The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of this Tuesday; then, excerpts from the self defense of former FEMA chief Michael Brown; a look at the use of the military in disaster relief and recovery; a Katrina insurance story from Louisiana; the latest on Sen. Frist's stock sale story; and an unusual view of the suffering in Darfur.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Evacuees from Hurricane Rita pressed to go home today, but authorities warned them away. Hard-hit towns across east Texas and west Louisiana were still littered with storm debris and downed power lines. The president of one heavily damaged parish in Louisiana told of the frustration he's hearing.

HAL McMILLAN, President, Calcasieu Parish: I understand the plight. Believe me, I've been chewed out so many times by some of my closest friends in the last day or so about how it's your responsibility; you're not letting us in. I'm the guy as parish president that works with these mayors, but I am the chief civilian officer in the parish in the time of disaster. And we have a disaster in Calcasieu Parish. This is the worst disaster that will probably ever happen in the history of our parish in our lifetime. So, please be patient.

JIM LEHRER: President Bush was back in Texas and Louisiana today to assess the damage. He met with local officials in Beaumont, Texas, close to where the storm's center came ashore. He also took a helicopter tour of the badly flooded border region. It included a view of a damaged oil refinery. Later, the president traveled to hard-hit Lake Charles, Louisiana. He met again with Gov. Kathleen Blanco, and he, too, urged patience.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I understand there's a lot of frustrations with the people who left this part of the country. People who are scattered around want to come back and see their homes. They want to come back to the communities they love. But it's very important for them to understand that now is not the time to come back until they get the utilities up and running and until they can get the sewer systems running, and until they can get some water people can drink.

JIM LEHRER: The president also said evacuees from Rita will be eligible for the same $2,000 housing benefit as victims of Hurricane Katrina. The death toll from Katrina went over 1,100 today. That included 885 in Louisiana. In New Orleans, people continued streaming back into the reopened Algiers neighborhood and crews worked to clean sidewalks around stores in the main business district. Also today, the city's police chief, Eddie Compass, announced he's quitting. He faced intense scrutiny during the disorder after Katrina.

The federal emergency chief who quit under fire strongly defended his actions today. Michael Brown spent the day before a special House committee. He insisted FEMA did all it could to deal with Hurricane Katrina, but he told the panel: My biggest mistake was not recognizing sooner that Louisiana was dysfunctional.' Democratic Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana shot back: I find it absolutely stunning you laying the blame on the governor and the mayor of New Orleans.' Most Democrats boycotted the hearing. They've demanded an independent investigation. That split was evident as committee leaders spoke outside the hearing room.

REP. TOM DAVIS: You can still have an independent investigation but we need to move ahead. The American public wants answers. Some of this evidence is still fresh. And we need to go. We have offered the Democrats the opportunity to call any witnesses they want to call, to ask any question they want to ask of Michael Brown. And to refuse to do that, to me, seems to be taking partisan politics probably beyond where it usually is.

REP. LOUISE SLAUGHTER: This is a sham. And we don't want to participate in a sham. This issue is far too important. People have died. The economic consequences are dire. And we simply demand the truth. And let me say again, we do not believe that we have... we have no reason to believe that this Republican majority along with the Republican White House will investigate itself thoroughly; they never have.

JIM LEHRER: During the hearing, Brown also complained FEMA was short-changed on its funding needs. Later, the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, said: He speaks for himself and he's entitled to his point of view.' And a spokesman for Louisiana Gov. Blanco rejected Brown's criticism. He said: Mike Brown wasn't engaged then and he surely isn't now.' We'll have more on this story right after this News Summary.

U.S. and Iraqi forces announced today they've killed al-Qaida's number-two man in Iraq. Abdullah Abu Azzam was shot dead in Baghdad on Sunday. He allegedly planned bombings that killed nearly 700 people since April. In Washington, the joint chiefs chairman, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, said it's a blow to al-Qaida in Iraq and its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS: His primary facilitator, the one that is organizing things operationally but certainly in Baghdad and has a lot of responsibility for the al-Qaida finances in Iraq; he's no longer on the scene. So they're going to have to go to the bench and find somebody that's probably less knowledgeable, less qualified.

JIM LEHRER: Al-Qaida said today there is no confirmation Abu Azzam is dead. The group also denied he was its second-in-command in Iraq. Instead, it said the U.S. and Iraqi claims were: a futile attempt to raise the morale of their troops.' Also in Iraq today, a suicide bomber killed nine police recruits outside a police station in Baqouba; twenty-one others were wounded. That made more than 60 Iraqis killed in just the past three days. The bodies of 22 others were found in southern Iraq today. They'd been blindfolded and shot. And the U.S. military announced another U.S. Marine was killed on Monday.

In economic news, consumer confidence in the U.S. fell this month by the most in 15 years. The Conference Board, a business research group, reported that today. It said the hurricane spikes in energy prices made people nervous about the future. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 12 points to close at 10,456. The NASDAQ fell five points to close at 2,116. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: Brown on the defensive; military as rescuers; a Katrina insurance story; the Sen. Frist stock story; and a Darfur exhibition.

FOCUS SELF-DEFENSE

JIM LEHRER: Tough questions for the former FEMA director. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: Michael Brown resigned as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency two weeks ago following blistering criticisms of FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina. Seated before a House investigative committee today, Brown defended himself and began by reminding the panel what FEMA is not empowered to do.

