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    <title>As Hurricane Harvey Approaches, Trump Appoints Deputy Chief of Staff Who Failed to Prepare for Katrina</title>

    
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The most destructive storm in U.S. history and also one of the deadliest, Katrina was a Category 3 storm with estimated maximum winds of 125 mph when it made landfall near Buras, La., on Aug. 29, 2005. Broken levees left most of New Orleans inundated. Damage was estimated at $75 billion, though rebuilding costs have far exceeded the initial damage. Katrina was blamed for around 1,200 deaths. 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class="Post-title-block" data-reactid="142"><h1 class="Post-title" data-reactid="143"><a class="Post-title-link" href="/2017/08/25/kirstjen-nielsen-dhs/" data-reactid="144">As Hurricane Harvey Approaches, Trump Appoints Deputy Chief of Staff Who Failed to Prepare for Katrina</a></h1><div class="PostByline byline" data-reactid="145"><div class="PostByline-names-with-images" data-reactid="146"><a class="PostByline-image-link" rel="author" href="/staff/leefang/" data-reactid="147"><img class="PostByline-image" src="//cdn01.theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/02/lee-staff-page-350x350.jpg" width="60" height="60" data-reactid="148"/><span class="PostByline-name" data-reactid="149"><span itemprop="name" class="" data-reactid="150">Lee Fang</span></span></a></div><div class="PostByline-images" data-reactid="151"><a class="PostByline-image-link" rel="author" href="/staff/leefang/" data-reactid="152"><img class="PostByline-image" src="//cdn01.theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/02/lee-staff-page-350x350.jpg" width="60" height="60" data-reactid="153"/></a></div><div class="PostByline-names" data-reactid="154"><a class="PostByline-link" rel="author" href="/staff/leefang/" data-reactid="155"><span itemprop="name" data-reactid="156">Lee Fang</span></a></div><br data-reactid="157"/><span class="PostByline-date" data-reactid="158">2017-08-25T20:27:18+00:00</span></div><div class="PartnershipArticle-StandardPost-PostByline" data-reactid="159"><!-- react-empty: 160 --></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="Post-body" data-reactid="161"><img class="print-only" src="//cdn01.theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2017/02/Kirstjen-Nielsen-donald-trump-hurricane-katrina-warning-1487782275-article-header.jpg" data-reactid="162"/><div class="Post-thumb-credit-block" data-reactid="163"><div class="Post-thumb-credit" data-reactid="164">Photo: Eric Gay/AP</div></div><div class="Post-content-block-outer" data-reactid="165"><div class="GridContainer Post-scroll-container" data-reactid="166"><div class="GridRow" data-reactid="167"><!-- react-text: 168 --><!-- /react-text --><div class="Post-content-block" data-reactid="169"><div class="Post-content-block-inner" data-reactid="170"><!-- react-empty: 171 --><div class="PostContent" data-reactid="172"><div data-reactid="173"><p>Hurricane Harvey, a storm expected to bring <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/hurricane-harvey-catastrophic-flooding/story?id=49412285">catastrophic</a> flooding to Texas, could be the first major disaster under the watch of President Donald Trump, attracting new attention to how the administration has staffed its emergency response teams.</p>
<p>Trump has faced growing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/03/six-months-into-his-presidency-trump-continues-to-be-exceptionally-slow-at-appointing-officials-heres-why-that-matters/?utm_term=.126fb0eeaf11">criticism</a> for leaving vacancies in many government positions, as well as apparently handing out appointments to connected Republican insiders and lobbyists over experts and well-qualified public servants. But as the administration faces Harvey, a reshuffle that&#8217;s brought Kirstjen Nielsen to the White House may raise eyebrows even further.</p>
<p>Until recently, Nielsen served as the top aide to retired Gen. John Kelly as he headed the Department of Homeland Security. But when Kelly became Trump&#8217;s chief of staff, Nielsen changed positions too, becoming Trump&#8217;s deputy chief of staff.</p>
<p>Nielsen is known in the Beltway for her close relationship with Kelly; a Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-lack-of-discipline-leaves-new-chief-of-staff-frustrated-and-dismayed/2017/08/16/9aec8e16-82b8-11e7-82a4-920da1aeb507_story.html?utm_term=.f31f4a76c163">story</a> recently stated that administration officials &#8220;usually work through Nielsen, and she funnels information to Kelly, who decides what to show the president.&#8221; Less known, however, is her history as a key figure singled out by two 2006 congressional reports highlighting members of former President George W. Bush&#8217;s administration who were warned about Hurricane Katrina and failed to act.</p>
