US News
White House knew about New Orleans dam break early on (Roundup)
By DPA
Feb 10, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - The White House knew on the day that Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans that the city's flood dams had broken, the former US emergency chief said Friday, contradicting statements by top Bush administration officials that they found out only later.

Michael Brown, who resigned as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) two weeks after the storm devastated the US Gulf Coast, told the Senate that he contacted the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with the news on Monday, August 29.

In contrast, President George W. Bush said in a September 2 interview that 'the levees broke on Tuesday.' DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff asserted at the time that the dikes did not begin breaking until late Monday at the earliest.

Brown, a Bush appointee, bore the brunt of nationwide criticism when the government fumbled its disaster response to Katrina, which flooded low-lying New Orleans and forced hundreds of thousands in the region to flee.

In his testimony, he said he feels like a scapegoat and that DHS was getting the same information on Katrina that he had.

'So for them to now claim that we didn't have awareness of it I think is just baloney,' Brown said.

His testimony and new documents show that DHS knew on August 29 that there was a 400-metre breach in a dam protecting New Orleans against the waters of Lake Pontchartrain, a lake-size inlet of the Gulf of Mexico.

Senate hearings have been going for months, but Brown's testimony under oath was among the most anticipated because it could shed light on how upper levels of the Bush administration reacted in the crisis.

FEMA is part of DHS, the sprawling national security department set up by Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The federal response would have been different if anyone had thought that terrorists were behind the flooding, Brown said, adding that natural disasters have 'become a stepchild at DHS.'