[StBernard] Reality check: Who said what about Katrina?

[Westley Annis]

Reality check: Who said what about Katrina? 
New video contradicts former FEMA head's recent statements

By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit
Updated: 7:35 p.m. ET March 2, 2006


NEW ORLEANS - NBC News has now obtained the videotape of a key private
meeting between federal and state officials on Monday Aug. 29, the day
Hurricane Katrina hit. Though Michael Brown has been critical of President
Bush, the tape shows Brown praising the president that day, saying they'd
already talked twice.

"He's asking questions about reports of breaches," Brown says in the video.
"He's asking about hospitals. He's really engaged, and he's asking a lot of
really good questions."

Yet, Brown told NBC's Brian Williams last week that he repeatedly and
emphatically warned how bad Katrina would be, but no one listened.

"I want to jam up supply lines," Brown said last week. "I want to cut the
bureaucratic red tape. I want it, balls to the wall was the phrase that I
used, in doing everything we could."

Tapes and transcripts don't reflect that colorful expression, but Brown does
repeatedly sound the alarm and push for action. In a briefing on Sunday Aug.
28, Brown can be heard saying, "My gut tells me ... I told you guys, my gut
was, this is a bad one and a big one."

At the next day's briefing, Brown says, "I want everyone to recognize - I
know I'm preaching to the choir to everybody here - how serious the
situation remains."

As for the president, on Thursday Sept 1, four days after Katrina hit, he
said, "I don't think anybody anticipated a breach of the levees." 

On a conference call, which President Bush participated in as Katrina
approached, the director of the National Hurricane Center, Max Mayfield,
said: "I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now
whether the levees will be topped or not, but that's obviously a very, very
grave concern."

Today, Mayfield told NBC News that he warned only that the levees might be
topped, not breached, and that on the many conference calls he monitored,
"Nobody talked about the possibility of a levee breach or failure until
after it happened."

In the Aug. 29 tape obtained by NBC News from Bush supporters, a senior
White House official asks Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco how the levees are
holding up. 

"We keep getting reports in some places that maybe water is coming over the
levees," Blanco says on the tape. "We've heard a report, unconfirmed. I
think we have not breached the levee. We have not breached the levee at this
point in time."

We now know that an hour before Blanco's assessment, a FEMA official alerted
superiors to reports that at least one levee had failed - information that
didn't reach the White House until almost midnight.

Lisa Myers is NBC's senior investigative correspondent.


C 2006 MSNBC.com

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11643327/