Homeland Security: White House fails to provide docs in Katrina probe
Despite a blistering letter to the White House sent January 12 by two senators, officials in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) have so far failed to provide additional documents to a Senate committee investigating the federal government's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina, Senate aides say.
The letter, obtained exclusively by U.S. News, is signed by Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Joe Lieberman and illustrates in vivid detail the frustration felt by the bipartisan Senate committee investigating the aftermath of the apocalyptic storm. It also indicates for the first time specific aides whom the White House has so far failed to make available for interviews.
The senators indicated that the tepid cooperation from the EOP hampered their work in significant ways.
"We have yet to receive the bulk of what we requested," the senators wrote, "and the committee is unable to fully understand and assess actions involving White House personnel during the preparations for and response to Hurricane Katrina." As reported last week, the senators also criticized a White House directive to other government agencies that all personnel before the committee should refrain from detailing their own communications with White House staff. Specifically, the senators wrote, Department of Homeland Security attorneys "have instructed witnesses not to answer any questions related to the White House, regardless of subject matter, context, or the position of the [White House] personnel involved in the conversation."
This, the senators said, "simply must cease."
The senators, who offered a list of subjects they would like to address, also called for testimony from four key White House aides: Kristjen Nielsen, the White House's senior director for preparedness and response; Ken Rapuano, the deputy White House homeland security director; Janet Benini, a member of the Homeland Security Council; and Joseph Hagin, the White House's deputy chief of staff. Rapuano is the only one who has met with the committee, although one aide stressed he "gave a presentation" and "didn't really submit to a full interview." In response to growing criticism, the White House offered over the weekend to provide more such briefings and additional documents, although not the ones requested by the committee, one aide says.
The Collins-Lieberman committee, which will hold five hearings this week and at least four next week, is being closely watched, especially because Democrats are officially boycotting a House panel investigating the hurricane response. (Two Democrats from states affected by the hurricane, however, sit on the House panel, which itself received a second briefing from Rapuano late last week.) Among other things, Collins and Lieberman listed "information and documents pertaining to the deployment of federal troops" among their top priorities in their probe of White House officials.
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