DOD has responsibility to provide a rapid and effective response and recovery from domestic catastrophic event. Specifically, the Department must maintain continuity of operations, save lives, prevent human suffering and mitigate great property damage. This responsibility involves capabilities to provide mission assurance (internal support) and Defense Support to Civil Authorities (external) utilizing active duty, Reserve, National Guard, DOD civilians and DOD contractors.
DOD PRIMARY MISSION ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS, 2012
After less than twenty-four hours on the ground, while moving thousands of tired, filthy, and sick American refugees from the Superdome to buses and to safety, Task Force Buckeye of the Ohio National Guard had received a secret “squirrel” mission assignment to protect Washington’s assets.
The order came in a circuitous way, neither from the Guard’s headquarters back home in Columbus nor from the Louisiana National Guard task force the Ohioans were assigned to in Baton Rouge. Instead, it came from the Pentagon, in a SPECAT—special category—message, meaning very limited distribution. A squad was to be volunteered to provide security for a high-water dump truck commandeered by the Central Intelligence Agency. Mission: wade into the muck to retrieve sensitive papers and codes from the Agency’s little-known and abandoned New Orleans office. Not surprisingly given that it was the CIA, it was all very hush-hush.
And then another national security mission assignment came in: the State Department sent a “high-priority message” to the Joint Chiefs of Staff announcing that “national security documents of the highest level” were located on the twelfth and thirteenth floors of the federal building at 333 Canal Street in the Central Business District. “Soldiers must secure building. No one will enter the building once secured, until authorized personnel arrive to retrieve documents,” the cryptic message said. A team of National Guard infantry was dispatched. “National security of the highest level” turned out to be a few hundred blank passports.1
And that wasn’t all; the Secret Service was readying its own nighttime special operation with a SWAT team for a mission right out of a Hollywood movie: Louisiana National Guardsmen were to support the black-suited civilian commandos and go into the Federal Reserve Bank building on Lafayette Square and rescue $50 million in cash.2
As to why National Guard troops were tasked with such missions instead of working on something like, say, saving lives—well, David Addington hadn’t been the only one among Washington’s leading ranks who watched the Weather Channel in the days before Katrina made landfall. The CIA, State Department, and Secret Service had all bugged out of New Orleans before the storm, as had all of the other federal law enforcement agencies—FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF); DEA; US Marshals Service; Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); Customs and Border Protection; Border Patrol; Federal Air Marshals—hundreds of their staff and families skedaddling out to safety, only skeletal crews left behind to watch over federal buildings, valuable equipment, and classified information.3 Even the agency that one might think would stay and even augment itself for the worst—FEMA—had just one employee in New Orleans when the hurricane made its Louisiana landfall, and he was a PR guy from Michael Brown’s office in Washington, there to prepare for the expected VIP photo ops that would follow from rubbernecking federal officials.4
Before the storm hit, the military was equally focused on its own. The navy moved ships out of harm’s way, the air force flushed aircraft north, marine corps reserve headquarters in New Orleans were evacuated and shuttered.5 At Louisiana and Mississippi military bases, special airlifts were laid on to evacuate critical patients and pregnant women in their third trimester to Texas;6 military retirees living in the area were air evacuated to Maryland.7 Those military personnel who stayed behind focused inward. The old naval base in the Algiers section of New Orleans was sealed up tight, so much so that the officers in charge there later turned away stranded civilians seeking shelter, at gunpoint.8
New Orleans after Katrina would offer tons of examples of true heroes—military included—pilots, the rescuers and aid workers, the Louisiana police who worked day and night despite their own homes being destroyed and their own families and relatives becoming part of the calamity; the Coast Guard; the Louisiana National Guard and the guardsmen and -women who came in from all over the country, the hundreds if not thousands of citizen volunteers, both organized and spontaneous. But while chaos reigned for the five days after landfall, federal law enforcement was effectively absent—by choice.9 From hundreds prestorm, about forty-five federal lawmen remained in New Orleans when the hurricane hit.10 Instead of a massive restocking, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security then fought over who was in charge of law enforcement. (At one point, things became so tense between the two agencies that some in Homeland Security proposed that their tactical teams take up positions around the city and mount a show of force rather than relinquish law enforcement powers to the men from Justice.11)
The federal argument about jurisdiction wasn’t solved until September 4, when Governor Blanco finally filled out the right paperwork agreeing to credential federal agents to allow them to enforce local laws and be deputized under the State.12 Then the federal flood began: over 2,300 federal law enforcement officers swarmed, the system primed for both redemption and possible takeover, in just one week growing to a force nearly equal to the total of the New Orleans and state police officers in the entire state of Louisiana before landfall;13 they grew to more than 3,000 strong in two weeks.14
On the evening of August 31, when he was in Baton Rouge on his way to New Orleans for the first time, General Honoré was approached by an FBI supervisor with another secret mission: “We’ve got some shooters we need to put on a building we have to protect,” the supervisor whispered, asking if they could hop a helicopter ride back into town. Seven black-clad snipers piled into Honoré’s Blackhawk; “They never said a word from the time we picked them up until we dropped them off atop a building downtown,” he later wrote. “To this day I don’t know what building they were on, why they were there, or how long they stayed.”15
In fact, it was the BellSouth main exchange on Poydras Street (separating the French Quarter from the Central Business District), the regional hub for multiple commercial carriers—what’s called a telecomm hotel. Though damaged, the main exchange was still operating at diminished capacity. The corporation wanted to send in a team to refuel the diesel generators, which were running low, but were fearful of all they were reading and seeing on television about the anarchy in the city. Corporate executives called the Justice Department in Washington seeking help.