MICHAEL BROWN: FEMA doesn't evacuate communities. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications.

KWAME HOLMAN: But then Brown described what FEMA did do before Katrina hit.

MICHAEL BROWN: FEMA activated and deployed the national disaster medical teams. We activated and deployed the urban search and rescue teams. We activated and deployed the rapid needs assessment teams. We activated and deployed the emergency response teams to all of the potentiality affected states.

I want this committee to know that FEMA pushed forward with everything that it had, every team, every asset that we had, in order to help what we saw as being a potentially catastrophic disaster.

KWAME HOLMAN: The committee's chairman, Republican Tom Davis of Virginia, asked Brown if, in reflection, he would have done anything differently.

MICHAEL BROWN: My mistake was in recognizing that, for whatever reason that we might want to discuss later, for whatever reason, Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco were reticent to order a mandatory evacuation. And if I, Mike Brown, individual, could have done something to convince them that this was the big one and they needed to order a mandatory evacuation, I would have done it. My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional.

KWAME HOLMAN: Most House Democrats refused to participate in this investigation, pressing for an independent probe. But Democrat William Jefferson represents the city of New Orleans and accepted an invitation to today's session.

REP. WILLIAM JEFFERSON: I find it absolutely stunning that this hearing would start out with you, Mr. Brown, laying the blame for FEMA's failings at the feet of the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans.

MICHAEL BROWN: Mr. Jefferson, I know that you saw what I saw when I was there on Sunday and Sunday evening and Monday, which was no one in charge. I couldn't find out who was driving the resource requirements, who was making the decisions about what needed to be done. You saw that middle room, the room where we sat with the president and had the briefing, on Sunday and Monday. That room was chaos.

KWAME HOLMAN: Connecticut's Christopher Shays pressed Brown on when and how he notified the White House that Katrina was a potentially devastating hurricane.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: Did you ask for a higher authority to help you out? You're the head of FEMA, but the governor and mayor aren't paying attention to you. I want to know who you asked for help.

MICHAEL BROWN: On Saturday and Sunday, I started talking to the White House.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: To whom?

MICHAEL BROWN: On Saturday and Sunday, I started talking to the White House.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: Okay. Now, the White House is a big place --

MICHAEL BROWN: Mm-hmm.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: So give us specifics. I'm not asking about conversations yet. I want to know who you contacted.

MICHAEL BROWN: I -- I exchanged e-mails and phone calls with Joe Hagen, Andy Card and the president.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: And what was their reaction, and what was their suggestions on how you should deal with this issue?

MICHAEL BROWN: They -- they offered to do whatever they could do, and were going to start making phone calls and set it up.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: And what did you ask them to do?

(Brown consulting counsel)

MICHAEL BROWN: Well, I'm being advised by counsel that I can't discuss with you my conversations with the president's chief of staff and the president.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: But you --

SPOKESMAN: Mr. Brown. Excuse me, Mr. Brown. You discussed it with the New York Times.

ALEXANDER BLOOM: Yes.

SPOKESMAN: So I think you at least what you shared with the New York Times I think you could share with this committee.

ALEXANDER BLOOM: I told them we needed help.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: And what specific kind of help were you asking? You don't have to tell me the reaction right now. I want to know: what specifically did you ask?

MICHAEL BROWN: To get them to get the mayor and the governor to order the mandatory evacuation.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: And that's coordinating?

MICHAEL BROWN: What would you like for me to do, congressman?

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: Well, that's why I'm happy you left because that kind of, you know, look in the lights like a deer tells me that you weren't capable to do the job. I would have liked you to do a lot of things.

MICHAEL BROWN: I take great umbrage to that comment, congressman.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: Why?

MICHAEL BROWN: Because FEMA did -- what people are missing in this entire conversation is the fact that FEMA did more in Hurricane Katrina than it did in Charlie in Florida and the others.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: Why is that relevant?

KWAME HOLMAN: Mac Thornberry of Texas asked whether FEMA was coordinating with anyone at the Superdome, where thousands of people were stranded in the days after the hurricane hit. Brown said he was in touch with Marty Bahamonde, a member of FEMA's team at the Superdome.

MICHAEL BROWN: And then Marty later was able to communicate to me the information that, you know, they had plenty of food. But by it was either Tuesday or Wednesday, they did need additional supplies, and, you know, he was trying to get additional supplies there. The other thing that Marty communicated to me was-- and I have to go back and find -- I just don't remember the day, Congressman Thornberry-- but he did e-mail me at one point and say that they-- they, the FEMA team, Phil Parr and Marty and the NDMS, the medical teams- - were going to self-evacuate because they felt threatened. They felt unsafe and they were going to come back to Baton Rouge.

REP. MAC THORNBERRY: Now, in these earlier conversations with your FEMA team, did they tell you who else-- responsible official types, police, fire and medical- - who else was there at the Superdome?

MICHAEL BROWN: I -- I don't recall that they told me who was there, but I had a --

REP. MAC THORNBERRY: Did you know if somebody was in charge, kind of directing operations, how you do the feeding, how you do the medical, how you keep security?

MICHAEL BROWN: I had a general impression that the Louisiana National Guard was there and that the mayor was there.

