Bobby Jindal

Jindal's Office Tries To Spin Katrina Story, Digs Itself In Deeper

Zachary Roth | February 27, 2009, 4:48PM

It looks like Bobby Jindal's staff has been trying to do some damage limitation on that phony Katrina story -- with some help from Politico. But it's blowing up in their faces.

Picking up on an earlier post at Daily Kos, we wrote a post yesterday that raised questions about a key anecdote in Bobby Jindal's big Tuesday night speech.

You can watch the key excerpt here, but here's the transcript:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

In our post, we reported -- among other red flags -- that we couldn't find any news reports that put Jindal on the ground in the affected area during the time when a boat rescue would have been needed. As we noted, we called Jindal's office twice before posting to ask them to verify the incident, but heard nothing back.

This morning, Politico's Ben Smith, noting that we and others had raised questions about Jindal's story, posted a response from the governor's chief of staff, Timmy Teepell:

It was in the days following the storm. Sheriff Lee was a hero who worked tirelessly to rescue those in danger, and he didn't take kindly to bureaucrats getting in his way.

That didn't really seem to clear things up either way -- indeed it admitted that it wasn't "during Katrina" as Jindal had originally said. Still, the headline of Smith's post characterized the statement as "stand[ing] by" the anecdote.

Team Jindal probably would have been wise to leave things there.

Instead, they went back to Smith, now telling him, in Smith's words, that Jindal "didn't imply" on Tuesday that the story "took place during the heat of a fight to release rescue boats." (Take 30 seconds to read Jindal's actual words, and you'll see that's flatly untrue -- but no matter.) Rather, Jindal spokeswoman Melissa Sellers told Smith, "It was days later .. Sheriff Lee was on the phone and the governor came down to visit him. It wasn't that they were standing right down there with the boats."

Smith added:

She said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, "was doing an interview" about the incident with the boats when the governor described him yelling into the phone.

In other words, Jindal only heard from Lee later that this had happened. He didn't actually see it happening and played no role in it himself. We posted a few hours ago, noting that Jindal's office had admitted the story was false.

But then things got weirder: Jindal's people went back for yet more.

Smith soon posted an update explaining that he had misunderstood Sellers earlier. According to Teepell, Smith now wrote, rescue efforts were in fact still underway when Jindal met with Lee. And Jindal overheard Lee yelling on the phone to justify a decision he had previously made, not giving an interview about the episode, as Sellers' earlier version had had it.

In fact, that whole thing about Jindal overhearing Lee giving an interview? It's now gone from Smith's post (though, thanks to the dangers of syndication, it remains here) as if Jindal's office never said it.

There's more. Amazingly, Sellers then argued to Smith that there is no difference between Jindal's original story as told Tuesday night, and the one her office finally settled on this afternoon. And even more amazingly, Smith added another update in which he transcribed that argument without comment, as if it were reasonable.

Then the capper: With Jindal's office now satisfied with the third iteration of its story -- a version that clearly acknowledged that the first version, told Tuesday night to millions, was false -- Teepell went back to Smith with the following comment:

"This is liberal blogger B.S. The story is clear."

And Smith, in yet another update, published it.

Good work all round!

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Topics: Bobby Jindal, Katrina

Bobby Jindal

Relive Jindal's Tall Tale!

Zachary Roth | February 27, 2009, 1:43PM

Reader T.A. notes that seeing the video of someone lying is more powerful than just reading the text.

So true! So here's the part of Bobby Jindal's speech from Tuesday night where he makes stuff up about Katrina. Enjoy...

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Topics: Bobby Jindal, Katrina

Bobby Jindal

Jindal Admits Katrina Story Was False

Zachary Roth | February 27, 2009, 12:39PM

Looks like the game is up.

Remember that story Bobby Jindal told in his big speech Tuesday night -- about how during Katrina, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a local sheriff who was battling government red tape to try to rescue stranded victims?

Turns out it wasn't actually, you know, true.

In the last few days, first Daily Kos, and then TPMmuckraker, raised serious questions about the story, based in part on the fact that no news reports we could find place Jindal in the affected area at the specific time at issue.

Jindal had described being in the office of Sheriff Harry Lee "during Katrina," and hearing him yelling into the phone at a government bureaucrat who was refusing to let him send volunteer boats out to rescue stranded storm victims, because they didn't have the necessary permits. Jindal said he told Lee, "that's ridiculous," prompting Lee to tell the bureaucrat that the rescue effort would go ahead and he or she could arrest both Lee and Jindal.

But now, a Jindal spokeswoman has admitted to Politico that in reality, Jindal overheard Lee talking about the episode to someone else by phone "days later." The spokeswoman said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, was being interviewed about the incident at the time.

This is no minor difference. Jindal's presence in Lee's office during the crisis itself was a key element of the story's intended appeal, putting him at the center of the action during the maelstrom. Just as important, Jindal implied that his support for the sheriff helped ensure the rescue went ahead. But it turns out Jindal wasn't there at the key moment, and played no role in making the rescue happen.

