A congressional probe into what happened before and after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast has been hampered by a variety of obstacles, most notably the difficulty lawmakers have had in getting the Bush White House to produce relevant documents. One lawmaker said the “lack of [White House] compliance is hindering the investigation.” It’s reached the point that House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) is threatening subpoenas.
Yesterday, Scott McClellan said Congress has nothing to worry about — the White House will cooperate just as it did with the 9/11 Commission. For anyone who remembers that cooperation, it wasn’t an encouraging response.
Q: On the Hurricane Katrina issue, will the White House turn over documents and communications that Chairman Davis is asking for?
McClellan: We’ve been working very closely with Chairman Davis’ committee — the bipartisan committee that is investigating some of the matters. We also, as you know, have a lessons-learned review going on at the White House, and we’re moving forward on it. We will continue to work with the committee and make sure they have the information that they need to do their job. We’ve provided a lot of information to the committee already, we’ve provided them access to a lot of officials already, and we’ll continue to work with them. […]
Remember, we worked with the 9/11 Commission, too. They had information they wanted, and we made sure they had the information they needed to be able to complete the important work that they were doing. (emphasis added)
If that’s supposed to make those investigating the Katrina breakdowns feel better, McClellan better hope everyone has a very short memory.
Despite McClellan’s claims about cooperation, the truth is the Bush gang stonewalled the 9/11 Commission at every available opportunity. The White House fought against the Commission’s very existence, limited the commission’s access to information it needed (handpicking which documents the members can see and not even allowing them to bring their own notes about the documents to their offices for review), and initially fought against giving the panel more time to complete its work. To top it off, the White House said Bush would talk to Commission members, but only if he could appear with Cheney and limit the chat to just one hour.
If the White House considers this cooperation worthy of bragging, the investigative committee looking into Katrina has very little to look forward to.