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Discovery of Bin Laden Hideout Spotlights Concerns About Pakistan's Intelligence Service

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Sebastian Rotella - May. 02 (News Analysis) - The killing of Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani city dominated by the military has spotlighted a conundrum that Western counterterror agencies have grappled with for years: Is Pakistan's powerful intelligence service an ally, an enemy or a mix of both? This time the debate is likely to take place in public, not behind the closed doors of national security outposts in Washington. In fact, White House homeland security adviser John Brennan seemed to confront the issue head-on Monday when he said that the presence of the world's most wanted man in a fortress-like compound near the homes of retired generals and a military academy raises questions that the Pakistani government must answer. The Obama administration took the extraordinary step of keeping Sunday's commando raid secret from Islamabad. Although Obama cited "counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan" as a factor in the successful hunt for bin Laden, U.S. officials have not given details on the extent and nature of that Pakistani assistance. The ISI has been suspected of playing a double game in previous cases: the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, the mysterious escape from Pakistani custody in 2007 of an al-Qaida operative accused in the London transport bombings and a plot to bomb U.S.-bound commercial flights, charges of ISI involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attack and recent allegations by top military brass that the ISI supports militant networks fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

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U.S. Nuclear Regulator Lets Industry Help With the Fine Print

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By John Sullivan - Apr. 14 (Investigative Report) - “The problem with inviting the industry in is that they tend to dominate the process,” he said. “The NRC has a problem distinguishing between the public they serve and the industry they regulate. “

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Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By T. Christian Miller, Daniel Zwerdling - Mar. 27 (Investigative Report) - "Shock waves from roadside bombs can ripple through soldiers’ brains, causing damage that sometimes leaves no visible scars but may cause lasting mental and physical harm. "

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Can U.S. Nuclear Plants Handle a Major Natural Disaster?

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By John Sullivan - Mar. 13 (News Report) - As engineers in Japan struggle to bring quake-damaged reactors under control, attention is turning to U.S. nuclear plants and their ability to withstand natural disasters. Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has spent years pushing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission toward stricter enforcement of its safety rules, has called for a reassessment. Several U.S. reactors lie on or near fault lines, and Markey wants to beef up standards for new and existing plants. "This disaster serves to highlight both the fragility of nuclear power plants and the potential consequences associated with a radiological release caused by earthquake related damage," Markey wrote NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko in a March 11 letter.

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Female Foreign Correspondents’ Code of Silence, Finally Broken

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Kim Barker - Feb. 20 (Opinion) - Lessons learned from CBS News Correspondent Lara Logan.

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The Year in Wall Street Investigations

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Karen Weise - Dec. 28 (News Analysis) - It's been over three years since credit markets started shaking with the early tremors of the subprime crisis, and two years since that spread into a marketwide collapse. Prosecutors, regulators, Congress and journalists have spent the year uncovering the financial shenanigans that brought the market to its knees. It's been marked by a few blockbuster settlements and more revealing investigations -- as well as by some noticeable inaction in the reckoning.

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The ‘Subsidy’: How a Handful of Merrill Lynch Bankers Helped Blow Up Their Own Firm

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Jake Bernstein, Jesse Eisinger - Dec. 25 (Investigative Report) - The builders of mortgage securities at industry giant Merrill Lynch couldn’t find buyers for their wares. So they paid another group at Merrill to take billions of dollars of the unwanted assets.

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Koch Industries Fought the Health Care Law, But Sought Funds From It

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Marian Wang - Aug. 31 (Investigative Report) - In a post last week, we noted that David Koch, an American businessman and philanthropist, has given millions to cancer research while his company, Koch Industries, lobbied against formal recognition of formaldehyde as a carcinogen.

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Banks’ Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Jake Bernstein Jesse Eisinger Jake Bernstein, Jesse Eisinger - Aug. 27 (Investigative Report) - As investors left the market in the run-up to the meltdown, Wall Street created fake demand, increasing their bonuses — and ultimately making the crisis worse.

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Scientists Dispute Government Stance on the Lingering Effects of Gulf Oil

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Marian Wang - Aug. 18 (News Report) - As we've noted, scientists seemed, on the whole, rather skeptical when a government report said most of the oil from BP’s well was gone from the Gulf of Mexico. Now the pushback against the government’s stance has grown, with several scientific reports released this week.

