"New Orleans 'Dodged the Bullet'"

"New Orleans 'Dodged the Bullet'"

Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff "told Meet the Press's Tim Russert on Sunday, September 4, 2005, that one reason for the delay in getting federal aid to Katrina victims was that 'everyone' thought the crisis had passed when the storm left:


 * "I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged The Bullet,' because if you recall the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse. It was on Tuesday that the levee--may have been overnight Monday to Tuesday--that the levee started to break," Chertoff told Russert.

Clearly posted on the Wonkette blogspot are the front pages of The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Washington Times, and The Times-Picayune, none of which say that New Orleans had "Dodged the Bullet."

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Myers, in a live Department of Defense press conference September 6, 2005, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the Defense Department’s response to Katrina, repeated DHS Director Michael Chertoff’s previously "debunked claim that newpapers on Tuesday had said, New Orleans Dodged a Bullet," AMERICAblog reported.

However, Myers "went a step further" and "claimed that 'most of the papers' carried that headline on Tuesday, [August 30th] and that the Defense Department’s response to Katrina was developed with 'those words…in our minds'."


 * Fact: None of the 477 newspaper front pages from 46 countries presented alphabetically dated Tuesday, August 30, 2005, stored in the Newseum show the headline "New Orleans 'Dodged the Bullet'." This can easily be confirmed by looking here.

Related SourceWatch Resources

 * Hurricane Katrina: List of related pages