<p>Over a decade ago, Nielsen held the title of senior director for preparedness and response at the White House Security Council.</p>
<p>The Senate report, &#8220;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3462970-HURRICANE-KATRINA-A-NATION-STILL-UNPREPARED.html">Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared</a>,&#8221; names Nielsen as among the key administration figures who failed to act on early warnings about the storm. A related bipartisan report from the House of Representatives on the government&#8217;s botched response to Katrina, &#8220;<a href="http://slfpae.com/studies/Final%20Report%20by%20Select%20Bipartisan%20Committee.pdf">A Failure of Initiative</a>,&#8221; similarly criticized Nielsen.</p>
<p>While serving in the Bush White House, the Senate report notes, Nielsen received an email from emergency planning officials six months before the storm in February 2005, warning that flooding in New Orleans &#8220;could cause similar devastation&#8221; as the tsunami that had devastated Southeast Asia the previous year.</p>
<p>Throughout August 27 and August 28, before the storm made landfall, Nielsen and other senior Bush aides received a flow of reports from DHS about the growing strength of Katrina, including a warning that floodwaters could overtop New Orleans&#8217;s levees. “Any storm rated Category 4 or greater,&#8221; one email from the Homeland Security Operations Center sent on August 28 warned, &#8220;will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching. This could leave the New Orleans area being submerged for weeks or months. … The magnitude of this storm is expected to cause massive flooding.”</p>
<p>Nielsen, the House report points out, <a href="http://slfpae.com/studies/Final%20Report%20by%20Select%20Bipartisan%20Committee.pdf">headed</a> Bush&#8217;s Homeland Security Council for Prevention, Preparedness, and Response directorate, a team designed to relay information from disaster response agencies to the president.</p>
<p>Bush and his senior aides did not act on the warnings. On Saturday, August 27, Bush spent the day vacationing at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. The following Monday, August 29, the president attended events in Arizona and California as the storm reached U.S. shores, including Arizona Senator John McCain&#8217;s birthday celebration.</p>
<p>&#8220;Despite the clear warnings before landfall that Katrina would be catastrophic, the President and the White House staff were not sufficiently engaged and failed to initiate a sufficiently strong and proactive response,&#8221; the Senate report concluded.</p>
<p><div class='img-wrap align-center  width-fixed' style='width: 1024px;'> <a href="//theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2017/02/Kirstjen-Nielsen-donald-trump-1487782464.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-113950" src="//theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2017/02/Kirstjen-Nielsen-donald-trump-1487782464.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1024&h=712" alt="DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 24JAN15 - Kirstjen Nielsen, Senior Fellow, Homeland Security Policy Institute, USA; Global Agenda Council on Risk &amp; Resilience reflects during the session 'Davos Insights on Crisis and Cooperation' at the Annual Meeting 2015 of the World Economic Forum at the congress centre in Davos, January 24, 2015. WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM/swiss-image.ch/Photo Valeriano DiDomenico" /></a></p>
<p class="caption">Kirstjen Nielsen attends the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum at the Davos Congress Centre in Switzerland, Jan. 24, 2015.</p>
<p class='caption source' style=''>Photo: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM/swiss-image.ch/Photo Valeriano DiDomenico</p></div>The White House did not fully cooperate with the congressional investigation, leaving key questions unanswered. Then-Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown claimed that he contacted the president and his senior officials 30 times before the storm made landfall. &#8220;Because the White House refused to cooperate with the Committee’s requests, we don’t know what the President and his staff did with the information about the impending disaster from Brown and others,&#8221; the report notes.</p>
