Et Cetera

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is charged with taking care of disasters, natural or man-made. Last week it scrambled to remedy one of its own making. Director Wallace Stickney announced that FEMA had shredded a 1991 list of eight gay employees that an openly gay fema analyst had been pressured to provide in exchange for a security clearance. In April FEMA promised that the names would stay locked in a vault. But when Representative Barney Frank threatened to hold hearings if FEMA did not destroy the list, Stickney relented, calling the list "abhorrent."