As Bodies Recovered, Reporters are Told 'No Photos, No Stories'

[Guest guest]

September 13, 2005

 

San Francisco Chronicle

 

 

 

 

 

By Cecilia M. Vega

 

NEW ORLEANS -- A long caravan of white vans led by an Army humvee rolled Monday

through New Orleans' Bywater district, a poor, mostly black neighborhood,

northeast of the French Quarter.

 

Recovery team members wearing white protective suits and black boots stopped at

houses with spray painted markings on the doors designating there were dead

bodies inside.

 

Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne

Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that

if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would

take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.

 

" No photos. No stories, " said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a red

beret.

 

On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration

agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the

bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

 

But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn't being followed.

The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires

media to be 300 meters -- more than three football fields in length -- away from

the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took

pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he

said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military

operations.

 

Dean Nugent, of the Louisiana State Coroner's Department, who accompanied the

soldier, added that it wasn't safe to be in Bywater. " They'll kill you out

here, " he said, referring to the few residents who have continued to defy

mandatory evacuation orders and remain in their homes. "

 

" The cockroaches come out at night, " he said of the residents. " This is one of

the worst places in the country. You should not be here. Especially you, " he

told a female reporter.

 

Nugent, who is white, acknowledged he wasn't personally familiar with the poor,

black neighborhood, saying he only knew of it by reputation.

 

Later Monday, the recovery team collected a body from a green house on St.

Anthony Street in nearby Seventh Ward. The dead man, who was slipped into a

black body bag and carried out to one of the white vans, had been lying alone on

the living room floor for nearly two weeks, neighbors said.

 

" I told them weeks ago he was in there, " said Barry Dominguez, 39, who lives

across the street and has refused to leave the neighborhood he grew up in.

 

After the recovery team took away the St. Anthony Street body, two workers

urinated on the side of a neighbor's house.

 

The CNN suit was in response to comments Friday at a news conference in which

officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency said members of the news

media would not be allowed to witness the recovery of hurricane victims' bodies.

 

Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security director, had said Friday that the

recovery effort would be done with dignity, " meaning that there would be no

press allowed. " Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore later said there would be zero

access to the recovery operation.

 

During a hearing Saturday morning in U.S. District Court in Houston, a lawyer

who represented the government said FEMA had revised its previous plans to limit

coverage.

 

Government agencies may still refuse requests from members of the media to ride

along, or be " embedded, " on recovery boats as crews gather the dead. " But, to

the extent the press can go out to the locations, they're free to do that, " said

Keith Wyatt, an assistant U.S. attorney, according to a transcript of the

hearing. " They're free to take whatever pictures they can take. "

 

Army Lt. Col. Richard Steele said the government's position as explained in

court Saturday didn't represent a change in policy. Reporters can watch recovery

efforts they come upon, but they won't be embedded with search teams.

 

" We're not going to bar, impede or prevent " the media from telling the story, he

said. " We're just not going to give the media a ride. "

 

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can still do

something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the

something that I can do.