As Cynthia McKinney has recently referred to these killings, more and more reports are becoming public, now. It would be great if Pacifica and other Indy journalists would follow-up. A friend who lives in New Orleans, Les Evenchick, has been compiling these stories. Here's what he has just written to me:
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From Les Evenchick, Oct. 6, 2008
I have been talking and writing about killings since I returned from New York after Katrina in Nov 2005.
When i first returned friends started to tell me stories about both individual and mass killings. I then started asking people I met if they had heard about any killings.
Over the past 3 years, i have heard about 3 dozen stories from individuals who do not know each other and in the majority of cases supported the killings.
I ran for city council and publicly raised the issue by calling for an investigation of the shootings of innocent people post Katrina.
I received zero media coverage concerning this but several more persons contacted me during the campaign with additional stories.
Here are a few of the stories I heard.
1. A medical officer I met said he worked at the St Gabriel Parish Prison morgue and said he saw 89 bodies that had been shot.
2. A former head of the local ACLU said while helping the police in 2 districts he heard reports of about 100 persons killed by Navy Seals. He supported the killings.
3. A friend of a New Orleans police officer reported that her friend told her that he had been involved in a killing of 68 persons. He said they had orders to "shoot anyone with a gun and everyone around them".
The officer was reported as saying that the bodies were put in body bags and loaded onto trucks.
4. A person came up to me on the street and said he recognized me from my election campaign. He said that he met a Green Beret in Tangipahoa Parish who was head of all the paramilitaries. He was reported as saying that he(the Green Beret) had seen 4 truckloads of bodies that had been shot.
5. A state police officer told another friend of mine that over 500 persons were shot and killed in the New Orleans area. I had met that officer and was present when the statement took place but was too far away to hear it directly.
6. A musician told me that a national guard officer friend of his said that about 1000 persons were killed by the US airborne in the Woodmere subdivision after several days of battles with other military and police forces. The bodies were reported to have been placed in body bags and loaded onto trucks. The musician told me he supported the killings. (This is in the area where it was reported in the press that a local police station was taken over by locals).
7. I was told by another person that bodies were dropped to the bottom of the Mississippi or burned. This person also supported the killings.
8. I talked with a cab driver from Algiers who said he helped the local police and heard daily reports from them about persons they killed.
9. A person working at a local bar where prostitutes work out of told me that national guard members had told him that they did things that they would "have to take to their graves." The same person told me about an incident where 17 persons took over a fire truck and tried to leave the city but were all killed. He also supported the killings.
10. I heard several reports of police vigilante killings directed against 'criminals' the police had scores to settle with.
11. I also had numerous reports of single individuals being killed or wounded on suspicion of looting, refusing to obey orders, talking back to national guard officers and the like.
In particular, in one case a women approached a police car near the convention center to ask for information. As she approached the officer shot her in the arm without warning. (Told to me by a cab driver who had the women as a passenger)
Another person (a neighbor of a friend) was killed when he did not hear an order to stop as he was wading through water to get home.
Another person was walking on Poydras St. with his family escaping from flooding when he saw a police car. He tried to flag down the police car by stepping out in the street and waving him down. The police officer just ran him down and killed him in front of his family and kept going. (This report I found on the internet)
Also I found other persons' reports via internet searches who reported burnings of bodies at one of the Army forts in Mississippi.
The above is just what I remember offhand.
I originally left New Orleans on the Friday after Katrina because all I heard starting Thursday morning, first from Bush and then from Blanco and Nagin, was "shoot to kill" on "suspicion". I did want to be shot on suspicion so I tried to figure out a way to get out.
I had heard lots of automatic gun fire from my apt on both Tuesday and Thursday nights.
I was able to leave thanks to a former employer who was able to get his truck out of a flooded garage. We had to go past 2 roadblocks to get out of the city. We were held at gunpoint by a large number of police/military and our driver interrogated for some 10 minutes before we were allowed to pass.
Local police had warned me and a friend on Thursday to get out of town by any means possible even if we had to hot wire a car.
There have been local media reports that when the Army came it, its leader went to the police chief (Eddie Compass) and asked him where the 'hot spots' were and said his forces would "take care" of them.
I personally saw state police on flatbed trucks heavily armed and looking scared. I kept my distance. I was also searched at the point of a huge hand held weapon that i had never seen before on the Thurs before I left.
The only Blackwater persons I saw were security guards at FEMA locations after I returned to New Orleans. I received no reports of Blackwater personnel killing anyone. Reports of killing always involved local police, national guard, state police, Army, and Navy personnel.
The Army Times had an article just after Katrina that referred to what was going on as an "insurgency".
The only radio station broadcasting into New Orleans was WWL which had been taken over by FEMA.
They promoted the idea that criminal gangs were taking over the city. They claimed armories were being raided. In one incident where a fire broke out in a chemical tank car (I could see the plume of smoke from my window), WWL was claiming that gangs were setting fores all over the city.
I live in a third floor apt with an unrestricted view of most of the city and would have seen smoke from such fires if they existed.
It seemed to me that FEMA created the fear among the national guard and other forces from outside the city that led to many killings on "suspicion".
Food and water was withheld from those of us trapped in the city. Tap water was turned off by the Governor (Blanco) on Tuesday morning after the storm even though the water system was not shown to pose any problems.
We were continually told to evacuate but no means was given to evacuate if you did not own a car or have a friend who did.
Tourists were kicked out of their hotels with no alternative places to stay until they were told to go to the Convention center on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon.
I also heard reports from several persons who were in the Superdome. At one point the doors were locked and no one allowed to leave. One person reported to me that a group tried to break out and were shot by national guard members. Whether any were killed i don't know.
My own opinion is that I doubt most shot and killed persons were dumped in swamps. It is more likely the bodies were systematically burned after being carried by trucks in body bags to military controlled locations.
It is unlikely that most of those killed were prisoners from jails. I have had zero reports of such killings
But persons did die in the Orleans Parish prison due to flooding. I met a man whose wife was told by a prison official that her cousin drowned in prison.
I also met a women former prisoner who said she saw bodies floating when she was rescued by persons sent from Angola prison to which she was transferred.
What actually happened needs a full investigation, that is clear, but I suspect it will be years before the truth comes out.
Remember, during the Nazi mass murders, most knew nothing about them till the Nazi's were defeated.
- Les