Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown’s already paper-thin resumé appears to have been padded. Time Magazine looked into the past of the man George W. Bush put in charge of the federal government’s response to disasters natural and man-made, and found less there than meets the eye.

Brown was the college roommate of former Bush campaign director Joe Allbaugh, who hired Brown as FEMA’s chief counsel after Allbaugh replaced highly regarded Clinton appointee James Lee Witt, an experienced emergency management professional who earned high praise from all parties including then-Texas governor Bush, at the top of the agency.

Allbaugh’s appointment heralded the transmogrification of FEMA from an efficient emergency management organization into a storehouse for otherwise unqualified Bush administration patronage appointees. The man Bush calls “Brownie” was the chief — but far from the only — beneficiary of the process. And it now appears as though his college days with Allbaugh were his only qualification for the job.

Brown’s official resumé is extraordinarily brief for a man who serves as an undersecretary in a critical cabinet department; the odds seem fairly good that you could find someone better qualified by throwing a dart into the happy hour crowd at most bars and anointing the one who bleeds. Here’s what the agency has to say about the boss:

Prior to joining FEMA, Mr. Brown practiced law in Colorado and Oklahoma, where he served as a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court. He had been appointed as a special prosecutor in police disciplinary matters. While attending law school he was appointed by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma Legislature as the Finance Committee Staff Director, where he oversaw state fiscal issues. His background in state and local government also includes serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight and as a city councilman.

“Emergency services oversight” is the only item in that list of lifetime achievements that remotely relates to his work at FEMA. According to Time, though, even that little is overstated.

Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA’s website, was “serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight.” The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 “overseeing the emergency services division.” In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an “assistant to the city manager” from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. “The assistant is more like an intern,” she told TIME. “Department heads did not report to him.” Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. “Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University,” recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. “Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I’d ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt.”

Of course we’re all too well aware that whatever his virtues then, Mike has life-threatening issues with details and tardiness now.

A FEMA media affairs flack told Time that Brown’s boss in Edmond is wrong, and that Brown had in fact worked his way up from intern to assistant city manager.

Time also notes that Brown’s biography on FindLaw, a resource for attorney’s and law students, is at odds with the actual record and that Brown’s contentious stint as the director of an Arabian horse association has been elided from it. To get an idea of why Brown might not want those ten years of his life remarked in his official and unofficial biographies, a look at the terms of his departure may be instructive.

Upon execution of this Agreement by the parties, Mr. Brown will resign from his position with IAHA, effective January 31, 2001.

B. Mr. Brown will employ his best efforts to conclude his work on pending matters during the month of September, 2000, and will assist in an orderly transition, and will continue to assist in the defense of litigation against him and/or IAHA relating to his work as Judges and Stewards Commissioner.

C. Prior to January 31, 2001, Mr. Brown will use all of his accrued vacation time.

D. IAHA will continue to pay to Mr. Brown his full salary, including benefits, through January 31, 2001.

E. During the months of February, March and April, 2001, IAHA will pay Mr. Brown his full salary, as severance pay.

F. Mr. Brown will continue to assist in the defense of litigation against him and/or IAHA relating to his work for IAHA as Judges and Stewards Commissioner, as reasonably requested by counsel for IAHA, unless reasonably objected to by counsel for Mr. Brown.

G. IAHA will pay to Mr. Brown a consulting fee of $100 per hour for time he spends assisting in the defense of litigation after April 30, 2001, such fee to be paid within 30 days of the date services are billed to IAHA by Mr. Brown.

H. IAHA will continue to provide and to pay for health insurance for Mr. Brown and his wife through October 31, 2001.

I. By October 1, 2000, Mr. Brown will cause to be contributed from the Michael D. Brown Legal Defense Fund Trust to the IAHA Legal Defense Fund the sum of $25,000.

J. IAHA will, without limitation and to the fullest extent allowed by law, continue to indemnify Mr. Brown and to hold Mr. Brown harmless from all liabilities, obligations, claims, causes of action, or expenses of any kind, including reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, that may arise or be incurred by Mr. Brown arising out of the performance of his employment as Judges and Stewards Commissioner of IAHA, including his duties under the terms of this Separation Agreement.

To an untrained eye, it looks as though Brown offered to pay his employers to pay him in exchange for allowing him to resign. That’s the job from which he pole-vaulted into his position as general counsel for Joe Allbaugh at FEMA.

Maybe he does have some disaster management experience after all.

Brown’s office also claims Brown never claimed some of the experience he claims in his FindLaw biography.

To review: The head of emergency response efforts in the richest, most powerful nation in history is a ghost inside an empty starched white shirt and dark suit. And his emergency management greatly exceeds that of his boss, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff. And the man who put them in charge of saving all of our lives in the event of a disaster is George W. Bush.

In an even marginally sane world, the Time story would mean that Brown is toast, tomorrow, and that anyone associated with him would get at least their fingers scorched if not something more precious. Of course, in a marginally sane world he never would have gotten the job.

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

=========================

And in other news, Bush has suspended the requirement that government contractors pay employees the prevailing wages in the region where the work takes place. No sense cutting into those profiteering margins.

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