KWAME HOLMAN: Besides Louisiana's William Jefferson, the only other Democrat to ask questions today was Gene Taylor, who told Brown that FEMA had failed his home state of Mississippi.

REP. GENE TAYLOR: What part of the FEMA plan envisioned that the first responders in Hancock County and in much of the Mississippi Gulf Coast would have to loot the local grocery store and loot the local Wal-mart in order to feed themselves, would have to loot the local Wal-mart in order to have a change of clothes? What part of your plan was that?

MICHAEL BROWN: Congressman, I respectfully disagree with the premise of your question --

REP. GENE TAYLOR: No, sir. This is --

MICHAEL BROWN: -- because there are times in a disaster, the last thing I'm going to do is to put equipment or manpower in place where they themselves become victims and then cannot assist the people they're there to assist.

KWAME HOLMAN: Toward the end of the hearing, Taylor and Brown had this exchange.

REP. GENE TAYLOR: I hope you'll admit your mistakes. That's the best way to learn from them -- that you as a consultant are going to work to see to it that this doesn't happen again. Or are we going to see this happen the next time there's a major hurricane or a natural disaster or act of terror?

MICHAEL BROWN: Mr. Taylor, let me assure you that I have been to plenty of disasters. I have had friends die by terrorist incidents. I lost my Sunday schoolteacher in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrow Building. I know what death and destruction is. So, I don't expect you to lecture me about not knowing how people suffer.

KWAME HOLMAN: After more than six hours before the committee, Michael Brown was allowed to leave. Even though he has resigned his position as FEMA director, he'll remain as a consultant on the payroll for two weeks.

FOCUS SEND IN THE MILITARY

JIM LEHRER: Now, to our look at the role of the U.S. military in home front disasters. Margaret Warner is in charge.

MARGARET WARNER: In the days following Hurricane Katrina, chaos reigned, with looting in the streets of New Orleans and mayhem at the city's convention center. The situation provoked confusion and, later, recriminations over how quickly federal troops should have gotten involved in responding to the disaster. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division did not arrive in New Orleans until four days after Katrina hit.

SPOKESMAN: The priority today is to keep patrolling the city and the French Quarter and make sure there's no looters or anything crazy that shouldn't be going on.

MARGARET WARNER: Within days, some 22,000 active duty soldiers and 50,000 National Guard troops were on the ground providing security, rescue and recovery duties. Last Sunday, in San Antonio, President Bush suggested Congress might want to rethink the military's role in natural disasters.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Is there a circumstance in which the Department of Defense becomes the lead agency? Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case. But is there a natural disaster which... of a certain size that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort? That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about.

MARGARET WARNER: Several federal laws limit the role U.S. soldiers can play inside the United States. The reconstruction-era Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits federal troops from acting in a domestic law enforcement capacity unless specifically authorized by Congress. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld told reporters today that the Pentagon followed the law in the Katrina situation, relying on state and local governments to take the lead.

DONALD RUMSFELD: The reality was that the first responders at the state and local level were, in large measure, victims themselves, and, as such, somewhat overwhelmed by the catastrophic nature of the Hurricane Katrina and the floods that followed. So we had a situation that was distinctively different than the normal situation, which works pretty well for a normal natural disaster or even a normal manmade disaster. And the president's point was that there are some things that are of sufficient magnitude that they require something to substitute for the overwhelmed first responders at the state and local level. And that is the issue that he's thinking about.

MARGARET WARNER: Some members of Congress are calling for a review of the use of active military in domestic disasters.

MARGARET WARNER: So, should the U.S. Military be given a more prominent role in responding to natural disasters in the United States? To explore that, we turn to: Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense for manpower and personnel during the Reagan administration-- he's now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank; and Gene Healy, an attorney and a senior editor at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Welcome to you both.

Larry Korb, let's just go right to the president's question that he laid on the table. Should the military be given lead responsibility in disasters on a scale of Katrina?

LAWRENCE KORB: When you have a disaster that overwhelms state and love government and requires a federal response, the Department of Defense is the agency best positioned to do it. They know how to plan. They're very good at logistics. They've got the resources. And they got people, field commanders, who know how to take charge in a difficult situation.

MARGARET WARNER: And would you give them this responsibility? If you knew the disaster was coming, as indeed with Katrina, there was warning, are you talking about ahead of time?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I would give it to them. The president mentioned that they have the lead responsibility if there's a terrorist attack. What we saw with Katrina is that a natural disaster can be as devastating or almost as devastating as a terrorist attack -- so I think in terms of planning for catastrophic attacks, whether they're by terrorists or whether they're natural.

MARGARET WARNER: What's your view of that question?

GENE HEALY: Well, I'm very cautious about these proposals to weaken the Posse Comitatus Act. We've long had a tradition in American law of being very reluctant to engage standing armies in keeping the peace domestically. And I think that's where the line should be drawn.

I think it's important to keep in mind that the Posse Comitatus Act and the state of federal law right now do not prevent logistical help. And they do not prevent even in very extraordinary circumstances the use of active duty military in a policing role. What they do say is that this should be a last resort.

This should not -- you do not want to institutionalize a principle where what goes through policymakers' heads is, when in doubt send in the 82nd Airborne. I think that would be very dangerous.