There's a larger point here, though. The central anecdote of the GOP's prime-time response to President Obama's speech, intended to illustrate the threat of excessive government regulation, turns out to have been made up.

Maybe it's time to rethink the premise.

Late Update: Politico's Ben Smith has updated his post with the following:

UPDATE: I'd initially misunderstood Sellers to be saying Jindal and Lee didn't meet while rescue efforts were still underway. In fact, she said, the conversation took place in the aftermath of the storm, but after the boat incident.

"Bobby and I walked into harry lee's office - he's yelling on the phone about a decision he's already made," Jindal chief of staff Timmy Teepell recalled. "He's saying this is a decision I made, and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me."

Teepell said the exchange took place in the week following Katrina, when Jindal visited Jefferson Parish multiple times.

"He was boots on the ground all the time," he said.

This doesn't seem to bear on the key question. As we said, the key elements of Jindal's story were that he was in Lee's office during the crisis itself, and that his support for the sheriff helped ensure the rescue went ahead. Neither of those things was true, it now seems.

Late Video Update: Here's the relevant section of Jindal's speech.

Late Late Update: Hilariously, Jindal's office keeps going back to Politico to try to straighten out its story, but it's only digging itself in deeper.

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Topics: Bobby Jindal, Katrina

Bobby Jindal

Jindal's Katrina Story: A Tall Tale?

Zachary Roth | February 26, 2009, 1:10PM

The evidence continues to grow that the story Bobby Jindal told Tuesday night -- about how he backed a tough-talking sheriff's efforts to rescue Katrina victims, government red-tape be damed -- was, how to put it ... made up.

Delivering the GOP response to President Obama's speech to Congress, Jindal had his first chance to impress a national audience. To do so, he told the following story:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

But there are several pieces of evidence that suggest this just didn't happen. Nothing, to be sure, that definitively proves the story was made up. But more than enough to declare it highly suspicious.

First, Jindal's story has Lee railing against the red-tape in the midst of the crisis. But Lee, the sheriff of Jefferson Parish in suburban New Orleans, told CNN he didn't find out about the license and registration issue until about seven days after the incident.

Here's Lee talking to Larry King (via Nexis) a week or so after Katrina:

I fully believe that when then matter is looked into, we tried to get some boats in the water early on. When I realized that we had a problem, I was the one that made the call in WWO (UNINTELLIGIBLE) radio if there was anybody with a boat to come to a place so that we can get the boats in the water because I was around when -- the other big hurricanes, and most of the rescue done early on were individual fisherman, recreational fisherman that had boats that went in the water. Those boats where not allowed to get into the water when they were needed and I just found out about seven days later one of the reason boats couldn't get in was they didn't have enough life preservers and some of them didn't have proof of insurance. And I'm sure that there's a FEMA regulation that says that. But when a storm of this magnitude hits, you through those regulations out the window and you do what you have to do and start saving lives. (our itals)

It's within the realm of possibility, just, that Lee and Jindal are talking about two separate incidents. But from the way the details line up, it's reasonable to assume they're the same.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Daily Kos diarist xgz assembled a slew of additional evidence suggesting that Jindal took some serious dramatic license, at best. To summarize:

According to numerous reports, Harry Lee did not leave the affected area of New Orleans during the crisis. But there is no reported evidence of Jindal having set foot in the area during the period when people were still stranded on roofs -- which, based on a review of news stories from the time, was only until September 3 at the very latest. Indeed, the evidence strongly suggests he did not...

When the storm made landfall on August 29, Jindal was on a foreign trip. His family was evacuated to his parents' house in Baton Rouge, and when he returned, he went straight there to join them. In a September 1st CNN interview given from Baton Rouge, Jindal talked about taking an aerial tour of the disaster area, but didn't mention anything about having been on the ground personally. We've reviewed Nexis and other sources, and can find no news reports putting Jindal on the ground in the affected area during the few days after Katrina struck when people might still have needed boats to rescue them from rooftops.

Schedule issues aside, it's also noticeable that Jindal has talked or written several times before about the problems of excessive red tape during Katrina, but has never told this story.

On September 8, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Jindal detailing how "[i]n Katrina's wake, red tape too often trumped common sense." Jindal listed several anecdotes to illustrate the problem, including one that involved a sheriff, and another about a boat evacuation. But nothing that resembled the Lee story he told Tuesday. You'd think that would have been his lead example.

And in 2008, Jindal told Human Events:

There are thousands of these stories. I talked to a sheriff in an area where they had people with boats that were ready to go in the water and rescue people and they were turned away because they didn't have proof of registration and insurance, they didn't bring the right paperwork. The bureaucracy was just awful.

The implication here is that Jindal talked to the sheriff after the fact, not that he was in his office during the moment of crisis.

As we said, none of this settles the question definitively. But it certainly raises a whole lot of questions about Jindal's tale. Those questions were enough for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, in a short segment last night on the controversy, to conclude that the story is "apparently not true."

Of course, Harry Lee could put this to rest once and for all. But he died in 2007.

We called Jindal's office, asking for any information that might help establish the story's veracity. They haven't gotten back to us.

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Topics: Bobby Jindal, Katrina