Bush's Brownie

By Carolyn Sayre

No one has to tell MICHAEL BROWN he's doing a heckuva job anymore. He's his own boss now. Brown, 51, who was FEMA director when Katrina hit last August, was roundly pilloried for mishandling the relief effort after the hurricane. At first President Bush stood by him, but two weeks after the storm, Brown resigned. For six weeks, he continued to work for FEMA as a consultant. Then he set up his own shop--in disaster preparedness. His firm, Michael D. Brown LLC, draws on the lessons of Katrina to help corporate clients implement contingency plans ahead of natural disasters. He has taken his unapologetic message to Congress. Testifying in February, he blamed his bosses at the Department of Homeland Security for FEMA's response to Katrina and urged "corrective action" so that "disasters don't occur in the future." "If we don't learn from this, then shame on us," he said in an interview with NBC. "I will have been scapegoated for nothing."