MARGARET WARNER: Before we delve further into this, Larry Korb, what would you add on the state of the law now -- is it that the U.S. military is used on American soil only as a last resort?

LAWRENCE KORB: Essentially, you have got two conflicting laws. Gene is right about the Posse Comitatus law which does limit the role of federal troops. Don't forget you have National Guard troops which can be under the control of the governor who can do these things. They have a dual mission.

You've also got the Insurrection Act which is based on Article 1 of the Constitution which says that if the president determines that law and order has broken down or a particular class of individuals is being disenfranchised he can take charge as President Eisenhower did in Little Rock, President Kennedy did it. Bush's father sent in troops to... active duty troops into Los Angeles in 1992 when the riots came out there.

MARGARET WARNER: And there have been some exceptions carved out even under the Posse Comitatus Act. Isn't that true? I mean, say drug enforcement. Hasn't Congress chipped away at that a little bit?

GENE HEALY: Yes. I think that's been a mistake. In 1997 there was an incident where a Marine Corps anti-drug patrol shot and killed an 18-year-old American high school student. And the Pentagon's internal investigation after that said, you know, one of the reasons for this is because these soldiers were -- had an aggressive spirit and were combat trained. Now, that's exactly how you want your soldiers to be trained, but it also points up, I think the difficulty of when you start mixing these two functions.

I think Mr. Korb put it best himself some years ago when he said that the military is trained to, quote, vaporize, not Mirandize.

MARGARET WARNER: Meaning issue the Miranda warning.

GENE HEALY: Right. I think that's important. I think it what makes our forces so effective. And I think it's also one of the things that should make us a little cautious about throwing this principle out the window.

MARGARET WARNER: What's your response to that?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think that after Sept. 11, whether we like it or not, particularly with a terrorist attack we're going to give the military that role. And I think you need to train them to do that.

When I made that comment, yes, I was concerned about what would happen using the Marines which I thought was really they weren't needed back then to deal with, you know, people trying to come over the border.

But since 9/11, we have used the military and we're planning to use them in a terrorist attack. And what you need to do is have peacekeeping and stabilization divisions. And the role the military has changed. I mean we've used the military for peacekeeping in Bosnia. We've used it for peacekeeping in Somalia so we've used it in a lot of places so the military role is changing.

And, yes, you did have that unfortunate incident but you had nothing when Eisenhower sent them in, Kennedy sent them in, President Bush's father sent them in. You did not have any incidents because they were well trained. And they followed orders.

MARGARET WARNER: Is there also a difficulty, Mr. Healy, or could there be in having to train the military for this additional function? Or do you accept Mr. Korb's argument that, in fact, whether it's in Iraq or in Bosnia or in a lot of places, in fact the police, I mean the U.S. military are now doing policing functions?

GENE HEALY: Well, that is a valid point, though I would say that counterinsurgency warfare is not an appropriate sort of training in the rules of engagement that operate there are not the -- are certainly not the sorts of rules that you would want to see operate in an American city.

I mean you may remember General Lt. Gen. Russell Honore when he went into New Orleans. He told his soldiers, you know, keep your guns down; this isn't Iraq. And I think that reflected a real appreciation that we're talking about two different functions here.

I personally would rather see us, when civilian law enforcement fails; I think this is a better role for the National Guard under the command of the state governors.

MARGARET WARNER: That raises the other really sensitive issue, which is, okay, on whose say-so should federal troops go in? And the question is: Do you wait for the governor to ask for the help, or should the circumstances be widened under which a president could just, on his own or her own authority say, we're activating American active duty forces?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think it's the president's judgment. He has to decide whether in fact the state is up to the job. Now obviously it works better if the state asks them to send the troops in, then you don't have any constitutional issues, but the fact of the matter is the president has to make that judgment.

If, in fact, the state is not up to the job or if the National Guard troops are deployed overseas, for example, as they're being used now, I think this is important for the Pentagon to be planning ahead of time so that when the president makes the decision, they know what to do. I agree we ought to use National Guard when we can. But remember National Guard troops are trained in the same way active forces are. They're used very much. So the idea that they're under state control doesn't change the way that they've been trained.

MARGARET WARNER: Is it constitutional, I mean, just under our current system, for a president to usurp the governor's powers in this regard?

GENE HEALY: Well, under -- the Constitution seems to prefer in Article 4 Section 4 that there is a request from the state government -- the Insurrection Act does have a provision that allows even over the objection of the state governor that allows the president to send in active duty military. The president --

MARGARET WARNER: A certain class of citizens isn't being protected?

GENE HEALY: Well, it's actually when the law -- federal law cannot be enforced. This is what Eisenhower used in Little Rock. I don't think it's something we want to -- the way the law draws a line now is the president should think twice before he does this.

He still has the power in an extraordinary circumstance, but I think there are legitimate reasons that we would want the president to think twice before going in militarily over the objection of the sitting state governor. I think federalism matters here.

MARGARET WARNER: The final question that came up at this hearing. If homeland security and FEMA were on top of their game in terms of coordination, would we even be having this conversation? Or would it obviate the need for having the military take charge?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, some day they may be but it's clear to me they're not now. I mean, four years after Sept. 11, the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to be planning for 15 different scenarios. And it's clear to me that they can't handle it. Maybe at some point they might. But I think we don't have time to wait because you could have not only just another natural disaster, another terrorist attack and I would prefer that when the president makes this judgment -- however the circumstances may be -- that it goes quickly and we save more lives.

MARGARET WARNER: What's your view on that?

GENE HEALY: I'm just concerned, you know, after we've seen another instance of colossal government failure on the state, local and federal level and too often the rush to judgment is, well, how can we centralize more power and, you know, use the military to carry out some of these goals?

I'd rather see some examination of what went wrong here and how they can use -- state, local and federal officials can use their considerable powers to deal with disaster relief without having a militarized, you know, federal war on hurricanes which seems to be what a lot of the talk in Washington is centering around.

MARGARET WARNER: No federal war on hurricanes. Gene Healy, Larry Korb, thank you both.

LAWRENCE KORB: Thank you.

GENE HEALY: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Katrina insurance problems; Sen. Frist's stock problem; and inside Darfur.

FOCUS WIND OR WATER

JIM LEHRER: Now, a post-Katrina story from Louisiana. Spencer Michels reports.

MAN: See back here, every side.

MAN: Wow.

SPENCER MICHELS: Donald Kennedy's house in Mandeville, Louisiana-- east of Baton Rouge on Lake Pontchartrain-- got crushed by Katrina shortly after he had fled.

DONALD KENNEDY: When I pulled up, I didn't recognize it was my house.

SPENCER MICHELS: He was convinced it was a total loss.

DONALD KENNEDY: I went to a catastrophe center and they gave me the name of my adjuster and a number I called, left a message, and he called back... two days.

JESSE CURTIS: Well, the first thing-- let's just walk around and take a couple of looks.

SPENCER MICHELS: The adjuster, Jesse Curtis, came to Louisiana from Florida, and when he saw Kennedy's house, he agreed: A total loss. So, he gave Kennedy a check for living expenses away from home.

JESSE CURTIS: That's a clean $5,000.

JESSE CURTIS: Most people that I encounter are usually happy to see me. They know I'm the guy carrying the checkbook.

SPENCER MICHELS: With Kennedy's home, where there was no water damage, the adjuster's job was clear. Nearly all homeowners' insurance policies pay for damage caused by wind.

JESSE CURTIS: The windstorm is pretty cut and dry. It's wind. If a tree falls through your house, the wind blew it over.

SPENCER MICHELS: And Kennedy seemed pleased, at least for now.

DONALD KENNEDY: It isn't over yet. (Laughs)

SPENCER MICHELS: You don't know.

DONALD KENNEDY: Right. But so far, things look okay.

SPENCER MICHELS: But the tricky issue isn't wind, but water. If homeowners haven't paid specifically for flood insurance, they are unlikely to collect on water damage. And a Rand study estimates that only 60 percent of homes affected by Katrina have flood insurance. So, the decision over how damage occurred has become highly contentious.

In Mississippi, the state attorney general has filed suit, claiming that homeowners are being tricked by five insurance companies into signing papers that say they were victims of a flood in order to get emergency money. And a similar class action suit has been filed in Louisiana. Companies say the allegations are unfounded. Robert Phillips manages a State Farm catastrophe team.

ROBERT PHILLIPS: If we're dealing with a hole through the ceiling or something like that, where the wind's knocked off shingles and you have water that's coming from the sky, then we're dealing with our homeowners' policy. But if it's rising water and it keeps rising up in your house, we're dealing with flood. So, you'll need two separate policies to cover those types of coverages.

ROBERT MARIONNEAUX JR., Louisiana State Senator: The problem with that scenario as it relates to a hurricane is where does the wind damage stop and where does the floodwater begin?

SPENCER MICHELS: Robert Marionneaux is a trial lawyer and a Louisiana state senator who sponsors consumer protection legislation. He predicts a flood of lawsuits against insurance companies.

ROBERT MARRIONNEAUX JR.: I would hope that the insurance company would step forward, not argue about whether it was wind or flood damage, make a reasonable assessment of the damage and pay the claim in reasonable short order. Is that going to happen? I doubt it. That's not the way insurance companies works.

SPENCER MICHELS: Portia Andrew is wondering if and when insurance works at all. She sustained damage to her home and healing center in Hammond, near Baton Rouge, and she is sure that a barbecue restaurant she owns in New Orleans was damaged, as well. But she hasn't been able to get to New Orleans to find out. We went by the spot and took pictures, which we showed to her the next day.

PORTIA ANDREW: Right now, I can't see the water damage, but I do know water was in that area.

SPENCER MICHELS: It looks better than you thought, maybe, huh?

PORTIA ANDREW: Oh, it does. It does. I thought it was much worse. I'm sure there's some damages inside.

SPENCER MICHELS: Without money, Andrew sees no way to repair and restock her restaurant, so she may well lose the business. Faced with damage on several fronts and having to sleep outside until electricity could be restored, Andrew got the runaround when she tried to file an insurance claim with a company whose offices were in the mostly destroyed St. Bernard Parish.

PORTIA ANDREW: I never heard from them anymore. I'm very frustrated, very tired, feeling helpless. What am I gonna do?

SPENCER MICHELS: Andrew and her husband, confused about what coverage they had and who was their carrier, cleaned up their healing center themselves but couldn't get the damage repaired.

