FEMA Apologizes For Staging Fake Press Conference – FEMA Employees Acted As News Reporters
October 27, 2007 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
The Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA, the chief disaster agency of the United States, is again in “hot water” as facts emerge that it staged a fake press conference, complete with FEMA employees “acting” as reporters.
According to several news reports, deputy FEMA administrator, Harvey Johnson, had an unusually friendly audience at an Oct. 23 news briefing on his agencys response to the California wildfires.
FEMA drafted its own employees to play the part of reporters at a hastily called news conference when no members of the media showed up.
As a result, Johnson took questions like, “Are you happy with FEMAs response so far?”
FEMA Administrator David Paulison was flying to California at the time and it is unclear whether he knew about the staged news conference.
Johnson issued a statement Friday apologizing for the error and promised to change the agencys news procedures.
Both the White House and the Homeland Security Department criticized FEMAs conduct.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it is not appropriate that the questions were posed by agency staffers instead of reporters, and the agency should take responsibility for it.
The Homeland Security Department, which includes FEMA, said the incident is a “simply inexcusable and offensive mistake.”
The departments spokeswoman Laura Keehner, said punishment may apply in the case.
This is a basic case-in-point of our government agencies and the powers-that-think-they-be, out of control.
Here we have facts and evidence leading to indictable charges and then being white-washed into “error” and “mistake”.
Let a civilian try to pull something like this off and they would be facing federal prison time with some lame criminal charge against them.
These people and their supervision and directors ALL need to face criminal charges for these actions. THIS is unexcusable fraud and abuse of process against the American taxpayers.
More aptly applied, THIS is DOMESTIC TERRORISM!