Does an audio recording show that a FEMA official said "We plan to execute between 70 and 80 ... We plan to evacuate between 70 and 80,000 people"? No, that's not true: This quote was said by Lloyd Austin, then the U.S. Secretary of Defense, when he misspoke in a 2021 congressional hearing about the Afghanistan withdrawal. Austin used the wrong word, then quickly corrected himself. An online search did not return any evidence that such a quote ever came from a FEMA executive.
The claim appeared in a post on TikTok (archived here) on October 8, 2024. Onscreen text read:
When FEMA accidentally says the quiet part out loud ...
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Oct 8 13:47:53 2024 UTC)
The eight-second video's claim comes from the video's audio. An unidentified male voice says, "We plan to execute between 70 and 80 ... We plan to evacuate between 70 and 80,000 people." The video does not provide any evidence that this quote was said by someone from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) or speaking for the agency.
The claim was also reposted (archived here) on X with no evidence that this quote was said by a FEMA employee.
A Google search (archived here) of the quote showed it was actually said by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on September 28, 2021. According to the C-SPAN description with the transcript, Austin was testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing about withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. The C-SPAN transcript has Austin saying, "We planned to execute between 70 and 80,000 ... We planned to evacuate between 70 and 80,000 people" at 22:14 in the video recording of the 2021 hearing, available here. Evidence of the claim's quote in the 2021 hearing transcript is in the screenshot below, highlighting done by Lead Stories:
(Source: c-span.org screenshot taken on Tue Oct 8 16:14:51 2024 UTC)
Austin quickly corrected himself as he was speaking, as the transcript shows.
Lead Stories searched for recent news stories mentioning "We plan to execute between 70 and 80 ... We plan to evacuate between 70 and 80,000 people" and "FEMA" on Google News, and we found no actual news reports, credible sources or documents that would confirm the claim (archived here).
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims regarding FEMA are here.
