FEMA Fiction: Brownie’s Padded Resume

In over his head: Time Magazine has looked into the resume of FEMA Director Michael Brown, and has found some, er, irregularities.

By now, everybody knows that he was the general counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association before he went to work for his college roommate, Joe Allbaugh, the director of FEMA. (Allbaugh got the FEMA job because he was a camapaign operative for Bush/Cheney in 2000.)

But the one position prior to his stint at FEMA that seemed to have had anything to do with disaster preparedness was “serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight” for a small town in Oklahoma in the 1970’s.

Wrong. Brownie, who was in his twenties, was actually an “assistant to the city manager” of Edmond, OK. In other words, he was the city manager’s administrative assistant, or secretary.

Brown also apparently lied about receiving the “Outstanding Political Science Professor” award at an Oklahoma university. In fact, he was a student, not a professor, at the school.

He also claimed to be a director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, but a spokesperson for the home said Brown “was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here.”

A former boss remembers Brown this way: “He did mainly transactional work, not litigation,” says Jones. “There was a feeling that he was not serious and somewhat shallow.”

Connect:

2 thoughts on “FEMA Fiction: Brownie’s Padded Resume”

  1. And BTW, I was the president of American Express, where I coincidentally did my undergrad internship. And I once led 20 people to safety from a buring mobile home. I was just passing by and saw the flames. And I got the Florida Mother of the Year award, although I have no children. And I singehandedly saved the Cedar’s Hairstreak butterfly from extinction. Really. Can I run FEMA now?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.