[Mb-civic] Video Shows Bush Being Warned on Katrina - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Video Shows Bush Being Warned on Katrina
Officials Detailed a Dire Threat to New Orleans

By Spencer S. Hsu and Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 2, 2006; A01

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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/01/AR2006030101731.html?nav=hcmodule
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