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Did FEMA Really Build a Secret Lair in a Mountain? · Question Everything

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Today on Question Everything, how did the agency in charge
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: of helping us recover from hurricanes become the subject of
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: such wild conspiracy theories?
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Tell me about FEMA's secret plan to round up all
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: the liberals in the country and put them in concentration camps.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: What?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Our colleagues over at the fellow public radio show On
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the Media from WNYC in New York have just spent
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: months trying to figure out how FEMA, the Federal Emergency
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Management Agency... which is supposed to prepare America for worst-case scenarios,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: and not only natural disasters, remember, but nuclear disasters as well,
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  Speaker 1: has become so distrusted, despised, and now is having its
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: funding dramatically slashed. On the Media co-host Michael Loewinger has
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: been reporting deeply on this and looking at the ways
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: that kernels of truth about FEMA and the actual secrets
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: it has kept from the public have spawned fictional conspiracy
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: theories and how all of this has led to the
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: crisis that the agency is now in where Donald Trump
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: is talking about closing FEMA altogether. On the Media is
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: a kindred show of Question Everything. It uses the media
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: as a lens to look at everything that's happening in
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the world. And today I'm excited to share the first
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  Speaker 1: episode in a special four-part series they put together about
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: FEMA and the conspiracy theories surrounding it.
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: Here's Micah.
• 1:20
  Speaker 5: At the beginning of his second term, amid all the
• 1:23
  Speaker 5: chaos of the incoming administration, President Trump made his first
• 1:27
  Speaker 5: trip to North Carolina.
• 1:28
  Speaker 6: We've come to North Carolina with a simple message for
• 1:31
  Speaker 6: all the people of this region who were hit so
• 1:34
  Speaker 6: hard by Hurricane Helene. That message is very simple.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: You are not forgotten any longer.
• 1:41
  Speaker 5: Before he got on Air Force One, Trump called a
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  Speaker 5: press conference on the tarmac. And casually dropped this bomb.
• 1:48
  Speaker 7: I'll also be signing an executive order to begin the
• 1:50
  Speaker 7: process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting
• 1:55
  Speaker 7: rid of FEMA.
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  Speaker 5: The Federal Emergency Management Agency. The agency that stands between
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: America and climate destruction.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I think, frankly, FEMA's not good.
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  Speaker 5: The agency that helps people rebuild after they've lost everything.
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: The agency that, while he was rambling... was providing aid
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  Speaker 5: to Californians suffering through the historic L.A. wildfires, as well
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  Speaker 5: as Helene survivors right there in North Carolina. It seemed
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  Speaker 5: like with a snap of his fingers, the president would
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  Speaker 5: be happy to see FEMA vanish.
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  Speaker 8: I think we're going to recommend that FEMA go away.
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  Speaker 5: I learned that employees at FEMA broke down in tears
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: when they heard the news. Some replayed the president's speech
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: over and over.
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  Speaker 2: I think we're going to recommend that FEMA go away.
• 2:40
  Speaker 5: Anxious members of Congress spent the day calling into the
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: agency's headquarters with a barrage of questions. Is the president serious?
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: What happens when the next hurricane hits?
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  Speaker 9: If the president came to you and said, you're my
• 2:52
  Speaker 9: DHS secretary, do you think I should get rid of FEMA,
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  Speaker 9: what would you say?
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  Speaker 4: I would say, yes, get rid of FEMA the way
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  Speaker 4: it exists today.
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  Speaker 5: Kristi Noem, former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
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  Speaker 10: It has been slow to respond at the federal level,
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  Speaker 10: and that is why this entire agency needs to be
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  Speaker 10: eliminated as it exists today.
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  Speaker 5: Before she got the boot this spring, Noem effectively set
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: fire to FEMA. Preparedness programs were slashed. Unqualified leaders cycled
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: in and out. Billions meant for survivors of storms, wildfires,
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: and earthquakes were withheld or denied. Lives hung in the balance.
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: The death toll in Texas, the flooding tragedy, it's up
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: to 104 dead across six counties. That number includes nearly
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: 30 children. After deadly floodwaters inundated Camp Mystic and other
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: parts of central Texas, the agency's support lines left thousands
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: of calls unanswered. FEMA's top leader at the time couldn't
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: be reached for 24 hours.
• 3:55
  Speaker 11: We live about a mile down the road from Camp Michigan,
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  Speaker 11: and we've already got two little girls who have come
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  Speaker 11: down the river, and we've gotten to them, but I'm
• 4:04
  Speaker 11: not sure how many else are out there.
• 4:07
  Speaker 12: The federal response to this disaster has come under scrutiny.
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  Speaker 12: Allegations that FEMA cutbacks meant delays in answering people's calls
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  Speaker 12: for disaster assistance and aid after the floods.
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  Speaker 5: In one telling, the dysfunctional response was Doge's doing. It's true,
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: at the start of 2025, no agency was safe from
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: Elon Musk's chainsaw. But that's only part of the story.
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: For many years, fomenting under the surface was a deep-seated
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: distrust of FEMA. which broke through during Hurricane Helene just
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: months before the 2024 presidential election.
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  Speaker 13: Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on
• 4:50
  Speaker 13: housing for illegal migrants.
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  Speaker 4: Some on the right pushing conspiracy theories.
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  Speaker 14: That they're blocking aid and seizing land from people here
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  Speaker 14: in North Carolina, and that is not true.
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  Speaker 15: An anti-government militia group known as Veterans on Patrol is
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  Speaker 15: claiming Hurricane Helene was caused by government-controlled weather weapons. The
• 5:10
  Speaker 15: group called Hurricane Helene an.
• 5:12
  Speaker 9: Act of war.
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: I knew from my years reporting on far-right militias that
• 5:18
  Speaker 5: these groups often showed up after natural disasters to recruit,
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  Speaker 5: fundraise and spit shine their public image. But I never
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: understood why they hated FEMA so much. So I started
• 5:30
  Speaker 5: digging into right-wing media archives and found that the anti-FEMA
• 5:35
  Speaker 5: lore went back decades.
• 5:36
  Speaker 16: People are waking up in droves to the FEMA camps,
• 5:40
  Speaker 16: to the New World Order, to the trips on the streets.
