball
and not covering your back.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
You did a great job. Have a good weekend.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
One of the things that I point out that I've
not discussed a lot in the past is one of
the problems I had with the Department of Defense is
unbeknownst to me. And this shows you how cutthroat Washington,
d C.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Can be.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Donald Rumsfeld, who I to this day still consider a friend.
But he and I had before he passed away. He
and I had at after we were both out of government.
We had a couple of lunches at his office, and
man did we have some knockdown dragouts. But I think
(19:33):
it actually made our friendship stronger because he tried to explain,
you know, the position he was in, and I'm trying
to explain the position I'm in. What precipitated one of
those lunches was that he did an interview with Gentleman's
quarterby GQ, in which because I knew Rumsfeld, secretary of Defense,
(19:56):
and Gordon England, another really stand up guy who was
the Deputy Secretary of Defense. He had come to Homeland
Security as the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security for a
very short period of.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Time, and.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I'll just tell you, I I'll just tell you what
he told me one day in my office. He said,
and I can't repeat it verbatim on air, but that
Homeland Security is soft up. That he told the President
that he's going back to d D. So he leaves
(20:35):
d D, comes to DHS, sees how bad that organization is,
and then tells the President, I'm going to go back
to d D. And the President lets him go back
to d D. And so he and I had a
long standing relationship. Anyway, in that meeting in my office,
he encouraged me to quit. He told me that what
(20:59):
I was trying to attempt to accomplish was and if
you want to understand my personality, this is it right here.
I was desperately trying to make DHS work the way
that the President and I and the members of the
transition team wanted it to work. But I knew that
(21:25):
it was virtually impossible. But I kept banging my head
against the wall because I knew that with strong leadership,
understanding that we had different cultures, we had different objectives,
but that if we would work as a team, we
(21:45):
could make it work, even though we might still be
siloed in these different functions. Some people in that organization
carry guns, others don't. Some people that organization think they're
law enforcement, but they are not. And then FEMA is
a cooperative agent agency that works with state and local
(22:07):
governments as opposed to imposing our will on state and
local governments. We are a responder of last resort. So
I'm determined to make this work. And because that's what
I meant, that was the mission assignment, that's what I
was told to do. But Gordon England, being older than
(22:29):
I was, being wiser than I was, told me in
my office, you need to get the hell out of
here because you're going to fail, because they're never going
to let you succeed. And unfortunately, I took that as
a challenge. Really hold my beer. That was one of
(22:54):
the greatest moments in my life that I will never forget,
is being lectured by someone, not lectured, but being told
like a like a grandfather would tell you give you
advice about something. And I didn't take that advice. And
to this day, while I'm still conflicted, because I was
still determined to make it work. I was still determined
(23:17):
to do what the president's objective was and to meet
the objectives of the president, because that's what you do.
I mean, my gosh, you're serving the president of the
United States of America, so you want to make it work.
And here's a guy who I highly respect, truly look
upon as a grandfather telling me, I'm leaving. I'm going
(23:37):
back to the Pentagon because this is soft up that
I'm not going to deal with this. I thought the
Pentagon was screwed up. Hell's bells, I'm going back to
that monstrosity. You ought to get out of here, and
I didn't. And in the convert in the interview with GQ,
Rumsfeld tells the interview the reporter that he knew that
(24:03):
I was asking for all this personnel and the equipment,
and that I was asking to federalize. I was asking
I've told you the story about being on Air Force
One with the Deputy Secretary of the Deputy National Security Advisor,
the Attorney General of the United States, and myself all
writing up the documents to waive posse commatatis, invoke the
(24:24):
Insurrection Act and put armed US troops in New Orleans
because I needed not just the security, but I also
needed the logistics. I needed the equipment, and the President
gave Blanco time to think about it, and she realized
that was a political suicide pact, and she refused to
(24:45):
do it. I don't blame her, but nonetheless she did.
But Rumsfeld admitted that he was opposed to invoking the
Insurrection Act. He also did not want to and was
delaying the deployment of both National Guard and regular Army
(25:12):
and the eighty second Airborne and everybody else because of
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he didn't want
to run the risk that if a hotspot blew up
somewhere else. I mean, you can read all of this,
he admits all of this in GQ. So while I'm
sitting there pounding my head against the wall, yelling and
(25:32):
screaming about people, you know, where is the eighty second?
Where is you know this battalion? Where is where are
all of these people? You know what's going you know what?