Since the Kennedy administration, private property like the BellSouth facility holds a special status in the XYZ world. Communications problems during the Cuban missile crisis, extending to links from Washington to its own military forces, let alone to the Soviet leadership, drove the president and the executive agents to seek a single unified communications system for command and control.16 In 1984, the Reagan team expanded the mission of what was now called the national communications system to encompass prewar responsibilities as well, including coordinating the emergency plans to help the government—and the American economy—survive a nuclear war. In some ways, it was a change necessitated by advances in technology; a centralized government-only system of closed circuits and links needed to be updated to keep pace with the far more robust decentralized commercial networks and technologies that were emerging.17 But it also meant a further need for constant oversight that extended well beyond the federal government.
For the national security establishment, communications were merely one of the newest of its private-sector concerns. Long before the information age, the military had systematically identified what it called key assets—strategic materials, factories, and transportation links—that would be vital in war production and mobilization. It was all pretty straightforward, though nuclear weapons and the era of mutual assured destruction made the notion of mobilization of large numbers of anything seem obsolete if not wasteful. Yet ever-nimble nuclear strategists proposed that protection of key assets was linked to the deterrence of a Soviet attack: if the economic survival of the nation could be assured, the theory went, then this would reduce the possibility of postnuclear-war coercion and thus of attack.18 With enough shovels, America would survive and endure: COG flourished, civil defense (dormant with the passing of bomber and missile gaps) revived, billions were poured into “command, control, and communications.” The military’s ARPANET—the nuclear-war-surviving packet-switched network that was the seed of today’s Internet—emerged.
When years later the Clinton administration inherited the burgeoning World Wide Web, the attempt to strategically unite all of the old pieces—continuity, national security communications, enduring and protectable key assets—was already well under way. There was understandable logic to this, but the “civil” in “civil defense” began to take on a broader meaning than it had for the beginning of the Cold War. For example, when the Reagan administration tasked FEMA to examine how “various critical US infrastructure elements (e.g., the computerized banking system, power grids, and communications networks) are vulnerable to acts of terrorism,” it was the first time a national security directive explicitly identified as critical private-sector infrastructure not directly part of the military-industrial complex.19 A decade later, Clinton’s National Security Strategy for 1997 stated that the US “must be prepared to respond effectively to protect lives and property and ensure the survival of our institutions and national infrastructure” in the event of natural disasters, terrorism, WMD, and sabotage of information systems.20 Presidential Decision Directive 63 followed in May 1998, setting out government responsibilities. “Critical infrastructures are those physical and cyber-based systems essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government,” the directive said. “Non-traditional attacks on our infrastructure and information systems may be capable of significantly harming both our military power and our economy.”21
In February 2000, President Clinton announced the “first-ever” public-private partnership for protecting the nation’s communications: “stakeholders in the critical infrastructures,” they were called.22 That was still on the books, as it were, when Katrina hit, so it made perfect sense that, following orders, the SWAT team came in with Honoré to secure the place, followed later by US marshals to protect the building.23 Snipers would enforce the private-public infrastructure partnership, putting the focus on security from needy civilians who might disrupt federal working.
In the end, the BellSouth’s Poydras Street central office never completely failed, but so many poles, relays, and towers were damaged or destroyed that whatever phone service remained was not only sporadic but completely inadequate. With the loss of electrical power and the flooding, almost all of the communications lines in and around New Orleans went down as well; the city’s main communications tower was destroyed and two others were damaged, causing catastrophic cascading failure. In total, almost three million customer phone lines were knocked out, telephone switching centers were flooded and damaged, and over 1,475 cell towers were incapacitated.24 The rescue effort and the general welfare were disrupted, but the experts in Washington concluded that the loss of communications didn’t really affect the rest of the nation.
Oil was a different matter, though, and here corporate and government devotion coincided. Washington’s expression of priority came in the amount of intelligence resources thrown into assessing the impact, activity undertaken even without an industry lobbyist knocking at the door.
