Fault Lines

Responsibility fever: Catch it!

Now it's Gov. Blanco's turn to take responsibility for Louisiana's hurricane relief screw-ups.

"We all know that there were failures at every level of government: state, federal and local,"Blanco told lawmakers in a special meeting of the Louisiana Legislature. "At the state level, we must take a careful look at what went wrong and make sure it never happens again. The buck stops here, and as your governor, I take full responsibility."

Echoes of Dumbya: Taking responsibility, but not necessarily the blame.

Meanwhile, the cast of characters is doling out blame for everyone else.

Resume-fudging Arabian horse-show judge Michael Brown is telling The New York Times that he warned the White House early on that Blanco's administration was woefully unresponsive to the impending disaster.

"On Monday night, Mr. Brown said, he reported his growing worries to [Homeland Security head Michael] Chertoff and the White House. He said he did not ask for federal active-duty troops to be deployed because he assumed his superiors in Washington were doing all they could. Instead, he said, he repeated a dozen times, 'I cannot get a unified command established."

"The next morning, Mr. Brown said, he and Governor Blanco decided to take a helicopter into New Orleans to see the mayor and assess the situation. But before the helicopter took off, his field coordinating officer, or F.C.O., called from the city on a satellite phone. 'It is getting out of control down here; the levee has broken,' the staff member told him, he said.

"The crowd in the Superdome, the city's shelter of last resort, was already larger than expected. But Mr. Brown said he was relieved to see that the mayor had a detailed list of priorities, starting with help to evacuate the Superdome. Mr. Brown passed the list on to the state emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, but when he returned that evening he was surprised to find that nothing had been done."

In the meantime, Blanco is getting a pass from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The Stakeholder notes that the CRS report concludes Blanco met all statutory requirements by Aug. 27 for federal authorities to provide relief assistance. Whether that was sufficient remains to be seen. We're a bit skeptical that anyone -- aside from the media, oddly enough -- did what they were supposed to do in the first few days of the crisis.

For the administration's part, a senior official suggests to the New York Times that the White House "did not believe [Brown's phone calls] had the urgency or desperation" that the recently resigned FEMA head has indicated.

And there might be a reason for that spin on Brown's warnings. A Knight Ridder report now finds that Michael Chertoff, not Brown, might be most accountable for the late federal response.

According to the media report, the feds' national disaster response plan gives Chertoff full authority to federalize the hurricane response regardless of any invites coming from state or local officials:

"But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

" 'As you know, the President has established the White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response. He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the Administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina,' Chertoff said in the memo to the secretaries of defense, health and human services and other key federal agencies.

[...]

"Chertoff's hesitation and Bush's creation of a task force both appear to contradict the National Response Plan and previous presidential directives that specify what the secretary of homeland security is assigned to do without further presidential orders. The goal of the National Response Plan is to provide a streamlined framework for swiftly delivering federal assistance when a disaster -- caused by terrorists or Mother Nature -- is too big for local officials to handle."

And so it goes.