Brownie’s excellent Katrina adventure. W/video.

The Associated Press interviewed its political writer Ron Fournier to talk about the video.

AP: Can you tell me where the tape came from?

Fournier: I can’t go into detail. I got it from a source in government who was involved in the pre-and-post Katrina effort.

AP: What about the inconsistencies between the video and transcripts and what the government said in the aftermath of Katrina?

Fournier: If you recall, shortly after the hurricane struck, President Bush said, “No one had any idea the levees might be breached.” Well, it turns out that in the briefings before the hurricane struck, that indeed his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin, who was with the president in Crawford, had asked about the possibility levees could be breached. And Mike Brown, then the head of FEMA, said during one of the briefings that he had just talked to the president who asked about the possibility that levees could breach. So it raises the question: What was the president talking about when he said no one had any idea levees could be breached? Even Mike Brown told us [Wednesday] the president was wrong to say that.

The former federal emergency director who resigned after the heavily criticized response to Hurricane Katrina admitted Friday that he should have been more forthcoming about problems with the government’s response to the storm but faulted the performance of his former boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and called for his resignation.

Michael Brown, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was well aware that his agency was overwhelmed during the immediate aftermath of the storm, he told CNN, but blamed a “beltway” mentality that believes that “the American public can’t handle the truth” for not making his concerns about the response public.

“I should have owned up to the public very early in this disaster — probably on Monday and Tuesday — that’s how catastrophic it was, how serious it was, and that we were going to have problems,” Brown said.

“I think we need to get beyond that and just start being honest with the public and telling them exactly what is going on,” he added.

Brown resigned from FEMA in September amid intense criticism of his own performance after Katrina, the storm that left more than 1,300 dead in Louisiana and Mississippi.

“I have apologized to the people of America and I think it’s time for everybody else to own up to their mistakes, too,” Brown said.

AP: Can you tell me where the tape came from?

Fournier: I can’t go into detail. I got it from a source in government who was involved in the pre-and-post Katrina effort.