After the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, then New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said he plunged into a state of paranoia.
In his new book, Katrina’s Secrets: Storms After the Storm, Nagin writes that he believed his criticisms of top officials, including President George W. Bush, would put him in grave danger.
"I thought to myself, ‘I’m a dead man! I have just publicly denounced the governor, U.S. Senators, FEMA and the president of the United States,’” he writes. “I started wondering if during the night I would be visited by specially trained CIA agents. Could they secretly shoot me with a miniature, slow-acting poison dart?"
The ex-mayor also thought the city’s wealthy were trying to bug his hotel suite.
The Miami Herald reports that exactly why Nagin thought the men wanted to bug his room was unclear.
In the book, he said the guards' visit may have had something to do with an angry telephone exchange he had earlier in the day with a local business leader from an upper class New Orleans neighborhood. The man wanted Nagin to allow private security forces into the city to supplement police.
Nagin also claims credit for helping New Orleans get back on its feet.
"Our footprints, our fingerprints are all over the recovery," Nagin writes.