<p>The lack of preparation for the deadly storm led to absolute chaos on the ground as Katrina flooded New Orleans and destroyed communities along the coast. Local authorities, lacking guidance from the federal government, failed both to evacuate residents and to provide medical assistance to those stranded by the storm. Katrina is estimated to have cost nearly 2,000 lives.</p>
<p>In April 2007, Bush appointed Thomas Bossert to replace Nielsen as senior director for preparedness and response, one of many turnovers in personnel in the Homeland Security Council during a congressionally mandated “shakeup” of the department in the years after Hurricane Katrina. Bossert, notably, has also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/27/us/politics/thomas-bossert-national-security-trump.html">returned</a> to the White House as a senior aide for Trump.</p>
<p>Nielsen, like many Bush homeland security officials, ended up in the for-profit security industry &#8212; in <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alan-wade-kirstjen-nielsen-and-david-aidekman-join-civitas-group-expanding-the-firms-national-security-capabilities-58159117.html">Nielsen&#8217;s case</a>, at a company called Civitas Group LLC. Civitas, which describes itself as a &#8220;strategic advisory and investment firm serving the homeland and national security markets,&#8221; was founded by Republican lobbyist Charles Black and Samuel Berger, a former national security adviser to former President Bill Clinton.</p>
<p>Beginning in 2012, Nielsen <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstjennielsen/">served</a> as the president of Sunesis Consulting, a consulting firm that &#8220;advises senior government officials and senior private sector officials on the development, assessment, and execution of preparedness strategies, policies, plans, tools, and tabletop exercises to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from all hazard events with a focus on cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, and emergency preparedness and response.&#8221; The firm, according to GovExec, won a <a href="http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2016/05/dhs-deadline-collect-data-monitoring-transportation-power-other-key-sectors/128186/">contract</a> last year to review the Homeland Security Department&#8217;s efforts to collect data about threats to U.S. infrastructure. She also served as a fellow at George Washington University&#8217;s Center for Cyber &amp; Homeland Security.</p>
<p class="caption">Top photo: Bryan Vernon and Dorothy Bell are rescued on Aug. 29, 2005 from their rooftop after Hurricane Katrina hit, causing flooding in their New Orleans neighborhood.</p>
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      window.initialStoreTree = {"bodyClasses":[],"commentsExpanded":{},"contentLanguage":"en","documentCloud":{"document":{},"embedUrl":"","text":{}},"documentIDs":[],"error":null,"featureIDs":[],"featuresLanguage":{},"googleAMPUrl":"https://static.theintercept.com/amp/kirstjen-nielsen-dhs.html","hamburgerColor":null,"homepageActiveSidemenuLink":null,"homepageItems":{},"homepagePromoID":null,"homepageSidemenuStuck":false,"host":"nodefront","inInitialRender":false,"liveBlogsUpdatesIDs":{},"loading":false,"mediaPlayer":null,"postsExpanded":{},"postsMetaIDs":{},"resources":{"alerts":{},"annotationSets":{},"annotations":{},"categories":{},"comments":{},"documents":{},"liveBlogs":{},"platform":{"Article":{},"Author":{},"Document":{},"GeoLocation":{},"Section":{},"bySpeakingID":{},"documentReleases":{}},"postCommentMeta":{},"posts":{"113199":{"ID":113199,"article_length_type":"Medium","authors":[{"ID":58,"brief_bio":"Lee Fang is a journalist with a long-standing interest in how public policy is influenced by organized interest groups and money.","disable_contact":false,"disable_staff_detail":false,"display_name":"Lee Fang","email":"lee.fang@theintercept.com","facebook":"https://www.facebook.com/lhfang","full_bio":"\u003cp>Lee Fang is a journalist with a long-standing interest in how public policy is influenced by organized interest groups and money. He was the first to uncover and detail the role of the billionaire Koch brothers in financing the Tea Party movement. His interviews and research on the Koch brothers have been featured on HBO&#8217;s &#8220;The Newsroom,&#8221; the documentaries &#8220;Merchants of Doubt&#8221; and &#8220;Citizen Koch,&#8221; as well as in multiple media outlets. He was an investigative blogger for ThinkProgress (2009-2011) and then a fellow at the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute and contributing writer for The Nation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2012, he co-founded RepublicReport.org, a blog to cover political corruption that syndicates content