A lot of very important things came into focus on September 11 last year. Before 9-11 or after 9-11 has become one of those universal markers, a way to date things without explanation, without elaboration. But for the future of journalism in the public interest, one of the things that occurred on 9-11 was that […]
Posted inEnergy, Environment, Harken Energy
More Harken Energy Corporation documents
The New York Daily News reported on July 30 that Harken Energy Corporation set up a Cayman Islands subsidiary, the Harken Bahrain Energy Company, on September 1, 1989, in connection with the company’s $25 million contract to drill for oil off the coast of Bahrain, an island nation in the Persian Gulf. The Cayman Islands […]
Posted inAccountability
Commentary: Enhance democracy in Colombia
The elected Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, recently visited the United States and Europe and declared that his “get tough” campaign for a sustainable peace would be waged with “absolute respect for human rights.” Meantime in Colombia, Fernando Londoño — his future interior and justice minister — repeated that the new administration would push for a […]
Posted inAccountability
Commentary: So Tim’s death will not have been in vain
AUSTIN, Texas — By a sick coincidence, the Brazilian journalist Tim Lopes was assassinated precisely on the 26th anniversary of the car-bomb explosion that killed his North American colleague, reporter Don Bolles, on June 2, 1976 in Phoenix, Arizona. The death of the reporter for the Arizona Republic brought immense repercussions in the United States, […]
Posted inEnergy, Environment, Harken Energy
Further Harken documents
July 25, 2002 — Documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show President George W. Bush met with the president and CEO of Harken Energy Corp. shortly before the controversial sale of the company’s Aloha Petroleum subsidiary. The sale of Aloha led to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and restatement of […]
Posted inEnergy, Environment, Harken Energy
Harken Energy Corporation internal documents
July 19, 2002 — In his July 8, 2002, press conference, President George W. Bush told reporters “to look back on the directors’ minutes” for details of his knowledge of and involvement in the financial reporting of Harken Energy Corporation that was the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation in the early 1990s. […]
Posted inEnergy, Environment, Harken Energy
Additional Harken documents
July 12, 2002 — Since posting the last batch of documents yesterday, we received requests for more Harken-related documents. Today, we are posting Harken Energy Corporation’s 1989 Form 10K, which includes information on the Aloha transaction and the loans George W. Bush received from the company, and the company’s quarterly reports from the period ending […]
Posted inEnergy, Environment, Harken Energy
More Harken documents
July 11, 2002 — The Center for Public Integrity, as a public service, is posting a second round of the documents that we obtained from the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Freedom of Information Act. The Center obtained these documents in 2000. The first batch can still be read here. April 20, 1990 Letter […]
Posted inAccountability
Commentary: Freedom of information under attack
Asking the tough questions required of “watchdog journalism” is especially difficult in a national crisis atmosphere of fear, paranoia and patriotism. In the months since the September 11 terrorist attacks, we have been painfully reminded of Senator Hiram Johnson’s famous 1917 observation that “The first casualty when war comes is truth.” Trauma from the worst […]
Posted inEnergy, Environment, Harken Energy
Securities and Exchange Commission documents
July 3, 2002 — Because of a column by Paul Krugman that ran in The New York Times and a follow-up Washington Post story, there has been renewed interest in two reports the Center published concerning George W. Bush’s days as a director of Harken Energy. We published the first on October 2, 2000 and […]
Posted inDemocracy, Elections, Party Lines
State parties collected nearly $570 million in contributions, soft money transfers in 2000
Federal Election Commission By The Center for Public Integrity September 26, 2002 The dispersion of disclosure By MaryJo Sylwester and Katy Lewis September 26, 2002 In the 2000 elections, Democratic and Republican state party committees raised $570 million, with 46 percent comprised of soft money transfers from national party organizations, according to an unprecedented study […]
Posted inIntelligence, National Security, War on Error
Live pictures taken by U.S. planes were freely available
LONDON — The war on terrorism in Europe is being undermined by a military communications system that makes it easier for terrorists to tune in to live video of U.S. intelligence operations than to watch Disney cartoons or new-release movies. For more than six months, live pictures from U.S. aerial spy missions have been broadcast […]
Posted inIntelligence, National Security, War in Afghanistan and Iraq, War on Error
Watching the terror trails
LONDON, June 12, 2002 — If you heard anything, you would think it was a mosquito hovering, hunting for fresh prey. But in the dark night skies over the Balkan mountains, that distant, faint buzzing may mark a hunter of a different sort. Shrouded from view, loitering up to 16,000 feet in the air is […]
Posted inIntelligence, National Security, War in Afghanistan and Iraq, War on Error
The hot line from Virginia to Al Qaeda
LONDON, June 12, 2002 — The flaw in the U.S. communications system is a Pentagon network called the Global Broadcasting Service (GBS), a new military satellite system begun in 1996. The system was designed to “provide efficient, direct broadcast of digital multimedia information” and give “deployed warfighters … high-bandwidth data imagery and video of critical […]
Posted inIntelligence, National Security, War on Error
A Spy Inc. no stranger to controversy
LONDON / WASHINGTON — Even within the secretive world of private military companies, AirScan is noted for being unforthcoming about its operations. The Florida-based company has repeatedly refused to disclose what work it is doing in Europe, choosing instead to discuss the company’s plans to track polar bears hibernating in the Arctic. “We work closely […]
Posted inEnvironment
Smog-forming and toxic gases ‘consistently’ undercounted, major study finds
