Amid Katrina Chaos, Congressman Used National Guard to Visit Home

ABC News - Military sources tells ABC News that (Rep. William Jefferson, D-La), an eight-term Democratic congressman, asked the National Guard that night to take him on a tour of the flooded portions of his congressional district. A 5-ton military truck and a half dozen military police were dispatched.

Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard tells ABC News that during the tour, Jefferson asked that the truck take him to his home on Marengo Street, in the affluent uptown neighborhood in his congressional district. According to Schneider, this was not part of Jefferson's initial request.

Jefferson defended the expedition, saying he set out to see how residents were coping at the Superdome and in his neighborhood. He also insisted that he did not ask the National Guard to transport him.

'I did not seek the use of military assets to help me get around my city,' Jefferson told ABC News. 'There was shooting going on. There was sniping going on. They thought I should be escorted by some military guards, both to the convention center, the Superdome and uptown.'

The water reached to the third step of Jefferson's house, a military source familiar with the incident told ABC News, and the vehicle pulled up onto Jefferson's front lawn so he wouldn't have to walk in the water. Jefferson went into the house alone, the source says, while the soldiers waited on the porch for about an hour.

I'm OK with the tour, he is a senior Congressman from Louisiana after all, and I'd probably be OK with him taking a drive by his house, though that might be pushing it, especially if his house was out of the way, but running in and going through his things for an hour? I'm not so good with that.