with TheNation.com, Salon, National Memo, BillMoyers.com, TruthOut, and other media outlets. His work has been published by VICE, The Baffler, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Progressive, NPR, In These Times, and the Huffington Post. His first book, &#8220;The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right,&#8221; published by the New Press, explores how the conservative right rebuilt the Republican Party and its political clout in the aftermath of President Obama&#8217;s 2008 election victory. He is based in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n","image_350":"https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/02/lee-staff-page-350x350.jpg","language":true,"nicename":"leefang","pgp_file":"https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/03/LeeFangPGP.asc","pgp_fingerprint":"7E99 79A8 C6B0 27E6 B724 8931 BEAC 16CC 3766 D97C","pgp_key":"Lee Fang's public key","twitter":"@lhfang","url":"https://theintercept.com/staff/leefang/","user_group":"","user_title":"Investigative Reporter"}],"banner_videokey":"","bitly_url":"https://interc.pt/2xjJS2j","categories":[{"name":"Unofficial Sources","slug":"unofficial-sources"}],"comments_number":"17","comments_open":false,"content":"\u003cp>Hurricane Harvey, a storm expected to bring \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/US/hurricane-harvey-catastrophic-flooding/story?id=49412285\">catastrophic\u003c/a> flooding to Texas, could be the first major disaster under the watch of President Donald Trump, attracting new attention to how the administration has staffed its emergency response teams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trump has faced growing \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/03/six-months-into-his-presidency-trump-continues-to-be-exceptionally-slow-at-appointing-officials-heres-why-that-matters/?utm_term=.126fb0eeaf11\">criticism\u003c/a> for leaving vacancies in many government positions, as well as apparently handing out appointments to connected Republican insiders and lobbyists over experts and well-qualified public servants. But as the administration faces Harvey, a reshuffle that&#8217;s brought Kirstjen Nielsen to the White House may raise eyebrows even further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until recently, Nielsen served as the top aide to retired Gen. John Kelly as he headed the Department of Homeland Security. But when Kelly became Trump&#8217;s chief of staff, Nielsen changed positions too, becoming Trump&#8217;s deputy chief of staff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nielsen is known in the Beltway for her close relationship with Kelly; a Washington Post \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-lack-of-discipline-leaves-new-chief-of-staff-frustrated-and-dismayed/2017/08/16/9aec8e16-82b8-11e7-82a4-920da1aeb507_story.html?utm_term=.f31f4a76c163\">story\u003c/a> recently stated that administration officials &#8220;usually work through Nielsen, and she funnels information to Kelly, who decides what to show the president.&#8221; Less known, however, is her history as a key figure singled out by two 2006 congressional reports highlighting members of former President George W. Bush&#8217;s administration who were warned about Hurricane Katrina and failed to act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over a decade ago, Nielsen held the title of senior director for preparedness and response at the White House Security Council.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Senate report, &#8220;\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3462970-HURRICANE-KATRINA-A-NATION-STILL-UNPREPARED.html\">Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared\u003c/a>,&#8221; names Nielsen as among the key administration figures who failed to act on early warnings about the storm. A related bipartisan report from the House of Representatives on the government&#8217;s botched response to Katrina, &#8220;\u003ca href=\"http://slfpae.com/studies/Final%20Report%20by%20Select%20Bipartisan%20Committee.pdf\">A Failure of Initiative\u003c/a>,&#8221; similarly criticized Nielsen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While serving in the Bush White House, the Senate report notes, Nielsen received an email from emergency planning officials six months before the storm in February 2005, warning that flooding in New Orleans &#8220;could cause similar devastation&#8221; as the tsunami that had devastated Southeast Asia the previous year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout August 27 and August 28, before the storm made landfall, Nielsen and other senior Bush aides received a flow of