Ctr for Public Integrity CPI

not to be confused with Franklin ctr

DISCLOSE SOROS BACKING

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https://publicintegrity.org/politics/news-outlets-unearth-more-donors-trust-recipients/

donors use charity to push free-market policies in states

By Paul Abowd

February 14, 2013

Charity acts as screen for conservative foundations that feed network of state-based think tanks, media outlets.

Virginia-based charity Donors Trust has promised anonymity to donors who seek to fund “sensitive or controversial” issues.

A Center for Public Integrity report last week lifted that veil — at least partially — revealing dozens of conservative foundations that together in recent years have given tens of millions of dollars to Donors Trust .

Donors Trust, in turn, has funded a nationwide network of free-market think tanks, media outlets and university programs to the tune of nearly $400 million since 2002.

Recently, much of that funding has gone toward state-based policy efforts. For example, Donors Trust provided 95 percent of the funding for a conservative media clearinghouse called the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which runs a network of state-based blogs.

While many of the charity’s 193 donors remain anonymous, a variety of media reports have shown where Donors Trust money ends up:

Climate change-denial

In late February, The Guardian GUK reported that 46 percent of Donors Trust grants in 2010 went to groups opposing climate science. Between 2002 and 2010, the group gave $118 million to about 100 such groups.

A detailed 2012 report published on DeSmog Blog ties Donors Trust to a vast climate science denial machine through its generous support for theHeartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that mobilized support for the tobacco industry before shifting its focus to climate change. BUCHHOLTZ?]

An October episode of PBS Frontline said Donors Trust has become “the number one supporter” of climate denial groups like Heartland and the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity after industry giants such as ExxonMobil curtailed funding to Heartland following public protest.

Islamic radicalism

Donors Trust made its largest grant in 2007 to a New York-based group called Clarion Fund. The $17 million donation went toward the production of a documentary called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”

Seven weeks before the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president, Clarion distributed millions of copies of the movie, which stirred fear about Islamic radicalism, by inserting DVDs as ads in daily newspapers nationwide.

Reports later suggested that Chicago businessmanBarry Seid may have passed the $17 million through Donors Trust to Clarion. Seid and Donors Trust director Whitney Ball co-chair another foundation called Chicago Freedom Trust.

Academic coups?

In 2010, a free-market professor of economics whose research is funded through Donors Trust laid out his “Free State” plan for libertarians to migrate to and take over the state of New Hampshire.

In 2009, Donors Trust passed about $600,000 in donations to Shimer Collegewhile conservative Chicago businessmen, including Seid, attempted unsuccessfully to take control of the small liberal arts school.

‘Fair representation’

A Donors Trust subsidiary called the Project for Fair Representationhas led legal challenges to affirmative action programs and, more recently, to the Voting Rights Act, according to reports by Reuters and The New York Times.

The project sought out and tapped the majority-white Shelby County, Ala., as plaintiffs in a challenge to Section 5 of the Act,which gives the U.S. Department of Justice power to approve or reject changes to electoral laws in 16 states, mostly in the south. The case will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/fueling-dissent/

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FUELING DISSENT

How the oil industry set out to undercut clean air

After casting doubt on climate change for decades, industry consultants have turned their attention to air pollution

Illustration by Robert Fresson

by Jie Jenny Zou

Tom Dart of Guardian US contributed reporting

December 12, 2017

SAN ANTONIO, Texas ― On sunny days, when his classmates at St. John Bosco Elementary School run out to play, Gabriel Rosales heads to the school nurse for a dose of Albuterol. The fine mist opens his airways, relaxing the muscles in his chest. Without it, recess could leave the 9-year-old gasping for breath. He gets a second dose at the end of the day before heading home.

Over the past year, Gabriel’s asthma has worsened. Visits to the emergency room, shortened trips to the park, and reliance on inhalers have become his new norm. “It got to the point where I couldn’t even leave him with anybody,” said his father, Gabe, who works as a consultant to the National Association of Public Employees, a workers’ advocacy group, and a seasonal field director of the Bexar County Democratic Party. “One time he almost looked blue.”