• 5:43
  Speaker 5: Alex Jones has made multiple films claiming to have discovered
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: secret prisons operated by FEMA. And right-wing pundit Glenn Beck
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  Speaker 5: entertained this stuff when he was still on Fox.
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  Speaker 17: If you have any kind of fear that we might
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  Speaker 17: be headed towards a totalitarian state, buckle up. There's something
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  Speaker 17: going on in our country that ain't good.
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: Over time, these paranoias seeped into the waters of mainstream culture.
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  Speaker 13: Are you familiar with what the Federal Emergency Management Agency's
• 6:13
  Speaker 13: real power is?
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: It was a major plot point in the X-Files.
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  Speaker 18: FEMA allows the White House to suspend constitutional government upon
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  Speaker 18: declaration of a national emergency. Think about that.
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  Speaker 5: Even with Kristi Noem replaced at DHS by Republican Senator
• 6:28
  Speaker 5: Mark Wayne Mullen, the future of FEMA is still in jeopardy.
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: This week, the administration announced that it was patching up
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: some of the Nome-era cuts, but agency insiders say that
• 6:39
  Speaker 5: it may take years to build FEMA back up to
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: fighting strength. About a month ago, Trump repeated his antipathy
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: for the agency.
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  Speaker 8: I've never been a big fan of FEMA.
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  Speaker 12: I like to keep it local.
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  Speaker 6: I like to see governors and neighboring states help each
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  Speaker 6: other as opposed to FEMA.
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  Speaker 2: FEMA is very expensive.
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  Speaker 5: As I've followed the current-day crisis at FEMA... I've wondered
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: whether it can survive the stories that have been told
• 7:05
  Speaker 5: about it, the misinformation, mismanagement, and genuine catastrophes that have
• 7:10
  Speaker 5: made this agency one of the least popular among Americans.
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: But for all its faults, and there are many, it's
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: not clear we can afford to lose it. Extreme weather
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: leaving so many across the United States wondering when they'll
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: get a break. In July alone, there were five 1,000-year
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: flood events.
• 7:28
  Speaker 17: Extreme heat is becoming a dangerous new normal.
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: The record-setting storm measured Not in inches, but in feet
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: of snow. Hundreds of thousands are now without power in
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: this freezing weather.
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  Speaker 19: The U.S.
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  Speaker 20: Is experiencing a billion-dollar disaster every 10 days on average
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  Speaker 20: compared to every 82 back in the 1980s.
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: Over the next few weeks, we'll explore how the organization
• 7:54
  Speaker 5: tasked with saving America came to be so despised and mythologized.
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: For a series we're calling American Emergency, the movement to
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: kill FEMA. We'll hear about FEMA's identity crisis during Hurricane Katrina,
• 8:09
  Speaker 5: how conspiracy theories have fueled violent threats against federal workers,
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: and how a group of anonymous employees are fighting to
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: keep the agency alive under Trump. For this first episode,
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  Speaker 5: we're looking at FEMA's secretive origins. and the moment when
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  Speaker 5: Americans first learned that the agency was hiding things from us.
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  Speaker 5: On December 1st, 1974, heavy rain and fog rerouted a
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  Speaker 5: passenger plane over northern Virginia, some 50 miles from Washington, D.C.
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  Speaker 5: On its descent, the aircraft dropped into the forest below,
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  Speaker 5: shearing off the treetops of and crashing into the side
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  Speaker 5: of Mount Weather. The two pilots were killed first, lanced
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: by trees that burst through the cockpit. The rest of
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  Speaker 5: the aircraft crumbled into pieces, a mangle of shrapnel on
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  Speaker 5: the body parts of the 92 passengers and crew members.
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  Speaker 5: There were no survivors. One woman, whose parents were on
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  Speaker 5: the flight, said it seemed like the mountain had jumped
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  Speaker 5: up and bit the plane. News coverage of the day
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  Speaker 5: quickly turned to the blame game and the miscommunication from
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  Speaker 5: air traffic control amidst a violent storm. But our focus
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: is something that was buried in the reports. When TV
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: crews arrived at the crash site, they discovered, rather ominously,
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  Speaker 5: that Mount Weather had already been sealed off on the
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  Speaker 5: orders of federal security agents.
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  Speaker 13: The quick action was taken because the big jet had
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  Speaker 13: landed almost a mile away from a super secret government installation,
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  Speaker 13: an underground complex of emergency offices set up for federal
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  Speaker 13: officials in the event of nuclear war.
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  Speaker 5: The crash had inadvertently uncovered a tightly guarded Cold War secret.
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  Speaker 5: Inside Mount Weather was a massive covert facility. And somehow
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  Speaker 5: that undersells it. Through a tunnel that burrows into the
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  Speaker 5: mountain and behind a 34-ton blast door, lies a subterranean, strange,
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  Speaker 5: Lovian lair. A freestanding city with a hospital, a crematorium,
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  Speaker 5: an emergency power plant, and even a broadcasting studio. Everything
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: that the White House and thousands of federal workers would
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  Speaker 5: need to run the country underground while millions melted on
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  Speaker 5: the surface. I expect your people to save our government.
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  Speaker 5: That's what President Dwight Eisenhower told the first director of
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  Speaker 5: Mount Weather after it was built in 1955. It's still
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  Speaker 5: operated by FEMA today. It's actually being renovated as I speak.
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  Speaker 5: But back in the 1950s, Mount Weather was run by
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  Speaker 5: FEMA's predecessor, the Federal Civil Defense Administration, the FCDA, which
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: poured billions into making America nuke-proof. or at least lulling
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  Speaker 5: people into the belief that with enough preparation, they might
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  Speaker 5: survive atomic hellfire. The FCDA was behind this delightful, if
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: slightly morbid, PSA, instructing schoolchildren to hide under their desks
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  Speaker 5: during bomb drills.
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  Speaker 20: There was a turtle by the name of Bert, and
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  Speaker 20: Bert the turtle was very alert, and.
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  Speaker 7: Dangerous, but until he never got hurt, He knew just.
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  Speaker 8: What to do.
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  Speaker 12: He ducked and covered.
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  Speaker 5: For adults, the FCDA organized Operation Alert, a series of
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  Speaker 5: dramatic exercises where millions of people acted out the day
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  Speaker 5: of their likely demise, emptying the streets of America's biggest cities.
