white house declines to provide storm papers
published: january 25, 2006
washington, jan. 24 – the bush administration said tuesday that it did not plan to turn over certain documents about hurricane katrina or make senior white house officials available for sworn testimony before two congressional committees investigating the storm response.
the white house this week also formally notified representative richard h. baker, republican of louisiana, that it would not support his legislation creating a federally financed reconstruction program for the state that would bail out homeowners and mortgage lenders. many louisiana officials consider the bill crucial to recovery, but administration officials said the state would have to use community development money appropriated by congress.
the white house’s stance on storm-related documents, along with slow or incomplete responses by other agencies, threatens to undermine efforts to identify what went wrong, democrats on the committees said tuesday.
“there has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do,” senator joseph i. lieberman, democrat of connecticut, said at tuesday’s hearing of the senate committee investigating the response. his spokeswoman said he would ask for a subpoena for documents and testimony if the white house did not comply.
in response to questions later from a reporter, the deputy white house spokesman, trent duffy, said the administration had declined requests to provide testimony by andrew h. card jr., the white house chief of staff; mr. card’s deputy, joe hagin; frances fragos townsend, the domestic security adviser; and her deputy, ken rapuano.
mr. duffy said the administration had also declined to provide storm-related e-mail correspondence and other communications involving white house staff members. mr. rapuano has given briefings to the committees, but the sessions were closed to the public and were not considered formal testimony.
yet even senator susan collins, republican of maine, objected when administration officials who were not part of the president’s staff said they could not testify about communications with the white house.
“i completely disagree with that practice,” ms. collins, chairwoman of the senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee, said in an interview tuesday.
according to mr. lieberman, michael d. brown, the former director of the federal emergency management agency, cited such a restriction on monday, as agency lawyers had advised him not to say whether he had spoken to president bush or vice president dick cheney or to comment on the substance of any conversations with any other high-level white house officials.
other members of the committees said the executive branch communications were essential because it had become apparent that one of the most significant failures was the apparent lack of complete engagement by the white house and the federal government in the days immediately before and after the storm.
“when you have a natural disaster, the president needs to be hands-on, and if anyone in his staff gets in the way, he needs to push them away,” said representative christopher shays, a connecticut republican and member of the house investigating committee. “the response was pathetic.”