White House lashes back at ex-aide on hurricane

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration pushed back hard yesterday at criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina, leveled by the former disaster agency chief, Michael Brown, and by a number of congressional investigators.

''I reject outright the suggestion that President Bush was anything less than fully involved," said the White House Homeland Security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend.

The Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, ''unequivocally and strongly" rejected suggestions that his agency was preoccupied with terror threats at the expense of preparing for natural disasters.

Both spoke at a conference of state emergency management directors in Alexandria, Va., a suburb of Washington.

They made their rebuttal as a House report, written by Republicans, said the government had mishandledHurricane Katrina relief efforts.

A report by Congress's investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, reached similar conclusions, and singled out Chertoff, saying his office was related to the delays.

Both Townsend and Chertoff took swipes at Brown, who resigned under pressure in September as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

''There is no place for a lone ranger in emergency management," said Chertoff, whose Department of Homeland Security is FEMA's parent agency.

Brown testified before a Senate committee last week that he issued repeated warnings to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security the day the hurricane struck, Aug. 29, that levees had failed and New Orleans was seriously flooding.

He suggested that the White House and the Department of Homeland Security had dragged their feet. Bush and other federal officials have said they did not know until the next day, Aug. 30, that levees had been breached.

Yesterday, Brown defended his performance. ''For Secretary Chertoff to claim that I failed to keep him informed belies the numerous telephone calls and e-mails between me and him prior to, during and after landfall" of the storm, Brown said in an e-mail message.

Brown also applauded congressional investigations into the response.

Townsend, without naming names, criticized those at FEMA she said had ''become bitter" and lashed out ''trying to find someone else, anyone else, to blame."

''We cannot attempt to rewrite history by pointing fingers or laying blame," Townsend said.

Townsend, who at Bush's request is conducting her own ''lessons learned" inquiry, said her report would be released later this month.

A Senate panel is conducting a separate review due in March.

While both Chertoff and Townsend acknowledged that the federal response had left much to be desired, both suggested that federal officials, up to Bush's level, had been unfairly criticized.

Bush, who was traveling in Arizona and California the day the storm roared ashore, was ''highly engaged" in monitoring its advance, Townsend said.

And she said it was Bush himself who first conceded several days after the storm -- one of the nation's worst natural disasters -- that ''the response to the hurricane was insufficient."

The White House would welcome congressional inquiries into Katrina and its aftermath, and would cooperate, Townsend said. ''But let's be clear about the facts," she said. ''As you know, President Bush was highly engaged in the preparation and response effort."

Chertoff announced wide-ranging changes to FEMA. These range from creating a full-time response force of 1,500 new employees to establishing a more reliable system to report on such disasters as they unfold.

He said he hoped to put the changes into effect before the 2006 hurricane season begins around June 1. The changes would include the following:

Trucks carrying food, water, ice, blankets, and other emergency supplies would be tracked by satellite to ensure that they arrive at disaster sites quickly and with enough equipment.

FEMA employees would be sent to shelters and other housing venues to register victims for aid, rather than rely on victims to register by telephone or the Internet.

A database of approved private contracting firms from disaster regions would be set up to remove debris and provide services faster.

Reconnaissance teams would be established to report disaster conditions to Homeland Security and FEMA operation centers within hours, and communications channels would be improved to ensure the information quickly gets to the president and Cabinet-level officials.