I am cussing like a sailor on these calls. And
then I find out, Oh, it's my friend, Donald Rumsfeld.
(25:52):
Everything that you could possibly imagine going wrong is going wrong.
And I feel like I'm in the middle of a
slow moving car wreck in which I know.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
That I'm going to die.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I know that the air bags won't deploy. No one's
coming to save me, and it's going to create around me.
And the nail in the coffin was you got to
put yourself in Bush's shoes for a moment. So Bush
is getting because direct contact. He's getting me whining about
(26:32):
not getting what I need DOT D D you know, Commerce, Department,
AAG department, Housing and urban development. There are nobody's doing
what I want to do. Bush is going into cabinet
meetings and he's hearing from the cabinet secretaries that Brown's
asking for all this stuff and we don't want to
(26:53):
do this, and we don't want to do that, and
so everybody's bitching at Bush. Mammy, Mammy, Mammie man. Brown's
asking for too much. Really, have you seen what's going
on down here? You don't think that I don't need
regular army, that I don't need armored personnel carriers, that
I don't need five hundred freaking buses because they can't.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Do their thing.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Get your ass down here and go look and then
tell me that I don't want to do this. And
what people fail to understand is that when I'm the undersecretary,
and I execute a mission assignment that tells a cabinet secretary,
Because when I am in the middle of a presidentially
(27:41):
declared disaster, I'm acting directly on behalf of the president.
So if I say to Donald Rumsfeld that I need
twenty five Blackhawk helicopters and ten Chinooks and I need
x YZ, I need whatever, that that's an order from
(28:02):
the President to provide that to me. And don't worry
about your budget, because I'm going to reimburse you out
of my budget for the operating costs, the personnel costs,
the fuel, everything that you incur responding to my mission assignment,
I'm going to pay you for, so it's not going
to hurt your budget. And yet nothing is moving, not
(28:26):
a damn thing is moving. And so Bush is caught
in the middle of all of this. And let me
criticize Bush for a moment, he was oblivious to how
bad it was to despite me trying to explain to
him how bad it was, which is why I was
so freaking furious that they didn't land Air Force one
(28:47):
in Baton Rouge so that he could then take Marine
one and we could fly over. Well, he eventually did it,
but by that time it's too damn late. But I
am furious at Bush for that because he finally just
(29:09):
said Andy Carr, his main chief of staff, till Brown
start dealing with Chertoff. I'm tired of dealing with him
demanding all of this stuff, and then the Secretary's bitching
at me. He didn't want to deal with it. He
simply did not want to deal with it. And here's
a political storm coming at him and he doesn't recognize
(29:31):
it despite me telling Andy card because Andy Carr had
to deal with Hurricane Andrew and which was what nineteen
ninety two or four, I forget what year it was,
and it was as bad as Katrina in that regard,
and Andy Carr had to go clean up that mess.
And I told Andy Carr, this is going to be
(29:51):
this Bush's Hurricane Andrew, because you guys are not paying attention,
and Chertoff has been because I had direct communication with
the President and turn off went a direct communication with him.
He wasn't getting the attention he needed. Well, it sucks
to be you, but that's not how the law works.
(30:13):
So yeah, that's why I wrote what I wrote in
the op ed.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
Michael, I have a buddy who had family that lived
through Katrina, and he told me that as they made
their way to the super Dome that it was pretty
much a hellish, chaotic scene. That there is a lot
of lawless kind of marauding going on. There was a
lot of assault, sexual assault, very scary that they went armed.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Can you speak to that? Is there any truth in that?
