Bush vows probe of 'what went wrong'

WASHINGTON -- President Bush, under fire about whether he acted aggressively to help tens of thousands of desperate people left homeless, destitute, and starving by Hurricane Katrina, promised yesterday that he would lead an investigation into ''what went wrong" with the government's response and will dispatch Vice President Dick Cheney to ''assess our recovery efforts" in the region.

But two hours later, Scott McClellan, Bush's press secretary, told reporters the president would simply ''lead an effort" in the escalating catastrophe. McClellan was unclear about whether Bush would look into his own actions and vague about when and how the investigation would start, and rejected questions about whether the president should fire anyone responsible for the problems.

Meanwhile yesterday, the political fallout from the storm began in earnest. Several congressional leaders announced their own series of Katrina-related investigations. Among their topics: the government's response, alleged gas price gouging, and whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency, harshly criticized for its response, should be reconfigured again.

While House minority leader Nancy Pelosi of California demanded yesterday that Bush fire Michael Brown, FEMA's leader, House and Senate leaders took up requests for more Katrina-related aid, with Senate minority leader Harry Reid suggesting the cost could climb to more than $150 billion. Bush, who signed a $10 billion aid package last week, was expected to ask for another $40 billion from Congress soon.

During a morning Cabinet session, Bush responded to questions from reporters about whether his administration stumbled badly in response to Katrina's devastation. ''I think one of the things that people want us to do here is to play a blame game," he said. ''We got to solve problems. We're problem solvers. There'll be ample time for people to figure out what went right and what went wrong."

Bush also said he wants to find out what happened: ''What I intend to do is lead a -- to lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong, and I'll tell you why. It's very important for us to understand the relationship between the federal government and the state government and the local government when it comes to a major catastrophe."

By afternoon, however, McClellan seemed to shift the president's declaration, indicating that Bush himself would not be directly involved.

The president ''will lead an effort to make sure that there is a thorough analysis," McClellan said. McClellan did not answer basic questions about the investigation, such as whether it would be conducted by a White House task force or an independent review panel, which would probably be more critical.

In any case, McClellan said, any investigation should come later because the White House is focused on the plight of the destitute victims in the ravaged areas of the Gulf Coast.

The mixed signals underscore Bush's difficult balancing act as he tries to manage the greatest crisis of his presidency. He must answer questions about whether a stalled federal response to the hurricane played a role in the deaths of thousands of people, while also trying to show that he is in charge of the recovery effort. At one point in yesterday's highly contentious briefing, one reporter asked McClellan, ''Where does the buck stop in this administration?"

''The president," he responded.

The question about the nature of an investigation is a familiar one at the White House. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House initially resisted an independent investigation, but eventually gave in to political pressure and agreed to cooperate.

Senator Susan M. Collins, a Maine Republican who plans to lead a congressional probe of the government's response to Katrina, said an investigation should happen sooner rather than later. ''If our system did such a poor job when there was no enemy, how would the federal, state, and local governments have coped with a terrorist attack that provided no advance warning and that was intent on causing as much death and destruction as possible?" Collins said.

Examining the response to Hurricane Katrina is likely to focus on whether Bush and other federal officials bungled a crucial chance to order military and other federal assets into New Orleans more quickly, a move that could have brought help to thousands of people who died for lack of medical care, fell ill, or went days without food and water. Many residents and entire families who sought short-term shelter at the New Orleans convention center and the city's Superdome said they endured squalid, hellish conditions for almost five days, expecting federal help that never came.

Critics -- including members of his own party -- say Bush's initial response and federal help were inadequate, and Bush himself said the results were ''unacceptable."

One of the most discussed questions, however, is Brown's admission that he didn't know that some 20,000 evacuees were huddled for days at the convention center in unsanitary conditions, without provisions, police protection from armed thugs, or crews to remove bodies of people who died waiting for help. Brown told CNN last week that he was ''surprised" to learn about those evacuees on Thursday, and ''we didn't know that the city had used that as a staging area."

Brown said that he relied ''on the state to give us that information" and that ''I learned about it from the news reports."

In an open letter to Bush published on Sunday, the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper criticized the president and the administration, and insisted that the entire leadership of FEMA ''should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially." Yesterday, Pelosi agreed that FEMA's leadership ''should be changed immediately."

At yesterday's news briefing, McClellan was repeatedly pressed on whether Bush would consider dismissing officials such as Brown; in his first on-the-scene visit on Thursday, Bush -- using Brown's nickname -- said, ''Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Yesterday, a reporter asked whether Bush still believed that, but McClellan frequently repeated Bush's comment that he wouldn't play the ''blame game."

Bush said yesterday that Cheney will go to the region tomorrow to make sure the relief effort is running. ''He'll work with [Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff and others to make sure that we remove any obstacles, bureaucratic obstacles that may be preventing us from achieving our goals," Bush said. ''In other words, bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people."

In a Pentagon briefing yesterday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pledged their own investigation. A key question that must be answered, Myers said, is whether the military needs greater authority to move trucks, helicopters, and soldiers into place before civilian disaster response agencies such as FEMA request them.

Rumsfeld said that, given the public's lack of confidence in disaster relief in Katrina's aftermath, it was a ''fair" question to ask whether local, state, and federal authorities could handle the effects of a terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction. ''The government will be addressing that question in a serious way, as we all should," he said.

On Monday, former president George H.W. Bush defended his son on CNN's ''Larry King Live," saying: ''Anytime there's a crisis people want to blame someone. . . . There was one particularly vicious comment that the president didn't care [for], was insensitive on ethnicity." The elder Bush was apparently referring to a remark by rapper Kanye West that ''George Bush doesn't care about black people," made during a live NBC-TV telethon for hurricane victims. TV news reports seemed to show a large portion of stranded, destitute storm victims were African-American.

But the president may not have been helped by a comment his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush,, made on National Public Radio the same day.

After meeting with New Orleans evacuees at a makeshift shelter in Houston's Astrodome, the former first lady, who lives in Texas and Maine, said: ''What I'm hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, this, this is working very well for them."

Nina Easton, Susan Milligan, and Bryan Bender of the Globe Washington bureau contributed. Wire service material was included.