Quote:

---

Former FEMA director Michael Brown is not backing off his charge that the Obama administration wants to use the Gulf Coast oil spill as a plot to put an end to offshore drilling.

"They want a crisis like this, so that they can use a crisis like this to shut down offshore and gas drilling," he said Tuesday night on CNN's "AC 360°."

His remarks came a day after he told Fox News' "Your World with Neil Cavuto" that the oil slick is "exactly what they want, because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'I'm going to shut it down because it's too dangerous.' While Mexico and China and everybody else drills in the Gulf, we're going to get shut down."

Pressed by CNN for evidence to back up his claim, Brown pointed to an interview that then-Sen. Barack Obama gave to The San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008. Obama told the Chronicle editorial board that he wanted cap-and-trade legislation to be as strong as possible.

"So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted," Obama told the board, after discussing the importance of figuring out how to use coal without emitting greenhouse gases.

Brown told CNN that he didn't mean to imply the administration wanted the slick to spread, but he suggested that the White House was exaggerating the ramifications of the spill by claiming the damage would last forever.

---