This briefing video was almost certainly leaked to AP by former FEMA Director Brown. Brown is making the case that he was not a wholly incompetent boob, but rather a semi-competent boob stripped of all real authority and hung out to dry by Michael Chertoff.

But who was Chertoff's superior? Not Bush, who was incurious and reading off a script during this briefing. Maybe it was the guy ordering oil pipeline repairs in the middle of the night following the storm -- Dick "Fudd" Cheney.

Brown's remark that the Louisiana Superdome roof may not hold up could seem to be prescient -- a slick leak by the Brown team. Until you realize that Brown was talking about the Superdome roof in a Category 5 storm -- not the Category 2 winds that the Superdome and the canal wall levees actually did receive.

As the video shows both Bush and his Homeland Security chief were told by federal disaster officials in unambiguous language "that the storm could breach levees and overwhelm rescuers".

What could be clearer than that?

Bush's comments three days later that, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees", was obviously meant to mislead the public and redirect the blame away from himself.

For some unknown reason, Bush and his lieutenants ignored the warnings of the Hurricane experts and stubbornly refused to take timely action that would have saved lives. Even when Chertoff was notified that the levees had been breached, he failed to respond until hours later.

Why?

After all, as one official noted, "It was not only predictable; it was predicted."

Indeed, it was. But Bush and company obviously had different plans in mind.

What those plans were; no one knows, but that doesn't minimize the scale of the disaster or keep us from assigning blame. The video proves that both Bush and Chertoff are guilty of dereliction of duty and, very possibly, manslaughter.

The question now is one of "intentionality", not "culpability".

The media has played a crucial role in blocking attempts for an independent investigation and for absolving Bush of guilt. From the beginning, they singed-out ex-FEMA-chief Michael Brown as the scapegoat for the obvious failures of the administration. We know now that "Brownie" was perhaps the only high-ranking official who acted responsibly and tried to protect the public from harm. Brown repeatedly warned of the potential dangers of Katrina but no one paid attention. On the video he is heard saying, "My gut tells me…that this is a bad one and a big one…To put it mildly, this is the big one".

Brown cautioned that the Superdome was 12 ft below sea-level and could be swamped if the levees broke. He later alerted Homeland Security that, "They're not taking patients out of the hospitals, taking prisoners out of the prisons, and they're leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So, I'm very concerned about that."…"I'm concerned about the medical and mortuary resources and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe."

He also added later, "I want to jam up supply-lines. I want to cut the bureaucratic red-tape. I want it, balls-to-the-wall, in doing everything we could."

Brown was obviously doing the best he could under the circumstances.

Unfortunately, his efforts were rewarded by a "swift-boat" media-campaign that portrayed him as a clownish-bungler who botched the relief-effort from start to finish. The media deftly shifted the blame from the White House (where it belonged) to a bit-player in the government bureaucracy who was only trying to save lives. The AP video shows where the guilt really lies.

There's no evidence that anyone else in the administration was particularly worried by the tragedy or the loss of life. Three days passed before troops were deployed to the region and the relief-effort was hampered at every turn by federal agents.

As more and more incriminating evidence has surfaced, the recalcitrant media has stuck to its narrative of a "blundering bureaucracy" unable to deal with a massive natural disaster like Katrina. All of the 2,200 articles which first appeared about the storm invoked the very same phraseology. According to the MSM, Katrina showed a "failure of imagination" or, Homeland Security was "slow to react" or, Chertoff was in "a fog of war" or, (Bush's much repeated) "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees".

These carefully-worded phrases have built a protective wall around Bush and Chertoff; shielding them from direct involvement in the deaths of 1,300 Americans and 2,300 missing.

We may not know what Bush or Chertoff had in mind when they refused to carry out their duties, but we do know that it was not the result of a "bungling bureaucracy". That's just baloney.

The "buck-passing" media is trying to deflect blame and hoodwink the public, but the charges remain the same; criminal negligence or manslaughter.

For weeks, Chertoff has been under fire from Capitol Hill and the media for his performance during the disaster last year. In addition, more criticism has been fueled by his clash with former FEMA Director Michael Brown in the so-called post-Katrina "blame game." (See HUMAN EVENTS' exclusive report, "Brown: White House Made Me Scapegoat," in which he says, "They've got to keep me out there as a scapegoat. If they get rid of Chertoff, they have no new scapegoat. Then it goes to the White House.")

Last month, however, when I asked White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan if the President had confidence in the embattled Chertoff, he replied without hesitation "Absolutely." Even Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.), a very public critic of the Administration's handling of Katrina, stopped short of calling on Chertoff to leave.

But with the release of the teleconference two days ago and resultant media discussion of the President's apparent silence as Brown informs him of pending disaster ("Is Brown Owed An Apology?" was the theme of a debate on Fox News last night), criticism of Chertoff and calls for his resignation have been enhanced.

Now, at least one source close to him says the end of his tenure as the nation's second secretary of Homeland Security is near.

UPDATE -- 8:08 p.m.: A senior administration official is refuting my source's comments that Chertoff's days are numbered.

"The President offered strong words of support for Secretary Chertoff on Tuesday in an interview with Elizabeth Vargas. Secretary Chertoff is serving in one of the most difficult positions in government and he is doing an excellent job."