The president of Deluxe, Donald E. Meske, is scarred by the union battles, the bureaucratic foul-ups and the administrative barriers in the city.

Indeed, the bureaucratic foul-ups forced her back on the welfare rolls, after she had proudly worked her way free.

But they said Federal officials must determine what caused the delay - ambiguously attributed thus far to a bureaucratic foul-up - so that it does not happen again.

Ms. Marquez blames bureaucratic foul-ups with her city rent subsidies.

It was also difficult to get enough of boats in the water because of bureaucratic foul-ups, Captain Bayard said.

But intergovernmental squabbles and bureaucratic foul-ups, along with the enormity of the catastrophe, sometimes conspired to prolong a family's agony.

She believes their Medicaid coverage lapsed early this year because of a bureaucratic foul-up, perhaps because paperwork was mailed to a homeless shelter after they had left.

The trail of fumbles and stumbles - the intelligence lapses, bureaucratic foul-ups, policy miscalculations and all the rest - began well before Mr. Bush's inauguration.

But their bureaucratic foul-ups and intramural rivalries are at least as big a hindrance.

After taking down the details and making the appropriate inquiries, Ms. Walsh called back to say that "there has been a bureaucratic foul-up."