reports from DHS about the growing strength of Katrina, including a warning that floodwaters could overtop New Orleans&#8217;s levees. “Any storm rated Category 4 or greater,&#8221; one email from the Homeland Security Operations Center sent on August 28 warned, &#8220;will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching. This could leave the New Orleans area being submerged for weeks or months. … The magnitude of this storm is expected to cause massive flooding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nielsen, the House report points out, \u003ca href=\"http://slfpae.com/studies/Final%20Report%20by%20Select%20Bipartisan%20Committee.pdf\">headed\u003c/a> Bush&#8217;s Homeland Security Council for Prevention, Preparedness, and Response directorate, a team designed to relay information from disaster response agencies to the president.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bush and his senior aides did not act on the warnings. On Saturday, August 27, Bush spent the day vacationing at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. The following Monday, August 29, the president attended events in Arizona and California as the storm reached U.S. shores, including Arizona Senator John McCain&#8217;s birthday celebration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>&#8220;Despite the clear warnings before landfall that Katrina would be catastrophic, the President and the White House staff were not sufficiently engaged and failed to initiate a sufficiently strong and proactive response,&#8221; the Senate report concluded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cdiv class='img-wrap align-center  width-fixed' style='width: 1024px;'> \u003ca href=\"https://theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2017/02/Kirstjen-Nielsen-donald-trump-1487782464.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-113950\" src=\"https://theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2017/02/Kirstjen-Nielsen-donald-trump-1487782464-1024x712.jpg\" alt=\"DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 24JAN15 - Kirstjen Nielsen, Senior Fellow, Homeland Security Policy Institute, USA; Global Agenda Council on Risk &amp; Resilience reflects during the session 'Davos Insights on Crisis and Cooperation' at the Annual Meeting 2015 of the World Economic Forum at the congress centre in Davos, January 24, 2015. WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM/swiss-image.ch/Photo Valeriano DiDomenico\" />\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"caption\">Kirstjen Nielsen attends the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum at the Davos Congress Centre in Switzerland, Jan. 24, 2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class='caption source' style=''>Photo: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM/swiss-image.ch/Photo Valeriano DiDomenico\u003c/p>\u003c/div>The White House did not fully cooperate with the congressional investigation, leaving key questions unanswered. Then-Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown claimed that he contacted the president and his senior officials 30 times before the storm made landfall. &#8220;Because the White House refused to cooperate with the Committee’s requests, we don’t know what the President and his staff did with the information about the impending disaster from Brown and others,&#8221; the report notes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lack of preparation for the deadly storm led to absolute chaos on the ground as Katrina flooded New Orleans and destroyed communities along the coast. Local authorities, lacking guidance from the federal government, failed both to evacuate residents and to provide medical assistance to those stranded by the storm. Katrina is estimated to have cost nearly 2,000 lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April 2007, Bush appointed Thomas Bossert to replace Nielsen as senior director for preparedness and response, one of many turnovers in personnel in the Homeland Security Council during a congressionally mandated “shakeup” of the department in the years after Hurricane Katrina. Bossert, notably, has also \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/27/us/politics/thomas-bossert-national-security-trump.html\">returned\u003c/a> to the White House as a senior aide for Trump.