How the Pentagon Spun Hurricane Maria
Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Command organize food and water deliveries for residents of Utuado, Puerto Rico, on Oct 5.
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesLate last month, Pentagon communications officials inadvertently included Bloomberg climate reporter Christopher Flavelle on an internal distribution list, in which Defense Department and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials discussed their evolving strategy for presenting the response to Hurricane Maria.
Despite repeatedly alerting officials to the error, Bloomberg continued receiving the emails for five days. Those messages, each of which was marked “unclassified,” offer a glimpse into the federal government’s struggle to convince the public that the response effort was going well. That struggle was compounded by the commander-in-chief, and eased only when public attention was pulled to a very different disaster.