PORTIA ANDREW: I don't have any money. I don't have any money to get it fixed. So, I was waiting on the insurance company to come, and since they never showed up, we just praying that it won't rain.

SPENCER MICHELS: The bulk of insurance claims is still to come since parts of New Orleans and environs are still unreachable. But consumers who feel cheated or-- like Portia Andrew-- ignored won't have many places to turn since Louisiana has almost no consumer advocate organizations.

ROBERT MARIONNEAUX JR.: What I hope Katrina does is open the eyes of the public that we need someone out there in the legislature and in the courtrooms protecting consumers.

SPENCER MICHELS: While the lawsuits begin and the Louisiana legislature holds hearings on insurance issues, the state's third-largest insurer, Louisiana Farm Bureau Mutual, sent its agents and adjusters into the field to continue their jobs. Malcolm Fitzhugh says most people have been understanding.

MALCOLM FITZHUGH, Louisiana Farm Bureau Mutual Agent: Some things that we're finding, you know, aren't covered under the policies, like food loss and things like that. People are a little irritated. But for the most part, most people have been friendly. So, it's kind of like a knight in shining armor when you show up.

SPENCER MICHELS: Insurance claims and payoffs will be in the billions of dollars. The upcoming battle over what's covered and what is not will play itself out in the courts, but that may be too late for many victims of the hurricane.

FOCUS STOCK SALE

JIM LEHRER: The investigations of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and his personal finances. Gwen Ifill has the latest.

GWEN IFILL: The Justice Department and the Securities & Exchange Commission are investigating the timing of stock sales made by Sen. Frist this summer. The senator told his portfolio managers in June to sell all of his shares in HCA, a healthcare company founded by his family but since sold. Frist's order to sell the stock came one month before HCA issued a weak earnings report and lost significant value. The senator has denied any wrongdoing. Eamon Javers, who covers Capitol Hill for BusinessWeek, has been covering this story.

So Eamon, I read somewhere today that there are 45 members of the Senate who are millionaires. Many of them have blind trusts. What happened in this case that made this different?

EAMON JAVERS: Well, what critics are saying, Gwen, is that what we found out here is that Senate blind trusts are really sort of nearsighted trusts. These aren't totally blind. There are a couple of loopholes in there -- one being that senators who think they have an upcoming conflict of interest in legislation, things that are moving, their political ambitions maybe, can tell trustees to sell a stock that might trigger that conflict. And that's what Sen. Frist did here. He told his trustees on June 13 to sell HCA. That process was complete by July 8. And then on July 13, we have this weak earnings report. The stock declines by about 9 percent. That sale -- it turns out -- saved Sen. Frist a lot of money; how much we don't quite know. There's a lot we still don't know about this.

GWEN IFILL: What is the senator's connection, other than having been a big stock owner in this company?

EAMON JAVERS: Well, the company was founded by his father and brother. It is a publicly traded company. And he has never worked there but he owns quite a bit of stock in the company. And when he set up the original blind trust in the Senate years ago, he put something on the order of about $10 million of HCA stock into the blind trust.

The way these trusts work he doesn't know exactly how much of that stock remains, but he does know that he had some. And what he told his trustees was sell any amount of HCA that still remains in this account.

GWEN IFILL: Is that the typical arrangement on Capitol Hill for politicians or for anybody in public life, that they, the money is put in a blind trust but they can know actually what's there?

EAMON JAVERS: Well, they can know bits and pieces of what's there. They can know, for example, if a stock has been liquidated from their blind trust. There's a $1,000 trigger; if the amount of stock goes below that trigger, they're notified that that stock has been liquidated. So they'll know if they don't own it anymore but they don't know how much of that $10 million, for example, in Frist's case, has been divested into other stocks.

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His trustees may have all along been selling some of that stock in order to diversify him as any financial manager may do. But typically in the Senate this is something that we see a lot. These are Senate Ethics Committee-approved blind trusts. But, as we're learning as this process unfolds that senators can see some of the details there.

GWEN IFILL: Is there anyway to know -- he's been a member of the Senate since --

EAMON JAVERS: 1994 he was elected.

GWEN IFILL: Just now he's divested himself of this stock. If it was a conflict now, why wasn't it a conflict before?

EAMON JAVERS: Well, that's what his critics are asking. They say he's made major health care votes HCA being a big health care company -- over the years while still knowing that he owned this HCA stock. So one of the things that we're going to get into now is the question of what exactly was it that Sen. Frist thought was a conflict of interest upcoming on the Senate's agenda if all these major votes didn't constitute in his mind a conflict of interest.

GWEN IFILL: Well, as those questions have been mounting this week Sen. Frist finally came before the cameras yesterday. And this is what he had to say.

SEN. BILL FRIST: In April, I asked my staff to determine if Senate rules and relevant laws would allow me to direct the trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock. After my staff reviewed the relevant statutes and Senate rules and consulted with outside counsel and Senate Ethics Committee staff, I learned that the rules allowed me to direct the trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock in my blind trust.

Now, I'm being asked to explain this decision. I understand that and I welcome it. An examination of the facts will demonstrate that I acted properly. I will cooperate with the Securities & Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to provide the information they need as quickly as possible.

My only objective in selling the stock was to eliminate the appearance of a conflict of interest. I had no information about HCA or its performance that was not publicly available when I directed the trustees to sell the stock.

