Posted on 02/01/2006 6:21:17 PM PST by Indy Pendance
WASHINGTON - The White House and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff failed to provide decisive action when Hurricane Katrina struck, congressional investigators said Wednesday in a stinging assessment of slow federal relief efforts.
The White House had no clear chain of command in place, investigators with the Government Accountability Office said, laying much of the blame on President Bush for not designating a single official to coordinate federal decision-making for the Aug. 29 storm. Bush has accepted responsibility for the government's halting response, but for the most part then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, who quit days after the hurricane hit, has been the public face of the failures.
"That's up to the president of the United States," GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker told reporters after being asked whether Chertoff should have been the lead official during the emergency.
"It could have been Secretary Chertoff" or someone on the White House staff, Walker added. "That's up to the president."
The report, which the congressional agency said was preliminary, also singled out Chertoff for several shortcomings. Chertoff has largely escaped direct criticism for the government's poor preparations and slow rescue efforts.
The Homeland Security Department angrily responded to the GAO report, calling the preliminary findings a publicity stunt riddled with errors. Homeland Security oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency and issued a national plan last year for coordinating federal disaster response with state and local agencies.
In their nine-page report, investigators noted that they had urged the Clinton White House to appoint a single disaster coordinator more than a decade ago after the destruction wrought by Hurricane Andrew. Still, they said, the Bush administration continued the failure with the lack of a clear chain of command and that led to internal confusion when Katrina struck.
"In the absence of timely and decisive action and clear leadership responsibility and accountability, there were multiple chains of command," the report found.
The assessment — the first of several reports about the response to Katrina — noted that Chertoff authorized additional federal assistance to overwhelmed state and local resources on Aug. 30, a day after the storm hit. But Chertoff did not specifically classify the storm as a catastrophic disaster, which would have triggered a faster response.
"As a result, the federal response generally was to wait for the affected states to request assistance," the report found.
In another stab at Chertoff, the report called for Homeland Security to provide stronger advance training and planning for future disasters — including taking better advantage of the military's ability to rescue and evacuate victims, provide supplies and assess damage.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke called the report misleading because federal officials and supplies were already at the Gulf Coast before Katrina hit. He said Chertoff did not activate a government plan for dealing with catastrophes because it is used only to respond to unexpected disasters.
The report "displays a significant misunderstanding of core aspects of the Katrina response that could have easily been corrected in the most basic conversations with" Homeland Security leaders, Knocke said.
Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who is leading a special House investigation of the Katrina response, said the GAO findings will be included in his own panel's conclusions, which are due Feb. 15.
"I'm very hopeful that our final report will answer a lot of questions the American people have," Davis said. "The most obvious being: How could our government fail so badly?"
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, in Washington to testify before a separate Senate-led Katrina inquiry, said he was not surprised at the report's conclusions.
"One of the big challenges in this event was the chain of command issue," Nagin told The Associated Press. "And for something that was a multistate event, something that pretty much overwhelmed local government, we need to figure out how to do this better in the future."
However, a transcript of an Aug. 28 briefing as Katrina bore down on the region indicates Gulf Coast state officials were satisfied with the federal assistance they had so far received.
"I want to say thank you very much for all that you're doing," Louisiana emergency preparedness deputy director Col. Jeff Smith told Homeland Security and FEMA officials during the call, in which President Bush also participated, according to the transcript obtained by The Associated Press. "I think that at this point in time our coordination is as good as it can be."
Asked by FEMA's Brown if Louisiana had any unmet needs at that point, or if there were anything else the federal government could provide, Smith said: "Mike, no."
Until he was relieved of his onsite duties on Sept. 9, Brown was the top federal officer in the Gulf Coast. But GAO concluded that his authority was unclear, leading to an "incomplete understanding of roles and responsibilities" for other federal agencies.
The report praised the Coast Guard, the Pentagon, the U.S. Postal Service and the National Finance Center for taking a "lean forward" approach to preparing for and responding to Katrina.
An emergency response department that needs approval from a higher authority before it can act can hardly be at peak efficiency.
In one of the initial interviews with Brown,it was clear that although he stated there were problems coordinating with Nagin and Blanco,he was also hindered by the reporting relationship with his department and Homeland Security.
