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 […]
Posted inAccountability
Housing secretary to release funds to struggling nonprofits
Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez said yesterday that dozens of struggling nonprofit housing groups across the country owed more than $1 million by HUD will be paid in full by the first week in March. Last November, the Center reported that a HUD division may have violated federal spending laws and […]
Posted inNational Security, War in Afghanistan and Iraq
Commentary: The dangers of disinformation in the war on terrorism
“In wartime,” Winston Churchill once said, “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Two weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld evoked Churchill’s words when asked for assurances that neither he nor his lieutenants would lie to the media as the United States […]
Posted inAccountability
How medical technology is changing who we are
OTTAWA — This series was first aired on CBC Radio over a six-day period beginning on January 6, 2002 and is reposted with permission. Hardly a week goes by without yet another breathless announcement of a great breakthrough in medical technologies. We’re told that these technologies will make it possible, in the not-too-distant future, to […]
Posted inAccountability
Quiet burial of a secret agent
DWELLINGUP — Like the cry of a wounded bird, it rang out in the Hanoi street, high and plaintive: “Dioxin, Dioxin…” It was the song of a small beggar woman sitting on a child-sized cane chair. She wore a long graceful blue silk tunic. Her hands were tiny, fingerless paws, her body twisted, her feet […]
Posted inDemocracy
Big GOP contributor advised administration’s energy task force
When a generous patron of President Bush and the Republican Party sought political backing for his company’s multi-billion dollar Alaskan pipeline project, he turned to Vice President Dick Cheney, head of the administration’s energy policy task force, known formally as the National Energy Policy Development Group. The Bush administration has refused to disclose the names […]
Posted inNational Security
Africa’s ‘merchant of death’ sold arms to the Taliban
Victor Bout, the Russian arms trafficker whose clandestine sales of weapons of war to some of the bloodiest regimes and rebels in Africa were exposed by the United Nations, had another secret client: he sold millions of dollars of arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan. According to Belgian intelligence documents obtained by the Center for […]
Posted inDemocracy
The Bush 100
The average net worth of the individual members of the Bush cabinet, including the President and Vice President, was between $9.3 and $27.3 million. That’s nearly ten times the average net worth of the cabinet officials who were their immediate predecessors, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of executive branch personal financial disclosure […]
Posted inDemocracy
Fourteen top Bush officials invested in Enron stock
Fourteen of the top 100 officials in the Bush administration owned stock in embattled energy services firm Enron, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Bush administration personal financial disclosure forms. Their holdings were worth-at the time of their filings-between $284,016 and $886,000. Revelations about Enron’s financial losses and accounting practices caused the […]
Posted inDemocracy
Enron top brass accused of dumping stock were big political donors
Twenty-four top executives and board members at Enron Corp. contributed nearly $800,000 to national political parties, President Bush, members of Congress, and others overseeing investigations of the company for possible securities fraud, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation. In addition, Enron made $1.9 million in soft money contributions during the same 1999-2001 period. […]
Posted inAccountability, Watchdogs
Tennessee
Oversight SummaryOversight Survey Tennessee is one of 27 states in which no outside agency oversees ethical conduct of state legislators. It is one of 9 of those states where an outside ethics agency does oversee disclosure for members of the legislature, in this case both personal financial disclosure and campaign finance disclosure. Tennessee is one […]
Posted inAccountability, Watchdogs
Minnesota
Oversight SummaryOversight Survey Minnesota is one of 23 states in which an outside ethics agency oversees ethical conduct of state legislators. It is one of 10 of those states where the ethics agency also oversees both personal financial disclosure and campaign finance disclosure for members of the legislature. Minnesota is among the 22 states that […]
Posted inAccountability, Watchdogs
California
Oversight SummaryOversight Survey California is one of 23 states in which an outside ethics agency oversees ethical conduct of state legislators. It is one of 10 of those states where the ethics agency also oversees both personal financial disclosure and campaign finance disclosure for members of the legislature. California is among the 22 states that […]