Katrina briefing tape leads to Bush criticisms

WASHINGTON -- Democratic lawmakers accused the Bush administration on Thursday of withholding information and misleading the American people about the response to Hurricane Katrina, following disclosure of a videotape of a pre-Katrina briefing for Bush and other top officials.\nThe House and Senate have conducted separate investigations of the federal response, and the White House did its own investigation. House Democrats for the most part refused to participate in the probe, insisting since last fall that an independent commission should be created to handle the probe.\n"Top federal, state and local officials failed to process and act on information at their disposal," said David Marin, the spokesman. "We already knew that."\nBut Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, disagreed.\n"If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth a million," he said. "Six months after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the homes and livelihoods of millions along the Gulf Coast, the truth about what the president knew and when he knew it has come to light."\nThe videotape captured a briefing, on Aug. 29, involving then-Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown, President Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other officials. Brown and others warned that the storm could breach levees, endanger lives in the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelm rescuers.\nFive days after the briefing, with most of New Orleans underwater, Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."\nR. David Paulison, who replaced Brown as head of FEMA in the aftermath of Katrina, said after watching the video that he would not second-guess the administration response to the hurricane.\n"I don't know what else the White House could have done," he said. "I think as soon as everybody recognized there was a big problem, stuff started flowing in within a couple of days"