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nielsen, like many Bush homeland security officials, ended up in the for-profit security industry &#8212; in \u003ca href=\"http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alan-wade-kirstjen-nielsen-and-david-aidekman-join-civitas-group-expanding-the-firms-national-security-capabilities-58159117.html\">Nielsen&#8217;s case\u003c/a>, at a company called Civitas Group LLC. Civitas, which describes itself as a &#8220;strategic advisory and investment firm serving the homeland and national security markets,&#8221; was founded by Republican lobbyist Charles Black and Samuel Berger, a former national security adviser to former President Bill Clinton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in 2012, Nielsen \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstjennielsen/\">served\u003c/a> as the president of Sunesis Consulting, a consulting firm that &#8220;advises senior government officials and senior private sector officials on the development, assessment, and execution of preparedness strategies, policies, plans, tools, and tabletop exercises to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from all hazard events with a focus on cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, and emergency preparedness and response.&#8221; The firm, according to GovExec, won a \u003ca href=\"http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2016/05/dhs-deadline-collect-data-monitoring-transportation-power-other-key-sectors/128186/\">contract\u003c/a> last year to review the Homeland Security Department&#8217;s efforts to collect data about threats to U.S. infrastructure. She also served as a fellow at George Washington University&#8217;s Center for Cyber &amp; Homeland Security.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"caption\">Top photo: Bryan Vernon and Dorothy Bell are rescued on Aug. 29, 2005 from their rooftop after Hurricane Katrina hit, causing flooding in their New Orleans neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n","credit_additional_reporting":"","credit_additional_reporting_users_object":"","credit_photo_illustration":"","credit_research":"","credit_research_users_object":"","credit_translation":"","credit_translation_users_object":"","date":"2017-08-25T20:27:18+00:00","date_local":"2017-08-25T16:27:18+00:00","documents":"","excerpt":"Kirstjen Nielsen was singled out by two congressional reports for failing to act on warnings about the devastating 2005 hurricane.","excerpt_type":"default","feature_header_background_color":"","feature_header_color":"","feature_header_layout":"default","feature_image_mask":"normal","feature_interactive_url":"","feature_text_color":"","feature_title":"Featured News","featured_video_url":"","hide_featured_image":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"is_banner_hidden":false,"is_feature":"0","language":{"code":"en","name":"English","slug":"english"},"language_related_post_ids":"","language_related_post_permalinks":"","layout":"default","link":"https://theintercept.com/2017/08/25/kirstjen-nielsen-dhs/","meta":{"links":[]},"mobile_thumbnail":null,"partner_feeds":[{"name":"Spoken Layer","slug":"spoken-layer"},{"name":"Uproxx","slug":"uproxx"}],"partnership":{"article_logo":"","article_logo_blurb":"In partnership with","article_text_color":"#AAAAAA","homepage_background_color":"#EEEEEE","homepage_featured":"0","homepage_logo":"","homepage_logo_blurb":"In partnership with","homepage_text_color":"#111111","module_type":"default","partner":"default","partner_url":"","video_module_post_description":"","video_module_post_image":"","video_module_post_title":""},"post_type":"post","prefer_talk_comments":false,"related_post_ids":"","related_post_permalinks":"","series":"","series_part_number":"","share_twitter_text":"As Hurricane Harvey approaches, Trump appoints deputy chief of staff who failed to prepare for Katrina","show_donations_promo":true,"show_in_recirculation":true,"show_in_syndication":false,"slug":"kirstjen-nielsen-dhs","talk_cutover_date":1513620000,"talk_publish_timestamp":1503692838,"thumbnail":{"ID":113948,"alt_text":"FILE - In this Aug. 29, 2005 file photo, Bryan Vernon and Dorothy Bell are rescued from their  rooftop after  Hurricane Katrina hit, causing flooding in their New Orleans neighborhood. The most destructive storm in U.S. history and also one of the deadliest, Katrina was a Category 3 storm with estimated maximum winds of 125 mph when it made landfall near Buras, La., on Aug. 29, 2005. Broken levees left most of New Orleans inundated. Damage was estimated at $75 billion, though rebuilding costs have far exceeded the initial damage. Katrina was blamed for around 1,200 deaths. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)","content":"","credit":"Photo: Eric Gay/AP","excerpt":"Bryan Vernon and Dorothy Bell are rescued on Aug. 29, 2005 from their  rooftop after Hurricane Katrina hit, causing flooding in their New Orleans neighborhood. 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