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WHAT DID THE President know and when did he know it? That Watergate-era phrase may be a cliche from overuse, but it's worth asking of this White House and its prime occupant. The topic this time is the Katrina disaster, or more precisely, what President Bush and his inner circle knew as the water and wind swept across the Gulf Coast. Clearly, nothing was done as the storm hit New Orleans, causing the greatest natural disaster in modern times with at least 1,300 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. The hurricane slammed a famously vulnerable city, yet preparations and later...

WASHINGTON - Former federal disaster chief Michael Brown, the face of the government's listless response to Hurricane Katrina, said Friday he told top Bush officials the day the storm howled ashore of massive flooding in New Orleans and warned "we were realizing our worst nightmare." More defiant than defensive, Brown told senators he dealt directly with White House officials the day of the Aug. 29 storm, including chief of staff Andrew Card and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin. He also said the Homeland Security Department was among a half-dozen government agencies that received regular briefings that day from him...

Navy took Dome buses for family, panel told Stranded residents of New Orleans weren't the only ones trying to get out of Dodge after the floodwaters began overtaking large sections of the city. A Louisiana National Guard official said that Navy officials, pretending to be contractors, appropriated buses that were on their way to the Superdome the Thursday after Hurricane Katrina struck. The buses were used to rescue family members of Navy personnel hunkered down at the Fairmont Hotel. "The bus would come up to the checkpoints, these people, who weren't supposed to be taking the buses, come up and...

Here we go.

WASHINGTON Senators needled Governor Kathleen Blanco today over state evacuation plans that left sick and elderly patients in nursing homes as Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast. Senator Susan Collins, head of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the majority of nursing homes did not evacuate, and people died because of it. At issue was earlier testimony by Louisiana's transportation secretary who told Senate investigators that the state did nothing to fulfill its responsibility of ensuring evacuation plans are in place for at-risk populations. At least 40 bodies, many of them elderly patients, were found...

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin testified before Congress again Wednesday on the response to Hurricane Katrina. Nagin answered questions on what the city needs from the federal government to continue the cleanup process. He told them that New Orleans' greatest needs are temporary housing and help for small businesses. On Tuesday the committee looked at documents that showed Nagin opened up the Convention Center but failed to provide enough food and water. On Wednesday the committee asked more questions about the incident. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told Nagin, "We can't find any evidence of a request from the city...

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...

A Louisiana grand jury will investigate several controversies involving police in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, including the theft of cars from a Cadillac dealership and the shooting deaths of two men suspected of firing on contractors. The grand jury will be the first impaneled here since Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29. District Attorney Eddie Jordan, whose offices were flooded in the storm, announced the investigations Wednesday from his temporary headquarters in a former nightclub. More than 200 vehicles _ including 88 new Cadillacs and Chevrolets _ were taken from a dealership amid the chaos after the hurricane hit....

Federal officials announced Thursday a $1.5 billion plan to rebuild the levee damage, fix flaws being found in the design of the system, and to make the entire New Orleans levee system stronger than ever before. Governor Kathleen Blanco's testimony before Congress on Wednesday might have played a part in securing that promise from President Bush. Political analysts say those three hours in the hot seat just might be a turning point in the governor's career. In testimony, Blanco told Congress, "Let me say we evacuated. We had mandatory evacuations. We got 1.2 million people out. We ended up saving...

Statistics released by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals suggest that fewer than half of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black, and that whites died at the highest rate of all races in New Orleans. Liberals in the aftermath of the storm were quick to allege that the Bush administration delayed its response to the catastrophe because most of the victims were black. Damu Smith, founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, in September said that the federal government "ignored us, they forgot about us ... because we look like we look." Nation of Islam leader Louis...

Her testimony will be live on the Internet at www.katrina.house.gov according to Shreveport Times.