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Yes and no.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
It's it's one of those things that I don't think
we'll ever know the full truth about. There was some looting,
there was some crime, there were some assaults. Anytime you
get people in that tide of condition, under those circumstances, fearful, poor,
(31:14):
not knowing what's going on. I'm not saying that this
is necessarily your family members, but let's say your family
members the smartest people in the world and they have means,
but they're making their way into a crowd that is
unruly and people don't know what's going on. There's nobody
there to provide a new directions. Because that was one
of my frustrations was Nagan says, this is a shelter
(31:36):
of last resort, and I'm screaming, well hold on now,
I'll get as many MRIs and supplies in there as
I can. But you're telling me you don't know how
many people to expect, how many people to plan for,
or anything else, and you haven't done anything. And now
you want me, as the storm is approaching to now
(32:00):
get people with eighteen wheelers to drive into that area
and then they hear the rumors. Now, some people, you know,
Honore tries to blow off the shotguns or the gunshots
as people trying to get the attention of helicopies. Well,
in some cases that was true, and in some cases
(32:21):
it wasn't. So yes, it was total chaos, unbelief,
Michael, does our vacation from you start at ten o'clock
this morning or one pm tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I would think that a P one listener like she
is would understand that my vacation time started when.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Dragon, uh, Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I was going to say tuesday, just to be you know,
to cover all my bases, and we're not talking about
next Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
We're talking about.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Last Tuesday, last Tuesday exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yes, I've been in vacation mode since well actually since
I put the request in.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
If he won't know the truth.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
He's here physically, but emotionally and mentally.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Nah, And so Dragon, I have to go, which is
just a total third world problem to take a whiz.
We have to walk down on the stairwell. It's terrible
to the third floor where you know those people reside.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
It's smelly down there where.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
All they do is tell Wiener jokes. And there was
somebody watering plants down there this morning them. Yeah, I
don't know what was going on. I was like, I
want because I didn't know whether it was a contractor
like what. But we don't have plants, so it must
have been in it, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I was just about to say, we have plants I
know we used to.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Remember we had some mad we come around water all
the plants and things. All that went away.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, yeah, so then somebody there's there's one person working
on the third floor, and then I come up, you know,
through the other hallway and then walk through the pit
that's been a grand canyon for three days now.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, nobody, I mean nobody, nobody's gone.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Nobody, nobody. Yes, I will, I will, I'm working uh tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
You know, there are people who like me, they really
really like me.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
There are people that like you. Yes, the tammer and
the dog. Well, the dogs don't dogs.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
That's right, don't don't don't hey, do rethink that.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
You caught yourself on that one? I took the dog.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I took the dogs to the dry cleaner's lat yesterday
and I finally picked them up at one o'clock. Their
appointment was at one o'clock, and I remember thinking when
they scheduled it from one o'clock, I thought, this is
unusual for you to schedule anything after you know, we
(02:41):
tried to do it like ten thirty. So if Camber
can't take a mic and take it, yeah, because it
usually takes about six hours.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Today it's a big job for those two puppies.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Well, it was almost seven o'clock last night before I
got the Yeah. I gave her a big tip last night,
big tip. I genuinely felt sorry for her.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Do you want to talk about this stuff now? Do
you want to do it later?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I mean, I suppose so we can.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Dragon came to me two weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
You did, give or take it?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Give or take.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Two weeks ago, Dragon came to me. Came in for
our pre production meeting, which is now a very formal affair.
We have someone bring in uh croissants, donuts, tea and donuts,
and we sit here and we usually have a nice
flower arrangement and Dragon sits and he can't wait to
(03:37):
hear my wisdom for the morning. He just comes in
and he's like, oh, I'll wake go. What's he going
to tell me today? That's just going to brighten my day?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And first thing I said, what was I remember.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
The word hate was somewhere involved.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Happy crituia today.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yes, well, the couple of weeks ago, what was the
first thing you said?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I do that one? I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I don't know something about missus Redbeard and I watched
something last night, and she's really upset.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
She was.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Yeah, she was pretty pissed off as to how Hulu
treated you in that documentary.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
There are two documentaries out. Hulu's done one and well,
I'm not quite sure who the producers were or the
director was.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
On the Hulu they were named I didn't.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Re National geographic, so whoever, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
It was not Gil, but I didn't recognize the names.
On the Netflix one, which was released on Wednesday, it
Spike Lee is the executive producer on all three episodes,
and he's the producer and director on the third episode
(04:51):
and the director on all three episodes. Sam's the third
one is someone that I've known of for some time.
I watched the Hulu one with a little trepidation because
of what missus Redbeard said, which was primarily, it's.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
All Brownie's fault. Huh, It's all Brownie's fault, all.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
My fault, all my fault.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And so I watched it and I was furious, furious
about it because it's a great example of how you
take snippets. There was and I now, actually this was
not in the Hulu when this was in the Netflix one,
(05:39):
because in the Hulu one, I have said and there's
documentary evidence of it, because Netflix actually put part of
it in, not all of it, but part of it.
