President Bush getting 'regular updates' on Gustav

Not only is President Bush keeping atop the reports of Tropical Storm Gustav, but the White House press office is keeping atop efforts to report that he is keeping atop the reports.

In other words, the president's staff wants us to know he's paying attention.

Can you say "Katrina"?

With the new storm following a path much like that of the 2005 hurricane, and forecasters predicting that it could come ashore Tuesday morning as a Category 3 hurricane (with winds in the 113-mph-to-130-mph range), the president has already dispatched top officials to the Gulf Coast to monitor preparations.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said this morning that Bush was getting "regular updates" about Gustav.

She said he was briefed Wednesday afternoon and again this morning by senior staff members.

"He's involved, engaged and getting briefings and working to make sure that the federal assistance is there," the spokeswoman said, adding: "Obviously, state and local authorities have responsibilities."

The efforts to demonstrate Bush's involvement, of course, come against the backdrop of what the president has acknowledged was an insufficient federal response to the devastation that Katrina wrought as it swept across Louisiana and Mississippi.

This afternoon, one of Perino's deputies, Scott Stanzel, dispatched an e-mail update.

He said Bush had spoken with Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, and David Paulison, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and "received an update about the ongoing efforts to prepare for the potential landfall of Tropical Storm Gustav."

Stanzel said Bush spoke with them about deploying personnel and prepositioning supplies, and about federal coordination with state and local authorities.

Still up in the air: whether the storm -- or, more specifically, the need to monitor the preparations for the storm and the response to its assault -- will force Bush to alter his plan to address the Republican National Convention on Monday night in St. Paul, Minn.

"Too premature to say," Perino said when asked whether the president's aides were tracking the storm with an eye toward changing his schedule.

Unspoken: the notion that it might be unseemly, let alone politically unwise, for Bush to be rousing the party faithful in St. Paul -- while network cameras were showing Gulf Coast residents again struggling against another horrific storm.

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Associated Press

Coming to a theater near you: Gitmo tapes?

When foreign intelligence agents and law enforcement teams arrived at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to talk to their countrymen held there, a third party was likely listening in on the interrogations, according to a report published today: U.S. officials operating via sound and video recording equipment.

The Washington Post says the policy, revealed in documents it obtained, suggests that the U.S. government could have thousands of hours of taped conversations recorded between detainees and representatives of nearly three dozen countries.

Which opens these questions: Do the tapes still exist? Will the recordings -- sound and video -- surface?

And if so, will they show misbehavior? Threats? Useful intelligence? Or information exonerating a detainee who remains in captivity?

The Post noted:

   Should such videotapes exist, they would reveal how representatives from countries such as China, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia treated detainees in small interrogation booths at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba--sessions that some detainees have said were abusive and at times contained threats of torture or even death.

But, the newspaper also said, while defense attorneys have long sought such evidence, the Bush administration has not indicated the tapes exist.

Nonetheless, even as the Pentagon has said it did not "regularly videotape interrogations" at Gitmo, it acknowledged last month that it had recorded at least seven hours of Canadian officials interrogating terrorism suspect Omar Khadr. It acknowledged having the tapes after the Canadian Supreme Court ordered Canadian officials to release them.

-- James Gerstenzang

Pool photo: Randall Mikkelson / Getty Images

Feds now arrest your laptops at border

Not content with taking your shoes and confiscating your water, now the Department of Homeland Security is gunning for your laptops.

As the Washington Post reported yesterday, Border Patrol and Customs agents can now "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period of time" to "review and analyze information."

They don't need probable cause under the new policy. Doesn't matter if you're a U.S. citizen or foreign visitor. Officials can hold the laptops indefinitely. Or hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, video and audio tapes. Ditto papers, documents, books, pamphlets, even litter.

"It's not our intent to subject legitimate travelers to undue scrutiny, but to ensure the safety of the American public," wrote Jayson Ahern, U.S. Customs deputy commissioner, in a recent policy paper.

Arguing that border searches of laptops have already uncovered intellectual property rights violations, extremist Jihadist literature, video clips of IEDs and child pornography, he pledged the government would never disclose confidential information "without lawful authority."

The policy has been on the books for awhile, but just confirmed under pressure from civil rights and business groups worried about increasing reports of laptop confiscation.

"Truly alarming," said Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.). Added sci-fi blogger Annalee Newit, "Who will defend the rights of the detained laptops?"

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times.