Chertoff defends waiting to take charge after Katrina

WASHINGTON – Beleaguered U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff testified Wednesday that he did not take charge of his department’s faltering response to Hurricane Katrina because his personal experience during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had convinced him that micromanaging by senior officials could make matters worse.

But members of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which has spent months investigating the disaster, sharply criticized Chertoff for being so out of touch with the unfolding disaster that he went to bed unaware that the New Orleans levees had collapsed hours before, killing and injuring hundreds of people and leaving much of the city underwater.

Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said it was disheartening that Chertoff was “consistently behind the curve.” Katrina made landfall on Monday, Aug. 29, and a storm surge smashed the New Orleans levees later that day. Chertoff said he went to sleep Monday night not knowing his department had been informed of the levees’ collapse.

Chertoff, who testified for almost three hours before the Senate committee, acknowledged that his department had received e-mails describing the unfolding catastrophe, but he said his staff decided to withhold information from him until it had been verified by what he called “ground truth” – again because of his experience during Sept.11, when top officials were bombarded with imprecise data and unchecked rumors. He said he has since taken steps to make sure that would not happen in future.

In the months after Katrina, criticism of the botched federal response focused primarily on the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its director, Michael D. Brown, who resigned under fire. But FEMA is part of the Homeland Security Department, and as investigators have dug deeper, the spotlight has shifted to Chertoff because of his failure to step in despite clear signs that the response was going awry.

Although Chertoff was hailed as a brilliant choice when President Bush chose him to head up the department more than a year ago and was confirmed unanimously by the Senate, the criticism of his conduct during Katrina has become so pointed that a House special investigating committee titled its 600-page report “A Failure of Initiative.” It chided Chertoff for being too passive. The report was released Wednesday, although many of its findings had been reported earlier.

In its opening pages, the House report noted a succession of steps Chertoff “should have” taken, both before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and after the government began to stumble.

The House report was especially devastating for Chertoff and the Bush administration because it was written largely by Republicans – Democrats boycotted most of the committee’s sessions – and because it painted the government’s failures with a broad brush. “Secretary Chertoff failed to take the reins from (Brown) quickly enough,” said committee Chairman Rep. Tom Davis, R-.Va., adding, “The White House failed to act on the massive amounts of information at its disposal.”

Sen. Collins particularly criticized Chertoff for waiting until after the disaster had struck to designate a point person to manage the federal response, saying, “That’s like having the generals show up after the battle had already begun.”