HJ Bosworth Jr. Photo by Stanford Rosenthal - Aug 6, 2008

Tune in Thursday 10am to Garland Robinette’s Think Tank on WWL Radio FM105.3 Thursday July 2.

Hear Founder and former editor of Nola.com Jon Donley on why he came forward and described in a sworn affidavit how, for over 2 years, he observed a cadre of about 20 user names posting abusive comments on Nola.com about any articles or people who criticized the Army Corps of Engineers.

Also joining Garland will be HJ Bosworth Jr, research director for Levees.org (pictured right).

Senator Mary Landrieu the Netherlands. Photo by Sandy Rosenthal - May 26, 2009

Today is Phone-In Day to Senator Landrieu!

We’re asking Louisiana residents to pick up the phone and dial 504-589-2427. When the aide answers, please say this:

“I am a Louisiana resident and I would like to leave a message for the Senator. Thank you for calling on the Pentagon to investigate reports of the Corp of Engineers’ engagement in a campaign to attack its critics. However, I also believe this activity should be reviewed by the Justice Department.”

For those who prefer email, we suggest using this form to write directly to the Senator.

http://landrieu.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm

BEST IF DONE BY 5PM WED JULY 1.

Note from the Founder:

“Levees.org is pleased that Senator Mary Landrieu will call on the DOD to investigate the Corps on what she described as a ‘disingenuous campaign to undercut their critics in Louisiana.’ The citizens of metro New Orleans deserve to know the full extent of this unethical behavior, and we do hope the Senator keeps her word. But we also stress that a more thorough effort must be launched looking at this activity as a whole.”

Click here to see a critical piece of information, the sworn affidavit by the Founder and former Editor in Chief of Nola.com. This validates Levees.org’s suspicions that began with our discovery in late 2008, when we traced insulting comments to the Corps of Engineers’ computers in New Orleans.
http://levees.org/affidavit.pdf

Filmmaker Matt Faust stands where his family home in Chalmette, LA once was. The home took on 9 ft of water in August 2005 and was later torn down by accident.

A lifelong resident of Chalmette, Matt Faust has won the prize for best short documentary at New York’s prestigious Tribeca Film Festival!

Many of you will recognize the haunting scene with the little girl and her beach ball standing in a desolate post-levee breach landscape from our Public Service Announcement a year ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqjIryjz1Ws&feature=channel_page

I am sure Matt would agree with me that the promise of many more audiences to view this beautiful film will help keep the preventable tragedy of the levee failures in front of the American people.

Click here for more on Faust and the Tribeca Festival.
http://delicious.com/leveesorg

June 25, 2009

Senator Mary Landrieu
328 Hart Senate Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Landrieu,

Thank you for your speedy response to our request, and for taking these disturbing, and in some cases, appalling allegations, seriously.

We appreciate your alerting the Department of Defense about this issue as these actions may be in violation of existing Department of Defense directives.

Still we wish to stress that since these activities may have violated Federal statutes, they must also be reviewed by the Department of Justice.

In short, we believe that the alleged activities may be far more than just a personnel matter within the Department of Defense.

Meanwhile, please also be aware that Levees.Org intends to file a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel to look into possible violations of the Hatch Act and Department of Defense Directive 1344.10.

Again, thank you for your speedy response to our concerns.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours truly,

Sandy Rosenthal
Executive Director

HJ Bosworth Jr, PE
Research Director

Vince Pasquantonio
Legislative Liaison

“I am very concerned by the reports that a number of Corps employees have engaged in a disingenuous campaign to undercut their critics in Louisiana,” Landrieu said. “My staff and I will continue to review these allegations and will urge Pentagon officials to thoroughly review this matter.”

Click here for full story by WWL.
http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl062309mlcorps.1b71a413.html

Sandy Rosenthal delivering a letter to Senator Mary Landrieu's New Orleans Office calling for Investigation of alleged Corps Internet Scandal 6-23-09

Senator Mary Landrieu
328 Hart Senate Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

June 23, 2009

Dear Senator Landrieu,

On June 17, 2009, WWL-TV in New Orleans exposed an apparent campaign of disinformation by employees of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding the failure of the flood walls and levees during Hurricane Katrina and in response to any subsequent public discussion of the Corps’ failures.

