When did the levees go? It's STILL a mystery!

As we deal with Wilma, let us not forget the lingering Katrina controversies.

Some post-Katrina discussion revolved around the question of when, exactly, the 17th Street levees gave way. Talking Points Memo's timeline, quoting a Knight-Ridder story as a source, puts the breech at 3 a.m. -- three hours before landfall.

Is that true? If so, why did the levees go at that time? Keep in mind that New Orleans never got hit with the full brunt of Katrina's fury; the eye hit the Louisiana/Mississippi border.

A month-and-a-half later, we discover that even the government has little idea as to what happened when. From the Washington Post:

Marty Bahamonde, sent to New Orleans by Brown, said he alerted Brown's assistant shortly after 11 a.m. that Monday with the "worst possible news" for the city: The Category 4 hurricane had carved a 20-foot breach in the 17th Avenue Canal levee.

Bahamonde contacted Brown at 7 p.m. to warn of massive flooding; Brown said he would pass the information on to the President. Yet

It is unclear what Brown told his superiors or the president's aides. He has testified to receiving "conflicting information" about 10 a.m. Monday that the levees had broken and at noon or 1 p.m. that "the levees had only been topped. So we knew something was going on between 10 and noon on Monday."

Chertoff testified that "There was not a report to me until the following morning that there was a significant breach of the 17th Street levee," and Bush did not learn of the breach until 5 a.m. Tuesday.

Is this scenario credible? And just when did the levees go? How can such an important point remain unestablished?

Knight-Ridder did indeed say -- repeatedly -- that the first breech occurred at 3 a.m. on Monday morning, before landfall.

The collapse in New Orleans' 17th Street canal levee occurred as early as 3 a.m., hours before Hurricane Katrina battered its way onto the Gulf Coast Aug. 29.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in charge of the 350 miles of earthen and concrete walls protecting the city, got its first inkling about two hours later on that Monday morning. There'’s a break, a civilian called in. A state policeman had told him.

If the Army Corps of Engineers did not know until 5 a.m., one wonders how Knight-Ridder learned of the 3 a.m. breech.

Even so, we can be pretty sure that a responsible local authority had known of the disastrous breech at least an hour before the hurricane had fully hit the city. How could the President remain ignorant until a full day later?