When I could not get Mayor Nagan or Governor Blanco,
(05:59):
who's now just seized and by the way, Ray Nagan
did jail time for corruption.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Yeah, it was kind of interesting in the Hulu documentary
that they were saying that they did the.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Little end paragraph or whatever.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Yeah, they lumped him the criminal, and then immediately following
that was you, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
The non criminal exactly. But I could not get them.
They had an evacuation plan New Orleans had in the
state of Louisiana had an evacuation plan, and during a
secure conference call with all the affected governors from Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas,
(06:48):
and I think we included Georgia, probably Kentucky, Tennessee, and
maybe Arkansas in that conference call also, so we had,
you know, at least five to eight governors on the conference.
All we had Bush on the conference call that this
is all audio and visual, and Crawford in his secure facility,
(07:10):
I'm in the operations center, a secure facility, and Dacan
announces that now this is a couple of days before landfall.
They've already missed the window to do a mandatory evacuation.
I will say that in both documentaries they do for
(07:33):
the first time take some twenty freaking years, but for
the first time after twenty years, they show evidence, and
then there is some admission on part of some of
the players that the reason they did not order a
mandatory evacuation was because the year before, in two thousand
(07:54):
and four, Hurricane Ivan had hit New Orleans or I
should say Louisiana in general. It wasn't a direct hit,
and they ordered a mandatory evacuation, and it was a
fiasco because it ended up not being much of a hurricane.
(08:16):
It was like a Category one or something, but it
just there was no need for a mandatory evacuation. So
people were very upset about having had to evacuate. The
politicians now understand the next year, despite all the warnings
from the National Hurricane Center, despite all the warnings and
(08:36):
the poleas from me, despite actually I actually I remember
I remembered distinctly making this phone call from my town
home in Virginia, in Alexandria, and I called the president
directly while he was in Crawford. The deputy Chief of Staff.
(08:57):
Joe Hagen answered the phone. I told Joe, you know,
because he carries the phone from Bush. I told Joe,
I need to talk to the boss. And of course,
being good chiefs of staff, they always want to know
before they hand the phone off to the boss. What
do you want to talk to me about? I said,
I've got to get him to call the mayor or
(09:17):
the governor or both. I don't care, but I can't
get these yahoos to order a mandatory evacuation. And Hagen
handed the phone off to Bush. They were out cutting
brush or something, and I explained to the President what
I needed him to do, and it was something to
(09:39):
the effect mister President, I really need you to make
a phone call. We've got the numbers ready to go.
The White House switchboard, can the Situation room can connect you.
I need you speak to the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco,
the mayor of New Orleans Ray Egan. I'm spelling out
all the details and the the window has closed for
(10:01):
a mandatory evacuation and they still haven't done it, but
we still need them to do it to get as
many people out of the city as we can. And
there's a what seems like fifteen seconds, because you know,
if you if I stopped talking for fifteen seconds, alarms
go off. Well, he may have sat there on the
(10:22):
phone for like five seconds, and I'm thinking, do I
lose its mection? And before I can say anything, he
finally chimes in and says, seriously, do you want me now?
I'm interpreting this as you want me the freaking president
of the United States of America. You want me to
call a governor and a mayor and tell them that
(10:43):
they need to order a mandatory evacuation. That's their job.
And I'm like, yeah, that's what I really need you
to do. I'm asking you to do that for me.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
I think that's what's lost in a lot of these
documentaries is that nobody really says whose job it was to.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Tell these people to leave?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Right right?
Speaker 4 (11:04):
I don't recall in either of them saying anything of
that that nature. That the the thing that pissed me
off was that they were They showed Bush in the
Netflix documentary, hey listen to your local leaders, and he
walks off right like you No, No, there was a
longer speech than that. But all you're going to show
(11:25):
is listen to your local leaders.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Right, he walks out, well, or are you standing there?
And they start with I've talked to Under Secretary Brown
and you know this is really dangerous. You need to
listen to your local state leaders and follow their instructions.
And he walks off.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, that's all nothing beforehand? Wait what?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
That it's as if he walked out, talked for fifties,
walked off.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Who does he think he is? Joe Biden?