HOUSTON, May 31, 2002 — In a discovery with national implications, a group of government, academic and private researchers involved in a $20 million study of Houston’s air quality have found that operators of petrochemical plants in the city’s vast industrial complex have been significantly underestimating emissions of key air pollutants in required reports to […]
Posted inEnvironment
Federal board concludes current chemical regulations are inadequate
WASHINGTON, May 15, 2002 — The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, nearing the end of a lengthy investigation, has concluded that federal regulations designed to prevent catastrophic accidents involving a widely used group of hazardous chemicals are “inadequate.” After its own investigation of the same issue, the Center for Public Integrity reported recently […]
Posted inAccountability
Jacques Monsieur arrested in Turkey
BRUSSELS, Belgium — A Belgian man alleged to be one of Europe’s biggest gunrunners — and who has threatened to reveal secrets about the involvement of intelligence agencies and oil corporations in his illicit trade — has been arrested in Turkey. Jacques Monsieur, also known as the Marshal, was arrested in Istanbul on Saturday. Belgium, […]
Posted inHired Guns
Study finds $565 million spent on lobbying in the states in 2000
Lobbyists in 34 states spent $565 million wining, dining and influencing state legislators and members of the executive branch in 2000, according to “The Fourth Branch,” a new study by the Center for Public Integrity. The study was compiled in conjunction with the release of Capitol Offenders: How Private Interests Govern Our States, the Center’s […]
Posted inAccountability
How the spin doctors talked up tobacco as thousands died
AUSTRALIA — Cigarette companies knew as early as the 1950s that they would need a healthy image to protect their profits. Soon after British researcher Sir Richard Doll linked smoking with lung cancer in 1950, tobacco companies embarked on a concerted campaign aimed at ensuring their survival. The chief executives of Philip Morris, Benson & […]
Posted inAccountability
Tobacco lawyers face investigation by legal regulators
AUSTRALIA — The behavior of Clayton Utz and Mallesons Stephen Jaques lawyers in advising Australia’s biggest tobacco company on its documents policies will be investigated by legal regulators. If the lawyers are found to have been involved in misconduct or unsatisfactory conduct they face a range of possible sanctions including cancellation of their practicing certificates. […]
Posted inAccountability
Clayton Utz faces inquiries in destroying documents
Leading Australian law firm, Clayton Utz, faces at least two inquiries about its involvement in destroying thousands of sensitive tobacco company documents. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Professor Allan Fels yesterday said the commission would investigate if there had been misleading, deceptive or unconscionable conduct in breach of the Trade Practices Act by […]
Posted inAccountability
The smoking gun: A perspective
Yesterday a court awarded Melbourne grandmother Rolah Ann McCabe $700,000 in damages after she sued one of the world’s leading tobacco companies. The case revealed how the Firm was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to win. In 1996 when Phyllis Cremona sued tobacco companies for smoking-related illness, her lawyers were snowed under by thousands […]
Posted inAccountability
Smoker awarded $700,000 after evidence was destroyed
These stories first appeared in The Age on April 12-13, 2002. They are reposted here with permission. Australia’s biggest tobacco company destroyed thousands of internal documents to deliberately subvert court processes and to deny Melbourne lung cancer patient Rolah McCabe a fair trial, the Victorian Supreme Court found yesterday. Mrs. McCabe, 51, who has only […]
Posted inNational Security
Special Report: Kuchma approved sale of weapons system to Iraq
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma personally authorized the clandestine sale of $100-million worth of high-technology anti-aircraft radar systems to Iraq on July 10, 2000, in violation of United Nations sanctions. The Center for Public Integrity has obtained audio tape of a conversation between Kuchma and Valeri Malev, then-director of the state-owned arms exporting company, Ukrspetseksport. In […]
Posted inEnvironment
Bush administration kills safety regulation opposed by donors
WASHINGTON, April 11, 2002 — The Bush administration quietly shelved a proposal to tighten regulations on a group of hazardous chemicals despite evidence linking dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries to accidents involving those chemicals, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity has found. At issue in the shelved proposal is a particular […]
Posted inBroadband, Inequality, Well Connected
Broadcast industry defeats Shays-Meehan provision
Well Connected The business and legislative influences behind our nation’s information networks. Stories in this series Well connected By The Center for Public Integrity May 22, 2003 District of Columbia’s poor pay triple for sub-par Internet service By Laurel Adams February 18, 2011 Billions set aside to bridge broadband gap before creating plan on how […]
Posted inNational Security
Victor Bout denies involvement in arms traffic
Alleged Russian arms trafficker Victor Bout denied that he had any links to the al Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden and no role in shipping weapons to Afghanistan. In a statement issued last Friday in Moscow and in broadcast comments repeated on Monday, Bout denied allegations, including those levied by the United Nations, […]
Posted inDemocracy
Shays-Meehan opens soft money loophole in the States
If the campaign finance reform bill that passed the House becomes law, it will eliminate a colossal loophole through which corporate, labor union and individual political donors poured nearly a half-billion dollars in “soft money” into national party coffers in the 2000 election cycle. At the same time, it would open another loophole that will […]
Posted inFinance, Inequality
Commentary: The Enron collapse — A financial scandal rooted in politics
February 25, 2002 — The unfolding Enron spectacle is a cautionary tale about the fatal quicksand of irrational exuberance and greed, deceit and nondisclosure of pertinent public information, and government officials beholden to powerful private interests. And beyond the daily details and sensational revelations, there are sobering questions now about the extent of “Enronitis.” Some […]