The blue wall of silence finally has a small crack in it. The Huffington Post reported today that a retired lieutenant police officer pleaded guilty in the cover-up of the department's probe of the shootings to conceal that police gunned down unarmed civilians during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The supervisor of the police probe, Michael Lohman, a 41 year old 21-year veteran of the force, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice. The federal prosecutor said Lohman is cooperating with investigators who want to know more about the police department's actions.

Interestingly, a state judge throw out the original charges against seven officers that were charged with murder or attempted murder. Fortunately, the federal authorities then stepped in to investigate.

In unsealing the case against Lohman, prosecutors drew a picture of how the shootings at the Danziger bridge immediately spawned a cover-up.

Lohman went to the scene and saw no weapons near or with the victims of the shooting, federal officials said, and concluded the shootings were not justified.

The documents allege Lohman and an unidentified investigator he supervised drafted different versions of false reports. Among the claims was a fabricated statement by one of the victims that she had seen her nephew and others firing guns on the bridge.

Federal officials say Lohman drafted his own 17-page false report after becoming dissatisfied that another investigator's false account was not logical.

The Huffington Post also reported that when another investigator planned to plant a gun at the scene, Lohman just asked him if it was "clean," meaning it couldn't be traced, according to the documents. Read Story.