We're nearing the first anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. Two Wall Street Journal reporters have a new book out, and it gives some necessary attention to an under-appreciated figure in the debacle: the former director of the Homeland Security Department's 24-hour watch command with the unlikely name of Matthew Broderick.

As head of the 24/7/365 Homeland Security Operations Center (HSOC), Broderick controlled the "eyes and ears" of the Department. As reporters Christopher Cooper and Bobby Block point out, administration officials relied on his reports of events unfolding in the Gulf. Focusing on Broderick, the authors attempt to explain one of the key frustrations of the Bush administration's response: Why did it take them so long to figure out what was going on?

The answer: Broderick. (To his credit, Broderick has accepted blame for failing to properly inform his superiors. He resigned in March to take "an offer I couldn't refuse" from a private company, according to CQ.)

The ops center Broderick ran features 24-hour watchstanders, 16 50" flat-panel monitors, and access to real-time information from all over the government and the nation. DHS describes it this way:

The Homeland Security Operations Center (HSOC) serves as the nation’s nerve center for information sharing and domestic incident management. . . . [T]he HSOC provides real-time situational awareness and monitoring of the homeland, coordinates incidents and response activities. . . . HSOC staff can apply imagery capability by cross-referencing informational data against geospatial data that can then pinpoint an image down to an exact location.

As the world has since learned, New Orleans' levees and floodwalls were collapsing in the early morning of Monday, Aug. 29, 2005. However, Broderick insisted for the next 30 hours that no breaches had occurred, and the levees had merely been "overtopped" -- "normal, typical, hurricane background stuff," he later told Senate investigators.

It wasn't until noon the next day when he confirmed news of the catastrophe to DHS Secretary Mike Chertoff.

Block and Cooper write (excerpted by the Wall Street Journal):

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