OCTOBER 2005

By BRIAN THEVENOT and GORDON RUSSELL
Newhouse News Service
KARL MERTON FERRON / THE BALTIMORE SUN

Bystanders watch as National Guard troops move about the area outside the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans on Sept. 2. The vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees at the Dome — murders, rapes and beatings — have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence.

Coverage of Katrina bolsters standing of Fox's Shepard Smith

NEW ORLEANS — After five days managing near riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Following days of internationally reported murders, rapes and gang violence inside the stadium, the doctor from FEMA — Beron doesn't remember his name — came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a
refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies. "I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalled the doctor saying.

The real total?

Six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the handoff of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice.

State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been murdered inside the stadium.

At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies have been recovered, despite reports of heaps of dead piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been murdered, said health and law-enforcement officials. That the nation's frontline emergency-management officials believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the news media and even some of the city's top officials, including the mayor and police
superintendent.

The vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees — mass murders, rapes and beatings — have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law- enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.   "I think 99 percent of it is ****[expletive]," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong — bad things happened. But I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything ... 99 percent of the people in the Dome were very well- behaved."

Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state Health and Human Services Department administrator overseeing the body-recovery operation, said his teams were inundated with false reports. Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities have only confirmed four murders in the entire city in the aftermath of Katrina — making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. "I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two sites," he said. "It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they [national media outlets] have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases; they just accepted what people [on the street] told them. ... It's not consistent with the highest standards of journalism."

As floodwaters forced tens of thousands of evacuees into the Dome and Convention Center, news of unspeakable acts poured out of the nation's media: People firing at helicopters trying to save them; women, children and even babies raped with abandon; people murdered for food and water; a 7-year-old raped and killed at the Convention Center. Police, according to their chief, Eddie Compass, found themselves in multiple shootouts inside both shelters, and were forced to race toward muzzle flashes through the dark to disarm the criminals; snipers fired at doctors and soldiers from downtown high-rises. In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies,"
and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members killing and raping people" inside the Dome. Other unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies "we couldn't count."

The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, overwhelmingly African-American masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. The mayor told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an "almost animalistic state."

Four weeks after the storm, how many of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence? The piles of murdered bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines assert that, while anarchy reigned at times and people suffered indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened. "The information I had at the time, I thought it was credible," Compass said, admitting his earlier statements were false. Asked the source of the information, Compass said he didn't remember. Nagin frankly acknowledged he doesn't know the extent of the mayhem that occurred inside the Superdome and the Convention Center — and may never. "I'm having a hard time getting a good body count," he
said. Compass conceded that rumor had overtaken, and often crippled, authorities' response to reported lawlessness, sending badly needed resources to situations that turned out not to exist.

Military, law-enforcement and medical workers agree that the flood of evacuees — about 30,000 at the Dome and an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 at the Convention Center — overwhelmed their security personnel. The 400 to 500 soldiers in the Dome could have been easily overrun by increasingly agitated crowds in the Dome, but that never happened, said Col. James Knotts, a midlevel commander there. While the Convention Center saw plenty of mischief, including massive looting and isolated gunfire, and many inside cowered in fear, the hordes of evacuees for the most part did not resort to violence. "Everything was embellished, everything was exaggerated," said Deputy Police Superintendent Warren Riley. "If one guy said he saw six bodies, then another guy the same six, and another guy saw them — then that became 18."

Inside the Superdome, where National Guardsmen performed rigorous security checks before allowing anyone inside, only one shooting has been verified — and even that shooting, injuring Louisiana Guardsman Chris Watt of the 527th Engineer Battalion, has been widely misreported, said Maj. David Baldwin, who led the team of soldiers who arrested the alleged assailant. Watt had indeed been attacked inside one of the Dome's locker rooms, where he entered with another soldier. In the darkness, as they walked through about six inches of water, Watt's attacker hit him
with a metal rod, a piece of a cot. But the bullet that penetrated Watt's leg came from his own gun — he accidentally shot himself during the commotion. The attacker was sent to jail, Baldwin said.

Inside the Convention Center, Jimmie Fore, vice president of the state authority that runs the center, stayed in the building with a core group of 35 employees until Thursday. He said thugs hot-wired 75 forklifts and electric carts and looted food and booze, but he said he never saw any violent crimes committed, nor did any of his employees. Some, however, did report seeing armed men roaming the building, and Fore said he heard gunshots in the distance on about six occasions. Rumors of rampant violence at the Convention Center prompted Louisiana National Guard Col. Jacques Thibodeaux to put together a 1,000-man force of soldiers and police in full battle gear to secure the center around noon on Friday. It took only 20 minutes to take control, and soldiers met no resistance, Thibodeaux said. They found no evidence, witnesses or victims of any murders, rapes or beatings, Thibodeaux said. One widely circulated story, told to The Times-Picayune by a slew of evacuees and two Arkansas National Guardsman, held that "30 or 40 bodies" were stored in a Convention Center freezer. But a formal Arkansas Guard review of the matter later found that no soldier had actually seen the corpses, and that the information came from rumors in the food line for military, police and rescue workers in front of Harrah's Casino, said Col. John Edwards of the Arkansas National Guard, who conducted the review.

