Fmr. FEMA Chief: Department Of Homeland Security Is "A Bureaucratic Black Hole"...

Former FEMA Chief Michael Brown appeared on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos this morning to talk about Hurricane Katrina one year later. Brown lost his position in the aftermath of the storm, and shouldered a great deal of blame for the fallout from the hurricane that leveled catastrophic damage at New Orleans. Earlier today he talked about his own mistakes, as well as the institutional faults of a government wholly unprepared for a natural disaster of Katrina's magnitude.

The following is excerpted from today's This Week

...Stephanopoulos: You've admitted that it was a mistake for you to play along with the White House message during Katrina, and in Playboy Magazine you called that 'a lie,' the White House Message. What was the lie?

Brown: The lie was that we were ready and that everything was working as a team. Behind the scenes it wasn't working at all. There were political considerations going in to all the discussions, there was the fact that New Orleans did not evacuate, and the mayor had no plan, the mayor didn't do what he was supposed to do. And so we were stepping in there and talking about 'we're working as a team,' everything's going the way it's supposed to do, those were the talking points.

Stephanopoulos: Why did the White House want you to lie?

Brown: Well because they want to just talk about how great thing are going. You always want to put the spin on that things are working the way they're supposed to do, and behind the scenes they're not. Again, my biggest mistake was just not leveling with the American public and saying, 'folks, this isn't working'...

FULL TRANSCRIPT/VIDEO