Drew Griffin
CNN Investigative Correspondent

For gulf coast evacuees, this is the worst time. Sitting in a hotel lobby, watching updates on tv and wondering how your home, neighborhood and city are holding up.

For most here, they won’t know the answer until the roads are clear, the power is back on and they can fight that inevitable traffic jam of the Gustav refugees heading home.

Here’s one of the refugees in the lobby of Baton Rouge’s Hyatt Place hotel, trying to stay up on the latest.

Drew Griffin
CNN Correspondent

Location: New Orleans, Sunday 9am Mass St. Louis Cathedral

There were just a dozen of us at the 9am mass at St. Louis Cathedral. The last Sunday in August should find this church filled with Labor Day weekend visitors and locals, spilling out into Jackson Square, strolling to Café Du Monde and plotting the day.

Today, the few locals in church hugged each other, shared plans of escape and quietly left.

The French Quarter is empty. Shuttered doors have padlocks; plywood covers the first floor windows. You have a hard time buying a cup of coffee and there is nowhere to buy last minute supplies.

The last minute is up, you should be gone. For those of us still here, the priest who said mass wasn’t praying for Hurricane Gustav to miraculously go away, he was praying God would intervene in a more human way:

“Pray we use our God given brains and heed the warnings.”

There will not be another mass said at St. Louis Cathedral until Wednesday morning, that’s the plan anyway. Let’s hope that mass will be one of thanksgiving.

I took these pictures to show you just how empty New Orleans is:
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Chartres Street, French Quarter
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St Louis Cathedral, Jackson Square
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St Louis Cathedral, Jackson Square
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Drew Griffin
Special Investigations Unit

I doubt that after you read this you will check off that box on your tax form ever again….then again, here’s a little tale about what’s behind that box and you can decide.

Here’s the idea: If taxpayers fund the presidential campaigns, then big money, you know, the usual “bad guys”–big corporations, unions, PACs, contractors–would have less influence. That’s why this system was set up way back in 1971.

In 1974 Congress even took the added step of allowing you to opt-in or opt-out by checking or not checking that box. It wasn’t really a donation. It was a way to tell congress you would like to “earmark” a dollar of federal money for the cause.

Well, that little “check in the box” is now worth $3 dollars on your tax return. And if you are wondering where the money is going, next week turn on CNN and look at all those balloons about to drop. Keep reading

David Fitzpatrick
Special Investigations Unit Producer

If there was any doubt at all that the sale of prescription drugs over the internet, without a doctor’s legitimate authorization, is very big business, what happened in Kansas over the last couple of days should dispel those notions in a heartbeat.

The Kansas Attorney General’s office arrested and jailed three people, a pharmacist and the co-owners of a small pharmacy in the northwestern part of the state, on multiple felony and misdemeanor counts. Hogan’s Pharmacy is in a tiny town called Lyons. And according to documents filed in court, this small storefront operation, in a town of no more than 3,000 people, handled nearly $1.9 million in wire transfers in 2007 alone.

CNN Correspondent Drew Griffin and I went to Lyons a few months ago as part of an AC 360 investigation into internet prescription abuse. We had met and interviewed a young widow only the day before. Her husband had ordered the muscle-relaxant drug Soma over the internet—time and time again. Many of the pills came from Hogan’s Pharmacy and came without any legitimate order from a physician. One day last year, she went to their bedroom and found her husband unresponsive. He had died of an overdose of Soma.

There’s a good reason why doctors limit doses of Soma. Research by the Food and Drug Administration shows that it is one of those class of drugs which can be easily abused. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, there’s now some consideration being given to classifying Soma as a “controlled substance,” putting it in the same category of dangerous drugs such as Xanax and Hydrocodone..

I was sitting in my New York City office when that widow telephoned me to express her thanks to the Kansas authorities and to CNN for the investigative work. She told me she would likely testify in any coming trials and was looking forward to doing so.

Keeping them honest, we’ll continue to investigate prescription drug sales over the Internet.

Attorney General Steve Six announced charges today against Hogan’s Pharmacy owners Jolane and Mark Poindexter for their part in an Internet pharmacy scheme. The pharmacist in charge, Rick Kloxin, was charged earlier this week.

It grew out of 9-11 and today the ACLU says the problem is that it keeps growing. The FBI’s terror watch list, now has 400,000 people on it - with aliases, that comes to a million names. The FBI says it’s working, its making air travel safer but if your name is the same as any of the names on the list, it’s making your air travel an even bigger hassle.  Drew Griffin showed you how easy it is to get on the list and how hard it is to get off. Here’s the link to the first step to getting your name off the list.

