The Bush administration made a "fatal mistake" by talking up facts and figures without painting a broader picture of the obstacles in its widely criticized Hurricane Katrina response effort, ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown said Thursday.
Brown told CNN's Anderson Cooper that the talking points he and other federal officials used at the time didn't tell the whole story.
"They were factually correct, but weren't in context. We're moving all of this stuff in. We have teams here. Rescue teams are doing this," he said. "But we never explained to the people that it's not coming as fast as we want it to, and it's not enough, because of the number of people that were left behind in the aftermath of the storm."
Not making that clear was a "fatal mistake," Brown said.