House Panel Subpoenas Rumsfeld on Katrina By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago A House committee investigating the government's response to Hurricane Katrina issued a subpoena Wednesday to force Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to turn over documents but stopped short of sending a similar legal demand to the White House. The subpoena commands Rumsfeld to produce internal records and communications about the Pentagon's response to the Aug. 29 storm, including efforts to send supplies to victims, stabilize public safety and mobilize active duty forces in the Gulf Coast. It requires the Pentagon to deliver the documents,...

We've seen the 100,000 pages of e-mails, and now we're about to hear from Governor Blanco herself about the state's response to Katrina. Governor Blanco will testify Wednesday before the House Committee on Hurricane Katrina. This testimony comes in the last week Congress is in session this year. Governor Blanco will be speaking to the committee looking at the state's response and what the federal government can learn from it, but one committee member tells 9 News what the governor has to say may also affect whether help will come before Congress adjourns. Governor Blanco's Deputy Chief of Staff Kim...

The popular perception that African-Americans living in New Orleans were disproportionately victimized by the government's botched Hurricane Katrina rescue effort turns out not to be true - at least according to preliminary death statistics released by the state of Louisiana. On Wednesday, Congress heard dramatic testimony from black Katrina survivors, who complained that racism drove the federal rescue efforts and resulted in an unnecessarily high number of African-American deaths. "People were allowed to die," storm survivor Leah Hodges testified, telling a House panel that black residents of New Orleans had been victims of "genocide and ethnic cleansing." But preliminary figures...

The victim mentality of New Orleans was on full display, aided and abetted by race hustlers, at Congressional hearings about response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, giving the rest of the country yet another reason not to care about what happens to Louisiana. This mentality, that somehow some insidious force beyond the individual’s control causes misery in his life and keeps him in a disadvantaged position in society, is a major reason why Louisiana in general, and New Orleans in particular, are among the poorest areas in the country. Ordinarily, the fruit of this attitude, that a person’s inability to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Black survivors of Hurricane Katrina said Tuesday that racism contributed to the slow disaster response, at times likening themselves in emotional congressional testimony to victims of genocide and the Holocaust.The comparison is inappropriate, according to Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla."Not a single person was marched into a gas chamber and killed," Miller told the survivors."They died from abject neglect," retorted community activist Leah Hodges. "We left body bags behind."Angry evacuees described being trapped in temporary shelters where one New Orleans resident said she was "one sunrise from being consumed by maggots and flies." Another woman said military troops...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — One of the key figures in Louisiana's response to Hurricane Katrina came under fire from state lawmakers, who questioned the time it took the national guard to reach disaster areas and the reason that supply trucks stocked with food and water never made it to storm victims. The chief target of the questioning Tuesday was state Adjutant General Bennett Landreneau, director of the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness who is responsible for deploying the 14,000 members of the Louisiana National Guard. "What we watched in this disaster has disturbed a lot of...

BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco has asked for more time to deliver documents to congressional committees about her office's role in Hurricane Katrina preparations and emergency response to the storm. The delay would mean it could be December before internal documents reflecting what was going on behind the scenes are made public. "They have asked for the kitchen sink, which is OK," said Blanco executive counsel Terry Ryder. "But given the fact that we are dealing with Katrina and Rita right now, we have asked for 90 days more." Blanco got a request for information on Sept. 30 from...

Where were the buses? No image of the post-Katrina calamity is stronger than the tens of thousands of urban storm survivors awaiting rescue for days. Stranded residents at the Superdome, Convention Center, a Metairie interstate intersection and a Chalmette port grew restless and combative as temperatures soared, people died around them and getting basic necessities -- food and water -- became a daily battle.

National Academies to Probe New Orleans Levee Failures By Tom Ichniowski Army Assistant Secretary Woodley says study will take about eight months Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has instructed the Army to convene an panel of outside specialists to study why levees and floodwalls around New Orleans failed in the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina. Under Rumsfeld's directive, announced Oct. 19, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey will ask the National Academies of Science and Engineering to assemble a panel from a variety of disciplines to study whether levee or floodwall failures occurred because of design, construction, operation or maintenance factors, soil...