GWEN IFILL: There are two things that he said which caught my ear. One is he said he consulted with the Senate Ethics Committee.

EAMON JAVERS: Right.

GWEN IFILL: Does that mean he got a clearance from them, a written okay that he could sell this stock, or does it mean that he just talked to them or advised them?

EAMON JAVERS: He may very well have gotten something on paper in which case we'd like to see that as the story unfolds. The other thing there he said, the very first two words: He said in April he started this process. That is a very clear attempt by Frist to say, hey, wait a second. I started this months before I could have had any indication that there were any problems with HCA that were going to trigger this weak earnings report as late as July. So that's Frist expanding the time line a little bit and giving us a sense of when these decisions actually took place.

GWEN IFILL: And he also said there at the end of that particular piece of sound that he did not have access to any information that was not publicly available.

EAMON JAVERS: Right.

GWEN IFILL: Do we know what that means?

EAMON JAVERS: Well, notice what he didn't say. He didn't say there that he didn't talk to his brother, for example, who still remains involved with the company. He didn't say that he didn't have any contact --

GWEN IFILL: The chairman emeritus, I believe.

EAMON JAVERS: That's right. He didn't say that he didn't have any contact with anybody affiliated with the company. What he said is he didn't know anything that Joe Six-Pack stock investor didn't know. That's an important distinction.

GWEN IFILL: It sounds like a fairly subjective distinction as well. What is public and what does Joe Six-Pack know to ask?

EAMON JAVERS: These are dicey situations for politicians. I mean, what Bill Frist is facing here is the possibility of becoming the Martha Stewart of American politics, and how this investigation proceeds is going to be very important to him.

GWEN IFILL: Well, you mentioned Martha Stewart but how different are the facts of this case as far as we know them so far and other insider trading acquisitions, allegations we have heard with other high- profile people?

EAMON JAVERS: Well, remember insider trading itself can be tricky to prosecute. You need a lot of evidence. They're going to be wanting to go after Frist's emails, his schedule, other documents that show who was he meeting with, who did he talk to, his phone records and all of that.

But the challenge for a lot of folks in this kind of situation can be not necessarily what did you do before the investigation started but what do you do after the investigation is going on? Lying to investigators has tripped up people in the past.

GWEN IFILL: Have there been complaints before about -- from good government groups or whatever about Sen. Frist's continuing to hold an interest in HCA?

EAMON JAVERS: Yeah, HCA has been an issue for Frist over the years. People have pointed to it and say, wait a second. You're a big investor. How can you possibly make independent decisions? And in the past Frist has always said, you know, I don't have any conflict of interest here.

One thing that might be worth pointing out that we haven't seen, I don't think publicly before, is that at the same timeframe that Frist was selling this HCA stock he was also closing down something called Frist 2000 which was his 2000 campaign arm that had gone through all sorts of tumult of its own. That was invested in the stock market and Frist actually lost a lot of money in those funds. And I'm told by sources close to Frist's political operation that he actually shut that down on July 6. And people close to Frist point to that and say, well, what this was, was a broader effort by Frist to do some political and financial house cleaning, not an effort to game the stock market.

GWEN IFILL: Well, let's talk about political and financial house cleaning because he also indicated yesterday that he was setting these things straight because of issues to come when he leaves the Senate. What are these issues to come? As if we don't know.

EAMON JAVERS: He raised the curtain just a little bit on a potential Frist 2008 presidential bid here. And that's one of the questions behind all this. Was Frist behind the scenes setting the table really for a presidential bid and did somebody in his political organization say, hey, wait a second, these things have been long criticized over the years; you might want to get these off the table before we even get into the idea of a presidential campaign, so the irony here for Frist is there could be nothing wrong entirely. And he could have been trying to be even more above board than he ever was and that's what has caused the current flap.

GWEN IFILL: Well, as the current flap continues, it's about a week old today probably roughly, what has been the reaction among members of his own party and members of the other party on the Hill.

EAMON JAVERS: Democrats are proceeding very cautiously. They're not jumping up and down screaming for Frist's resignation just yet. I think they're going to want to see how the details unfold. And I talked to a lot of Senate Republicans today all of whom very, very strongly defended Sen. Frist.

I talked to Sen. McCain today. He was very aggressively pointing out to me, he said, look, this man has done a lot for veterans. He's done a lot for health care in Africa. He's a good and decent man. I don't think he did anything wrong.

So I think Frist has built up a lot of goodwill by being a medical doctor, by being the type of personality that he is. And I don't think Senate Republicans are ready to jump ship on him just yet.

GWEN IFILL: But there has been some nervousness among other conservatives outside of the Senate not members of the club about Sen. Frist on different issues.

EAMON JAVERS: Sure.

GWEN IFILL: Has any of that been boiling up over this?

EAMON JAVERS: Well, there are those who say that Sen. Frist's embryonic presidential campaign was already fairly dead because of what happened earlier in this year with Terri Schiavo and Frist very publicly getting involved in that, which caused him a bit of a political black eye as the politics of it played out.

So it might have been the case that Frist was a non-starter as a presidential candidate anyway. But clearly based on his comment that we just saw he doesn't think so and clearly a lot of support from other Senate Republicans.

GWEN IFILL: Eamon Javers, thanks a lot.