In the news story, WWL-TV obtained a sworn affidavit containing disturbing revelations about this disinformation campaign from Mr. Jon Donley, the Founder and former Editor-in-Chief of the Times Picayune’s online affiliate, Nola.com.

The 3-page document details how a group of about 20 individuals - whose usernames have been confirmed to originate from computers at the Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District - posted hundreds of politically-motivated and abusive comments using Nola.com’s user enagagement features.

These posts, as stated in the affidavit were made by Federal employees masquerading as ordinary citizens.  They reflect a possibly coordinated effort to abuse a public forum in order to shift responsibility from the agency’s destructive and deadly levee failures away from itself and onto the citizens of metro New Orleans.  This seemingly coordinated effort was done on the taxpayer’s dime while using taxpayer-funded equipment.   Many of these sort of comments were released last week on our website.

Furthermore, the affidavit asserts that there are numerous comments that “appealed to racial division and at times engaged in racial slurs” against African American citizens in the New Orleans region.

These comments also appeared to be by Federal employees, apparently on the taxpayer’s dime using taxpayer funded equipment.  Although this is a potential a violation of Federal Civil Rights law, these sort of comments have not yet been released to the public.

Mr. Donley’s affidavit referenced hundreds of comments, but that covered only a six-week period on a spreadsheet he ran.  In an email to Levees.org, Mr. Donley said he is very comfortable saying he observed “thousands over the entire nearly three-year period.”

In line with our mission of education, Levees.org, on March 16, 2009 requested that Times Picayune/Nola.com provide all such comments and usernames originating from the Corps’ office.  Their lawyer told us that while there is no law specifically preventing them from providing the data, they would elect to withhold it anyway, citing policy.

In light of these appalling revelations, we, the undersigned strongly urge you to have the Department of Justice conduct an investigation into these alleged activities as well as secure a full disclosure of the comments data.

We contend that a Federal agency, tasked with protecting coastal Louisiana, may be improperly and perhaps illegally engaging in coordinated political activity.  Furthermore, Federal employees tasked with protecting an African American-majority city have potentially displayed explicit racial prejudice.

We, the citizens of the region deserve to know the full extent to which multiple individuals with the Army Corps of Engineers may have been abusing the user engagement features at the Times Picayune/Nola.com.

Yours truly,
Mtumishi St. Julien
Chairman of the Board

Sandy Rosenthal
Executive Director

HJ Bosworth Jr, PE
Research Director

Vince Pasquantonio
Legislative Liaison

Photo in January 2006 of nearly ruined neighborhood in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana

The letter below to Jim Amoss, Editor of the Times Picayune / Nola.com is reprinted here with permission from the author.

Dear Mr. Amoss,

It is almost four years since my community was destroyed by the failure of the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) federally funded levees.  During that time, I as a St. Bernard Parish Firefighter, having lost everything I owned, initially assisted in the rescue of hundreds of those who felt protected and stayed not knowing the dangers that awaited them.  I also have suffered immensely, physically, mentally, emotionally, finacially and spiritually as my community and I have grappled with having to rebuild our lives and community in spite of persistent drawbacks.

During this time I have remained a subscriber to the Times Picayune and NOLA.COM using it to keep up with events and see what others in my community are feeling and how they are coping by reading the forums.  Over the course of the last four years I have seen many comments posted by what I believed to be those “spinning” for the ACOE and attacking some of us who have rebuilt our communities.

Now it comes to light that my suspicions were real and it has been ACOE employees using tax payer funded computers.  I think all your readers and I should be given full details and ALL the comments that were sent from the taxpayer paid ACOE computers. From the alleged amount of comments it is doubtful in my mind that this was as alleged by the ACOE the work of “one in 1600 employees”.

Mr. Amoss, do the right thing. Release the records and set the record straight on if the ACOE was “spinning ” their image or not.  As a subscriber and one who has endured I demand this.

Kevin R. Zanca
22 Pamela Place West
Arabi, LA 70032

How we nailed the Corps of Engineers. Using "backend" tools available to any nola.com blogger, I could clearly see the IP for username "overwrought"

On his website Friday, Jon Donley explained why he came forward and spoke out on what he saw while employed as Managing Editor at Nola.com.

