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'They don't care and they don't want to know'

Wilson told Cybercast News Service that her experiences on the levee board were not unique. She also spent 12 years on the New Orleans City Council.

"The problem that we have in New Orleans has never been (lack of) money, never," Wilson said. "It's always been the misspending of the money that we have, so that we don't get the results that we want to get."

As an example, she described a $250,000 federal grant the city received to operate summer camps for children. The program was designed to deter drug use and participation in gangs by providing alternative activities.

"About halfway through the summer, I decided to go visit the ten places that had received the money. I never found a single child," Wilson recalled. "I found churches that were boarded up. I found printing stacked from floor to ceiling. I found vans. I never found anybody playing baseball or soccer or drinking Kool-Aid, nothing."

Wilson said that when she reported her findings to fellow council members, she was branded a racist and someone who did not care about children "because I didn't like the way this money was being spent."

The widespread corruption Wilson claims she witnessed seldom required the kind of detective work she used in discovering the alleged fraud in the summer camp program.

"I was never 'Dick Tracy.' I never had to get my magnifying glass out or lift up the corner of a rug," Wilson said. "It was all blatant to a degree that you cannot even imagine."

Wilson claims the problems were most prevalent when federal funding was involved, such as with the summer camp grant.

"The farther away the money comes from, the worse the corruption and the easier the corruption. So, when the money comes from the federal government, there is nobody at the federal level who ever watches it. And if you call them and say, 'I just found out that this is going on,' they don't care and they don't want to know," Wilson said.

Despite her many allegations of corruption, Wilson was quick to defend the current New Orleans mayor's integrity.

"I don't think Ray Nagin himself is personally corrupt," Wilson said. "I think he's inept, and he didn't know anything about city government or how to run a city." She added, "It's not that Nagin wanted those people to suffer. It's just the most unbelievable ineptness. Unbelievable."

Multiple calls to Nagin's office and to the mayor's communications department seeking comment on Wilson's allegations were not returned.

Katrina lifted up a rock

Wilson argues that the alleged corruption and ineptness are responsible for more that just the failures of the local government to properly respond to Hurricane Katrina and the resulting flooding.

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