Congressional investigators have learned that a federal official's account of the New Orleans flooding reached the Homeland Security Department the night before the Bush administration has said it learned of the disaster, according to the New York Times.
The newspaper said a Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman sent an e-mail at 9.27pm on Monday, August 29th, the day the levee broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
A firefighter dousing flames in New Orleans las September
The e-mail said conditions "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. "Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought - also a number of fires," the e-mail said, according to the Times.
White House officials have confirmed to congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, the paper said.
It added that Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, "acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports".
Michael Brown, director of Fema until he resigned under pressure on September 12th, told the Timesyesterday that, learning of this eyewitness report, he notified the White House of the news that night.
Mr Brown is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today. The newspaper said he was expected to confirm that he notified the White House the night of August 29th the levee had given way, the city was flooding and his crews were overwhelmed.
"There is no question in my mind, that at the highest levels of the White House they understood how grave the situation was," Mr Brown told the Times.
Investigators have questions why President George W. Bush and Mr Chertoff said the levee break did not happen until Tuesday. The two said they believed initially the storm had passed without a catastrophe.
In their defence, the newspaper said, Mr Chertoff and White House officials have said they were referring to official confirmation the levee had broken, which they received on Tuesday morning from the Army Corp of Engineers.