Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Will the FBI Investigate?

Fact: The White House Lessons Learned report omits any mention of the 24 patient deaths in a LifeCare hospital in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina. The report explicitly mentions a nursing home where 6 or 7 patients expired.

Fact: LifeCare Hospitals was acquired by The Carlyle Group in August 2005 shortly before Hurricane Katrina struck. The Carlyle Group brags about its "insider political connections" in its news releases. The President's father has done work for the company and many of key Republican leaders currently are employed by The Carlyle Group.

Fact: Two LifeCare executives, Donald M. Boucher and David LeBlanc, have been charged with illegal campaign contributions between April 1997 and December 2002.


Questions/Need for an Investigation:

1. Why was LifeCare omitted from the Lessons Learned report?

2. Why did the report do such a poor job of identifying responsibility for pre and post hurricane patient evacuations?

3. Why did it not assess performance of those responsibilities?

4. Does LifeCare gain by the poor quality of the LL report?

5. Do they have a better chance of defending the company in any civil suits with the federal government silent on their actions?

6. If so, did any members of LifeCare, historically known for buying influence, solicit actions or omissions from federal representatives?

7. Did any members of the famously insider connected Carlyle Group do likewise?


The above information was submitted to the FBI, the Department of Justice, the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Nation and the Austin Chronicle. It is posted on Congress.org under comments to President Bush's

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