Affidavit on smear campaign against Corps critics: Why I spoke out

There’s a renewed focus this week on the U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers in New Orleans, based on my sworn affi­davit detail­ing a nearly three-​year-​old pat­tern of attacks on Corps crit­ics, posted from Corps com­put­ers onto blogs and forums on NOLA​.com.

Cov­er­age: WWL-​TV | Times-​Picayune | Lev​ees​.org

Dur­ing my tenure as found­ing editor-​in-​chief of the New Orleans-​based sites affil­i­ated with The Times-​Picayune, my duties included man­age­ment and over­sight of an aggres­sive pro­gram of com­mu­nity engage­ment fea­tures. As detailed in the affi­davit, I began observ­ing a group of about 20 user aliases derid­ing any story or user com­ment ques­tion­ing the Corps’ per­for­mance in pro­tect­ing New Orleans from flood­ing. These com­ments tracked Corps talk­ing points and media state­ments, often almost ver­ba­tim. Com­ments were often abu­sive, and at times reached the level of harass­ment.

I learned in mid-​2008 that the IP address asso­ci­ated with these post­ings belonged to the New Orleans office of the Corps of Engi­neers. At that point I watched the post­ings more closely. The Corps later admit­ted that posts were being made from within its net­work, but described them as an iso­lated event. In the lat­est response, Corps rep­re­sen­ta­tives said that any post­ings were made by peo­ple on breaks, as allowed by Corps policy. 

This clearly was not the case. At the height of this wave of post­ings against Corps crit­ics, I observed dozens of com­ments a day, nor­mally made within min­utes of a crit­i­cal post. This indi­cated that the blogs and forums were being con­tin­u­ally mon­i­tored inside the Corps. And post­ings made by indi­vid­ual accounts were dis­trib­uted through­out shifts. It would have been, in fact, a full-​time job for one or more peo­ple to have con­ducted this activity.

Even after the Corps com­man­der said the issue had been addressed, the activ­ity con­tin­ued, as described in the affidavit.

But what crys­tal­lized the issue for me was the news about the multimillion-​dollar pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign, whose launch tracked the begin­ning of the attacks on crit­ics of the Corps on NOLA​.com. The pub­lic rela­tions firm – Out­reach Process Part­ners (OPP) — bragged on its web site that it had influ­enced the cov­er­age of the Corps by major news orga­ni­za­tions. I know that the use of covert post­ings is a rec­og­nized, if some­what crude, tac­tic by many pub­lic rela­tions cam­paigns. Red flags were going off.

When I was laid off, I was actively inves­ti­gat­ing this mat­ter using the tools at my dis­posal. And that was before I learned of the pub­lic rela­tions con­tract. If I were still in New Orleans, in the con­text of this new infor­ma­tion, I would be inves­ti­gat­ing the heck out of this. Does the Corps have a vig­i­lante employee? Or more than one? Did the Corps know this has been going on for nearly three years? If so, was its inac­tion an unof­fi­cial bless­ing? Are these post­ings being made by a highly-​paid con­trac­tor work­ing inside the Corps? Is it OK for a gov­ern­ment agency — on the defen­sive in the wake of the worst nat­ural dis­as­ter in U.S. his­tory — to spend tax­payer money to try its case in the media? These are rea­son­able ques­tions, given the evi­dence, and they demand an answer. The Corps can eas­ily answer the ques­tions — it has the evi­dence of its server logs, trace­able in every way to those respon­si­ble. Per­haps it already knows the answer. 

But what really moti­vated me to speak out is this:

Dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, NOLA.com’s blogs, forums and other com­mu­nity tools became a pri­mary way for New Orleans res­i­dents to com­mu­ni­cate — to report their expe­ri­ences, share their pho­tos, send out cries for res­cue and search for miss­ing friends and rel­a­tives. The com­mu­nity used these fea­tures to inform one another of destruc­tion, or the open­ing of a gro­cery store, or the switch flip­ping elec­tric­ity on. In the most hor­ri­ble moments of the del­uge, peo­ple trapped in attics mes­saged friends on cell phones, and this infor­ma­tion was posted on NOLA This led to uncounted res­cues. Respon­der agen­cies begged NOLA to keep the reports com­ing — the blogs were guid­ing their res­cue efforts. A mother who lost her chil­dren after she col­lapsed at the Super­dome and was evac­u­ated sep­a­rately was reunited with her kids weeks later. A man cling­ing to his roof at the height of the storm in Chal­mette sent in 83 pho­tos that cap­tured the drown­ing of St. Bernard Parish. 

I’ve spo­ken to many jour­nal­ism groups about com­mu­nity jour­nal­ism and com­mu­nity engage­ment in cri­sis set­tings. NOLA has been men­tioned in text­books. Advance Inter­net — the com­pany that oper­ates NOLA​.com and other web sites around the coun­try — show­cases NOLA as the poster child for its com­pany mis­sion state­ment. The Knight Foun­da­tion awarded its first Online Pub­lic Ser­vice award to NOLA in 2006. Every jour­nal­ist hopes to make a dif­fer­ence. Not every jour­nal­ist knows for cer­tain that some­thing he was involved in saved lives. What hap­pened between New Orleans and NOLA​.com is pre­cious to me. 

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.

Tagged as: Corps of Engineers, Hurricane Katrina, NOLA.com