More than 10 percent of the nation’s imported crude oil entered through the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port.25 Two days before Katrina made landfall, energy companies were already estimating that the approaching storm had reduced Gulf of Mexico oil production by more than a third.26 Katrina forced the evacuation of more than 75 percent of the Gulf’s 819 manned oil platforms.27 It was enough of a concern that national reconnaissance satellites were diverted from wartime duties to begin imaging important installations.28
Whereas virtually no attention was paid at the federal level when it came to making sure lives were protected, pursuant to the federal government’s priorities, before the storm, the entire oil infrastructure on the Gulf was mapped and lists of factories and infrastructure critical to the executive agents were also compiled. Intelligence analysts at multiple agencies in Washington were assigned Katrina-related tasks concerned with infrastructure. Well before landfall, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency created customized charts and maps of critical infrastructure and government facilities.29 A special Defense Department team cataloged potential hazardous materials.30
The hurricane damage proved huge: most crude oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico was shut down. Eleven petroleum refineries, or one-sixth of the nation’s refining capacity, were damaged or destroyed by Katrina.31 Once the storm passed, the National Reconnaissance Office again diverted satellites to assess flooded areas and identify industrial and environmental hazards;32 and what followed was a massive and hidden government intelligence collection effort: the air force deployed Eagle Vision teams to pull down commercial satellite imagery that was already being purchased in bulk for the two foreign wars.33 Fourteen different types of reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft were called in: National Guard RC-26B Condor aircraft started flying reconnaissance missions from Texas on August 30,34 followed by the high-flying U-2 Dragon Lady, the first domestic service by the California-based planes.35 Three different types of auxiliary aircraft from the Civil Air Patrol provided a continual stream of digital imagery.36 OC-135 Open Skies aircraft, normally used for nuclear arms treaty verification and monitoring, were pulled in.37 So were C-130 Scathe View aircraft, normally used for counterdrug surveillance.38 Navy P-3 Orions intended for maritime surveillance and antisubmarine warfare were tasked to image, as were clandestine DC-3 Shadow Harvest reconnaissance aircraft of the Defense Intelligence Agency.39 Even special-operations AC-130H gunships and fighter jets flew overhead, providing imagery and full-motion video from various pods and internal sensors.40
In, too, came the unmanned drones,41 high-flying Predators and a swarm of other aerial vehicles filling the skies of the battlefield laboratory, taking pictures and producing live video of selected locations.42 Reconnaissance experts even duct-taped unmanned aerial vehicles to the bottom of helicopters to improvise in delivering video; another experimental drone was mounted on the thirty-eighth-story roof of the Hyatt Regency hotel to provide real-time surveillance.43
Good intelligence is never a bad thing, and in this situation any kind of intelligence was sorely needed. But in reality, the Katrina-related intelligence collection and analysis ended up being little more than bomb damage assessments that merely transposed wartime methodologies to the United States. Some of what was obtained was laughable, some of it downright ominous, but most of it focused on the conditions of critical infrastructure rather than on human needs, and all of it was rather boilerplate and thoughtless, feeding the voracious appetites of gigantic, competing, and overlapping headquarters far, far away.
Take, for instance, the initial “damage assessment” issued by Honoré’s higher headquarters, US Northern Command in Colorado: “Analysis of 2 September U-2 optical bar camera imagery along the United States Gulf Coast showed areas of light to extensive damage to infrastructure, residences, and businesses along the I-10 corridor between Pascagoula, Mississippi and Mobile, Alabama,” the report declared, as if the American Gulf Coast were distant Indonesia after a tsunami, as if anyone didn’t already know the broad outlines.
