White House Resists Katrina Probe

Jan. 25 (KGO) -- The President is refusing to turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina. He also doesn't want senior White House officials testifying before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response.

The Senate and the House are trying to sort out the response to Katrina in time to fix the problems before this year's storm season.

The President says his conversations with senior staff are high level, memos are private, and making them public might compromise his ability to get good honest advice.

When the water breached the levees in New Orleans, the flood boiled into the city's ninth ward in a torrent.

Gloria Brown, Katrina evacuee: "Oh it was gushing it was gushing through the doors. It came through my back door first."

Gloria Brown's house was underwater in a matter of minutes. It would be a week before she evacuated out of the city.

Gloria Brown, Katrina evacuee: "I would really like to know why. Why did they hesitate to come to our rescue?"

Shortly after the storm the President said the American people deserve to know what went wrong.

But in the Senate hearings this week, Democrat Joseph Lieberman said there has been a near total lack of cooperation from the White House.

Today the President's spokesman responded.

Scott McClellan, White House spokesman: "The President believes that Senator Lieberman ought to have the right to confidential conversations with his advisors just like all President's have asserted that they ought to have that same right. That's what this is about. That's the bottom line here."

The White House has made lower level officials available, along with 15,000 pages of documents. But any conversations with the President and White House memos between him and his advisors are off limits, including a Homeland Security report that was delivered to the White House as Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans.

The report said there was a good chance Katrina could cause the New Orleans levees to fail and result in massive flooding that could last for months.

The White House won't say what happened to that report and Gloria Brown's response.

Gloria Brown, Katrina evacuee: "I think it's ridiculous. It's terrible. Whatever went down it should be said and done."

Republicans on the investigating committees say they're getting enough information to produce meaningful results.

But even some of them objected when administration officials who are not part of the President's staff said they could not testify about communications with the White House.

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