CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript
Interview
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BLITZER: Our congressional correspondent, Dana Bash, caught up with Billy Nungesser.
Dana, he never holds back. The man is full of passion. He is obviously very angry.
DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Very angry, very frustrated.
He and other officials from Louisiana came here to Congress, Wolf, to plead with lawmakers to help fix what they say is still a major breakdown in the command-and-control structure down there by the Gulf. And he came out of that hearing, and he told me that he doesn't have a clue whose in charge, and it's making a dire situation even worse.
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BASH: You said in your testimony that someone has to be in charge who has the guts and the will to make things happen. Isn't that what Thad Allen's job is?
NUNGESSER: It's not happening. You saw the governor out there with the National Guard, with the suction equipment that we put on a barge. We have been asking for three weeks. That hasn't gotten approved.
BASH: You famously now initially called for Thad Allen to resign, and then later you said, well, he's doing a better job. So, have you changed your mind again?
NUNGESSER: Well, it got better since the berms got approved. But since then, we have had nothing approved. We have no suction equipment.
There's 100 skimmers in a warehouse. And Barataria Bay is covered with oil. Pelicans are dying every day. Where's the local decision- making? The fact that I got to beg for four vacuum equipment to get the -- get the goop out of the marsh by the pelicans so they don't dive in it every day is criminal.
They should be knocking me down to get out everything they can out there to clean it up. It's crazy. We're having to write purchase orders and turn them in. And they have got to go through the chain of command.
BASH: But the red tape is still...
NUNGESSER: Still there.
BASH: ... there, still thick?
NUNGESSER: Still there.
BASH: And when you talk to Thad Allen about this and you talk to whomever you could, maybe the president of the United States, what does he say?
NUNGESSER: We did. It changed. We got the berms approved, but now...
BASH: So, you're saying the only way you can get things done is when you go straight to the president?
NUNGESSER: It seems that's the way it's happened.
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