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  Speaker 8: While the sirens wail their grim warning, hundreds of thousands
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  Speaker 8: of New Yorkers scurry for shelter against the attack. Riders
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  Speaker 8: and drivers taking cover in a realistic drill for a
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  Speaker 8: day all Americans pray will never come.
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  Speaker 5: Operation Alert was also the first time that Mount Weather
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: saw action.
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  Speaker 19: As soon as the alert sounded in Washington, President Eisenhower
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  Speaker 19: reached for his hat and strode to a waiting limousine
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  Speaker 19: to be driven to an emergency base of operations in
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  Speaker 19: the mountains outside Washington.
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  Speaker 21: Exact location kept secret.
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  Speaker 5: Kept secret until that terrible plane crash in 1974. Fortunately,
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: nuclear obliteration never came and Mount Weather was never truly
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: put to use. But there's something ironic and revealing that
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: a single storm brought more death and destruction to the
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: base than 30 years of the Cold War. By the 1970s,
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: it had become clear that the nuclear preparations had done
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: little to protect America from an arguably greater threat. To
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: better understand the current-day crisis at FEMA and why so
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: many Americans believe wild conspiracy theories about it, I wanted
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: to dive back into the era it was created, when
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: state leaders began to realize that all the focus on
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: Cold War civil defense had left them vulnerable to Mother Nature.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: We just didn't have that many nuclear wars, which is great.
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  Speaker 4: But we do have a lot of natural disasters.
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: Garrett Graff is a journalist and author of a book
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: about the origins of FEMA titled Raven Rock, the story
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: of the U.S. government's secret plan to save itself while
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: the rest of us die. Before the agency was created,
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: America's disaster response system was, well, barely a system.
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: It didn't make sense for... every state to be developing
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: its own totally independent ability to respond to a hurricane
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: because in any given year, most states don't get hit
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: by a hurricane.
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  Speaker 5: Which became a big problem in the 60s and 70s
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  Speaker 5: when the country was rocked by a series of record-breaking disasters.
• 14:08
  Speaker 21: No one knows the full size of the disaster yet.
• 14:12
  Speaker 18: In Betsy's wake, there's only darkness, confusion, and death.
• 14:17
  Speaker 7: After suffering one of the most serious earthquakes in history,
• 14:20
  Speaker 7: Alaska had to undergo the further ordeal of over 40
• 14:23
  Speaker 7: severe earth tremors. Imagine being there as the streets reared
• 14:26
  Speaker 7: up around you like the scene of some terrible biblical retribution.
• 14:31
  Speaker 18: They called her Camille. Born of the sea, she turned
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  Speaker 18: like a woman scorned. She screamed and ripped and flooded
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  Speaker 18: and killed.
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  Speaker 5: These big disasters overwhelmed towns and counties and states. The
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: big ones often do. But when they asked for help,
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: the federal government was too disorganized to act quickly or efficiently.
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: Supplying extra ambulances, delivering food and water to survivors, fixing
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: roads and power plants. Each piece of the emergency management
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: process could come from a different office or department. A
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: hundred agencies might play a role. Navigating this patchwork of
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: services and jurisdictions was a major pain in the ass
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: for local leaders, especially during a crisis when lives are
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: on the line and every second counts. Like in 1972,
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: when another big storm hit.
• 15:26
  Speaker 14: Many of the people here and others in the path
• 15:28
  Speaker 14: of Hurricane Agnes were completely wiped out. Many of them
• 15:31
  Speaker 14: feel that federal aid is too slow in coming and
• 15:34
  Speaker 14: too little.
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: Trump says FEMA should return its responsibilities to the states,
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: which is odd because states often bring in FEMA when
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: they're unable to respond on their own. And anyway, it
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: was the states that asked for FEMA in the first place.
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: In 1978, the National Governors Association drew up plans for
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: a streamlined one-stop shop for federal emergency response... and delivered
• 15:59
  Speaker 5: it to a sympathetic White House.
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  Speaker 22: Washington President Carter proposed merging five big federal emergency preparation
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  Speaker 22: and disaster relief agencies into one agency as.
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  Speaker 4: Part of his reorganization plan.
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  Speaker 11: Civil defense experts say it will provide much-needed communication between
• 16:16
  Speaker 11: the state and federal levels.
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: In 1979, Jimmy Carter signed an executive order giving life
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA was a federal
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: Frankenstein with a dual mission, Cold War civil defense and
• 16:31
  Speaker 5: disaster relief. I wish I could illustrate this moment by
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: playing you like a triumphant speech from President Carter or
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: some colorful news footage, but either that stuff never existed
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: or no one thought it was important enough to archive.
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: Even the earliest employees at FEMA were confused about how
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: to talk about it.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: We had a new director there, and there was a
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: message that went out to us that said, that if
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: we're referring to the agency publicly, we should say either
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA, because the word FEMA
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: he thought sounded too much like a laxative.
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: This is Leo Bosner, a retired FEMA official, who's taught
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: me a lot about the earliest days of the agency.
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: He was working as a flood insurance specialist with the
• 17:16
  Speaker 5: Department of Housing and Urban Development in one of the
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: offices that was folded into FEMA.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: We're all working along in the office, and one day
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: they tell us, okay, Everybody go down to photo ID,
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: you're getting new photo IDs. We walk down the stairs,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: get new photo IDs that say FEMA, turn in our
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: photo IDs that say Housing and Urban Development, and then
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: we're all told, we're all getting new job titles, and
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: our new job title is Emergency Management Specialist. And I'm thinking,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: what on God's earth is an Emergency Management Specialist? Like,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: This is the end of my career. What kind of
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: a dead-end job is this?
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: Leo would spend the next 30 years at FEMA. He
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: eventually found really satisfying work helping hospitals and medical organizations
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: prepare for floods, wildfires, and hurricanes. But less than two
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: years after he started getting the hang of his new job,
• 18:06
  Speaker 5: FEMA fell into a decade-long tailspin.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: The big shift really didn't come until 1980.
• 18:13
  Speaker 23: Ronald Reagan appears to be heading toward a landslide electoral
• 18:17
  Speaker 23: victory tonight across the United States.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan got elected president, and there's a super U-turn
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: from Jimmy Carter, who was mostly all about social welfare,
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: and Ronald Reagan was more about national defense.