For over 2 years, he observed a cadre of about 20 user names posting abusive comments on Nola.com’s community features about any articles or people who criticized the Army Corps of Engineers.  Donley traced the comments via IP address to the Corps’ internet network and describe how he saw nearly 700 comments in just a 6-week period early this year.

The highly credible letter is lengthy and chock full of detail, but the final sentence says it all:

“The idea that those same community features would be used to attack people calling for accountability,  to silence critics and deflect independent review of the Katrina disaster – potentially putting those same New Orleans residents at risk again – is obscene.”  –Jon Donley

Click here for the full text.

Here is how we nailed the Corps of Engineers. Using free software available to any amateur blogger, I could easily see (in red) that IP address 155.76.159.253 belonged to the usace.

Katie Reckdahl a reporter with the Times Picayune interviewed me yesterday on the Corps Internet Scandal.  Her main question was how I came to possess a copy of Jon Donley’s affidavit.

I explained that I asked Mr. Donley to write it  when I realized the Times Picayune would not comply with my request to see the usernames and the comments that originated from the Corps.

I have two remarks about the TP story.  First, it described Mr. Donley in the opening sentence as a “consultant.”  Hardly.  Mr. Donley was managing editor of nola.com, the TP’s online affiliate.  The top dog.  And that explains his access to all the chicanery.

Second, in writing about my request for additional comments data, the reporter wrote “..The Times-Picayune, does not release the identities of online commenters except under court order.”

That implies I requested the identities of the commenters.  I did not.  I requested the public usernames and the public comments.  The TP’s lawyer told me there was no legal reason to NOT let Levees.org see the data.  But they refused anyway citing policy.

Click here for the Times Picayune story.

This shop window in Amsterdam, Netherlands boasts a "Hold the Corps Accountable" sign. The owners of this taco shop are from New Orleans.

In a sworn affidavit, the former managing editor of Nola.com, New Orleans’ largest online newsource describes how the Army Corps of Engineers used significant tax payer resources to attack critics of the Corps.

According to the affidavit, a cadre of about 20 people, for over 3 years, have hidden their identities and posted comments on the Times-Picayune affiliate’s articles and forums that smeared New Orleanians and obscured the facts of the Corps of Engineers’ responsibility for the failure of its flood protection.

The affidavit also described how many of the posts “appealed to racial division and at times engaged in racial slurs against African Americans.”

Levees.org discovered evidence of this activity six months ago, and early this year submitted a written request to the Times Picayune to see all the comments data.

But the newspaper’s lawyer, Neil Rosenhouse of Sabin, Bermant & Gould responded by saying, while there is no legal reason to deny access to the comments, his client still won’t release them citing “policy.”

Believing the full extent of this unethical behavior should be made public, Levees.org encourages citizens to write to Jim Amoss, Editor of the Times Picayune at this email address jamoss@timespicayune.com, and say this:

“I deserve to know the full details on how the Corps of Engineers has been using my tax payer money to protect its image.  I deserve to see all the comments that came from the Corps’ computers.”

Levees.org also suggests citizens might leave a message on Mr. Amoss’s voice mail by calling his direct line: 504-826-3475.

In response to this disturbing information, Levees.org filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) earlier this week.  We requested all communications between the Corps of Engineers and its $5 million dollar PR firm Outreach Process Partners (OPP) which recently claimed on its website to play a “fundamental part” of reducing the volume of negative news stories about the Corps.

The PR firm spoke of “fostering strategic relationships” with news outlets.  The Times Picayune is one of the news outlets with which OPP boasted of “providing media support.”

These revelations - the sworn affidavit, and the OPP claims  - are two more reasons the citizens of America deserve the 8/29 Investigation Act, a truly independent analysis of the flood protection failures, and the organizational component, that occurred in August 2005.

Click here for the WWL TV Channel 4 Eyewitness News story:
http://www.wwltv.com/video/news-index.html?nvid=372400

Click here to see a copy of the sworn affidavit.
http://levees.org/affidavit.pdf

Click here to see examples of the insulting comments and lies posted to the internet by individuals at the Army Corps of Engineers.
http://levees.org/?page_id=379