Unfortunately,it seems that so many people spend much time blaming anyone but themselves,their party,their country,their religion,their ethnic or racial group for whatever problem that comes up that very little is done to prevent it from happening again and again and again.
"Chertoff has yet to impress me in any area but trying to blaming him for state and local problems is flat wrong."
Agree he has been less than impressive. A typical career government hack.
I would have preferred somebody more in the mold of Rumsfeld or Guliani. Seems like a job for a top military type--line, not staff.
"scratchin my head...wasn't it breached levees that caused the damage, not the storm itself (in LA) ?"
terrorists within our own country blew them up, ask Nagin
lol
Only if you believe that the Federal government has primary responsibility for regional emergencies.
Maybe the deer-in-the-headlight look is because this popular swing towards federalizing every aspect of American society is a relatively new phenomenon.
They paid with their lives.
Nagin on TV now lying thru his teeth and saying that the Superdome had supplies stockpiled there for emergencies.
Morning Peach,
You and I both know "ragin nagin" was set up by Bush and those compassionate evil repubs.
It is the government's fault for not training him how to make sound and timely decisions during a natural disaster.
I for one believe that it was Bush's covert use of the "HAARP," technological advanced high tech weather alteration machine.
It was directed at destroying the ninth ward and it's minority inhabitants.
Just another example of someone trying to keep someone down in life.
When the smoke clears, it will be ted fatboy kennedy and j Traitorous skeery, uncovering the truth about those repub inflicted atrocities.
Peach, I hope you liked my "satire" and any sane reasonable person, can deduce the truth except commmie-democrats/brain dead sheeple.
I just wanted to throw my oppossum in the ring for a few rounds.
As I See It,
NSNR-THM
Morning CedarDave,
Excellent words of truth spoken. (100,000,000,000% correct.)
Tell It LIke It Is,
NSNR-THM
Good morning, No Surrender. Yes - I did like your satire! LOL
Morning VM,
I remember one of the so called civil rights leaders stating a while back. "What if you are born without any boot-straps to pull yourself up with???"
The DNC plantation cotton pickers always will play the role of a victim.
Word from the street, if hildabeast(ac/dc) were to become POTUS, all us conservative blacks&whites will be picking her cotton.
Self reliance and independence are "persona non grata" according to demo commies and their ilk.
As I See It,
NSNR-THM
Hey Peach,
Thank you.
Cordially,
NSNR-THM
Thanks for your appreciative words. I was responding to a newbie who turned out to be a troll. I disregarded the first rule in dealing with trolls: Do NOT feed the troll! He got ZOTTED and the thread got some common sense responses.
Good one!! And your satiric response to Peach too!!
This report is idiotic.
The president is not permitted by law to displace a governor. If he had done so, he would have violated the authority of states versus the federal government.
This is a no win. Had he done so, his enemies would have nailed him. He followed the law, and his enemies try to nail him.
I detest liberals.
Every level of government failed. All need to share blame. I don't live in Louisiana, or New Orleans and don't pay taxes there so i'm more worried about federal mistakes and seeing that DHS handles its next major crisis in a much more competent manner. I'm paying for the agency and want to see it perform as intended. It was created to handle emergencies and came off looking like what it was. A very large, slow moving, and confused government bureaucracy. At the very minimum a clear chain of command needed to be in place and somebody with a better background than horse shows needed to be in charge of FEMA. Communications issues also must be resolved. I was very disapointed that little had been done to fix the tremendous problems emergency personel had communicating with each other and with government officials after 9/11 had not been resolved by Katrina.
Same old liberal song and dance, What did Bush know, and when did he know it.
You can rail against federalism all you want, and I am personally against almost all aspects of it, but regional response to large scale disasters is probbaly the one area where pre-plpanned coordination between the FedGov and the States makes sense, esspecially in this new era of asyymetric attack by internationally based terrorist NGO's and perhaps, their state sponsors.
If the constitution should be amended to accomplish this, so be it. Regional planning and coordination has always been a weak area of both the federal and most state constitutions, IMO.
And I do believe that Chertoff's particularly clueless look is unique to ineffective bureaucrats.
Bottom line. People were told to leave 2days before landfal and they did not leave. Their fault. End of story.
In news of related relevance: grass grows.
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