By: E&P Staff A 600-page congressonal report to be released Wednesday, but described Sunday by the Washington Post, charges that officials from President Bush down "disregarded ample warnings of the threat to New Orleans and did not execute emergency plans or share information that would have saved lives," according to the story in the newspaper.
A draft of the report by an 11-member House committee, made up entirely of Republicans, includes 90 findings of failures at all levels of government, a senior investigation staffer told the Post. Titled "A Failure of Initiative," it is one of three separate current reviews by the House, Senate and White House.
The Post received a 60-page summary of it.
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," the Post declared.
Regarding Bush, the report found that "earlier presidential involvement could have speeded the response" because he alone could have cut through all bureaucratic resistance.
The White House, the Post reported in summarizing the draft, did not fully engage the president or "substantiate, analyze and act on the information at its disposal," failing to confirm the collapse of New Orleans's levee system on Aug. 29, the day of Katrina's landfall, which led to catastrophic flooding.
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