TSA questions a former air marshal about e-mail on talking to CNN. Here's a preview

Program Note: Federal officers charged with keeping terrorists off planes are now searching their own ranks for staff who told CNN that few flights were protected by air marshals. Watch Drew Griffin’s report tonight on AC360° 10p ET.

Drew Griffin
Special Investigations Unit

Here’s a little behind the scenes truth telling most reporters, well a lot of reporters won’t admit: we all fear being wrong. The day after we reported the lack of federal air marshals on domestic flights was one of those days I felt that fear. The Transportation Safety Administration publicly came after our reporting. The agency set up a blog on its website, challenging our numbers, calling the report itself false, eventually even going to congress and testifying that CNN got it wrong.

Keep reading

Drew Griffin reports on the threat to East St. Louis, Ill., posed by the floodwaters of the mighty Mississippi.

Drew Griffin
Special Investigations Unit

East Saint Louis, Illinois is not prepared for a major flood.

Fortunately it looks like the city won’t have to be. So many levees have been topped upstream, the pressure is now off this economically depressed town. But what is surprising to me, so many years now after Katrina, is that East St. Louis has not learned the lesson of New Orleans.

The levees that protect this city are not strong enough to withstand a major flood. The Army Corp. of Engineers is in the process of decertifying the levees, which means the Corp. does not have confidence they will hold. And yet the mayor and city manager seem only mildly concerned.

In fact when I visited the city manager in his office yesterday it was apparent he had not even been keeping up with the flood forecasts for his city…. Worse yet, we actually took him to a spot where he was surprised to see seepage in one of his levees, the initial warning stage of failure.

What the Mayor and city manager told me is Congress and the state and basically someone else needs to get busy fixing their levee.

Sound familiar?

Program note: Watch for Drew Griffin’s report on Thursday’s AC360° at 10p ET

Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston
CNN’s Special Investigations Unit

(CNN) — When the Democratic National Committee meets Saturday on the thorny issue of seating the Florida and Michigan delegations at its August convention, party officials will have to fashion a solution that satisfies supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton and presidential nominee front-runner Sen. Barack Obama.

It may take a Solomon-like decision to appease both candidates.

Clinton has argued that the primary results of two of the nation’s largest states should count because, otherwise, millions of voters are being disenfranchised. Obama has said he is willing to work out some compromise.

FULL STORY

These pills were sent to CNN's Drew Griffin, even though he was never seen by a doctor.

Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit

Every night before he went to bed, he would open a prescription bottle of the muscle relaxant Soma and swallow the 8 or 9 pills his wife says would be the only way he could get to sleep. Only last summer the doses were increasing.

She thought the drugs, arriving at her doorstep every week were being prescribed by a treating physician. Her husband had been in a car accident, suffered from back pain, and Soma was the one drug that could relieve the aches.

She was wrong. Although she wants to protect her husband’s identity and hers so as not to embarrass her husband’s family, she is willing to tell the story of how he died.

She found him last August in bed in a pool of vomit. Keep reading

Good afternoon, friends… How will the newest economic data play in the presidential race?

The unemployment rate shot up to 5.1% last month from 4.8%. That’s a big jump, and the highest rate since 2005. The economy lost 80,000 jobs–the most in a single month in five years. Plus, a NYT/CBS poll finds 81% say the country is on the wrong track.

Against that backdrop, Joe Johns is keeping them honest, revealing Congress’s most egregious earmarks — millions of your tax dollars spent on pet projects that many call a waste of money. As investigative journalist David Cay Johnston reports in his bestselling book, “Free Lunch,” $98,000 goes to develop a walking tour of Boydton, Va., a town of less than one square mile with a population of 474.  Is that how you’d like your hard earnings spent?

Also on 360 tonight, Clinton, Obama and McCain honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 40 years after he was shot and killed on a motel balcony. Later, Clinton and Obama address the North Dakota Democratic convention. Obama holds a Town Hall in Indiana. Bill Clinton works North Carolina.

Drew Griffin monitors a congressional hearing on a wave of airline safety issues, with four under investigation for allegedly violating safety directives, and accusations the FAA is too cozy with industry to protect travelers, plus cockpit windshields and landing gear failing. What’s going on here?
 

Continuing coverage of our Planet in Peril, Harris Whitbeck reports on the mysterious Dengue Fever ripping through Rio de Janeiro, with at least 54 deaths and nearly 30,000 illnesses already this year.  Could the fever threaten the U.S.?

Thank you for joining us at 10pm.

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