The decades-long movement to kill FEMA

A new series from “On the Media” traces the mistrust and conspiracy theories that have plagued FEMA since its founding in 1979.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Flora Lichtman?

  Hey, this is Flora and you are listening to Science Friday. Hurricane season is approaching and in the event of a big storm, local and state governments often rely on help from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But President Trump has questioned the value of the agency.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  So I've never been a big fan of FEMA. I like to keep it local. I like to see governors and neighboring states help each other as opposed to FEMA.

• 0:29Flora Lichtman?

  We've heard this about other federal agencies from this administration, but FEMA is a special case. The mistrust goes back to FEMA's founding in the late 1970s. Micah Lowinger, co-host of the show On the Media, traced FEMA's history in a new series called American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA. Hey, Micah, what's up?

• 0:53Speaker 02

  Hey, Flora. Thanks for having me.

• 0:55Flora Lichtman?

  Thank you for being here. So FEMA's in the news this week because after big cuts last year, the agency now says it wants to, quote, "stabilize their workforce" ahead of hurricane season and the World Cup. So they've rehired some FEMA employees. But tell us how we got here. How has the Trump administration approached FEMA this term?

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Well, when Trump came into office last year, his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem really tried to set fire to the agency. She instituted this really wild cost-cutting measure where she said, "I have to personally sign off on any expenditure that FEMA has over $100,000," which, in the world of emergency management, responding to floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and the like, like, everything costs more than $100,000.

• 1:44Flora Lichtman?

  It's every measure.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Basically. This created a huge bottleneck at the agency that delayed and led to the denial of tons of relief that should have been flowing more quickly to towns and states. She also cycled in unqualified leaders, people who had expressed conspiracy theories about the government and the agency. She bullied people in the workforce, called them names, said they were part of the deep state. This led to people with decades of experience who responded to hundreds of disasters, electing to leave. And so even though she's out, she has left the agency in a very, very weak state.

• 2:29Flora Lichtman?

  I mean, President Trump and and his administration has had beef with other federal agencies. We've talked about them a lot on this show. Is the story different with FEMA?

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yes, yes and no. You know, Elon Musk's Doge chainsaw came for everyone and everything that they could get to. In some way FEMA was a victim of that. In other ways FEMA was a victim of a kind of paranoia and distrust that has existed since it was created and since before it was created. And it's what we argue in American Emergency, our new series, is that the conspiracy theories, some based on real things, some based on completely fantastical things, sort of foreshadow this anger and this distrust among MAGA that helps explain why Trump and his administration have hated it so much.

• 3:24Flora Lichtman?

  Yeah, let's go back to the beginning. FEMA's original mission wasn't just dealing with natural disasters, right?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Yes. So FEMA is kind of a federal Frankenstein. It's the amalgamation of a bunch of different civil defense and emergency management and preparedness offices that were kind of thrown together by President Carter in the late 1970s. The dual mission being preparation and response to natural disasters and civil defense, preparing the country for terrorism, nuclear attacks, and continuity of government.

• 3:58Flora Lichtman?

  Where did the conspiracy theories first begin?

• 4:02Speaker 02

  The conspiracy theories come from the Cold War era of FEMA and these civil defense agencies that precede FEMA, a time when the country was preparing for a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. And America's leaders are wondering, like, one, how do we keep our government safe? How do we ensure that there will be leaders after a nuke causes widespread death? And then also, like, how do you keep the the citizenry safe? What do you do if a nuke falls on DC or New York? Where do those people go? And so FEMA starts secretly building bunkers. There's one outside of Northern Virginia called Mount Weather, which is an underground

• 4:45Speaker 02

  city that the White House and thousands of federal workers would live underground and run the country after a nuke or some other big disaster. FEMA also started thinking about, well, can we put people in refugee camps? So the Reagan administration signs this secret executive order. It creates this covert program called Project 908, like 908, that pools together billions of dollars from FEMA, the FBI, the National Security Council, and starts to game out a post-apocalyptic scenario. And the Reagan administration asks FEMA to work on plans for declaring martial law in the aftermath of a nuke.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  And it also starts scoping out businesses and buildings around the country where American citizens can survive after a nuclear attack and begin to rebuild the country. So that history is real. These were real plans with real funding, but none of this stuff actually ends up happening. And even though the people who were doing this kooky national security scheming end up leaving FEMA and not realizing any of this stuff, these revelations live on. And it inspires this FEMA camps conspiracy theory, particularly in the 90s among militia groups who are obsessed with the New World Order conspiracy theory,

• 6:13Speaker 02

  that the federal government is going to work with the UN to basically institute a world government, and they're going to use these secret FEMA prisons all across the country to round up political dissidents and shut them up.