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Right, exactly? So Bush makes that phone call.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
They still dilly delly around and now we're one day
prior to Lamb's all they and they to give them,
I'm straining to give them some credit. Hulu and Netflix,
they at least show the day that Blanco and Nagan
stand at a podium somewhere in New Orleans and Nagan, haltingly, hesitatingly,
(12:23):
with reservation, with no sense of urgency whatsoever, tells people
that he's ordering a mandatory evacuation. And then they cut
to people who are talking about, well, I'm going to stay,
you know, and it's not that serious. And other people
are claiming that it is serious and they are scared,
(12:44):
and they do leave, and they do talk about people
who are unable to evacuate, which was part of their
plan if they had implemented it, and that but that's
why you have to implement an evacuation plan in seventy
two hours before landfall, because their plan included using their
(13:06):
own school district buses to take people out, take people
out of the lower ninth ward who could not who
who did not have the financial resources, who did not
have cars transportation for that matter, people in nursing homes
or hospitals are people who are confined to home because
(13:29):
of health conditions. So that's part of their plan, But
you have to practice it. You have to have the
people to implement it and do it, and they didn't
have any of that, and then I get blamed for
not ordering a mandatory evacuation. I've always bitched about the
fact that I went on national television and I had
(13:54):
a phaylanx of reporters from all the cables, all the
networks overseas everywhere outside op Center, and I walked out
and I said something to the effect that despite the
calls for the lack of calls for an evacuation, if
(14:15):
I lived in New Orleans, I would be getting my
butt out of New Orleans right now. This is serious.
And I go through all the things about storm surge,
the National Hurricane Center, YadA, YadA, YadA, and so I'm
making a personal plea, without any authority to order anything,
a plea for people to evacuate New Orleans. They play
(14:38):
out of that entire presentation, if you will, to national media,
what would you guess Dragon, Do you remember that particular part?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Yeah, but they did say I would get I think
they'd say that if I were there, I would get out.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
They played because I said that numerous Yeah, they played
I'm guessing five seconds of that.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah, that was about it. That was the only thing there.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, five seconds of it out of probably what was
a ten minute press conference with here's the danger, here's what.
Because we had just had the conversation, and I'm explaining
to the governors, and I've got Max Mayfield from the
National Hurricane Center explaining how bad this is, storm surge,
everything else, concern about the levees. You know, we're really
(15:27):
concerned about the levees, blah blah blah blah, and nobody
does anything. It is astonishing to me. And this is
why I'm adamant about you know, everybody being a really
good consumer of news because you can. You can edit things,
you can cut things, you can omit things, you can
(15:50):
any do any number of things. And I'm not trying
to sit here and say I didn't make mistakes. I
clearly made some mistakes. But the failure of state and
local government is first and foremost the domino that starts everything.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Real quick jump back to the editing thing that really
frustrated me with this Netflix documentary. In the first couple
of episodes, they would have the two box you being
interviewed by the news anchor news anchored. Ask a question,
you'd answer the question. News anchored ask a question, You'd
answer the question. News anchored ask a very important question,
(16:29):
and then cut go off to something completely different.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Wait wait, wait, wait wait wait what was his answers.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
To the answer to that f What was the answer
to that important question?
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And they did that multiple times. That just pissed me off.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
What I what I really find most interesting about Dragon's
conversation with me about all of this is, of course
his reaction. But he and I see each other way
too much. We see each other five days a week.
There's more than we can stand. Even though you have
a great respect for each other. But miss shut up.
(17:03):
But Missus Redbeard and I see each other maybe twice
a year at the most. I mean, that's probably about it.
And so we don't have the relationship. Missus Redbeard and
I don't have the relationship that Dragon and I have.
But she was fully pissed off, which I just found adorable,
absolutely well, because because she knows that well, you know,
(17:28):
she could have she could have married up.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
You know, are they being so mean to Brownie?
Speaker 3 (17:36):
I did not.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
I've turned down every interview I In fact, I even
I was turning them down as late as last night London.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Times.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
They were reaching out, they were desperate to talk. The
only thing I agreed to do was an op ed
in the in US. Not agreed, but I decided to
do an op ed in USA today. And I've told everybody,
if you want to know what I have to say,
you can read the up ed.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
And that's it. Michael.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
I remember from that Katrina disaster that you were involved in,
Ray Nagan complaining about the fact that he would not
move his people with school buses. He wanted more luxury transportation.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
What a fool.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
And Bush is typical in his situation, dropping the ball
and not covering your back.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
You did a great job. Have a good weekend.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
One of the things that I point out that I've
not discussed a lot in the past is one of
the problems I had with the Department of Defense is
unbeknownst to me. And this shows you how cutthroat Washington,
d C.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Can be.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Donald Rumsfeld, who I to this day still consider a friend.