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: To run FEMA, Reagan picked someone who would stir up
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: a lot of trouble for the agency, this man.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Only a masochist with a death wish would accept the
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: job of directing FEMA.
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: Army Colonel Louis Chafrida speaking here with a caller on
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: Larry King's radio show.
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: I really don't believe that we can be saved if
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: there is a nuclear war.
• 18:51
  Speaker 13: I mean, how are you going to save me if
• 18:53
  Speaker 13: you're blown up too?
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: But you're not suggesting that because we both might be
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: blown up by a nuclear war that we shouldn't have
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: in place a system that would take care of us
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: if there was an earthquake or a tidal wave or
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: a hurricane or anything of that sort, are you?
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: While Louis Jafrida paid lip service to FEMA's disaster relief mission,
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: he was quietly funneling most of FEMA's budget towards Cold
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: War civil defense. Leo Bosner.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden, we start seeing all these military
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: officers signing in at the login desk. We go, why
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: are these military people here? What, military people go to
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: floods or something? And then we learn little by little
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: that FEMA's mission was really, really going to be to
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: get ready for the big nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: In the early 80s, Leo started to hear whispers about
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: classified programs at the agency. Every day on his trip
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: up the elevator at FEMA HQ, he'd ride by a
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: secret fifth floor manned by a security guard. Mostly, he
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: rolled his eyes at all the Cold War theater, wishing
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: FEMA would focus more on preparing Americans for natural disasters.
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: But he still wondered, what were they doing in there?
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: The majority of its funding, and about a third of
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: its workforce, was actually hidden in in the nation's classified
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: black budget, the special budget that Congress oversees that protects
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: our most secret programs and capabilities. And FEMA on a
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: daily basis is in charge of tracking the whereabouts of
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: everyone in the presidential line of succession so that in
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: the event of a nuclear war, It knows where all
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: of those people are, how to get them to secure
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: relocation sites like the Mount Weather Bunker, and who would
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: be best positioned to be the person who takes over
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: as president of the United States in the event of
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: a nuclear war.
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: I wonder if this classified continuity of government planning helps
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: explain why there was so little media about FEMA when
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: it was first created. I think the feds just didn't
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: want to draw attention to their secret plans. That said,
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: the coverage did pick up when the agency launched a
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: controversial new initiative.
• 21:09
  Speaker 19: The head of emergency management, Louis Jafrida, says the heart
• 21:13
  Speaker 19: of the proposal is crisis relocation.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: What we want to accomplish is taking the maximum number
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: of people from high-risk areas to areas of lesser risk.
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: A mass evacuation program.
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: There was sort of this sense of Well, if you
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: could just get 20, 30, 50 miles away from a
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: major city, you would at least have a chance to
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: survive the initial blast from the nuclear weapons and then
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: live into nuclear winter.
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: Government officials estimated that in the worst case, 60 million
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: Americans could survive an attack. Can you imagine all those
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: urbanites swamping small towns and rural areas? News reports at
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: the time featured a mixture of fascination and incredulity.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: My God, you're going to have modified anarchy after that
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: sort of thing.
• 22:05
  Speaker 16: How in the world are you going to coordinate the
• 22:08
  Speaker 16: recovery and putting leadership back into place?
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: How are you going to do that? 60 million is
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: still a lot of people. That is the modern population
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: of France. Those people would need a functioning government and
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: functioning infrastructure afterward.
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: This is where we start getting into the bizarre conspiracy
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: theories that haunt FEMA today. In 1982, in an effort
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: to game out some of these post-apocalyptic scenarios, President Ronald
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: Reagan signed a secret executive order to create a covert
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: program called Project 908.
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: That's nine zero eight, but they called it nine not eight.
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: It pooled billions of dollars and top officials from the
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: National Security Council, FEMA and the FBI.
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: The FBI was in charge of pre-identifying buildings that could
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: serve as refugee camps.
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: If I have this right, basically you had FBI agents
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: working undercover for FEMA, traveling around the country, visiting warehouses,
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: car shops, casinos, Walmarts, helping identify businesses that could be
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: used to house refugees. citizens after a nuke was dropped
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: on an American city?
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: Yes, and often without telling the businesses that they were
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: being scouted for these purposes.
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: There was thankfully never a need to construct these refugee camps.
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: But the secrecy went way deeper and darker. Just five
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: years after the launch of Project 998, A bombshell report
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: from the Miami Herald revealed that before Jafrida was asked
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: to help run FEMA, he'd written his master's thesis on
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: how the military could quell race riots by detaining millions
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: of black people and putting them in concentration camps. Members
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: of Congress were given a copy of his thesis during
• 24:08
  Speaker 5: Jafrida's confirmation hearings, a horrifying detail that makes me think
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: they considered this to be part of his qualifications for
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: the job. The most damning part of that Miami Herald piece, though,
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: was news that Jafrida had worked with Reagan's National Security
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: Council to write plans for declaring martial law and putting
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: the country temporarily under a sort of shadow government. And
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: not just in the case of a nuke, but also
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: in a so-called national crisis, like a war.
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: A bunch of this... comes out in the late 1980s
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: amid the Iran-Contra hearings and investigations. It turns out that
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who is the central figure at
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: the White House of Iran-Contra, was also one of the
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: planners for Project 908.
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: Oliver North was asked about these martial law plans during
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: the Iran-Contra hearings.
• 25:07
  Speaker 22: Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, Were you
• 25:11
  Speaker 22: not assigned at one time to work on plans for
• 25:13
  Speaker 22: the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: North was questioned by Texas Representative Jack Brooks. We see
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: North pause and whisper to his attorney. Then, the chairman
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: of the hearings, Daniel K. Inouye, jumps in to respond
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: on the government's behalf.
• 25:31
  Speaker 21: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and
• 25:35
  Speaker 21: classified area, so may I request that Do you not
• 25:41
  Speaker 21: touch upon.
• 25:41
  Speaker 18: That, sir?
• 25:43
  Speaker 22: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in
• 25:49
  Speaker 22: Miami Papers and several others that there had been a plan,
• 25:54
  Speaker 22: a contingency plan, that would suspend the American Constitution. And
• 25:59
  Speaker 22: I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that
• 26:01
  Speaker 22: was the area in which he had worked.
