Documents Highlight Bush-Blanco Standoff

Blanco has said she asked Bush on Aug. 29, the day of Katrina's landfall, "for everything you've got," requesting 40,000 troops on Aug. 31. The president deployed 7,000 active-duty troops on Sept. 3. Thousands more National Guard troops were already on the ground.

But White House officials were concerned enough about what Brown and military leaders have testified to Congress was a lack of "unified command" to bring state Guard troops and active-duty federal troops under a single commander. They ultimately declined to force the issue over Blanco's objection and worked with existing command authorities.

But Blanco's reluctance stemmed from several factors. According to documents and aides, her team was not familiar with relevant laws and procedures, believed the change would have disrupted Guard law enforcement operations in New Orleans and mistrusted the Bush team, which they saw as preoccupied with its own public relations problems and blame shifting.

Within 30 minutes of receiving Rove's message on Aug. 31, Ryder and Blanco Chief of Staff Andrew Kopplin were briefed by Col. Jeff Smith, a senior state emergency preparedness official, advising them of the National Response Plan and Incident Command System, basic components of the Department of Homeland Security's playbook that lay out the chain of emergency authority.

By 2:20 p.m., Blanco called Bush, saying she needed additional resources but not federalization, according to Ryder's notes. Instead, she said an emerging federal/state partnership was jelling and asked Bush instead to commit to an arrival date for troops.

"We don't know necessarily what 'unified' command, or what do these words mean," the Blanco aide said. "The governor thinks that by that time, the command structure that is coming together will work."

The next day, on a Bush visit, administration officials ganged up on Blanco out of the presence of staff members and tried to bully her into changing her mind, they said. Blanco requested 24 hours.

Ryder's notes report that on the night of Sept. 1, Army Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, advised Blanco, as an aide put it, "You don't want to do that. You lose control, and you don't get one more boot on the ground."

Later, Blum told Ryder he came "under political duress" for his opinion and used military slang to describe an out-of-control situation, according to Ryder's notes.

At about the same time, Blanco communications director Bob Mann spoke to an aide to Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), who said Democrats were eagerly "mobilizing big-time to push back on criticism of the state."

"Bush's numbers are low, they are getting pummeled by the media for their inept response to Katrina and are actively working to make us the scapegoats," Mann wrote to Ryder. Mann said that Mike McCurry, President Bill Clinton's press secretary, was predicting "a full-blown P.R. disaster-scandal" for Bush by the weekend and that Clinton FEMA chief James Lee Witt was offering to help Blanco. Witt was hired the next day.

With all that in the background, by the night of Sept. 2, relations between the Bush and Blanco teams were tense. At 11:20 p.m., Blanco received a fax from the White House asking that she sign a letter requesting a federal takeover. Bush Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said the president planned a news conference to announce the changes the next morning.

At 8:56 a.m., just before Bush stepped onto the White House lawn, Blanco called Card and aides faxed a rejection letter.

The president did not mention the dispute with Blanco in his remarks, and deployed troops using existing command structures.

Blanco aides remained convinced that the White House was trying to take credit for a situation in New Orleans that had by then improved. In hindsight, Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher said, the lesson to states is that they must be ready to take care of themselves and "not rely on anyone else."

But Vitter took another lesson, saying that in catastrophic incidents the legal and practical problems of calling in active-duty military must be straightened out "so people don't mess around for three days and then come to some understanding, which is what essentially happened here."