Stand-up comedian Tim Slagle was on a roll. In a lunchtime routine tailored to 400 conference attendees, Slagle was killing ‘em with jokes about, well,…
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On the night of September 30, 2004, few of the estimated 62.4 million viewers watching President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry square off…
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Termites? No problem. On DoMyOwnPestControl.com, $64.99 buys a 20-ounce bottle of Termidor SC. That’s enough for anyone with a credit card and a shipping address…
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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich isn’t running for president this year, but due to a gusher of support for his campaign to promote opening up…
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WASHINGTON, D.C., September 30, 2008 — The Center for Public Integrity has added two new editors and three new senior journalists to its editorial team,…
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LILLEHAMMER, NORWAY, Sept. 13, 2008 — A New York Times series about deadly Chinese counterfeit drugs sold around the world and a TV4 Sweden investigation…
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Archive InvestigationsRusk County, Texas — A gentle twilight pink stretches across the sky, touching the waters of Martin Creek Lake. The still air, smelling only of East Texas pines, brings the faint sounds of wildlife in the surrounding woods. Smog and traffic seem much further away than the 145-mile drive to Dallas.
Here’s the report that top officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention thought was too hot for the public to handle — and the story behind it.
The Center reveals that military contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan grew from $11 billion in 2004 to more than $25 billion in 2006 — and that billions have gone to unidentified foreign companies.
Washington State is tops in making it easy to track the private interests of public officials, and Vermont, Michigan, and Idaho tie for last in the Center’s national ranking. Check where your state ranks.
Post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy and military aid and assistance had a huge impact in nations around the world — and at home. This award-winning project includes 20 articles from four continents.
The Superfund isn’t so super anymore. A year-long investigation examined all 1,624 Superfund sites and found daunting toxic threats across the country 27 years after the Environmental Protection Agency program was launched.
At least 900 little-known federal advisory committees wield enormous influence over government policy, some to good ends — but many have become secretive, ideological, or packed with industry representatives.
A year-long investigation of President Bush’s initiative to fight AIDS abroad finds that conservative ideology hinders its real benefits by insisting on abstinence-only programs over promoting condom use.
This project offers a comprehensive examination of business and legislative influences on media — and includes the Media Tracker, a searchable online database of who owns the media serving any U.S. community.
200 trips to Paris? 150 to Hawaii? 140 to Italy? The Center’s investigation of how private interests gain access to members of Congress by funding supposedly educational or investigative travel.
Government contracts awarded for cleanup and reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina are collected in a searchable database, and the best coverage of what happened on the Gulf Coast is gathered and categorized.
An investigation into the state of federal lobbying identifies the top 100 lobbying companies and organizations — led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — as well as the top 250 lobbying firms.
Who’s winning the big contracts? Between 1998 and 2004 no-bid contracts accounted for more than 40 percent of Pentagon contracting, totaling $368 billion — and many contractors were generous campaign donors.
The vast influence over government policy wielded by the oil and gas industry and its related interest groups, employees, and political action committees is helped along by the millions in campaign contributions this project analyzes.
The Center for Public Integrity is dedicated to producing original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable.
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An advocacy group run by a political operative with oil industry ties (and a famous photo-op history) is spearheading a late advertising blitz to sway Senate races, spending more than $650,000 in the last month to blast the Democratic candidates in Colorado and Kentucky, and to urge support for Republican incumbents in Mississippi.
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That was then . . .
One chapter of the Center’s 2002 report Making a Killing: The Business of War was devoted to Arcadi Gaydamak, whom we described as “one of the most extraordinary operators in world business.” In 1993 and 1994 he and his French business partner, Pierre Falcone, arranged for $633 million in arms to be shipped from Russia and other Eastern European countries to the government of Angola, then engaged in a civil war. The United Nations had imposed an arms embargo on Angola, and France maintained that Falcone’s company did not have government authorization for the sales. Read more
Christopher De Rosa, a top scientist at the Centers for Disease Control, is still serving as a scapegoat for leaders at the organization, judging from a new congressional report released Monday about the CDC’s failure to act on dangerous formaldehyde levels reported in trailers for refugees from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
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The McCain campaign posted Sarah Palin’s financial disclosure form and her tax returns from 2006 and 2007 this afternoon. The Palins paid $22,721 in taxes on $166,080 adjusted gross income last year.
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Sarah Palin is turning in her personal financial disclosure forms to the Federal Election Commission on Monday. Will the forms give the pundits yet another excuse to slam on McCain’s veep?
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With Capitol Hill consumed by the nation’s financial crisis, time is running out on the broader search to find out just what happened behind closed doors during the last eight years. As the Bush administration winds down, numerous congressional investigations on a range of issues from greenhouse gas emissions standards to the firings of federal prosecutors remain unresolved — blocked by the White House’s wide-ranging assertions of executive privilege.
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A major libertarian political activist has sent thousands of letters to liberal funders threatening to expose them in their local communities, Ben Smith of The Politico reported Wednesday. The letters warn, "Should any of these organizations be found to be engaged in illegal or questionable activity, it is our intent to publicize your involvement with those activities." What is not mentioned is that the originators of the letter, Howard Rich and his tax-exempt political group Americans for Limited Government, don't actually release the names of their own donors and have a history of questionable activities.
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It has to be one of the more obscure subjects ever addressed in a news release from a major presidential campaign. John McCain — who two weeks ago called for the ouster of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox — now is praising the agency. Why? Its decision on Tuesday “to relax mark-to-market accounting requirements.”
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