• 26:04
  Speaker 21: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be
• 26:09
  Speaker 21: touched upon at this stage.
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: The government never acknowledged any of this stuff until much
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: of it was declassified years later. Louis Giafrida ended up
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: resigning from FEMA for totally unrelated reasons following a congressional
• 26:24
  Speaker 5: fraud investigation.
• 26:25
  Speaker 18: According to Senator Albert Gore, Giafrida had spent $ 170, 000.
• 26:29
  Speaker 8: Of federal money to build a house on federal property
• 26:33
  Speaker 8: for his own use.
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: By the start of the 90s, FEMA employee Leo Bosner
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: was beyond tired of the dysfunction and the kooky national
• 26:42
  Speaker 5: security schemes.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Frankly, for me, once that stuff was in the rearview mirror,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: it's like, fine, that's the trash. I hope they come
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: on Friday and pick it up and dump it to
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: the landfill. There were some pretty nutty people working back
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: there then. Fortunately, nothing much ever came of that except
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: they ate up most of our budget.
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: He was eager for the agency to shift resources to
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: preparing for floods and hurricanes. But all this doomsday planning
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: had done a number on FEMA's reputation.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I would talk on my off-duty time to people on
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Capitol Hill, news reporters, and say, look, this is a
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: dangerous thing. We're ignoring these natural disasters. And I was
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: having lunch with a news reporter one day, and I'm
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: telling him this. And the guy's looking really bored. He says, yeah, Leo,
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: that's all really bad, but tell me about FEMA's secret
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: plan to round up all the liberals in the country
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: and put them in concentration camps.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: What?
• 27:32
  Speaker 18: What?
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I said, buddy, these people are so inept, they
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: couldn't organize a two-car parade, and they're never going to
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: round up everybody in the country. Come on, get out
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: of here.
• 27:42
  Speaker 21: Will you?
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: Leo didn't know it at the time, but those FEMA
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: camps conspiracy theories had started popping up in fringe message
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: boards on the early Internet.
• 27:51
  Speaker 9: The FEMA plans to imprison American citizens have generated a
• 27:54
  Speaker 9: lot of interest in locating the potential prison camps throughout
• 27:57
  Speaker 9: the country.
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: This woman, Linda Thompson, a sort of godmother of the
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: right-wing militia movement, made a 1994 documentary, America Under Siege,
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: which warned that FEMA was part of the New World Order,
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: a global authoritarian takeover that would require rounding up anti-government dissidents.
• 28:17
  Speaker 9: These may be facilities that have other uses, but which
• 28:19
  Speaker 9: could be quickly used to detain large numbers of people.
• 28:22
  Speaker 9: such as this Amtrak facility in Beach Grove, Indiana.
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: Following in her footsteps a couple decades later were militia
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: leaders like Stuart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, one of
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: the January 6th guys.
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: A lot of this stuff is dual use.
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: They put together a detention center or an emergency center,
• 28:37
  Speaker 5: supposedly for refugees from other countries. And, as I mentioned,
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: InfoWars host Alex Jones. People are waking up in droves.
• 28:46
  Speaker 16: To the FEMA camps, to the New World Order, to
• 28:48
  Speaker 16: the tribes on the streets.
• 28:49
  Speaker 17: These FEMA camps.
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: And Glenn Beck, when he was still on Fox News.
• 28:53
  Speaker 17: I'm tired of hearing, you know about them?
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 28:55
  Speaker 17: We've now for several days done research on them. I
• 28:59
  Speaker 17: can't debunk them.
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: After whipping up this paranoia, Beck did eventually debunk the
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: theory with help from the editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics.
• 29:08
  Speaker 12: This is an Amtrak repair facility in Beach Grove, Indiana.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: We set a crew.
• 29:13
  Speaker 24: There the other day and we got footage inside.
• 29:15
  Speaker 21: Is this your video?
• 29:15
  Speaker 24: Yes. And sure enough, what did we find? They're repairing
• 29:19
  Speaker 24: trains in there.
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: Remember how earlier Garrett Graff told us about stores like
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: Walmart's being scoped out by the government to be used
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: as refugee camps? They don't exist, but people on TikTok
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: and YouTube still like to make videos about them.
• 29:33
  Speaker 24: It's like military style entrance, kind of like a FEMA camp.
• 29:38
  Speaker 8: Why in the hell?
• 29:39
  Speaker 23: Does Walmart Supercenter need that?
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: See the Walmart trucks?
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: These videos are low effort and easy to laugh off.
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: But I mean, if FEMA could operate a Mount Weather,
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: why not a Mount Walmart?
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: The challenge of a lot of these conspiracies is that
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: they have a germ of truth to them.
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: Garrett Graff.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: In the early stages of the Cold War, J. Edgar
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: Hoover at the FBI had pre-selected lists of suspected communists
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: and political dissidents that he wanted to round up in
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: the event of a nuclear war.
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: Not to mention the fact that the U.S. imprisoned over
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: I think FEMA has always been in a difficult place,
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: and this is true, by the way, across all of
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: the Continuity planning and doomsday planning. You just can't talk
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: about these classified bunkers and classified operations, even if you're
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: trying to debunk conspiracies.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: The secrecy in and of itself is naturally going to
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: feed conspiracy theories.
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: The kicker to all this is that some of what
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: the conspiracy theorists warned about is happening, just not to them.
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: This past July, FEMA, under Kristi Noem's Department of Homeland Security,
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: revealed a new program. FEMA allocating $ 608.
• 31:01
  Speaker 20: Million in state grants for construction of detention centers.
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: Migrant detention centers, part of Trump's mass deportation program. The
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: announcement came right around when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis opened
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: Alligator Alcatraz, the notorious facility in the Everglades. And while
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: he built the jail using state emergency funds intended for
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: natural disasters, he claimed that federal reimbursement was on the way.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirms Florida
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: did submit an application to FEMA and were awarded two
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: days ago the full amount Florida applied.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: For, $ 608 million.
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: The coverage made it sound like the money was in
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: Florida's bank account. But at time of recording, those FEMA
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: funds have actually been held up by Trump's Justice Department.
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: Florida officials say the money is still likely, but who knows?