EAMON JAVERS: Thank you.

FOCUS THE SMALLEST WITNESSES

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, a unique window into Darfur. Jeffrey Brown has our report.

JEFFREY BROWN: Much of the tragedy of Darfur-- the killings, the destruction of villages-- has taken place beyond the view of cameras, and the world has had to rely on eyewitness accounts. Now, new insight into the horrors of this area of western Sudan is coming from an unexpected source: The drawings of children.

DR. ANNIE SPARROW: It actually looks as if it's a picture of men dancing with women. But the men in the green are Sudanese soldiers taking the women away to be raped.

JEFFREY BROWN: The drawings were done by dozens of Darfur's children, age eight to seventeen, now living in refugee camps along the Sudan-Chad border. They were collected by researchers from the group Human Rights Watch, including Dr. Annie Sparrow, a 36-year-old pediatrician from Australia who went to the camps to study sexual violence against refugees. As she often does while talking to adults, Sparrow gave drawing materials to children without telling them what to draw.

DR. ANNIE SPARROW: And sometimes I had children climbing all over my lap just wanting to get involved. So, just handing out notebooks and pieces of paper and crayons and pens and everybody wants a pen or something to draw with. And I just let them go for it because that way they can just draw whatever they want to and the picture has all the integrity of literally expressing what is inside their head, that it's their own visual vocabulary of war.

JEFFREY BROWN: The drawings have been collected into an exhibition called "The Smallest Witnesses: The Conflict in Darfur Through Children's Eyes," recently at New York University, soon to travel around the country.

Here, the visual vocabulary of war includes armed Arab militias called the Janjaweed mounted on camels and horseback, torched villages, tanks and planes, people fleeing for their lives.

Sparrow describe one particularly haunting picture done by an eight-year-old girl.

DR. ANNIE SPARROW: There's a green vehicle in the middle of the drawing. There's a green man, and there's what looks like an explosive pretty flower. And I said, "What is this?" And she said, "That's my hut burning after it's been hit by a bomb." And I pointed to the man in green, and she said, "That's a soldier from Sudan." And I pointed to the green vehicle, and she said, "That's a tank." And then I pointed to this woman with a red face --

JEFFREY BROWN: It was upside down.

DR. ANNIE SPARROW: It was upside down. And I said, "What is this?" And she said, "That's a woman. She's dead." And I said, "Why does she have a red face?" And this little eight-year-old girl said, "Because she was shot in the face," which was just so shocking.

JEFFREY BROWN: The United Nations estimates some 200,000 people have been killed or died from disease or starvation in Darfur since the fighting began in 2003. Another 2.5 million have been displaced from their homes.

Most of the violence has been carried out by marauding bands of Arab militias against African tribes. The Sudanese government has been accused of aiding the militias with military aircraft and other equipment. Sparrow says the drawings make the connection clear.

DR. ANNIE SPARROW: They're not just drawing pictures of the Janjaweed, but they're also drawing pictures of the arsenal of war that the government used against the Africans. I can sit down with a military analyst and he would say, "This is a MiG-21. This is an FAO rifle. This is a Kalashnikov" -- shows how well the children have become acquainted with the weapons of war.

JEFFREY BROWN: They were up close?

DR. ANNIE SPARROW: Very up close.

JEFFREY BROWN: Not every picture is so easy to read. Looking at the swirls in this drawing, Sparrow asked the nine- year-old artist what they represented.

DR. ANNIE SPARROW: She pointed to the man at the bottom of the picture and she said, "That's a Janjaweed. He's running after us. They're all running after us. And we're holding on to each other and running and screaming." The saddest bit for that was, she said, "even though we're all hanging on to each other," she said, "my daddy -- my daddy was lost."

And they don't even know to this day whether he's alive or not because they're in Chad in a refugee camp and he could be anywhere.

JEFFREY BROWN: Among the terrible images, there are some that evoke a more peaceful time.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, this looks like a nice scene.

DR. ANNIE SPARROW: It's a very beautiful bird. And they do draw these pictures of beautiful birds and their home life, and they also draw pictures of almost what they were wishing for.

JEFFREY BROWN: In this drawing, a girl has books floating over the head of her brother. She told Sparrow he desperately wants to go to school.

DR. ANNIE SPARROW: And they are in no position to grow up knowing any other way of life because they can't even learn to play or, you know, they don't have access to education or they don't have access to their own identity. And a lot of the time, that's what's been stripped in this type of conflict where people are forced off their land and forced out of their livelihoods.

JEFFREY BROWN: Dr. Sparrow says that for the children of Darfur, creating the drawings has a therapeutic effect. For the rest of us, the works offer a window into their troubled world.

JIM LEHRER: The exhibition is now at the museum of tolerance in Los Angeles; it travels next to Toronto. A selection of the work can also be seen on our web site at pbs.org.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: Authorities across east Texas and west Louisiana warned them away. The former FEMA director Michael Brown defended his response to Hurricane Katrina. He blamed state and local officials in Louisiana for what happened in New Orleans. U.S. and Iraqi forces announced they've killed al-Qaida's number-two man in Iraq. And consumer confidence in September dropped by the most in 15 years.

JIM LEHRER: And again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are eight more.

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night. 2

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Tuesday, September 27, 2005