Research and Development. The top three leaders all were Corps employees or past employees. The credibility of the IPET was also challenged in a 42-page letter to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) submitted by Dr. Ray M. Seed, co-chair of the ILIT study. Dr. Seed described an early intentional plan by the Corps of Engineers to hide their mistakes in the New Orleans flooding after Katrina and to intimidate anyone who tried to intervene. All of this was done with the help and the complicity of some at the ASCE, according to Dr. Seed. Flood wall design Investigators focused on the 17th Street and London Avenue canals, where evidence showed they were breached even though water did not flow over their tops, indicating a design or construction flaw. Eyewitness accounts and other evidence show that levees and flood walls in other parts of the city, such as along the Industrial Canal, were topped by floodwaters first, then breached or eroded. A preliminary report released on November 2, 2005, carried out by independent investigators from the University of California, Berkeley and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) stated that many New Orleans levee and flood wall failures occurred at weak-link junctions where different levee or wall sections joined together. This was not supported by later final studies. A forensic engineering team from the Louisiana State University, using sonar, showed that at one point near the 17th Street Canal breach, the piling extends just below sea level, shallower than the Corps of Engineers had maintained. "The Corps keeps saying the piles were 17 feet, but their own drawings show them to be 10 feet, Ivor van Heerden said. "This is the first time anyone has been able to get a firm fix on what's really down there. And, so far, it's just 10 feet. Not nearly deep enough." The two sets of November tests conducted by the Corps of Engineers and LSU researchers used non-invasive seismic methods. Both studies understated the length of the piles by about seven feet. By December, seven of the actual piles had been pulled from the ground and measured. The Engineering News Record reported on December 16 that they ranged from 23' 3 1/8" to 23' 7 7/16" long, well within the original design specifications, contradicting the early report of short pilings. They also found that homeowners along the 17th Street Canal, near the