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: Despite that uncertainty and many legal attempts aimed at closing it,
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: Alligator Alcatraz remains open.
• 32:01
  Speaker 25: Amnesty International says immigrants held at the ICE jail in
• 32:04
  Speaker 25: Florida were shackled inside a two-foot-high metal cage and left
• 32:09
  Speaker 25: outside without water for up to a day at a time.
• 32:11
  Speaker 25: In a new report, they also detail unsanitary conditions, lights
• 32:15
  Speaker 25: on 24 hours a day, poor quality food and water,
• 32:18
  Speaker 25: and lack of privacy.
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: And while Governor DeSantis says the conditions are up to standard,
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: the families of migrants being held inside are calling it
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: a concentration camp.
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: That is the most real FEMA camp ever built.
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: What do you think it says that FEMA would actually
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: use public funds for the very thing that has been
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: a far-right boogeyman?
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: I mean, there is something uniquely dystopian about about a
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: right-wing government elected on the backs of the anti-government conspiracies
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: that it is now implementing.
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: Coming up, for the first time, FEMA finds its groove.
• 33:05
  Speaker 23: They ought to change the name because the old FEMA
• 33:08
  Speaker 23: has a pretty bad name and the new one they're
• 33:11
  Speaker 23: running now is a crackerjack agency.
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: In my reporting, I learned that FEMA's Cold War mission
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: to save America from nuclear war was met with a
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: lot of suspicion, and understandably so. Case in point, when
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: I was digging around in the National Archives, something that
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: caught my eye was a tape curiously labeled FEMA Blues.
• 33:43
  Speaker 19: Seattle, Washington. Now, Seattle did a spunky thing the other day.
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: It turned out to be a comedy special from a
• 33:49
  Speaker 5: guy named Mark Russell, which aired in 1982. He starts
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: with this hokey bit about Louis Jafrida's nuclear evacuation plans.
• 33:58
  Speaker 20: In an apparent effort to coax Seattle officials into participating,
• 34:04
  Speaker 20: FEMA had offered to subsidize the city's mass relocation, which
• 34:07
  Speaker 20: the city refused.
• 34:09
  Speaker 19: They turned down their allotment from the Federal Emergency Management Administration.
• 34:15
  Speaker 19: I think it really stands for feeble exercise in mindless administration.
• 34:20
  Speaker 19: You know what Seattle's allotment was?
• 34:23
  Speaker 9: $ 17, 000.
• 34:23
  Speaker 8: Can you imagine that?
• 34:24
  Speaker 19: I guess the money went to provide each resident with
• 34:27
  Speaker 19: a free road map and a granola bar.
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: After a bit of vamping, Russell calls up his band,
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: The Buzzards. It's our spunky, feisty little band.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: We only do this once a year.
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: To perform a song that I think captures the zeitgeist
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: in the 80s. Hit it, fellas!
• 34:45
  Speaker 19: I got those federal emergency management administration blues, blues, blues, blues.
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: Cause when you're hit, that's it.
• 34:54
  Speaker 19: You either sit or stand and melt down in your shoes, oohs, oohs, oohs.
• 34:59
  Speaker 19: According to its critics, FEMA's leaders were either mounting a
• 35:04
  Speaker 19: comically pitiful defense against the nation's.
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: Most pressing threat, or they were burning resources.
• 35:08
  Speaker 19: That would be better spent on responding to Mother Nature.
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: Leo Bosner, that OG FEMA employee, was in the latter camp.
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: As the 80s went on, he was busy trying to
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: warn the press.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: I was kind of in my whistleblower mode, letting them
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: know that FEMA was spending all of its time doing
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: nuclear stuff and not doing anything for these natural disasters.
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: If Ronald Reagan's FEMA was too active, too conniving, George
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: Bush Sr. 's FEMA had the opposite problem. It was
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: out to lunch. Daddy Bush left the agency leaderless for
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: over a year, and he was punished for it in
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: 1989 when a Category 5 storm came barreling off the Atlantic.
• 36:01
  Speaker 9: Two weeks after Hurricane Hugo hit South Carolina, it's FEMA
• 36:05
  Speaker 9: that is in the eye of the storm.
• 36:07
  Speaker 17: Only about 20% of FEMA's budget goes for disaster relief.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: FEMA is trying to live down a reputation for being slow, stingy,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: and distracted.
• 36:15
  Speaker 19: The South Carolina Senator Ernest Hollings today accused FEMA of
• 36:19
  Speaker 19: raw incompetence. They're the sorriest bunch of.
• 36:22
  Speaker 23: bureaucratic jackasses I've ever worked with in my life.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: FEMA did a terrible job.
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: Leo Bosner.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: But I think the feeling was, well, it's a once-in-a-hundred-years thing.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Except three years later, Hurricane Andrew hit in 92.
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: Another Category 5, one of the strongest in Florida's history.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: And FEMA was on the front pages.
• 36:42
  Speaker 16: A barrage of criticism for its handling of the aftermath
• 36:45
  Speaker 16: of Hurricane Andrew.
• 36:46
  Speaker 10: If we do not get more food and water in
• 36:49
  Speaker 10: a very short period of time, We are going to
• 36:51
  Speaker 10: have more casualties because we're going to have people who
• 36:54
  Speaker 10: are dehydrated, who are without food.
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: After the storm, as journalists started digging into FEMA's dysfunction,
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: they discovered a political backwater filled with unqualified Bush appointees.
• 37:06
  Speaker 16: Congressional records show that while at most federal agencies there
• 37:09
  Speaker 16: is only one political appointee for every 3,000 government agencies,
• 37:12
  Speaker 16: at FEMA there's one for every 300.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: So the election for the president was only like three
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: months later.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: This election is a clarion call for our country.
• 37:21
  Speaker 23: To face the challenges of the end.
• 37:24
  Speaker 18: Of the Cold War and the beginning of the next century.
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: Bill Clinton, the first Democrat to take the White House
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: in 12 years... had seen how FEMA's reputation had dragged
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: his predecessors. Unlike them, he understood that natural disasters are
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: media spectacles, predictable, high-stakes dramas that generate a steady stream
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: of coverage. So when Clinton came into office, he did
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: something radical. He appointed somebody actually qualified to run FEMA,
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: somebody who would fundamentally transform the agency from a liability
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: to a government success story. A man named James Lee Witt,
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: who had served as the Arkansas Director of Emergency Management
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: when Clinton was governor.