But he and I had before he passed away. He
and I had at after we were both out of government.
We had a couple of lunches at his office, and
man did we have some knockdown dragouts. But I think
(19:33):
it actually made our friendship stronger because he tried to explain,
you know, the position he was in, and I'm trying
to explain the position I'm in. What precipitated one of
those lunches was that he did an interview with Gentleman's
quarterby GQ, in which because I knew Rumsfeld, secretary of Defense,
(19:56):
and Gordon England, another really stand up guy who was
the Deputy Secretary of Defense. He had come to Homeland
Security as the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security for a
very short period of.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Time, and.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I'll just tell you, I I'll just tell you what
he told me one day in my office. He said,
and I can't repeat it verbatim on air, but that
Homeland Security is soft up. That he told the President
that he's going back to d D. So he leaves
(20:35):
d D, comes to DHS, sees how bad that organization is,
and then tells the President, I'm going to go back
to d D. And the President lets him go back
to d D. And so he and I had a
long standing relationship. Anyway, in that meeting in my office,
he encouraged me to quit. He told me that what
(20:59):
I was trying to attempt to accomplish was and if
you want to understand my personality, this is it right here.
I was desperately trying to make DHS work the way
that the President and I and the members of the
transition team wanted it to work. But I knew that
(21:25):
it was virtually impossible. But I kept banging my head
against the wall because I knew that with strong leadership,
understanding that we had different cultures, we had different objectives,
but that if we would work as a team, we
(21:45):
could make it work, even though we might still be
siloed in these different functions. Some people in that organization
carry guns, others don't. Some people that organization think they're
law enforcement, but they are not. And then FEMA is
a cooperative agent agency that works with state and local
(22:07):
governments as opposed to imposing our will on state and
local governments. We are a responder of last resort. So
I'm determined to make this work. And because that's what
I meant, that was the mission assignment, that's what I
was told to do. But Gordon England, being older than
(22:29):
I was, being wiser than I was, told me in
my office, you need to get the hell out of
here because you're going to fail, because they're never going
to let you succeed. And unfortunately, I took that as
a challenge. Really hold my beer. That was one of
(22:54):
the greatest moments in my life that I will never forget,
is being lectured by someone, not lectured, but being told
like a like a grandfather would tell you give you
advice about something. And I didn't take that advice. And
to this day, while I'm still conflicted, because I was
still determined to make it work. I was still determined
(23:17):
to do what the president's objective was and to meet
the objectives of the president, because that's what you do.
I mean, my gosh, you're serving the president of the
United States of America, so you want to make it work.
And here's a guy who I highly respect, truly look
upon as a grandfather telling me, I'm leaving. I'm going
(23:37):
back to the Pentagon because this is soft up that
I'm not going to deal with this. I thought the
Pentagon was screwed up. Hell's bells, I'm going back to
that monstrosity. You ought to get out of here, and
I didn't. And in the convert in the interview with GQ,
Rumsfeld tells the interview the reporter that he knew that
(24:03):
I was asking for all this personnel and the equipment,
and that I was asking to federalize. I was asking
I've told you the story about being on Air Force
One with the Deputy Secretary of the Deputy National Security Advisor,
the Attorney General of the United States, and myself all
writing up the documents to waive posse commatatis, invoke the
(24:24):
Insurrection Act and put armed US troops in New Orleans
because I needed not just the security, but I also
needed the logistics. I needed the equipment, and the President
gave Blanco time to think about it, and she realized
that was a political suicide pact, and she refused to
(24:45):
do it. I don't blame her, but nonetheless she did.
But Rumsfeld admitted that he was opposed to invoking the
Insurrection Act. He also did not want to and was
delaying the deployment of both National Guard and regular Army
(25:12):
and the eighty second Airborne and everybody else because of
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he didn't want
to run the risk that if a hotspot blew up
somewhere else. I mean, you can read all of this,
he admits all of this in GQ. So while I'm
sitting there pounding my head against the wall, yelling and
(25:32):
screaming about people, you know, where is the eighty second?
Where is you know this battalion? Where is where are
all of these people? You know what's going you know what?
I am cussing like a sailor on these calls. And
then I find out, Oh, it's my friend, Donald Rumsfeld.
(25:52):
Everything that you could possibly imagine going wrong is going wrong.
