A newly leaked video recording of high-level government
deliberations the day before Hurricane Katrina hit shows disaster
officials emphatically warning President Bush that the storm posed a
catastrophic threat to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and a grim-faced
Bush personally assuring state leaders that his administration was
"fully prepared" to help. The footage, taken of a videoconference
of federal and state officials on Aug. 28, offered an unusually vivid
glimpse of real-time decision making by an administration that has
vigorously guarded its internal deliberations. Reactions to the
tape, which was obtained by the Associated Press, varied widely --
reflecting the intense debate that has brewed for six months about who
should be held accountable for an initially flaccid government response
to the catastrophe. Democrats said the tape shows Bush being
warned in urgent terms of the potential magnitude of the storm, making
it less defensible that the administration did not act with more
dispatch to be ready. White House officials said the footage
reinforces what they have said to critics: that the president, at his
Texas vacation home, was fully engaged from the opening hours of the
emergency, while leaving operational decisions to the agencies in
charge. Bush was dialed into the conference Sunday at noon
Eastern time from a meeting room at his ranch in Crawford, with Deputy
Chief of Staff Joseph Hagin at his side. "I want to assure the
folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help
you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets
we have at our disposal after the storm," Bush said, gesturing with
both hands for emphasis on the digital recording. Neither Bush nor
Hagin asked questions, however. Then-Federal Emergency Management
Agency Director Michael D. Brown, who joined the call from Washington,
and Max Mayfield, head of the National Hurricane Center in Miami,
briefed participating federal and state officials in explicit terms. "This is, to put it mildly, the big one," Brown said. "Everyone within FEMA is now virtually on call." Brown
warned that thousands of New Orleans residents were gathering in a
shelter of last resort at the Louisiana Superdome, which he said was
about 12 feet below sea level. "I don't know what the heck we're
going to do for that, and I also am concerned about that roof," Brown
said. "Not to be kind of gross here, but I'm concerned about [medical
and mortuary disaster team] assets and their ability to respond to a
catastrophe within a catastrophe." Mayfield cited the 1992 storm that inflicted $20 billion of damage on South Florida. "This
hurricane is much larger than Hurricane Andrew ever was," Mayfield
said. "I also want to make absolutely clear to everyone that the
greatest potential for large loss of life is still in the coastal areas
from the storm surge." Congressional investigators previously
released transcripts of the daily meetings, and their substance and
other warnings of the danger to New Orleans have been widely reported. The
fresh footage, however, was prominently aired on evening television
news broadcasts and threatened to renew public scrutiny of the Bush
administration, which issued a report last week containing 125
recommendations to improve U.S. disaster readiness but little focus on
the action of senior presidential aides. White House spokesman
Trent Duffy said yesterday the footage showed that Bush was heavily
engaged while leaving "battlefield" decisions to his commanders. "The
president had multiple conversations, phone calls and briefings both
big and small throughout this process, and his whole priority was
making sure that the federal assets were brought to bear to help the
people of New Orleans," Duffy said. He added: "That's not to say
the president was satisfied with the federal response. He wasn't. He
said as much, and we just had a 200-page-plus federal report discussing
the things the president needs to do to make our emergency response
better." Duffy noted that a transcript of the Aug. 29 conference
showed Hagin asking about the status of the Superdome and New Orleans
levees. In the same conference, Brown said he spoke twice that morning
with Bush, who he said was "very engaged" and asking those same
questions and others about city hospitals. Duffy also said that
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) personally discounted a
report of a catastrophic levee break as "unconfirmed" in a noon call.
"I think we have not breached the levees at this point in time," Blanco
said, but she added that city flooding was severe. Brown, in an
interview yesterday, agreed that Bush was engaged in the emergency but
said the president was overconfident of FEMA's capabilities. He
dismissed as "baloney" assertions by Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff that "a fog of war" impaired decision making in
Washington. "There was this fog of bureaucracy," Brown said,
repeating his call to restore FEMA to independent, Cabinet-level status
outside the department. "People either didn't want to know about it, or
didn't want to deal with it." Brown said the video showed "I was
doing everything I could," whatever his mistakes. "My entreaties to the
White House about the problems that FEMA was having were falling on
deaf ears," he said. "They thought I could always pull a rabbit out of
the hat." In New Orleans, Mayor C. Ray Nagin (D) was visibly shocked when shown the recording by reporters. It
"seems they were aware of everything . . . that we would need lots of
help," Nagin said after a post-Mardi Gras news conference. "Why was the
response so slow?" When the video ended, Nagin turned away and said, "Oh, God." Democrats in Washington issued statements newly critical of the government response. Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) expressed alarm at "what the president actually knew and when he knew it." Sen.
Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), ranking Democrat on a Senate panel
investigating the storm response, said the video underscored the
committee's findings that "government at all levels was forewarned of
the catastrophic nature of the approaching storm and did painfully
little to be ready." The Department of Homeland Security has
provided transcripts but not recordings of the videoconferences to
Congress, and the AP did not report how it obtained the footage. A
congressional source, speaking on the condition of anonymity because
investigators were seeking the tape, said state officials may have
recorded the meetings. My View: That means bush lied and actually knew that the levees were broken. And it shows that even though he know the response was still dismal..... no wonder why his appoval ratings are at 34% http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/27/opinion/polls/main1350874.shtml
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