US News reports today on Congressional frustration with the Bush administration on the Senate's investigation of Katrina. The article reveals a letter sent by Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman to the White House detailing their frustration with White House stonewalling:
"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."
It's too bad the two senators didn't display a similar resoluteness on Alito earlier in the day, but that's for another post...
The article also lists the people that the Senate investigators want to talk to:
The senators, who offered a list of subjects they would like to address, also called for testimony from four key White House aides: Kirstjen 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.
I've quickly tried to research these people, to find out who they are and why the White House wants to talk to him. Rapuano has a solid background as a Marine and a counterterrorism official. Benini seems to be a career civil servant with a solid background in emergency response. But Hagin is a well-known hack, a former Chiquita Banana executive who was Bush's deputy campaign manager in 2000. And from what I can piece together, Nielsen - who is senior director for preparedness and response is a relatively young lawyer who worked on oil deals for the Dallas law firm Haynes Boone (which represented Bush's old employer Harken Energy back in the early 90's) and has little apparent experience in preparedness and response, even though she has the most senior job at the White House with that portfolio.
Hopefully the senators will consider the question of how the White House's decision to staff key positions with inexperienced or unqualified people contributed to their inability to respond effectively. But I wouldn't bet on it.