Captured! Public Enemy #1

On August 22nd, for LinkTV and DemocracyNow! we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held behind barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It’s been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW’s (Prisoners of W) are still in this aluminum ghetto in the middle of nowhere. One resident Pamela Lewis said, “It is a prison set-up” — except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes. To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of the place, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is nearly adjacent to the Exxon Oil refinery, the nation’s second largest, a chemical-belching behemoth. So we filmed it. Without Big Brother’s authorization. Uh, oh. Apparently, the broadcast of these stinking smokestacks tipped off Osama that, if his assassins pose as poor Black folk, they can get a cramped Airstream right next to a “critical infrastructure” asset. So now Matt and I have a “criminal complaint” lodged against us with the feds. The positive side for me as a journalist is that I get to see our terror-busters in action. I should note that it took the Maxwell Smarts at Homeland Security a full two weeks to hunt us down. Rest of story on Greg Palast's website. http://www.gregpalast.com/palast-charged-with-journalism-in-the-first-degree [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on September 13, 2006]

Note: http://www.gregpalast.c...