• 38:08
  Speaker 6: As governor of Arkansas, when I went to work for
• 38:11
  Speaker 6: him there, he said, if it affects people's lives and
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: it's going to be in the media, then I want
• 38:17
  Speaker 6: to know about it.
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: This is Witt speaking with C-SPAN in 1996.
• 38:21
  Speaker 17: Can you tell us the story of your very first
• 38:24
  Speaker 17: meeting with Bill Clinton?
• 38:26
  Speaker 21: Absolutely.
• 38:26
  Speaker 6: I never will forget it. It was in 1974. And
• 38:31
  Speaker 6: I was coaching a little league baseball team in Dardanelle, Arkansas.
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: When they first met, Clinton was a law professor and
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: congressional candidate, and Witt ran a local construction company.
• 38:41
  Speaker 12: You didn't go to college.
• 38:42
  Speaker 13: No.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: Do you ever have any second thoughts about that?
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 38:46
  Speaker 6: I guess anyone that has never been to college would
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: wish they had gone. But when I grew up, I
• 38:52
  Speaker 6: was working.
• 38:53
  Speaker 21: What did your father do?
• 38:54
  Speaker 6: He was a farmer.
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: Suffice to say, Witt's humble beginnings did not hold him back.
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: And when he came to FEMA in 1993, he became
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: the first leader in the agency's 14-year history with any
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: professional experience managing domestic disasters.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: Witt comes in, and that's when he totally started turning
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: everything around.
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: How did he do that?
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Well, a lot of it was really common sense. He
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: knew there were all kinds of problems internal to FEMA.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: So he sends a memo to all hands, first official action,
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Open door policy. So all of a sudden, he's getting
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: all these employees coming in and giving them an earful
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: of all the problems in the agency.
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: He collected all these ideas and got to work reorganizing
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: the agency for what he called an all hazards approach
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: to emergency response.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, if the FEMA employees might be needed in a disaster...
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: what kind of jobs are they going to have to do?
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Let's train people for those jobs. He also made rosters
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: of who would be on duty when during the disaster.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: And he said, okay, we're going to divide the employees
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: here like into three teams, the red team, the white team,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: and the blue team. Yay, the flag, right? If you're
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: on the red team, you're on call for disasters during January. February,
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: if you're on the white team, you're on call. Then
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: he even breaks it down into night shifts and day shifts. Now,
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: this does not take like a PhD in higher mathematics
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: to come up with this. And people could say, God,
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: this is common sense. And my answer is, yeah, but
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: nobody did it before.
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: And when did you get a sense that like people
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: out there in the public were taking notice?
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: Well, there was one of the other really smart things
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: that Mr. Witt did. Back in the Cold War days,
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: FEMA kept the news media at bay, like go away,
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: keep out, keep out, keep out. And so that just
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: added to the suspicions. Well, Witt opened the doors to it.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: The news media could come into our emergency operations center
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: right there in Washington, D.C., and they could observe things,
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: and they could even interview us.
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: Witt relished speaking with the press. He seemed to genuinely
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: want to explain how the agency worked. Within a year
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: of joining FEMA, he began chipping away at its secret
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: black budget, declassifying much of that doomsday planning and diverting
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: a whole bunch of its resources to natural disasters. The
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: agency began to see the fruits of all these new
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: reforms during Witt's first major test as administrator.
• 41:18
  Speaker 6: It started in 1993 with the flood on the Mississippi River.
• 41:22
  Speaker 6: Affected nine states. And the devastation was just... unreal.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: The water kept on coming.
• 41:30
  Speaker 17: Small river towns were swallowed up.
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: Over 54,000 people were forced to evacuate and leave behind
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: homes and belongings.
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: Though it was far from perfect, a New York Times
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: headline about FEMA's actions following the floods reads, in this emergency,
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: agency wins praise for its response. The tide was turning
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: for FEMA's reputation.
• 41:51
  Speaker 23: They ought to change the name because the old FEMA
• 41:54
  Speaker 23: has a pretty bad name and the new one they're
• 41:56
  Speaker 23: running now is a crackerjack agency.
• 41:59
  Speaker 6: President Clinton and I was talking about it in Governor Carnahan, Missouri.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: James Lee Witt.
• 42:04
  Speaker 6: And I said, you know, Mr. President, we can't let
• 42:06
  Speaker 6: people build back in those areas that flooded. And we
• 42:10
  Speaker 6: were able to buy out on a voluntary basis and
• 42:13
  Speaker 6: relocate people out of the floodplain so they'd never flood again.
• 42:18
  Speaker 6: In Missouri alone, we bought out over 4,000 pieces of property.
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: Thirty years later, this type of policy is considered a
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: core tenet of good emergency management. Recent studies vindicate Witt's approach.
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: Research shows that for every dollar spent on mitigation, six
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: dollars are saved down the line.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: During the 90s, FEMA had gotten to be so well known.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: In 1996, President Clinton publicly elevated James Lee Witt to
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: cabinet level, saying he's done such a great job here.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: That's how it was.
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: You can probably tell from the way he talks about it,
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: Leo Bosner was so proud of his agency during the 90s.
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: Some of its greatest work, he says, was visible on
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: one of the darkest days for the country.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: That April morning in 1995, we're all at work like normal,
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden.
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: A.
• 43:07
  Speaker 15: Plume of smoke rising in the air. If you are
• 43:10
  Speaker 15: anywhere downtown, you probably heard it and felt it.
• 43:14
  Speaker 7: An explosion of some kind.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: People were yelling because on the TV screen, oh my God,
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: there's been a bomb in Oklahoma City.
• 43:19
  Speaker 16: We have been able to confirm right now an explosion
• 43:22
  Speaker 16: at the federal court building downtown.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Within like a few minutes, my pager's going off, and
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: we're seeing all this action suddenly, very organized action going on.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Our regional office in Texas said, Within one hour, it
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: was on the phone with Oklahoma. And they decided that
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: what was needed most from FEMA was our specialized search
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: and rescue teams who had special tools and training to
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: go into collapsed concrete buildings, which is not a simple
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: thing to do. And our search and rescue teams were
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: then deployed there within a couple of hours.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: So they were quick.
