Rumsfeld’s memos from Katrina subpoenaed

White House could be subpeonaed later
The chairman of the special House committee rejected, for now, legal action against the White House, but left open the possibility of a future subpoena. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., asked lawmakers to wait until after a private briefing Thursday at the White House before deciding whether to go ahead with a subpoena.

“We cannot do our job if we don’t get these documents, and we won’t get these documents if we don’t subpoena them,” said Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La.

The committee, which plans to issue its findings on Feb. 15, requested hundreds of thousands of documents more than two months ago from the administration and Gulf Coast state and local officials.

Louisiana has handed over more than 100,000 documents to the committee. Though the White House said it has provided 450,000 documents, lawmakers said it has claimed executive privilege to refuse e-mails sent to and from White House chief of staff Andrew Card.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said lawmakers would be briefed by a high-level administration official and that he did not immediately anticipate a subpoena against the White House.

McClellan: ‘We’ve worked in good faith’
“I’m not expecting anything of that nature at this point,” McClellan said. “What we have done is work to make sure that they get the information they need to do their job. We’ve worked in good faith.”

The hearing came as FEMA pledged to continue paying for hotel rooms for evacuees still unable to find apartments, trailers or other stable housing by Feb. 7, a month beyond the agency’s cutoff date.

A federal judge in New Orleans this week set the February deadline in a ruling to give victims more time in hotels as FEMA processes aid applications.

FEMA’s acting director, R. David Paulison, did not cite an end-date for the hotel payments, but said “it won’t be indefinite.” He said FEMA will pay hotel bills for up to two weeks after evacuees receive temporary housing assistance because “sometimes it’s tough to find an apartment.”

An estimated 40,000 families still are living in hotels, compared with a peak of 85,000.

“We are going to be flexible, we will make changes to our plan as we move along,” Paulison said. “And we are going to continuously work to make sure nobody falls through the cracks. And if they do fall through the cracks, we are going to find them, locate them and get them back into our system.”

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