THE Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina was beset by fraud on such a scale that emergency aid was paid to nearly one million bogus applicants, it emerged yesterday.
Two government reports, released before a separate congressional investigation that will tomorrow condemn President Bush and his top aides, details grotesque fraud, waste and mismanagement in which hundreds of millions of dollars were squandered.
The reports, a week before Mardi Gras in New Orleans, where large areas are still without electricity or running water, came as 40,000 people left homeless by the hurricane were set to be evicted from hotel rooms across the US.
The two audits of the $2.3 billion (£1.3 billion) in emergency cash spent in the weeks after the hurricane found that 900,000 of the 2.5 million applicants who received federal aid did so after fraudulent claims.
Because the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s oversight of cash payments was so flawed, the agency made “millions of dollars of payments” to applicants with bogus addresses, names or Social Security numbers.
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The audits, by the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, found that $2,000 debit cards issued for emergency supplies were often used for purchases unrelated to disaster aid, including pornographic movies, gambling, a $450 tattoo, a .45-calibre handgun costing $1,300 and a diamond engagement ring for $1,000.
The debit cards were also used to make bail payments and to pay parking fines.
In one case, 17 applicants used fake names and addresses to collect more than $103,000 in aid. About 80 of more than 200 sample addresses claiming to have been homes damaged by Katrina were visited by auditors and and found to be vacant lots or “bogus apartments”.
The reports also detail millions more wasted in overspending, including evacuees being housed in $438-a-night hotel rooms in New York and beachfront condominiums in Panama City, Florida, costing $375 a night. Nearly 11,000 trailer homes bought by Fema are sitting empty in Hope, Arkansas, sinking into mud.
The reports precede the damning indictment of the Bush Administration’s failures before and after Katrina that will be published by a congressional committee composed exclusively of Republicans.
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Democrats had boycotted the committee, claiming that it would result in a whitewash. But instead the 11 House Republicans have produced a 600-page report savaging the Administration, as well as state and local government, for a litany of failures.
Of most political concern to the White House, the report states that the US Government has failed to learn the lessons of the September 11 terror attacks. The congressmen state that earlier involvement by Mr Bush “could have speeded the response”. The congressmen also state that 56 hours before Katrina hit, the National Weather Service cited an “extremely high probability” that New Orleans would be flooded.
Given those warnings, the report notes Mr Bush’s statement, after the disaster, that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees”.
The reports said: “Comments such as those . . . do not appear to be consistent with the advice and counsel one would expect to have been provided by a senior disaster professional.”
The report singles out Michael Chertoff, Mr Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security. He triggered the emergency response “late, ineffectively or not at all”, it said. The Government’s response was marked by “fecklessness, flailing and organisational paralysis”.
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HURRICANE COST
50,000 homes likely to be demolished
57,000 small businesses lost
Two thirds of the city still without electricity
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200,000 homes remain uninhabitable
837,000 Louisiana families receiving housing assistance
Only two of New Orleans’s seven hospitals function
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$22 billion spent by federal government
1.5m people displaced by the hurricane
$3.1bn promised by Bush Administration for repairs and improvements of flood defences
$2,000 given by Fema to each household in the states most affected by the hurricane
803,018 applicants in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama who gained Fema assistance
370,000 students uprooted in Louisiana and Mississippi