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Messages Depict Disarray in Federal Katrina Response
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Chertoff is scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Katrina committee, his first extended public appearance on Capitol Hill regarding the disaster.
A spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the investigation, declined to discuss the documents yesterday, saying members will ask Chertoff about them Wednesday.
"Davis wants to know if Michael Brown had it right. Does Secretary Chertoff agree that FEMA has grown emaciated, that its budget's been hijacked and that it's been organizationally undermined since Congress folded it into DHS?" Davis spokesman David Marin said.
Asked about the e-mails, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke cautioned: "It is extraordinarily difficult to extract a clear understanding of everything that was going on from a single e-mail, or even a few e-mails." As reviews continue, he said, "We'll undoubtedly deconflict some individual accounts."
The documents show a quick breakdown in communications after the hurricane hit Aug. 29. With telephone and wireless reception spotty, FEMA's operations center resorted to e-mailing Brown the next afternoon to ask him to call Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England.
As late as Sept. 1, the head of the military's Hurricane Katrina Task Force, Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, was unable to reach Brown and asked FEMA officials to track down his satellite phone.
"He [Honore] wants to speak with Mike very badly," FEMA aides wrote at 1 p.m. Three hours later, the reply came from a Brown aide: "Not here in [Mississippi.] Is in [Louisiana], as far as I know."
The first FEMA request to the Defense Department was not reported in Brown's e-mails until 10 a.m. on Sept. 2 -- nearly three days later -- seeking "full logistical support to the Katrina disaster in all [emergency] declared states."
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) requested 40,000 U.S. troops on Aug. 31.
Brown's e-mails show that FEMA leaders acted on information that conflicts with the timeline released by Homeland Security a week after the hurricane. Altshuler's e-mail of Aug. 28, for example, referred to White House pressure to create the interagency team that would include FEMA, the Pentagon, the State Department and others. The group began meeting Aug. 26, according to the department timeline.
Knocke said that the group convened Aug. 29, but that individuals received updates earlier.
