Sept 9, 2005
Gore airlifts victims from New
Orleans
KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Al Gore helped airlift
some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters
from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor
who saved the life of the former vice president's son.
Gore criticized the Bush administration's slow
response to Katrina in a speech Friday in San
Francisco, but refused to be interviewed about the
mercy missions he financed and flew on September 3
and 4.
However, Dr. Anderson Spickard, who is Gore's
personal physician and accompanied him on the
flights, said: "Gore told me he wanted to do this
because like all of us he wanted to seize the
opportunity to do what one guy can do, given the
assets that he has."
An account of the flights was posted this week on a
Democratic Party Web page.
It was written by Greg Simon, president of the
Washington-based activist group FasterCures. Simon,
who helped put together the mission, also declined an
interview.
On September 1, three days after Katrina slammed
into the Gulf Coast, Simon learned that Dr. David
Kline, a neurosurgeon who operated on Gore's son,
Albert, after a life-threatening auto accident in 1989,
was trying to get in touch with Gore. Kline was
stranded with patients at Charity Hospital in New
Orleans.
"The situation was dire and becoming worse by the
minute -- food and water running out, no power, 4 feet
of water surrounding the hospital and ... corpses
outside," Simon wrote.
Gore responded immediately, telephoning Kline and
agreeing to underwrite the $50,000 each for the two
flights, although Larry Flax, founder of California
Pizza Kitchens, later pledged to pay for one of them.
"None of the airlines involved required a contract or
any written guarantee of payment before sending
their planes and volunteer crews," Simon wrote of the
American Airlines flights. "One official said if Gore
promised to pay, that was good enough for them."
He also recruited two doctors, Spickard and Gore's
cousin, retired Col. Dar LaFon, a specialist in internal
medicine who once ran the military hospital in
Baghdad.
Most critically, Gore worked to cut through
government red tape, personally calling Gov. Phil
Bredesen to get Tennessee's support and U.S.
Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta to secure
landing rights in New Orleans.
About 140 people, many of them sick, landed in
Knoxville on September 3. The second flight, with 130
evacuees, landed the next day in Chattanooga
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