"Study Slams Confusion, Waste in BP Oil Spill Response"

"A report alleging that the Obama administration squelched efforts by government scientists to publicize the size of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill wasn't the only study critical of the government's response released Wednesday.

A second report, entitled "Decision-Making in the Unified Command," portrays the cleanup effort as confused, wasteful and often ineffective, and offers thinly veiled criticism of some of the key figures in the effort, including Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Allen, who President Barack Obama appointed as the National Incident Commander to oversee the response, saw the center he ran as intended primarily "to deal with high-level political and media inquiries" and not to direct the response effort, the report said. As a result, the public was confused about who was in charge of the response, the report said.

Jindal became an obstacle to the response, the report said, when, 11 days into the disaster, he removed the state's on-scene commander and named himself to the post. "No one else had the authority to speak for the state, so all decisions had to flow through the governor's office, which slowed decision-making and caused problems in the response efforts," the report said."

Mark Seibel reports for October 6, 2010, McClatchy Newspapers