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Corps of Engineers used taxpayer funds to attack its critics

June 19th, 2009

From Levees.org

Please go to YouTube and watch our new short video about how the Corps of Engineers used taxpayer funds to attack its critics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZXFK8z9WXo

The more people who visit this video and comment on it, the higher it goes in the YouTube rating! Click here!

In a sworn affidavit, a 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 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 comments “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 Nola.com/Times Picayune for all the comments data.

But their lawyer, Neil Rosenhouse of Sabin, Bermant & Gould told us that, while there is no legal reason to deny us access to the comments, they still won’t give them to us. They cited “policy.”

Don’t we, the citizens deserve to know the full extent of the Corps’ unethical behavior?

If you agree, write to Jim Amoss, Editor of the Times Picayune at this 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.”

You could also 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 has filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 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 that OPP boasted of “providing media support.”

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