For
reasons of practicality and politics, officials at the Justice Department and
the Pentagon, and then at the White House, decided not to urge Mr. Bush to take
command of the effort. Instead, the Washington officials decided to rely on the
growing number of National Guard personnel flowing into Louisiana, who were
under Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's control.
The
debate began after officials realized that Hurricane Katrina had exposed a critical
flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11
attacks. According to the administration's senior domestic security officials,
the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel
might be incapacitated.
As
criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina has mounted, one of the most
pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to
restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and
Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they
were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing
the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the
crisis.
To
seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had
to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times
of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law
enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms.
Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration
officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces
before law and order had been re-established.
While
combat troops can conduct relief missions without the legal authority of the
Insurrection Act, Pentagon and military officials say that no active-duty
forces could have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans on Wednesday or
Thursday without confronting law-and-order challenges.
But
just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would
have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from
command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and
Justice Department officials.
"Can
you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one
party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the
command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it
completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command
authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one
senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were
confidential.
Officials
in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over
National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large
numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were
desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers.
"I
need everything you have got," Ms. Blanco said she told Mr. Bush last
Monday, after the storm hit.
In
an interview, she acknowledged that she did not specify what sorts of soldiers.
"Nobody told me that I had to request that," Ms. Blanco said. "I
thought that I had requested everything they had. We were living in a war zone
by then."
By
Wednesday, she had asked for 40,000 soldiers.
In
the discussions in Washington, also at issue was whether active-duty troops
could respond faster and in larger numbers than the Guard.
By
last Wednesday, Pentagon officials said even the 82nd Airborne, which has a
brigade on standby to move out within 18 hours, could not arrive any faster
than 7,000 National Guard troops, which are specially trained and equipped for
civilian law enforcement duties.
In
the end, the flow of thousands of National Guard soldiers, especially military
police, was accelerated from other states.
"I
was there. I saw what needed to be done," Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of
the National Guard Bureau, said in an interview. "They were the fastest,
best-capable, most appropriate force to get there in the time allowed. And
that's what it's all about."
But
one senior Army officer expressed puzzlement that active-duty troops were not
summoned sooner, saying 82nd Airborne troops were ready to move out from Fort
Bragg, N.C., on Sunday, the day before the hurricane hit.
The
call never came, administration officials said, in part because military
officials believed Guard troops would get to the stricken region faster and because
administration civilians worried that there could be political fallout if
federal troops were forced to shoot looters.
Louisiana
officials were furious that there was not more of a show of force, in terms of
relief supplies and troops, from the federal government in the middle of last
week. As the water was rising in New Orleans, the governor repeatedly
questioned whether Washington had started its promised surge of federal
resources.
"We
needed equipment," Ms. Blanco said in an interview. "Helicopters. We
got isolated."
Aides
to Ms. Blanco said she was prepared to accept the deployment of active-duty
military officials in her state. But she and other state officials balked at
giving up control of the Guard as Justice Department officials said would have
been required by the Insurrection Act if those combat troops were to be sent in
before order was restored.
In
a separate discussion last weekend, the governor also rejected a more modest
proposal for a hybrid command structure in which both the Guard and active-duty
troops would be under the command of an active-duty, three-star general - but
only after he had been sworn into the Louisiana National Guard.
Lt.
Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations for the military's Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said that the Pentagon in August streamlined a rigid, decades-old system
of deployment orders to allow the military's Northern Command to dispatch
liaisons to work with local officials before an approaching hurricane.
The
Pentagon is reviewing events from the time Hurricane Katrina reached full
strength and bore down on New Orleans and five days later when Mr. Bush ordered
7,200 active-duty soldiers and marines to the scene.
After
the hurricane passed New Orleans and the levees broke, flooding the city, it became
increasingly evident that disaster-response efforts were badly bogged down.
Justice
Department lawyers, who were receiving harrowing reports from the area,
considered whether active-duty military units could be brought into relief
operations even if state authorities gave their consent - or even if they
refused.
The
issue of federalizing the response was one of several legal issues considered
in a flurry of meetings at the Justice Department, the White House and other agencies,
administration officials said.
Attorney
General Alberto R. Gonzales urged Justice Department lawyers to interpret the
federal law creatively to help local authorities, those officials said. For
example, federal prosecutors prepared to expand their enforcement of some
criminal statutes like anti-carjacking laws that can be prosecuted by either
state or federal authorities.
On
the issue of whether the military could be deployed without the invitation of
state officials, the Office of Legal Counsel, the unit within the Justice
Department that provides legal advice to federal agencies, concluded that the
federal government had authority to move in even over the objection of local
officials.
This
act was last invoked in 1992 for the Los Angeles riots, but at the request of
Gov. Pete Wilson of California, and has not
been invoked over a governor's objections since the civil rights era - and
before that, to the time of the Civil War, administration officials said. Bush
administration, Pentagon and senior military officials warned that such an
extreme measure would have serious legal and political implications.
Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said deployment of National Guard soldiers to Iraq, including a brigade
from Louisiana, did not affect the relief mission, but Ms. Blanco disagreed.
"Over
the last year, we have had about 5,000 out, at one time," she said.
"They are on active duty, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That
certainly is a factor."
By
Friday, National Guard reinforcements had arrived, and a truck convoy of 1,000
Guard soldiers brought relief supplies - and order - to the convention center
area.
Officials
from the Department of Homeland Security say the experience with Hurricane
Katrina has demonstrated flaws in the nation's plans to handle disaster.
"This
event has exposed, perhaps ultimately to our benefit, a deficiency in terms of
replacing first responders who tragically may be the first casualties,"
Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for domestic security, said.
Michael
Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, has suggested that active-duty
troops be trained and equipped to intervene if front-line emergency personnel
are stricken. But the Pentagon's leadership remains unconvinced that this plan is
sound, suggesting instead that the national emergency response plans be revised
to draw reinforcements initially from civilian police, firefighters, medical
personnel and hazardous-waste experts in other states not affected by a
disaster.
The
federal government rewrote its national emergency response plan after the Sept.
11 attacks, but it relied on local officials to manage any crisis in its
opening days. But Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed local "first
responders," including civilian police and the National Guard.
At
a news conference on Saturday, Mr. Chertoff said, "The unusual set of
challenges of conducting a massive evacuation in the context of a still
dangerous flood requires us to basically break the traditional model and create
a new model, one for what you might call kind of an ultra-catastrophe."