If NORTHCOM thought it was breaking ground with such pronouncements as “Heavy damage was observed around Gulfport and Biloxi,” it was far from alone in stating—and ignoring—the obvious.44 “Spectral analysis of the I-10 causeway between New Orleans and Slidell indicates sections of the bridge are missing,” announced another carefully annotated imagery report produced three weeks after the fact, as if complex spectral analysis were needed to know what everyone knew in the first hours.45
“Technical Image analysis of the Chalmette Petrol Storage Facility indicates presence of flood-water surface refraction indicative of petroleum contamination throughout the facility,” said one typical infrastructure report, proudly using similar hyperspectral imagery and analysis, long after the workers had already been back to make an on-the-ground assessment.46 And just as would have been done for a bombing survey, the national intelligence agencies calculated percentages of damage to factories, power plants, and petroleum facilities—levels of damage classified as limited, moderate, extensive, and “catastrophic,” each with precise definitions laid out in additional reports. Elaborate maps of the Gulf region were prepared showing percentages of damage to communications, energy infrastructure, electrical production, airfields, highways, bridges, the petroleum industry, ports, defense plants, etc. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Washington created hundreds of intelligence products (as they are officially termed) a day;47 2,300 imagery and mapping products were produced by air force intelligence alone;48 scores of special graphics were prepared in response to federal needs, such as one aerial reconnaissance study that showed various views of the FBI field office near Lake Pontchartrain, as if it were a behind-enemy-lines target, even though skeletal FBI staff had stayed right there all along.49
The graphics and images used for the constant briefings were rich and expertly prepared. But intelligence didn’t inform any decisions on the ground, not intelligence from Washington, not from the system. When Honoré arrived at the Superdome on August 31, he thought the total head count there might be around 16,000 to 17,000; he soon discovered that the estimate was low by half;50 none of the intelligence gathering had anything to say to explain the error. No imagery or intelligence reports informed any of the federal watch officers of the existence of a second gathering place at the convention center—in all the collection of information on buildings and infrastructure, 25,000 people were missed.51
There is no indication whatsoever that any of this intelligence effort provided people on the ground with what they needed, informed one decision, or made one iota of difference—that is, except one, and it was the most important one: the federal government’s view of crime and governance on the ground, where there was an utter absence of any official intelligence. The ensuing panic, overreaction, power struggles—and federal takeover—were all fed by this enforced ignorance. The Homeland Security Operations Center—designed to be “the nation’s nerve center for information sharing and domestic incident management”—completely failed.52 The operational director, a retired marine corps brigadier general and a man known for loudly demanding the latest intelligence and then rolling up his sleeves to scrutinize the satellite photography with his own eyes, didn’t at first realize that the Superdome and the convention center were two different buildings.53
Gordon R. England, Rumsfeld’s deputy and perhaps the most active official in Washington urging military commands to provide assistance regardless of FEMA’s incompetence, later said he had no accurate information whatsoever in the first twenty-four hours, “except what was on the news.”54 At NORTHCOM, the deputy director of intelligence, navy captain Brett Markham, said that the Colorado headquarters relied heavily on “national technical means”—satellites—in the immediate aftermath, but also that none of the intelligence yielded “a sufficiently clear picture” of what was happening.55 The divide between what Honoré could see on the ground and what was perceived in Washington was so large that the Pentagon actually believed it had to plan for a far more complicated military operation, “one in which federal soldiers might have to kill American citizens.”56
All of the now-too-familiar intelligence failures discovered on 9/11 recurred: parties not talking to each other, overclassification of information, limited distribution—and this despite billions invested in intelligence and information sharing, despite an entirely new homeland security apparatus, despite hundreds of thousands of man-hours put into the mapping efforts in Washington.57 And if the priorities weren’t crystal clear amidst the destroyed city, they would eventually become a bit less opaque: Congress later found scant evidence that any satellite imagery was used to any advantage to target relief, nor was information resulting from aerial damage assessment flights ever distributed.58 Honoré had to have his people develop their own aerial grid system from scratch to guide door-to-door searches.59 So if rescuing the residents of New Orleans was not the priority, if, despite rhetoric, the federal government was willing to devote astonishing resources to gathering intelligence that had little to nothing to do with human needs, what was the purpose of all of those satellites and clandestine activities? (And no: it wasn’t to help prevent the environmental disaster that followed.) A hint came buried in the intelligence advisories issued to federal troops: amidst the human catastrophe, Northern Command simply reminded “commanders” that
THE REAL WORLD TERRORIST THREAT STILL EXISTS AND TO REMAIN VIGILANT.… REMAIN AWARE OF POTENTIAL TERRORIST AND EXTREMIST THREATS AND CONTINUE TO REPORT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY.60
On September 7, NORTHCOM and the FBI—jointly with Department of Homeland Security “intelligence”—issued advisories warning of the upcoming anniversary of 9/11 and the domestic dangers that needed tending because terrorists might take advantage of the hurricane and conduct another strike.61 The next day, Joint Force Headquarters National Capital Region, the newly created military command responsible for defense of the nation’s capital, added its own intelligence warning of suspicious activity; a second report called for “increased vigilance during the 9/11 memorial period.”62
One reason that federal assistance in New Orleans was such a failure was that the executive agents who tend to love such seizures of power from local authorities also have little to no interest in locals, period. Of course, nobody wants dead bodies, but the overarching priority is for a macro-level web of infrastructure—communications, military, economic—not things like old ladies dying in apartments without air-conditioning, children drowning in floodwaters, and young men gunned down in the street violence that so often accompanies social breakdown. In a very real sense, theirs is a calculus not unlike those of nuclear-age theorists who considered millions of deaths simply part of the equation; the crucial thing was America’s survival, not the survival of Americans.
The long state and federal cleanup was just beginning, but national security instantly lost interest in the human drama. Katrina had been a useful proving ground for the Program and its executive agents to evaluate continuity, critical infrastructure, command lines, and takeover. But now it was time to get back to business.