Winning contractors – An update By Daniel Politi July 7, 2004 Contractors write the rules By Jonathan Werve June 30, 2004 Outsourcing government By Laura Peterson October 30, 2003 Anatomy of a contract Top 100 Contractors in Iraq, Afghanistan By The Center for Public Integrity November 19, 2007 Inside a war-time contract By André Verlöy […]
Posted inNational Security, Windfalls of War
Contracts with provisional authorities
Oil immunity? By André Verlöy October 30, 2003 A family connection While the Defense and State Departments have granted the lion’s share of contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan directly from Washington, a few U.S. companies have made their deals directly with local governing authorities that have emerged with U.S. support or direction. The companies do […]
Posted inNational Security, Windfalls of War
Anatomy of a contract
Winning contractors By The Center for Public Integrity and The Center for Public Integrity October 30, 2003 Cutting through the fog of war By Daniel Politi October 30, 2003 The Pentagon has awarded seven contracts to San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. to oversee much of the massive jobs of building a new government and […]
Posted inNational Security, Windfalls of War
A family connection
Cutting through the fog of war By Daniel Politi October 30, 2003 Outsourcing government By Laura Peterson October 30, 2003 Contracts with provisional authorities By Kevin Baron, Neil Gordon and Laura Peterson October 30, 2003 One of the more interesting Iraq contracts the Center uncovered involves a tiny firm called Sullivan Haave Associates. Sullivan Haave […]
Posted inNational Security, Windfalls of War
Oil immunity?
Outsourcing government By Laura Peterson October 30, 2003 Contracts with provisional authorities By Kevin Baron, Neil Gordon and Laura Peterson October 30, 2003 On May 22, the U.N. Security Council gathered in New York to approve a resolution lifting sanctions on Iraq, creating a Development Fund for the country and providing limited immunity to corporations […]
Posted inNational Security, War in Afghanistan and Iraq, Windfalls of War
Outsourcing government
Winning contractors By The Center for Public Integrity and The Center for Public Integrity October 30, 2003 Oil immunity? By André Verlöy October 30, 2003 A family connection Government contracting has always been a complex matter, thick with legal wrangling and bureaucracy, but the last decade has seen a radical change in how the U.S. […]
Posted inNational Security, War in Afghanistan and Iraq, Windfalls of War
Cutting through the fog of war
Private contractors By The Center for Public Integrity June 13, 2004 A family connection Anatomy of a contract Raytheon Aerospace, which changed its name to Vertex Aerospace in June 2003, and its related companies have received more than $2.7 billion in U.S. government contracts since 1990, and the company is currently in Afghanistan with a […]
Posted inBroadband, Inequality, Well Connected
Prepaid profit plan for wireless companies
Since January 2002, the nation’s wireless phone companies have been slipping some mysterious new fees in the bills of their 101 million customers. Those who bothered to ask were told that the fees, which ranged from a nickel to $1.75 per month, were needed primarily to cover the wireless industry’s costs for implementing “number portability,” […]
Posted inBroadband, Inequality, Well Connected
Big radio rules in small markets
The greatest concentration of ownership in the radio industry can be found in smaller and medium-sized markets and not in large cities, with broadcast leviathan Clear Channel Communications Inc. by far the most dominant player in America’s heartland, according to a new study by the Center for Public Integrity. The radio ownership survey shows that […]
Posted inBroadband, Inequality, Well Connected
FCC dawdled as radio grew
The Federal Communications Commission knew as far back as 1998 that the way it measured radio markets was deeply flawed and could lead to the creation of behemoths like Clear Channel Communications, but failed to act in the face of industry pressure and bureaucratic inertia. The result is a radio industry where Clear Channel and […]
Posted inDemocracy, Silent Partners
Young money
Politician 527s By Alex Knott and Agustín Armendariz September 25, 2003 A group made up entirely of college students and recent graduates—the College Republican National Committee—has become one of the most successful youth-oriented fund-raisers in the country, spending more than $10.6 million during the past two years to promote Republican candidates and issues. Since separating […]
Posted inDemocracy
Politician 527s
Young money By Meghan O’Donnell September 25, 2003 Buying influence By The Center for Public Integrity July 16, 2003 Some political committees with ties to federal lawmakers and candidates continue to raise and spend “soft money,” even as the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of the new law banning the practice. […]
Posted inDemocracy, Silent Partners
The new soft money
National political parties may be banned from raising “soft money” under a new campaign finance law, but partisan gubernatorial associations have gone on accepting unlimited contributions from many of the same corporate and labor union donors for use in statewide elections. The Republican Governors Association and the Democratic Governors’ Association are both organized as 527 […]
Posted inDemocracy, Silent Partners
Silent Partners: Special Report
527s – Frequently Asked Questions By The Center for Public Integrity November 21, 2005 It was the morning of November 6, 2002, the day after Democrats had lost control of the U.S. Senate, lost ground in the U.S. House of Representatives and were soundly beaten in several key gubernatorial races. The man at the top […]
Posted inNational Security
Interview: Not in the U.S. of A?