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Primer: Six Things Happening Right Now With Financial Regulation

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Marian Wang - Aug. 12 (News Analysis) - News about the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation has come in smatterings. We’re well aware that there were people who weren’t impressed with its strength when it passed, and much of the bill leaves a lot still to be determined by regulators in subsequent rulemaking (By one law firm’s count [PDF], it requires 67 studies and 243 new rules to be created). And that leaves us with many moving parts, so here are a few—in motion right now—that pique our interest

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More on Net Neutrality: Parsing Through Google and Verizon’s ‘Policy Announcement’

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Marian Wang - Aug. 10 (News Analysis) - Journalism in the public interest. Last week, we touched upon the net neutrality issue to help explain and add context to the buzz around a forthcoming Google-Verizon deal. That "deal," as you may have heard, was announced on Monday. The first thing

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Obama Administration Considers Bypassing Congress on Immigration Reform

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Marcus Stern - Jul. 30 (News Report) - The Obama administration, anticipating that Congress might not pass comprehensive immigration reform this year, is considering ways it could act without congressional approval to achieve many of the objectives of the initiative, including giving permanent resident status, or green cards, to large numbers of people in the country illegally.

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Off the Radar: Private Planes Hidden from Public View

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Michael Grabell, Sebastian Jones - Apr. 10 (Investigative Report) - Televangelist Kenneth Copeland faced a congressional inquiry after flying his ministry?s tax-exempt jet to Maui and the Fiji Islands. South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds has been questioned about his use of state planes for political and personal trips. And after getting a $180 billion federal bailout, the insurance giant AIG caught flak for its fleet of corporate jets. To prevent the public from seeing where they fly, all have over the years turned to a little-known program that lets private plane owners block their flights from view in the government?s system for tracking air traffic. The owners don?t have to meet any test to keep their flights secret. They merely submit a request to the National Business Aviation Association, a trade group that lobbied to set up the program on the grounds that secrecy is justified to protect business deals and the security of executives. Blocking Flights: How It Works View Graphic But in at least some cases, the program has also served as a refuge for plane owners who?ve faced bad publicity, according to a review by ProPublica of 1,100 blocked planes in the program. The list was obtained after a 15-month public records battle in which the business aviation group sued the FAA to keep it confidential. After a federal judge ruled that the records are public, the FAA provided the list this week. It includes aircraft registered to Fortune 500 companies such as 3M and Tyson Foods, private real estate developers, government agencies and evangelical churches. There are 62 Gulfstream IVs and Vs, which cost tens of millions of dollars each, 36 Learjets and two Boeing 737s. Registered owners include: College booster clubs and athletic programs for the University of Alabama and the University of Mississippi, who blocked flights to hide coaching searches and recruiting trips. The CEO of Hooters, who along with other business partners, has a blocked jet to conduct surprise checks on restaurants, according to the company. Owners of newspapers that have fought for access to public records, including Journal Enterprises, owner of the Albuquerque Journal, and Sam Zell, chairman of the Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. How the list came to be Use of the national airspace is generally considered public information because pilots ? whether airline captains or recreational fliers ? rely on a system of air traffic controllers, radars, runways and taxiways, lighting systems and towers that are all paid for or subsidized by taxpayers. As a result, flight data collected by the FAA in its air traffic control system ? except for military and sensitive government flights ? is public information. Web sites such as FlightAware post the data online, allowing anyone to observe the system and follow most planes virtually in real time. Chuck Collins, who has studied (PDF) the costs of private jet travel for the progressive Institute for Policy Studies, said the public has a right to monitor such flights because taxpayers and commercial passengers heavily support business aviation. ?It?s the use of the public commons,? he said. ?It belongs to all of us. It?s not a private preserve. It?s not a country club.? Dan Hubbard, spokesman for the business aviation association, which helps to administer the program, called the Block Aircraft Registration Request program, or BARR, said privacy is important because businesses worry that competitors could watch them, potentially disclosing deals that could move stock prices. ?Our members tell NBAA that there are certain circumstances where there is a security concern, and that?s why they want to avail themselves of the BARR program,? he said. The program drew attention in November 2008 after the Big Three auto executives were criticized for taking corporate jets to ask Congress for financial help, prompting General Motors to block its flights. The business aviation group administers BARR in cooperation with the FAA, and plane owners have two options for keeping flights secret. In one, the NBAA sends a ?block? list directly to private flight-tracking sites, which are bound by agreement with FAA to hide those planes. In the other, the NBAA sends a block list to the FAA, which hides the planes from data released to flight-tracking sites. ProPublica obtained the latter list. The former remains undisclosed. FAA blocks planes at no charge and without requiring owners to prove why their movements should be kept secret. The agency keeps only the current month?s block list and deletes historical records, which prevents the public from knowing who has used the program in the past. The origins of the block program trace to 1995, when flight-tracking Web sites began to proliferate. Several private plane groups petitioned the FAA to limit release of the data to a need-to-know basis. The groups lobbied Congress, and in 2000, a measure was attached to an FAA reauthorization bill requiring Web sites that use the data to hide any aircraft upon FAA request. Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the FAA, said the agency doesn?t have the resources to evaluate the block requests and, because the business aviation association is receiving the requests, allows it to gather the information for the FAA. Planes that drew scrutiny In some cases, records and news accounts show that aircraft owners flew into some public relations turbulence. In 2007, Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the finance committee, opened an inquiry into several tax-exempt ministries, questioning whether charitable donations had paid for mansions, Rolls Royces and private jets. Televangelist Copeland and his Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark, Texas, were questioned about layovers of church aircraft in Maui, Fiji and Honolulu. The church told Grassley the Fiji trip was for preaching and the others so the pilots could rest. The ministry?s Web site says the planes are used for humanitarian missions and to spread the word of God around the world. The church has five planes on the blocked list, including a $17 million Cessna Citation X. Also blocked is a 1953 North American T-28B Trojan, a vintage warplane registered to Copeland. The ministry and Copeland declined to respond to ProPublica?s questions. In September 2005, the use of state planes by South Dakota governor, Rounds, was the subject of a three-part series in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, which found that he had flown to Republican Party functions and his sons? high school basketball games. Two state planes are on the block list. Rounds, a pilot who sometimes flies himself, has advocated using state planes to save drive time and money. Col. Dan Mosteller, superintendent of South Dakota?s Highway Patrol, said he decided to block the flights to protect the governor after a routine security review. ?All the other things that go on with the governor?s office, that?s irrelevant to me,? he said. ?My only goal is for security reasons.? He said the blocking request was made on March 30, 2006. That was the same day Rounds announced his re-election campaign. South Dakota isn?t the only government entity on the block list. The New Mexico Department of Public Safety, which handles flights for Gov. Bill Richardson, and the Alabama Department of Transportation also have blocked their planes. Taxpayers subsidize system The use of corporate jets stoked the anger of the public and even President Obama in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and government bailout as banks continued to buy planes and fly executives to resorts and vacation homes. Firms such as AIG decided to sell aircraft and cancel purchases of new ones. AIG spokesman Mark Herr said in an e-mail that AIG blocked its aircraft years before the meltdown. ?It?s been AIG?s historical practice going back years to not disclose its aircraft identifiers to the general public,? Herr said. ?In light of the surge in numbers and intensity of the threats directed at the physical safety of our employees, it?s only common sense to continue this practice.? The private jet has always been an emblem in a long-running dispute about whether general aviation ? the class that includes corporate jets, recreational fliers, helicopters and charters ? pays its fair share in support of the nation?s air traffic system. According to an FAA study released in 2007, general aviation uses 16 percent of the air traffic system , yet pays only 3 percent of the taxes that support it. The rest is covered largely by commercial travel. The system, including salaries for traffic controllers, costs about $9 billion a year. The business aviation association disputes the FAA study. The association?s president, Ed Bolen, said the group?s members are rigorous in evaluating the costs of corporate jet travel versus driving or taking commercial airlines. But often, the need to fly to multiple cities in one day, the lack of airline service to some areas or the proprietary nature of business discussions necessitates the use of company planes. Confrontation on a landing strip Several plane owners defended the blocked aircraft program to ProPublica. One pilot who asked not to be identified for personal security reasons said he blocked his plane after he and a female companion were stalked by a man who had been tracking their flights. According to the account, which ProPublica verified with the local sheriff, the stalker showed up at the pilot?s private airstrip and confronted them as soon as they landed from a trip out of town. ?The only possible way he could have followed us there was to use that tracking software,? the pilot said. ?I run around with folks all the time who fly corporate jets and they have very, very good reasons? for privacy ?because there are some screwballs in the world.? Gannett Co., the media company that owns USA Today, which published a version of this article in collaboration with ProPublica, has blocked its corporate jet. Company spokeswoman Robin Pence said Gannett shields its flights mostly for competitive reasons, such as when it looks at possible acquisitions and investments. Security in a post-9/11 environment also is a concern, she said. A spokeswoman for Zell, the Tribune Co. chairman, declined to comment. Thompson Lang, publisher of the Albuquerque Journal, said the company?s jet has been used to ferry reporters to news events like Hurricane Katrina. But Lang said he plans to take it off the block list. The reason: Lang doesn?t want the governor or others to be able to hide their flights, so why should he?

