The unsourced and unconfirmed report here (or here) says that the DHS was using the private company AccuWeather to obtain their forecasts of Katrina. A report was compiled using their data and presented to DHS head Michael Chertoff.

Meanwhile, NWS meteorologists working at the "NOAA Desk" in the "DHS Ops Center" prepared another report based on the reports from the National Hurricane Center. That report might not have been presented to Chertoff:

To make matters worse & even more confusing, FEMA relies solely on NWS products, which includes those issued by the National Hurricane Center. So FEMA (which only uses NWS) and the DHS (which uses Accuweather) are not even looking at the same forecasts! The NWS NHC's track for Katrina was significantly different & more accurate than Accuweather's. Just recently, Accuweather's track for Ophelia brought it across Florida & into the Gulf. In both cases, Accuweather's forecast was dead wrong. The end result is that the head of homeland security & DHS & FEMA received conflicting forecasts.

Sen. Bill Nelson also asked Max Mayfield about consolidation and downsizing of WFOs and Max Mayfield unequivocally said it was a very bad idea, and that he hopes that it doesn't happen and that the local\ WFOs are an essential part of NWS. Senator Nelson also trashed Accuweather and, without naming Santorum, blasted those who would try to take NWS off the air and off the internet to help commercial interests.

Since this was apparently discussed at Congressional hearings, it shouldn't be too difficult to confirm whether this is accurate or not.