And I feel like I'm in the middle of a
slow moving car wreck in which I know.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
That I'm going to die.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I know that the air bags won't deploy. No one's
coming to save me, and it's going to create around me.
And the nail in the coffin was you got to
put yourself in Bush's shoes for a moment. So Bush
is getting because direct contact. He's getting me whining about
(26:32):
not getting what I need DOT D D you know, Commerce, Department,
AAG department, Housing and urban development. There are nobody's doing
what I want to do. Bush is going into cabinet
meetings and he's hearing from the cabinet secretaries that Brown's
asking for all this stuff and we don't want to
(26:53):
do this, and we don't want to do that, and
so everybody's bitching at Bush. Mammy, Mammy, Mammie man. Brown's
asking for too much. Really, have you seen what's going
on down here? You don't think that I don't need
regular army, that I don't need armored personnel carriers, that
I don't need five hundred freaking buses because they can't.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Do their thing.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Get your ass down here and go look and then
tell me that I don't want to do this. And
what people fail to understand is that when I'm the undersecretary,
and I execute a mission assignment that tells a cabinet secretary,
Because when I am in the middle of a presidentially
(27:41):
declared disaster, I'm acting directly on behalf of the president.
So if I say to Donald Rumsfeld that I need
twenty five Blackhawk helicopters and ten Chinooks and I need
x YZ, I need whatever, that that's an order from
(28:02):
the President to provide that to me. And don't worry
about your budget, because I'm going to reimburse you out
of my budget for the operating costs, the personnel costs,
the fuel, everything that you incur responding to my mission assignment,
I'm going to pay you for, so it's not going
to hurt your budget. And yet nothing is moving, not
(28:26):
a damn thing is moving. And so Bush is caught
in the middle of all of this. And let me
criticize Bush for a moment, he was oblivious to how
bad it was to despite me trying to explain to
him how bad it was, which is why I was
so freaking furious that they didn't land Air Force one
(28:47):
in Baton Rouge so that he could then take Marine
one and we could fly over. Well, he eventually did it,
but by that time it's too damn late. But I
am furious at Bush for that because he finally just
(29:09):
said Andy Carr, his main chief of staff, till Brown
start dealing with Chertoff. I'm tired of dealing with him
demanding all of this stuff, and then the Secretary's bitching
at me. He didn't want to deal with it. He
simply did not want to deal with it. And here's
a political storm coming at him and he doesn't recognize
(29:31):
it despite me telling Andy card because Andy Carr had
to deal with Hurricane Andrew and which was what nineteen
ninety two or four, I forget what year it was,
and it was as bad as Katrina in that regard,
and Andy Carr had to go clean up that mess.
And I told Andy Carr, this is going to be
(29:51):
this Bush's Hurricane Andrew, because you guys are not paying attention,
and Chertoff has been because I had direct communication with
the President and turn off went a direct communication with him.
He wasn't getting the attention he needed. Well, it sucks
to be you, but that's not how the law works.
(30:13):
So yeah, that's why I wrote what I wrote in
the op ed.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
Michael, I have a buddy who had family that lived
through Katrina, and he told me that as they made
their way to the super Dome that it was pretty
much a hellish, chaotic scene. That there is a lot
of lawless kind of marauding going on. There was a
lot of assault, sexual assault, very scary that they went armed.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Can you speak to that? Is there any truth in that?
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Yes and no.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
It's it's one of those things that I don't think
we'll ever know the full truth about. There was some looting,
there was some crime, there were some assaults. Anytime you
get people in that tide of condition, under those circumstances, fearful, poor,
(31:14):
not knowing what's going on. I'm not saying that this
is necessarily your family members, but let's say your family
members the smartest people in the world and they have means,
but they're making their way into a crowd that is
unruly and people don't know what's going on. There's nobody
there to provide a new directions. Because that was one
of my frustrations was Nagan says, this is a shelter
(31:36):
of last resort, and I'm screaming, well hold on now,
I'll get as many MRIs and supplies in there as
I can. But you're telling me you don't know how
many people to expect, how many people to plan for,
or anything else, and you haven't done anything. And now
you want me, as the storm is approaching to now
(32:00):
get people with eighteen wheelers to drive into that area
and then they hear the rumors. Now, some people, you know,
Honore tries to blow off the shotguns or the gunshots
as people trying to get the attention of helicopies. Well,
in some cases that was true, and in some cases
(32:21):
it wasn't. So yes, it was total chaos, unbelief,
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Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
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