A month before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and all of the increased government secrecy that has ensued, the Justice Department secretly seized the home telephone records of respected investigative reporter and deputy bureau chief of the Associated Press in Washington, John Solomon. And earlier this year, the FBI opened and confiscated his […]
Posted inNational Security
Commentary — The assault on liberty (continued)
President George W. Bush used the second anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks not only to praise the controversial USA Patriot Act but to promote further expanding federal law enforcement powers. Speaking at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, Bush said “Under current federal law, there are unreasonable obstacles to investigating and prosecuting terrorism,” […]
Posted inBroadband, Inequality, Well Connected
FCC plans to nix industry-paid travel
Bowing to pressure from a powerful member of the House Appropriations Committee, the Federal Communications Commission says it plans to largely eliminate its longtime practice of accepting free travel and entertainment from the communication industries it regulates. U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., who oversees the agency’s budget, sent a letter to FCC Chairman Michael […]
Posted inDemocracy, Silent Partners
Buying influence
Politician 527s By Alex Knott and Agustín Armendariz September 25, 2003 Political committees operating in a gray area of the law spent more than $430 million during the past three years to influence elections and policy debates across the country, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity. Until now, no one has […]
Posted inBuying of the President 2000, Democracy, Elections
Right on the money: The George W. Bush profile
On January 30, 1990, Platt’s Oilgram News, a respected trade journal of the petroleum industry, reported that a subsidiary of a small, Dallas-based independent oil company, Harken Energy Corporation, had just signed an agreement with the government of Bahrain. “Harken Bahrain Oil Company signed a production sharing contract today,” the article announced, “that gave the […]
Posted inDemocracy
Trading in favors
Legislative favors, increased access to federal lawmakers and instructions on how to use loopholes to evade federal contribution limits—these are just some of the arrangements discussed in recently released documents relating to judicial challenges of a new soft money law, a Center for Public Integrity study has found. Such situations appear in many of the […]
Posted inHarmful Error
Breaking the rules
When Larry Johnson walked out of a Missouri prison during the summer of 2002, exonerated by DNA testing from a wrongful rape conviction after avowing his innocence for 18 years, St. Louis legal community insiders nodded knowingly as word trickled out who had led the prosecution back in 1984—Nels C. Moss Jr. Moss, assistant circuit […]
Posted inHarmful Error
Misconduct and punishment
Unlike any private attorney, the local prosecutor—be he district attorney, county attorney, or criminal district attorney—is an elected official whose office is constitutionally mandated and protected. Prosecutors are still subject to the Rules of Professional Responsibility, but they must police themselves at the trial court level because of their status as independent members of the […]
Posted inHarmful Error
Actual innocence
Actual innocence cases in which courts found prosecutorial misconduct Name Randall Dale Adams State/County Texas – Dallas County Case history 1977: convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death 1980: death sentence overturned; sentence commuted to life imprisonment 1988: key witness recanted his trial testimony and attested to Adams’ innocence 1989: conviction overturned; Adams released […]
Posted inHarmful Error
Methodology, The Team for Harmful Error
A poisoned prosecution By Brooke Williams June 26, 2003 Changing an office’s culture By Steve Weinburg June 26, 2003 Inside an office By Steve Weinburg June 26, 2003 Turning on their own By Steve Weinburg June 26, 2003 Playing by the rules By Steve Weinburg June 26, 2003 Anatomy of misconduct By Steve Weinburg June […]
Posted inHarmful Error
A short history of exposing misconduct
Methodology, The Team for Harmful Error By The Center for Public Integrity June 26, 2003 In January 1999, the Chicago Tribune published a five-part series of articles that found, in the paper’s own words, “nearly 400 cases where prosecutors obtained homicide convictions by committing the most unforgivable kinds of deception. They hid evidence that could […]
Posted inHarmful Error
Shielding misconduct
Methodology, The Team for Harmful Error By The Center for Public Integrity June 26, 2003 A physician who botches an operation or an attorney in private practice whose incompetence costs his client a small fortune can both be sued for malpractice. A prosecutor who convicts a defendant of a crime he didn’t commit, on the […]
Posted inHarmful Error
Punishing the wrongfully convicted
Methodology, The Team for Harmful Error By The Center for Public Integrity June 26, 2003 The cliché about American jurisprudence is that the system is designed to let 10 guilty men go so that the proverbial one innocent man does not end up behind bars. By and large, the system does work that way. Prosecutors […]
Posted inHarmful Error
A question of integrity
Methodology, The Team for Harmful Error By The Center for Public Integrity June 26, 2003 After a recent Delaware Supreme Court decision, Wilmington lawyer Charles M. Oberly III wrote to E. Norman Veasey, the chief justice. Oberly, a veteran prosecutor now in private practice, had something to get off his chest about the court’s ruling […]
Posted inHarmful Error
Anatomy of misconduct
Methodology, The Team for Harmful Error By The Center for Public Integrity June 26, 2003 On January 2, 1983, in the early morning hours, James A. Buckley died at a service station in St. Louis County. The 19-year-old white male attendant had been shot seven times, with robbery as the apparent motive. When 24-year-old Ellen […]
Posted inHarmful Error
Playing by the rules
Methodology, The Team for Harmful Error By The Center for Public Integrity June 26, 2003 The American justice system is designed to err on the side of allowing the guilty to go free rather than incarcerate the innocent. But when an innocent defendant enters the criminal justice system, grievous mistakes can occur, even when prosecutors […]