By Nicholas Stix (Read 9/6 here . The following introduction to the Times-Pic s September 26, 2005 story ( 9/26 ) is largely a copy-and-paste beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise of the one I wrote to 9/6. Thus, if you ve already read 9/6, you needn t re-read it, though you re welcome to do so. I ll add only that while a charitable soul could deny that Brian Thevenot lied in 9/6, it is impossible for him and his colleagues not to have lied in 9/26.) The following September 26, 2005 article, by Times-Picayune operatives Brian Thevenot, Gordon Russell, Jeff Duncan and Gwen Filosa, which I refer to in my own work as 9/26, was one of the two most influential on the Katrina mayhem. It was written to reverse-report beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise the truths told in Thevenot s September 6, 2005 article (9/6), beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise as well as by many of his colleagues at the Times-Pic and the American and foreign MSM. 9/6 told stories of stacks of corpses at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, and other horror stories. When it was published, its findings were repeated 24/7 in the media echo chamber. The only article beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise more influential than 9/6 was the one Thevenot co-wrote with three Times-Picayune colleagues 20 days later, which I refer to as 9/26, and which I have rescued from the memory hole, and reprinted below. (I was able to retrieve it from a dusty, beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise old external backup drive I found lying around on my desk.) 9/26 completely contradicts 9/6, but without ever saying that 9/6 was wrong. The later article acts as if it is refuting some unnamed writer or writers at some other media outlet. 9/26 even goes so far as to use the same witness, Louisiana National Guard Spc. Mykel Brooks, to impeach the most lurid tales told in 9/6, without mentioning that the primary witness for those stories was none other than Spc. Mykel Brooks. Why the contradictions? Black activists and leaders were outraged by the honest reporting that had been carried out by many media outlets, including the Times-Pic , which had failed to portray blacks solely as victims of white racist evil, which indeed is the media s own creed. The honest reporting had been a severe lapse. The media echo chamber immediately turned on a dime, and began repeating the 9/26 story 24/7, as if 9/6 had never been published. The lies of 9/26 were a form of racial reparations, for which Thevenot and the Times-Pic were richly rewarded, with two Pulitzer Prizes, and an award from at least one racist black group. One award that Thevenot & six colleagues and editors would rather not have won came from yours truly. I wrote a series of exposés of different lengths, beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise and bestowed on them the Duranty-Blair Award for Journalistic Infamy: 1,900-word version ; Two-part, 3,900-word version ( here and here ); and 9,900-word version . * * * Monday, September 26, 2005 Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated 6 bodies found at Dome; 4 at Convention Center By Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell Staff writers [New Orleans Times Picayune ] After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise Agency. Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, 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 beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying. The real total was 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 turning over 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 killed inside. At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials. That the nation's front-line emergency management 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 media and even some of New Orleans' top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent. As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise 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 bulls---," 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. ... Ninety-nine 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 beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise with false reports about the Dome and Convention Center. "We swept both buildings several times, because we kept getting reports of more bodies there," Cataldie said. "But it just wasn't the case." Orleans Parish District Attorney beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages. "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 beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise tens of thousands of evacuees into the Dome and Convention Center, news of unspeakable acts poured out of the nation's media: evacuees firing at helicopters trying to save them; women, children and even babies raped with abandon; people killed for food and water; a 7-year-old raped and killed beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise at the Convention Center. Police, according to their chief, Eddie Compass, found themselves in multiple shootouts beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise inside both shelters, and were forced to race toward beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise muzzle flashes through the dark to disarm the criminals; snipers supposedly beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise 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. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, "we couldn't count." The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, 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 beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise to save them. Nagin told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an "almost animalistic state." Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise personnel beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened. 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, but that never happened, said Col. James Knotts, a midlevel commander there. Security was nonexistent at the Convention Center, which was never designated as a shelter. Authorities provided no food, water or medical care until troops secured the building the Friday after the storm. While the Convention Center saw plenty of mischief, beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise 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, as legend has it. "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." Soldier shot - by himself Inside the Dome, where National Guardsmen performed rigorous security checks before allowing beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise anyone inside, only one shooting has been verified. Even that incident, in which Louisiana Guardsman Chris Watt of the 527th Engineer Battalion was injured, beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise has been widely misreported, said Maj. David Baldwin, who led the team of soldiers who arrested a suspect. Watt was attacked inside one of the Dome's locker beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise rooms, which he entered with another soldier. In the darkness, as he walked through about six inches of water, Watt was attacked 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 in the commotion. The attacker never took his gun from him, Baldwin said. New Orleans police investigated the matter fully and sent the suspect to jail in Breaux Bridge, beijing shanghai china travel vacations cruise Baldwin said. As for other shootings, Baldwin said, "We actively patrolled 24 hours a day, and nobody heard another shot.
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