Wednesday, March 25, 2009
TP’s Gordon Russell Strikes Again, As Does American Zombie
Posted by Clancy DuBos on Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 3:55 AM
May as well give credit where it’s due: Ashe Dambala of American Zombie has told us for months (years?) that former New Orleans technology chief Gregory Meffert was not all that he pretended to be. Dambala’s posts on the subject are too numerous to mention, but they’re all there.
And now, in Wednesday morning’s (March 25) Times-Picayune, investigative reporter –turned - city editor Gordon Russell shows that he still has his investigative chops. His story peels back even more layers of intrigue and alleged self-dealing between Meffert and some of his former colleagues in the private sector. Much of Russell’s story confirms what Dambala has told us for a long, long time. I’m not here to referee. Both guys did great work on this story. Read Dambala’s posts and read Russell’s story.
You can bet the feds are already all over this. My sources say the feds have already paid Meffert a very threatening visit … to his home, no less. It was ugly, and he’s scared.
Stay tuned.
Comments (4)
Showing 1-4 of 4
The interoperability contract, quite frankly, justifies lethal injection for Meffert and crew. Meffert caused the city to lose a grant to purchase interoperable communications equipment for all first responders (EMT's, police, fire) because he wanted to favor a particular bidder (Imagine or one of its unholy offspring). This all happened in the months leading up to Katrina. The big one hits and nobody can talk to anybody and lots of people died as a result. http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/08/securitymatters_0823?currentPage=all Meanwhile, Minnesota had its ducks in a row for the same grant, got the equipment, and it was critical in the first few minutes after the bridge collapse. There was one ambulance set up on a hill that coordinated the entire response (police to cordon off the area, firemen to go after people in the water and pull people out of cars, and EMT's to set up first aid stations). If you want a couple of hundred cases of negligent manslaughter, there you go.
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Ummm, take a question mark off the "years?". Dambala had his mojo working on this for quite a while. It's sad that it's taken this long to truly come to light, but it's complicated. I hope whoever prosecutes this one has every last little duckie in the row.
Why am I not surprised? Dambala is right. They all need to be jettisoned right to jail. It's obvious (if it wasn't already) that Nagin dumped his e-mail because it would implicate him and his cronies in all sorts of scurrilous activities -- crime cameras, home depot, sanitation, state and federal grants... The nice thing about e-mail is that there is a sender and a receiver. It would be nice to have all of C. Ray's e-mails in one place but if forensic IT folks can't find it, there are plenty of people that either sent and/or received e-mails from C. Ray that are in the public domain. Access to those e-mails can be used to piece together the big picture. Let's look at e-mail from Meffert, White, Blakely, Rice, The ENTIRE Council, Hatfield... to name a few. E-mail may well turn-out to be the best crime camera this city ever invested in. I hope the justice system understands that erasing e-mails is a much bigger issue/problem than it could appear to be on the surface. I hope Gambit or some other entity makes a public records request that demands all e-mail that was sent by any city employee and/or contractor to or received from C. Ray Nagin be made public. Once we find the right thread(s) this thing will unravel. How long is a piece of string and who will be implicated along the way?
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