Washington, DC — As the Katrina blame game in Washington escalates — in full, sorry display on the Sunday talk circuit — there appears to be the beginning of an effort to drag former PA Governor and Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge into the culpability tar pit.
Consider this key second graph in David Sanger’s New York Times story this morning:
“But it fact, just hours before, in a meeting in the Oval Office, Mr. Brown’s fate had been all but sealed.
Michael Chertoff, the onetime judge who has told friends he was shocked by the state of the Department of Homeland Security, which he inherited earlier this year, told Mr. Bush and the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., that he wanted to remove Mr. Brown from the day-to-day management of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, although he would remain the head of FEMA.”
As very little in the subtle, nuanced reporting game in DC happens by chance — especially when it appears in the second graph of a retrospective tick tock of the FEMA/Homeland Security disaster — Tom Ridge needs to watch his back, and push back immediately behind the scenes.
Someone with Chertoff and/or others in the White House are trying to drag Ridge into the culpability loop.
Watch out Governor.