• 43:55
  Speaker 13: Oh, yeah.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: That's when you could really see that FEMA is real
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: and we could do things.
• 43:59
  Speaker 14: The reinforcements showed up tonight. At the center of it all,
• 44:02
  Speaker 14: of course, is the bombed-out shell of the federal office building.
• 44:06
  Speaker 14: And in its shadow, the exhausted, who for a day
• 44:09
  Speaker 14: and a half now have sifted through its debris and
• 44:12
  Speaker 14: counted its dead and seen up close why they call
• 44:16
  Speaker 14: it terror.
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: The bombing was part of an alarming trend. Anti-government extremists
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: were becoming more active and more violent. After the attack,
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: the White House brought in a new No. 2 official
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: at FEMA, a man with experience monitoring and investigating terrorism,
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: including far-right militias.
• 44:35
  Speaker 16: I'm Mike Walker, the deputy director of FEMA, and I'm
• 44:38
  Speaker 16: one of the newest employees of FEMA.
• 44:40
  Speaker 24: Mike's a legend in the business.
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: Tim Manning held the same deputy director role during the
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: Obama administration. Now he's a professor at Georgetown University, but
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: earlier in his career, Mike Walker was his mentor.
• 44:53
  Speaker 24: Mike's been confirmed by the Senate. He's held a number
• 44:56
  Speaker 24: of senior roles. He's been around, seen, and been part
• 44:59
  Speaker 24: of just about everything in the past 40-plus years of
• 45:02
  Speaker 24: emergency management and Homeland Security.
• 45:04
  Speaker 5: When Tim was preparing for his own Senate confirmation hearings,
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: Mike warned Tim about the job he was about to
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: take at FEMA. Mike told him a story that's never
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: been reported before now. It happened in 1999.
• 45:17
  Speaker 24: He's in the new role at FEMA. He was gone
• 45:20
  Speaker 24: a lot. These are very demanding jobs. Traveling around the country,
• 45:23
  Speaker 24: dealing with disaster response.
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: He was commuting often between FEMA headquarters in D.C. and
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: his home in West Virginia, where he lived with his wife.
• 45:31
  Speaker 24: He needed help around the house, and there was a
• 45:33
  Speaker 24: person in the neighborhood who came by and offered his
• 45:36
  Speaker 24: services as a handyman.
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: For a few weeks, the handyman comes by to repair windows,
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: fix doors, whatever it might be. And Mike and his
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: wife were pretty happy with his work. Until.
• 45:47
  Speaker 24: He got a call from the FBI one day asking
• 45:49
  Speaker 24: if he knew who this person was. Mike said, well, yeah,
• 45:53
  Speaker 24: he's our handyman doing work for us. And the FBI said, well,
• 45:57
  Speaker 24: he's not. He's actually undercover. He's a militia member who...
• 46:02
  Speaker 24: was sent here to get close to you and watch
• 46:05
  Speaker 24: your movements, figure out your patterns, try to collect information.
• 46:08
  Speaker 24: He's there surveilling you as a spy.
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: Oh, my God.
• 46:13
  Speaker 24: Fortunately, nothing dangerous ever happened for Mike or his family.
• 46:18
  Speaker 24: I suppose having an undercover militia operative in your home
• 46:20
  Speaker 24: for a time is dangerous in itself. I don't know
• 46:23
  Speaker 24: whatever kind of dangerous plots might have been in the
• 46:26
  Speaker 24: works before the FBI figured out who he was and
• 46:29
  Speaker 24: what was happening and interdicted.
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: I mean, when I hear this story, it doesn't sound real.
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: It sounds like a movie, like noir.
• 46:37
  Speaker 24: Yeah, I wish it was a noir fiction. It's the
• 46:41
  Speaker 24: kind of thing that you're always worried about. And, you know,
• 46:45
  Speaker 24: you think about in the middle of the night, is
• 46:47
  Speaker 24: my family safe? And am I doing all the right things?
• 46:49
  Speaker 24: And you think about that as like, oh, that's so
• 46:52
  Speaker 24: far fetched. That would never happen. But, you know, here
• 46:55
  Speaker 24: it did happen.
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: When I first heard this story, I thought it could
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: be explained simply by the rise of extremist militia groups
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: in America. But the more I learned about FEMA, its
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: secretive origins, its unhinged leadership under Reagan, the more I
• 47:15
  Speaker 5: realized that the agency that was born of the paranoias
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: of the 20th century had been met with paranoia in return.
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: While reporting this series, I spoke to FEMA workers from
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: just about every era of the agency. And I've heard
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: too many stories of threats from conspiracy theorists to chase
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: them all down. But for now, here's one more. A
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: FEMA official from the 90s told me that he'd seen
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: FEMA head James Lee Witt walking around with a U.S.
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: Marshal security detail, but never learned why. After some digging,
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: I discovered that in 1998, Witt was asked to meet
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: with the FBI. An agent told him that a militia
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: group had been selling VHS tapes with his home address
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: and information on his kids and wife. The death threats
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: were credible enough that Witt was told to stop taking
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: public transportation to work early in the morning. As you'll
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: learn in the coming weeks, these plots against FEMA's leadership
• 48:13
  Speaker 5: foreshadow its current day unraveling.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: That was Micah Loewinger, co-host of On the Media from WNYC.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: This was the first episode in a special four-part series
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: On the Media is running over the next few weeks
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: called American Emergency, where they're trying to figure out if
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: FEMA can survive all the crazy stories that are being
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: told about it. Go check out the rest of the
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: series by catching On the Media on the radio or
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Episode two tackles the effects
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina had on FEMA, really put the agency into
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: an identity crisis. and includes the story of the one
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: and only FEMA staffer who was on the ground in
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: New Orleans when the storm hit, a PR guy who
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: became an unlikely hero when he testified in Congress against
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: FEMA's leader. This episode was reported by Micah Lowinger with
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: additional writing and reporting from senior producer Eloise Blondio. Jared
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Bartman designed the artwork for the series. Fact-checking by Tom Colligan.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Original music and mixing from Jared Paul. American Emergency was
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: edited by On The Media's executive We'll be back with
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: more Question Everything next Thursday.