New allegations highlight the bureaucratic fumbles that delayed vital help for hurricane-hit New Orleans

Red Tape
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Wednesday 14 September 2005

New allegations highlight the bureaucratic fumbles that delayed vital help for hurricane-hit New Orleans

The Bush administration is continuing to face heavy criticism over the sluggish response of federal agencies, principally the departments of Homeland Security and Defense, to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

New allegations continue to surface that offers of personnel and material assistance to New Orleans and other areas affected by the storm were held up by bureaucratic red tape. There are also indications that a proposed congressional investigation into government responses to the disaster could itself become bogged down in jurisdictional wrangles and partisan infighting.

One example of the criticisms that are still continuing to surface regarding the Bush administration's slow response to the damage wrought by Katrina comes from Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico and former secretary of Energy under Bill Clinton. Richardson told NEWSWEEK that on Monday, the day Katrina hit New Orleans, he immediately authorized his state National Guard commander to dispatch 400 New Mexico guardsmen to the disaster area to help out Louisiana state forces. But according to a state official, a hold-up at the Pentagon meant that the New Mexico guardsmen did not actually fly to Louisiana until Friday morning, four days after Richardson authorized them to go.

Richardson said that when he asked his guard commander to explain the delay, he was told the New Mexico troops were not being allowed to travel to the region because of "federal paperwork," which the National Guard bureau at the Pentagon insisted had to be completed. According to Richardson, this paperwork included various authorizations and certifications as well as "transportation waivers." "I remember saying to [the New Mexico guard commander] it's going to be too late" by the time state guardsmen reached the disaster scene, Richardson recalled.

An aide to the governor said that military officials later explained that the troops were not allowed to move until they had been assigned a specific mission to pursue once they got to the disaster region, and the mission assignment did not come through from the Pentagon until late Thursday. A spokesman for the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon said the bureau worked "as quickly as possible" to move troops to the disaster area as part of "an orderly process."

National Guard troops from other states were not the only would-be rescue and recovery officials whose movement to the disaster scene appears to have been impeded by bureaucratic fumbling. According to a knowledgeable federal source, dozens of officers from one of the Homeland Security Department's own bureaus were also inexplicably delayed in being transported to the region. According to the source, investigators working for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the plainclothes detective division of Homeland Security also known as ICE, were also put on standby to fly to the Gulf Coast within hours of the hurricane making landfall. However, the orders for the ICE agents to move to the region did not come from Homeland Security headquarters until a couple of days passed, leaving investigators puzzled about the reason for the delay.

Late last week, Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was removed from his temporary appointment as top federal official on the scene of the disaster. On Monday, amid questions about his qualifications for the post-he had previously been a "commissioner" of the International Arabian Horse Association and had no background in emergency management-Brown resigned as FEMA chief and from his position as Homeland Security undersecretary. In a public appearance Tuesday, President Bush acknowledged the faltering response by authorities to Katrina and said: "To the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

Additional questions are being raised, however, as to whether Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who is supposed to be the president's chief adviser on responses to both natural disasters and man-made catastrophes like terror attacks, was also slow in responding to the multiple crises caused by Katrina. According to a report today by the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, under an order issued by President Bush in 2003, Chertoff, as Homeland Security chief, was in charge of managing the national response to a natural catastrophe. But Knight Ridder cited an internal government memo that indicated that Chertoff did not designate Brown as the Principal Federal Official on the disaster scene until Tuesday, Aug. 30, about 36 hours after the hurricane hit Mississippi and Louisiana. Knight Ridder also suggested that the memo implied Chertoff might have been "confused about his lead role in disaster response."

Senior Homeland Security officials insisted to NEWSWEEK that Knight Ridder's reporters had misread Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo and that the newspaper story contained "significant inaccuracies." According to the department's version, on Saturday, Aug. 27, before the hurricane reached the Gulf Coast, President Bush had signed an order declaring the storm an "incident of national significance," thereby formally triggering the "national response plan," a governmentwide scheme for dealing with any kind of national catastrophe that the Bush administration prepared in response to the 9/11 attacks. According to officials, Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo was only a reminder to other agencies that the president had triggered the plan several days earlier. Officials also said that Knight Ridder had misinterpreted the memo when they suggested that Chertoff might have been confused about his role as the leader of government responses to the disaster. The officials said that when Chertoff's memo talked about his department's role in "assisting" in responding to Katrina-rather than leading the response to the storm-the memo was only referring to the department's role in "assisting" a White House Task Force that had been set up to consider long-term plans for helping areas affected by Katrina to recover and rebuild after the storm.

Aides to Chertoff said that the Homeland Security secretary has been concerned for some time that the department's assorted and far-flung components did not always work well together to respond urgently to crises, and that Chertoff declared a few weeks before Katrina that one of his priorities was trying to get various agencies in his own department to work together more efficiently.

Even before it gets under way, a congressional investigation that is supposed to examine how and where government responses to Katrina failed also seems to be beset by jurisdictional and political squabbles. Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican from Long Island who is in line to become next chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and, hence, a major player in any legislative-branch inquiry, said that several potential obstacles face congressional leaders as they try to set up their investigation.

For a start, King said, Democrats have vowed to boycott the investigation entirely. In a statement last week, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi demanded an independent 9/11-style commission be set up to investigate the response to Katrina and said that she would not appoint any Democrats to serve on the Senate-House Katrina inquiry that the GOP leadership says it is going to set up. "The partisan proposal that Republican leaders outlined yesterday is completely unacceptable. House Democrats will not participate in a sham that is just the latest example of congressional Republicans being the foxes guarding the president's hen house," Pelosi complained.

Republican infighting could also hamper any inquiry. King noted that while the House Homeland Security Committee has jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security, its agencies, and any actions or preparations it might make relating to man-made catastrophes like terror attacks, the House Transportation Committee, headed by Rep. Don Young, has jurisdiction over natural disasters. Hence, there is a possibility of jockeying between the two committees over control of the Katrina investigation, if it ever gets going. King said that as he understands it, what GOP leaders want to do is to set up a joint inquiry committee, like the panels that examined the Iran-contra affair and 9/11 background. But in this case, the Senate end of the committee would hold hearings under Senate chairmanship with some House members present, and the House members of the committee would do likewise. King said House GOP leaders have indicated they would like any congressional investigation to be completed-and to produce its final report-by Feb. 15 of next year, which doesn't leave much time for the infighting that is currently bogging the down the whole process.