Who's in Charge?

• A photojournalist takes pictures near a BP refinery in Texas. The police/Homeland Security arrest the journalist so that BP employees can review and approve the photos.
• Reporters traveling to Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge, owed by the state of Louisiana, are stopped by local police and told they must go to BP to gain access to the Refuge.
• The conservation coordinator for the American Birding Association is filming the Deepwater Horizon response center. Louisiana police warn him to stop filming. As he is leaving he is detained and interrogated by a BP official aided by a police officer.
• The Coast Guard prevents a United States Senator accompanied by a reporter from visiting the Fort Jackson Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Louisiana.
• Call the FAA in Louisiana for permission to fly over the oil spill and a BP official will answer the phone. "The BP contractor who answered the phone was there because the F.A.A. operations center is in one of BP’s buildings."
• The Coast Guard has declared it a Class D felony for any reporter or photographer to approach within 65 feet of a BP spill response vessel or oil boom.
  

If it isn't obvious by now, British Petroleum is the big enchilada. Local, state, and federal officials are obsequious toadies.