• 6:30Flora Lichtman?

  You have a clip about this. You interviewed Leo Bosner, a longtime FEMA employee, who describes this amazing moment where he's being interviewed by a journalist.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  I would talk on my off-duty time to people on Capitol Hill, news reporters, and say, look, this is a dangerous thing. We're ignoring these natural disasters. And I was having lunch with a news reporter one day, and I'm telling him this. And the guy's looking really bored. He says, yeah, Leo, that's all really bad. But tell me about FEMA's secret plan to round up all the liberals in the country and put them in concentration camps.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Concentration camps, yes. This is this story that that conspiracy theorists have told about FEMA for decades, that FEMA is operating these like secret prisons and that when a natural disaster or some kind of political crisis strikes, the federal government will use FEMA to round up dissidents in their effort to create some kind of global authoritarian takeover. And this conspiracy theory has lived on. It has dogged FEMA for decades. Alex Jones made multiple conspiracy films claiming to find these secret prisons. Stuart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, one of the main characters of January 6th, he was often talking about the FEMA camps.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Despite the fact that this stuff has been debunked over and over, this is like maybe the most common story of paranoia about FEMA that I think has ruined its credibility with some Americans and has consistently led to threats, really violent threats against FEMA's leaders and workforce.

• 8:09Flora Lichtman?

  You know, Micah, you've reported on extremism in America before. How do you think about this link between distrust in institutions and extremism and natural disasters? Is there a link?

• 8:25Speaker 02

  I think there is. It's something that's come up a lot in my reporting. In the lead up to January 6th, I tracked a lot of militia groups. I was very interested in in their activity, their recruitment, and this moment where it felt like violence could break out in the street at any moment. This is the summer of 2020. And what I noticed tracking these groups is that they would frequently show up to flooded cities and towns, to places where there are wildfires in the Pacific Northwest. And they would ostensibly offer their assistance, you know, just as volunteers, handing out food, trying to save people from flooded buildings. But

• 9:05Speaker 02

  I felt that this was actually kind of a cynical effort to recruit, to fundraise, to spit shine their public image. Fast forward to January 6th, and a number of the high-profile people who received, you know, some of the most severe charges had joined a militia because of a natural disaster, formed their own, had been recruited, or had used a natural disaster to raise money. And I think what you see after a big storm, a big earthquake, when people's lives are in disarray, this is an incredibly vulnerable moment where political movements have an opportunity to kind of seize on the shock.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Militia groups have done it. To a certain degree, Donald Trump did it during Hurricane Helene. He seized on the chaos and death and destruction of Hurricane Helene to spread conspiracy theories that helped him politically. So I think that as we look at the future of our country, the future of FEMA, the future of response to climate change, I really think it's worth considering the effects on our democracy we might see if our government is not able to adequately and robustly respond to climate destruction.

• 10:23Flora Lichtman?

  President Trump is expected to nominate Cameron Hamilton to lead FEMA.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:28Flora Lichtman?

  And he was the interim FEMA administrator until he was fired last year when he said he didn't want to kill the agency. You interviewed him for this series, right? What did he tell you about the future of FEMA?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  It's fascinating. Cameron Hamilton, he's like this MAGA warrior. He had a failed bid for Congress claiming that if, you know, if he came to Washington, he would root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and reduce government, all this stuff. He has no emergency management experience, but is put in the role of acting administrator at the beginning of the Trump administration. When I spoke to Cameron Hamilton, he was telling me about this incredibly turbulent time for the agency when there was a lot of uncertainty about whether it would continue to exist. Flash forward to today, I had absolutely no way of knowing that after being fired

• 11:23Speaker 02

  for standing up for FEMA and trying not to kill it, he would be invited back to potentially lead it again if he passes Senate confirmation. I mean, it's just the wildest twist to our story and the story of FEMA. It's hard to know whether him coming back to lead the agency means that the Trump administration has changed its mind about FEMA, or whether he was just the only one who wanted the job. I mean, there's just so much we don't know. I mean, who wants to run an agency while it's bleeding out? The fact that somebody with more emergency management experience isn't coming in to run the show suggests that, frankly, it's a miserable job.

• 12:07Flora Lichtman?

  That's a perfect place to land. Micah, thank you for being here.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Flora, thanks so much for having me.

• 12:13Flora Lichtman?

  Micah Lowenjer is co-host of On the Media. Check out his new four-part series, American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA, on the On the Media feed. This episode was produced by Shoshana Buxbaum. If you're deep down the rabbit hole on scientific conspiracy theories and you need some fact checking, call us about that or any other question. Our listener line is always open, and we love hearing from you. 877-4-CY-FRY is our number, 877-4-CY-FRY. I'm Flora Lichtman. Catch you tomorrow.