Who Knew What?

The vacationing President George W. Bush was "very engaged" in monitoring Hurricane Katrina developments right from the day that the hurricane made landfall, according to Michael Brown, then chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brown's comments about the president surfaced in a transcript of an Aug. 29, 2005, videoconference call produced by Bush administration officials today after they initially told Congress that no such document existed.

During the FEMA-run conference call—one of a series of noon calls in which top local, state and federal officials reported on the progress of the storm and on the government responses to it—Brown says that on Aug. 29, the Monday that Katrina made landfall near New Orleans, he had talked to Bush twice, "once in Crawford and then again on Air Force One."

The president "remains very very interested in this situation. He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the [Superdome]. He's asking questions about reports of [levee] breaches. He's asking about hospitals. He's very engaged, and he's asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask," Brown told the conference call, according to a transcript that was sent to NEWSWEEK by the White House on Wednesday morning.

Later in the conference call, according to the transcript, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco is asked by Joe Hagin, the deputy White House chief of staff, about the status of the New Orleans levees. Blanco replies: "We keep getting reports in some places that maybe water is coming over the levees … I think we have not breached the levee. We have not breached the levee at this point in time. That could change, but in some places we have floodwaters coming in New Orleans East and ... St. Bernard Parish where we have waters that are eight to 10 feet deep, and we have people swimming in there. That's got a considerable amount of water itself."

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the newly discovered transcript demonstrates how President Bush "was very much engaged that day and throughout the days following, and senior White House staff was interested in the integrity of the levees." An administration official, speaking anonymously because of political sensitivity of the issue, also noted Blanco's evident uncertainty during the conference call about whether or not New Orleans levees had been breached. This supports the administration's contention that the White House was receiving conflicting reports during the course of Aug. 29 about whether the levees had been breached or simply "overtopped" by hurricane-driven flood waters.

Deputy Homeland Security adviser Kenneth Rapuano, the only White House official allowed by the administration to meet with congressional investigators examining governmental responses to Katrina, indicated to House investigators in two recent closed-door meetings that he left the White House around 10 p.m. on the night of Aug. 29 without a clear understanding of whether or not the levees had been breached. White House officials maintained that this was because written bulletins coming into the White House Situation Room presented contradictory information about whether the New Orleans flooding was due to levee breaches or supposedly less damaging "overtopping." The White House has maintained that Rapuano and other senior officials did not clearly realize that the levees had actually been breached until early on the morning of Aug. 30; White House officials in the past have also noted that Governor Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin were uncertain on the 29th about levee breaches.