Oyster aka Mark Moseley stopped in yesterday on Nowdy’s old Booker Diggins post and left a dynamite comment that is well worth repeating as it amplifies why her black book is a holy grail of sorts in local investigative journalism circles. On the media side Mark’s work on the topic is second to none so we should consider the implications of why Assistant U.S. Attorney Gaynell Williams evidently fell out when the subject of its release was broached and why the public was not served by covering up what happened at the Canal Street Brothel. Here is Oyster’s comment:
Whitmergate says “it’s the ‘The Who Wanted What’…that’s the bogeyman.”
I believe this is correct. The list itself of doctors, lawyers, indian chiefs, sons of political party Presidents, judges, rich businessmen, City Councilmen, news anchors and other elites is sufficiently long and broad enough to make high level calls for a public release politically toxic. (Plus there’s the “these guys have families that will be needlessly destroyed” argument.) A decade ago Letten and Connick played hot potato with the black book issue, as I recall, and mainstream news has been silent on the matter except for the occasional Vitter-related mention.
But the deviancy– even by freaky New Orleans standards!– is where the rubbers (nyuk) hit the road. When Madam Maier had to build a dungeon inside the brothel, to slake the very particular desires of some of her highest paying, and most frequent customers… well, that raises eyebrows. I assume she had some sort of symbol code beside the name of each john to remind her (revolving) crew precisely what whip to use to get (insert bigwig name here) off. Its bad bad business not to create detailed customer profiles.
Still, that’s not unprecedented in the Crescent City. As I recall, ole’ Volz brought out a box of evidence that contained whips and shackles and other goodies from Clay Shaw’s FQ house back in the day, before Volz distanced himself from Garrison’s windmill jousting, and went on to bigger and better offices, some of which boasted a lot of up and coming legal talent.
However, sado-maso-domination predilections are one thing. Young street boys being procured and then raped in a brothel by ever-more-twisted power addicts… those are dark rumors that certainly wouldn’t, as whitmergate says, be tolerated by the public in N.O– much less the rest of the state. Sounds like blackmail material, if you catch my drift.