Hiding the incompetence as confidential.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/politics/25katrina.html?
hp&ex=1138251600&en=8d29a3cd95560931&ei=5094&partner=homepage

White House Declines to Provide Storm Papers 

By ERIC LIPTON             Published: January 25, 2006
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - The Bush administration, citing the confidentiality 
of executive branch communications, said Tuesday that it did not plan to 
turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White 
House officials available for sworn testimony before two Congressional 
committees investigating the storm response.

The White House this week also formally notified Representative Richard H. 
Baker, Republican of Louisiana, that it would not support his legislation 
creating a federally financed reconstruction program for the state that 
would bail out homeowners and mortgage lenders. Many Louisiana officials 
consider the bill crucial to recovery, but administration officials said 
the state would have to use community development money appropriated by 
Congress.

The White House's stance on storm-related documents, along with slow or 
incomplete responses by other agencies, threatens to undermine efforts to 
identify what went wrong, Democrats on the committees said Tuesday.

"There has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it 
impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we 
have a responsibility to do," Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of 
Connecticut, said at Tuesday's hearing of the Senate committee 
investigating the response. His spokeswoman said he would ask for a 
subpoena for documents and testimony if the White House did not comply. 

In response to questions later from a reporter, the deputy White House 
spokesman, Trent Duffy, said the administration had declined requests to 
provide testimony by Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; 
Mr. Card's deputy, Joe Hagin; Frances Fragos Townsend, the domestic 
security adviser; and her deputy, Ken Rapuano.

Mr. Duffy said the administration had also declined to provide storm-
related e-mail correspondence and other communications involving White 
House staff members. Mr. Rapuano has given briefings to the committees, but 
the sessions were closed to the public and were not considered formal 
testimony.

"The White House and the administration are cooperating with both the House 
and Senate," Mr. Duffy said. "But we have also maintained the president's 
ability to get advice and have conversations with his top advisers that 
remain confidential."

Yet even Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, objected when 
administration officials who were not part of the president's staff said 
they could not testify about communications with the White House.

"I completely disagree with that practice," Ms. Collins, chairwoman of the 
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in an 
interview Tuesday.

According to Mr. Lieberman, Michael D. Brown, the former director of the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency, cited such a restriction on Monday, as 
agency lawyers had advised him not to say whether he had spoken to 
President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney or to comment on the substance 
of any conversations with any other high-level White House officials.

Nevertheless, both Ms. Collins and Representative Thomas M. Davis III, a 
Virginia Republican who is leading the House inquiry, said that despite 
some frustration with the administration's response, they remained 
confident that the investigations would produce meaningful results.

Other members of the committees said the executive branch communications 
were essential because it had become apparent that one of the most 
significant failures was the apparent lack of complete engagement by the 
White House and the federal government in the days immediately before and 
after the storm.

"When you have a natural disaster, the president needs to be hands-on, and 
if anyone in his staff gets in the way, he needs to push them away," said 
Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican and member of 
the House investigating committee. "The response was pathetic."

Even before the House and Senate investigations began, Democrats called for 
the appointment of an independent commission, like the one set up after the 
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to investigate the response to the most costly 
natural disaster in United States history. The 9/11 Commission, after 
extensive negotiations, questioned Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and received 
sworn testimony from Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser.

"Our fears are turning out to be accurate," Representative Henry A. Waxman, 
Democrat of California, said Tuesday. "The Bush administration is 
stonewalling the Congress."

Mr. Duffy, along with officials from the Departments of Defense and 
Homeland Security, said that although not every request had been met, the 
administration had provided an enormous amount of detailed information 
about nearly every aspect of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

The Department of Defense, for example, has provided 18 officials for 
testimony, and 57 others have been interviewed by Congressional staff 
members, said Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman. It has also turned 
over an estimated 240,000 pages of documents.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said his 
agency, which oversees FEMA, had been similarly responsive, providing 60 
officials as witnesses and producing 300,000 pages of documents. 

But the White House and other federal agencies have been less helpful, 
members of the investigating committees said, particularly the Pentagon and 
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is the subject of the sole 
subpoena issued so far.

"We have been trying - without success - to obtain Secretary Rumsfeld's 
cooperation for months," Representative Charlie Melancon, Democrat of 
Louisiana, said in a letter to Representative Davis on Monday. "The 
situation is not acceptable."

Mr. Davis, in a written response to Mr. Melancon on Tuesday, said he felt 
that the Pentagon, after the subpoena, had largely honored the committee's 
requests.

The Congressional investigations began in September, shortly after 
Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, flooding New Orleans, devastating 
much of the rest of the region and causing more than $100 billion in 
damage. 

Both of the committees are rushing to try to complete their investigations -
 the House by Feb. 15, and the Senate by the middle of March - in part 
because of the approaching Atlantic hurricane season, which starts on June 
1.

The separate action this week by the Bush administration to oppose an 
effort to create what would have been called the Louisiana Recovery 
Corporation evoked great disappointment among state officials.

Mr. Baker's bill would have bought out owners of ruined homes, offering 
them at least 60 percent of their pre-storm equity, while also giving 
mortgage companies 60 percent of their loans on damaged properties. The 
bonds needed for the project would have been paid off by selling developers 
federally acquired land. 

"The Baker bill as a tool was very efficient in terms of helping people 
sell out, or clear title to the land," said Sean Reilly, a member of the 
Louisiana Recovery Authority. "We're going to have to go back to the 
drawing board and do the best with the tools we have."

Donald E. Powell, the Bush administration's Gulf Coast recovery 
coordinator, said in a statement that the government was prepared to help 
victims in other ways.

"We share the common vision, the common objective of Congressman Baker, to 
assist uninsured homeowners outside the flood plain," Mr. Powell said. 

Mr. Powell's spokeswoman, D. J. Nordquist, said the administration was open 
to discussion if the community development money turned out to be 
insufficient.

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