Report faults Chertoff, Brown for lack of leadership during Katrina

Despite ample warning of an impending catastrophe, the federal government bungled its response to Hurricane Katrina because of a void of leadership and confusion about who was in charge, an independent investigation ordered by Congress has found.

The Government Accountability Office, the investigatory arm of Congress, in a preliminary report to be released Wednesday faulted Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his designee, former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown, for not filling a crucial "leadership role during Hurricane Katrina."

That void "serves to underscore the immaturity of and weaknesses relating to the current national response framework," according to a copy of the report obtained Tuesday evening by Knight Ridder.

While the report says little more than was apparent in the hours after the hurricane damaged, demolished or destroyed long swaths of the coastline, the GAO's conclusion is striking for its bluntness.

"No one was designated in advance to lead the overall federal response in anticipation of the event despite clear warnings from the National Hurricane Center," GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker's prepared remarks read. The speech faults the federal government, saying it "did not act decisively or quickly enough."

Walker notes that "there were multiple chains of command, a myriad of approaches and processes for requesting and providing assistance and confusion about who should be advised of requests and what resources would be provided within specific timeframes."

Walker's statement said other agencies got ready in advance, including the military and the post office, but not FEMA - the nation's principal disaster relief agency.

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(Those of us who belong to the 'thinking class' were able to figure all of this out while watching CNN in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I guess this report is intended for the 'non-thinking' class [aka Bush supporters] - who chose to believe what the Republican Spin machine was telling them rather than what they were seeing with their own eyes. If they won't believe their own eyes - the details of this report will have little impact on the way they view the world. The narrative of this report should be made into a campaign commercial - the images of what we saw on tv with a voice over reading the details of this report. eaprez)