The White House dodge on Katrina
ON MONDAY, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program by saying, ''Our enemy is listening." He said terrorists must be ''smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror."
This is from the same White House that disarmed itself against Hurricane Katrina by failing to listen. Despite its continuing attempts to invoke executive privilege on hurricane-related communications among top Bush officials, revelations keep coming on the ineptitude of the president's men.
Last week, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog agency, the General Accountability Office, issued a stinging report on the failure of Secretary Michael Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Security and then-Director Michael Brown of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to demonstrate leadership during Katrina ''serves to underscore the immaturity" of the nation's response capabilities.
GAO Comptroller David Walker noted how ''No one was designated in advance to lead the overall federal response in anticipation of the event despite clear warnings from the National Hurricane Center." He wrote how the delay by Chertoff to declare Katrina as a catastrophic event failed to trigger appropriate resources. He said Brown's role under Chertoff was so unclear that it resulted in ''the absence of timely and decisive action and clear leadership responsibility and accountability."
In a press conference to discuss the report, Walker said the responsibility to designate a single coordinator for Katrina is ''up to the president of the United States." As if to underscore the chain of command for the hurricane, the chairman of the House committee investigating the government's response to Katrina, Republican Thomas Davis of Virginia, noted how President Bush stayed on vacation at his Texas ranch, Vice President Dick Cheney was fly fishing in Wyoming, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was in Maine.
Davis told The New York Times, ''It is disengagement." He told The
That question became even bigger this week as the Times reported yesterday on a fresh batch of e-mails dug up by congressional investigators. The e-mails showed that the White House was well informed on the night that Katrina hit -- much sooner than it has previously admitted -- that the levees were breached by Katrina's tidal surges. One e-mail from FEMA to Homeland Security chief of staff John Wood said that aerial surveys were showing a scene ''far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had originally thought."
Also yesterday, Brown testified before a Senate committee that he told both the White House and Homeland Security on the night of Aug. 29 that ''we were realizing our worst nightmare." Brown said he communicated the dire situation in an e-mail to Card. He said he believed he verbally gave the same message to deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, who was with the president at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Brown of course is himself a legendary symbol of the government's insensitivity. He was the one who responded to FEMA field reports of a deadly situation being ''past critical," by continuing to eat dinner in a Baton Rouge restaurant and saying things like, ''Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?"
But the evidence is mounting that Brown and his agency at least let the White House know how bad that first night really was. Bush would go on to say on Sept. 12, in the face of mounting criticism of the federal response, ''A lot of people said we dodged a bullet. When that storm came through, at first people said, 'Whew!' There was a sense of relaxation . . . And I myself thought we had dodged a bullet."
Dodging responsibility is getting harder to do for the White House. It was perfect for the latest news on the Katrina response to come on the same week that Gonzales pressed for more government secrecy. Gonzales admitted that he could not guarantee that innocent people have not been swept up in the new level of government spying. Yet he refused to provide details to the Senate Judiciary Committee on what happens to information about the innocent.
This is the same government that refuses to provide all the details on how its incompetence may have allowed untold residents of New Orleans to be swept away. Gonzales says our enemies are listening to us. By failing to listen to the early reports on Katrina, the Bush administration lost the war on time. It became the enemy of New Orleans.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com. 