Reports of dozens of rapes at both facilities — many allegedly involving small children — may forever remain a question mark. Rape is a notoriously underreported crime under ideal circumstances, and tracking down evidence at this point, with evacuees spread all over the country, will be nearly impossible. The same goes for reports of armed robberies at both sites. While numerous people told The Times-Picayune that they had witnessed rapes, in particular the rape of two young girls in the Superdome ladies' room and the killing of one of them, police and military
officials say they know nothing of such an incident.

Katrina, Bush and Cheney

Grounds for Impeachment

By FRANCIS BOYLE
from Counterpunch.September 16, 2005

The longer we delay the necessary and principled impeachment process against Bush Jr. and his Neo-conservatives apparatchiks the greater will be the disaster for all the peoples of the world and even here in the United States. Witness the racist and class-based criminal mistreatment inflicted by the Bush Jr. administration upon the victims of Hurricane Katrina. President Bush Jr., Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff must all be impeached immediately for denying Equal Protection of the Laws to the Katrina Victims because they are African Americans and because they are Poor in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Their criminal negligence and resulting mass homicides constitute "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" within the meaning of Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution quoted above.

There is a recent precedent for introducing an Article of Impeachment against an incumbent American President for such Equal Protection violations amounting to massive discrimination on the grounds of Race and Class threatening the lives of American citizens that this author personally advised upon. On 14 January 1991, pursuant to the terms of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the United States Congress authorized President Bush Sr. to use military force against Iraq in order to expel Iraq from Kuwait in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 678 of 29 November 1990. In direct reaction thereto, Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and I agreed to set up a National Campaign to Impeach President Bush Sr. if he went to war against Iraq, initially for the purpose of deterring him from doing so. It was agreed that I would write the Bill of Particulars against President Bush Sr. to serve as the basis for drafting the Articles of Impeachment comprising the Gonzalez Bill of Impeachment. We launched the Bush Sr. Impeachment Campaign on 15 January 1991.

Nevertheless the war started, and the very next day Congressman Gonzalez appeared on the floor of the House of Representatives to introduce his Bill of Impeachment against President Bush Sr. It was my great honor and privilege to serve as Counsel to Congressman Gonzalez on the subsequent course of this impeachment effort that he so courageously and tenaciously investigated and pursued in his capacity as Chairman of the House Banking Committee, a position he held until the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the 1994 congressional elections. In response, President Bush Sr. even unleashed the C.I.A. on this beloved congressman known affectionately to his friends as "Henry B."

I will not review here either the contents or the bases for the 1991 Gonzalez Impeachment Resolution against President Bush Sr. But for the purpose of this Equal Protection impeachment argument with respect to the Katrina victims on grounds of Class and Race, its most salient feature was Article I:

Article I

In the conduct of the office of President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution. U.S. soldiers in the Middle East are overwhelmingly poor white, black, and Mexican-American, and their military service is based on the coercion of a system that has denied viable economic opportunities to these classes of citizens. Under the Constitution, all classes of citizens are guaranteed equal protection, and calling on the poor and minorities to fight a war for oil to preserve the lifestyles of the wealthy is a denial of the rights of these soldiers. In all of this George Herbert Walker Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore George Herbert Walker Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

As Congressman Gonzalez so eloquently, presciently and prophetically stated when he introduced his Bill of Impeachment against President Bush Sr. onto the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on 16 January 1991:

My resolution has five articles of impeachment. First, the President has violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Our soldiers in the Middle East are overwhelmingly poor white, black, and Mexican-American or Hispanic-American. They may be volunteers technically, but their voluntarism is based on the coercion of a system that has denied viable opportunities to these classes of our citizens. Under the Constitution, all classes of citizens are guaranteed equal protection, and calling on the poor and the minorities to fight a war for oil to preserve the lifestyles of the wealthy is a denial of the rights of these soldiers.

Let me add that since 1981 we have suffered the Reagan-Bush and now the Bush war against the poor, and to add insult to injury, we now are asking the poor to fight while here, as a result of this fight, even the meager programs that the Congress had seen fit to preserve as a national policy will suffer because the money for those programs will be diverted to the cause of this unnecessary war.

Of course the same constitutional arguments apply today to justify the impeachment of President Bush Jr. for his illegal and criminal war against Iraq in order to steal oil that is being waged by poor Whites, Blacks, and Latinos to support the luxurious lifestyles of the White Racist Power Elite who effectively govern this country and criminally abandoned the Black and Poor Katrina victims to their grisly and cruel fate.

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University Press, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press. He can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU