The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Government (federal/state/local)
Collateral Damage – Human Rights and Military Aid after 9/11
The Center for Public Integrity has published “one of the most comprehensive resources on U.S. military aid and assistance in the post-9/11 era. ‘Collateral Damage’ couples the reporting of 10 of the world’s leading investigative journalists on four continents with a powerful database combining U.S. military assistance, foreign lobbying expenditures, and human rights abuses into…
Read MoreDelays impeded implementation of air defense system prior to 9/11
Michael Fabey of Aerospace Daily and Defense Report writes that the inability of the Pentagon and Canadian defense officials to keep a lid on costs and schedules may have cost them the opportunity to modernize their radar-based air defense system in time to possibly thwart the terrorist from completing their 9/11 attacks.
Read MorePolice chief misrepresents crime report to city council
Will Carless of voiceofsandiego.org reports that San Diego’s Chief of Police delivered misinformation in his report to the City Council. “The chief’s statements were made at the height of contract negotiations between the police department and the city. While the chief was painting a rosy picture of crime rates before four city councilmen, the police…
Read MoreATVs: Deceptively Dangerous
An in-depth special report by The Oregonian explores the dangers of ATVs. “Over the past decade, the machines have soared in popularity, with 7.6 million in use. The result: Record numbers of riders end up in emergency rooms and morgues as accidents kill about 800 people a year and injure an estimated 136,700.” The multimedia…
Read MoreMedical research group’s conflicts of interest revealed
Reporters Susanne Rust and Cary Spivak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel detailed conflicts of interest involving the Constella Group, a private health research company that performs hundreds of millions of dollars worth of work for the federal government while also representing major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies such as Merck and GlaxoSmithKline. The reporters analyzed federal…
Read MoreWasting Away: Superfund’s Toxic Legacy
The Center for Public Integrity has taken a look at the state of Superfund sites throughout the US. Twenty-seven years after the government developed a program to identify and clean up the worst of these sites, toxic waste remains a problem across the country. “A one-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity reveals the…
Read MoreOSHA decreases regulatory role under Bush
The New York Times‘s Stephen Labaton (with contributions by Ron Nixon) reports that, under the Bush Administration, OSHA has moved away from its regulatory role in workplace safety. Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety…
Read MoreSex and the CIA
David E. Kaplan of U.S. News & World Report reveals how female spy veterans of the CIA are taking legal action for being disciplined over
Read MoreArizona developer’s checkered past
Mark Flatten of the East Valley Tribune in Phoenix completed a series on Jim Rhodes who has become in the most influential developer in Arizona’s East Valley. In December of 2006, he purchased over 1,000 acres of state trust land. The $58.6 million purchase gave him the right to “master-plan 7,700 acres in the area…
Read MoreFBI’s terrorism mission leaves white-collar crime unpunished
A story by Paul Shukovsky, Tracy Johnson and Daniel Lathrop of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on a profound shift in the FBI’s mission. Due to a shift in focus to national security following 9/11, the FBI has failed to pursue thousands of white-collar crimes. “Five-and-a-half years later, the White House and the Justice Department have…
Read More