White House Not At Fault For Katrina Response
The White House’s report released today, The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned, places the blame for the Katrina response on the federal government’s plans and structures, rather than on any individual government executive. According to Homeland Security Advisor Frances Fragos Townsend:
"The system wasn’t dependent on any one person. It was a failure of various aspects of decision-making that needed to happen real time and quickly to get federal response efforts."
The report totally ignores the responsibility of any top Bush administration officials. The recent bipartisan report from House of Representatives fills in the gaps. As reported by the The Washington Post:
[The report] lays primary fault with the passive reaction and misjudgments of top Bush aides, singling out Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Operations Center and the White House Homeland Security Council.
As it relates to Bush, the report also found that “earlier presidential involvement could have speeded the response” because he alone could have cut through all bureaucratic resistance. We had to wait five months for this. Anyone with access to CNN knew all of this was the case.
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