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Inside Job: Eat my Shorts

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

This American Life - By Ira Glass, Alex Blumberg, Jake Bernstein, Jesse Eisinger - Apr. 09 (Special Report) - For seven months a team of investigative journalists from ProPublica looked into a story for us, the inside story of one company that made hundreds of millions of dollars for itself while worsening the financial crisis for the rest of us. ... A hedge fund named Magnetar comes up with an elaborate plan to make money. It sponsors the creation of complicated and ultimately toxic financial securities... while at the same time betting against the very securities it helped create.

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Compare Health Care Bills Side-by-side

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - Mar. 19 (News Analysis) - Yesterday the House released its "fixes" to the Senate's health care bill. We've done the heavy lifting and tracked all changes for easy viewing. Get to know your bill before the pundits tell you what to think about it.

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Grading the Public Options That Already Exist

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Sabrina Sahnkman - Oct. 28 (News Analysis) - Pundits and politicians from both sides of the fence have been hollering themselves blue about a potential public health care option. Instead of relying on private insurers, the government would insure people itself. The idea is that if a

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Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Sheri Fink - Aug. 30 (Special Report) - After Katrina, overstretched doctors and nurses in New Orleans injected some patients with drugs. Were they trying to comfort those patients — or hasten their deaths?

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Foreign workers for U.S. are casualties twice over

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By T. Christian Miller - Jun. 21 (Special Report) - Rey Torres dreamed of a better life for his wife and five children when he left a neighborhood of wooden shacks and burning trash piles to drive a bus on a U.S. military base near Baghdad. He hoped to send his children to college and build a new home with the $16,000 a year he earned in Iraq -- four times what he could make in the Philippines. Then, in April 2005, Torres, 31, was killed in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents. His widow and children were supposed to be protected by a war zone insurance system overseen by the U.S. government. They were eligible for about $300,000 in compensation.

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Industry Defends Federal Loophole for Drilling

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Abrahm Lustgarten - Jun. 05 (News Report) - In a packed and sometimes contentious hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, representatives of the oil and gas industry and their state regulators vigorously defended the practice of injecting toxic fluids underground without federal regulatory oversight.

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Stimulus money going to scofflaw companies

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Michael Grabell, David Epstein - May. 21 (Special Report) - One company paid nearly $1 million for destroying seagrass in the Florida Keys marine sanctuary. Another settled a discrimination case after federal investigators found it refused to hire black employees. A third firm was rebuked by the Army for poorly screening the interrogators it hired -- interrogators who later abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Despite those problems, the three companies have won millions of dollars in contracts under the economic stimulus package.

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As Crisis Loomed, Geithner Pressed But Fell Short

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Jeff Gerth, Robert O'Harrow Jr. - Apr. 03 (Investigative Report) - In September 2005, Timothy Geithner made one of his most visible moves as a supervisor of the U.S. banking system. He summoned the nation's top financial firms and their regulators to streamline an antiquated system that threatened Wall Street's boom.

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How Citigroup Unraveled Under Geithner’s Watch

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Jeff Gerth - Jan. 15 (Special Report) - Geithner's tenure at the New York Fed – which bore the major responsibility for supervising Citigroup – covers a tumultuous span in which the sprawling conglomerate spiraled from the country's biggest banking company to one of its largest welfare cases.

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Agencies Move to Restrict FOIA Access in Last-Minute Regs

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Jennifer LaFleur - Jan. 06 (News Report) - As one of the most secretive presidential administrations in history gets ready to close up shop, it's closing a few more things -- records. Over the past few months, some federal agencies have issued rules that would eliminate public disclosure of information -- or, in some cases, make it more difficult for requesters to get information.

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In 90’s, Burris Sought Death Penalty for Innocent Man

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Ben Protess - Dec. 31 (Special Report) - While state attorney general in 1992, Burris aggressively sought the death penalty for Rolando Cruz, who twice was convicted of raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. The crime took place in 1983. But by 1992, another man had confessed to the crime, and Burris’ own deputy attorney general was pleading with Burris to drop the case, then on appeal before the Illinois Supreme Court. Burris refused. He was running for governor.

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