Gabriel’s health is deteriorating alongside air quality in San Antonio, where oil and gas development, a hotter climate and a growing population have combined to spell misery for a city that once boasted clean air compared to other Texas metropolitan areas. Part of the problem lies southeast of the city in the Eagle Ford Shale, a 400-mile-long hub of hydraulic fracturing that unleashes microscopic particles and smog-causing, ground-level ozone.

The state’s environmental regulator — the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — hasn’t made things better.In fact, it’s followed in the footsteps of Big Oil’s biggest lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, which has forestalled progress on ozone for decades. Using consultants also hired byAPI,the commission has spent millions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to undercut scientific evidence linking particulate matter and ozone with bronchitis, asthma and premature death.

Read more about API's history of climate denial and its ties to the White House ]

Air quality is the new frontier for climate-change skeptics long tied to API. The institute has fueled uncertainty on climate by producing what critics call misleading scientific and economic studies. Now, by attempting to discredit established research on ozone and fine particles, API and its cadre of doubters are trying to undermine the Clean Air Act — the landmark U.S. law credited with saving millions of lives. Working in concert with other free-market groups, they’re taking their message to Capitol Hill. API officials did not grant interview requests from the Center for Public Integrity.

Residents of San Antonio’s low-income, mostly Latino neighborhoods — like Hillcrest, where Gabriel Rosales lives — bear the brunt of poor air quality even if they aren’t in ozone hot spots, said Mario Bravo, an outreach specialist with the Environmental Defense Fund. “They have less access to health care,” Bravo said. “They have less access to transportation to get to the health-care providers.”

‘A lot like climate’

In June, two peer-reviewed studies trumpeted a conclusion at odds with years of solid science: fine-particle pollution long linked to premature death and chronic illness isn’t as dangerous as health advocates contend. If true, the findings would call into question health benefits claimed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has set ever-tightening air-quality standards.

There was a catch, however. The articles — which were published within a week of one another — appeared in Critical Reviews in Toxicology and Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, two journals favored by industry consultants alleged to promote pay-for-play science. And both studies were funded by API, a trade group that has spent $40 million since 2013 to lobby Congress on topics ranging from taxes to global warming.

Twitter

“Our study is published...air quality does not kill. $600 million of EPA junk science up in smoke,” climate-change skeptic and Donald Trump acolyte Steve Milloy tweeted in June, linking to the Regulatory Toxicology article. During a congressional luncheon a month later, the former coal executive took credit for conceiving the study before turning it over to friend, S. Stanley Young, and two other statisticians, who authored the final article. No mention of Milloy’s involvement is made in the publication.

Read more about how Big Oil is trying to sow skepticism of science among judges ]

Some of the same data were used in the Critical Reviews article published by Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr., which also disputed the link between fine particles and mortality. Cox, a biostatistician from Colorado, started consulting for API in 1988. Cox disclosed that his paper “benefitted from close proofreading and copy-editing suggestions from API” but denied in an interview that his findings were influenced.In November, he was named the next chair of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, drawing criticism from groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The science on particle pollution, much like the science on global warming, is exhaustive and widely accepted, with thousands of studies pointing to serious health implications. The World Health Organization notes that particulate matter “affects more people than any other pollutant,” with effects observed at even “very low concentrations.” The particles — found in automotive and industrial exhaust and smaller than one-fifth of the width of a strand of hair — form a toxic mix with ozone that lodges deep in the lungs. Unlike Cox, most researchers are no longer fixated on whether this form of pollution is fundamentally dangerous; they worry instead about whether it can cause — not just exacerbate — chronic illness.

Attacking the science is one way of undermining the Clean Air Act, said John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which advocates for more protective air-quality standards. The Clean Air Act is routinely hailed as one of the most cost-effective federal laws, even by business groups. In 2015, the EPA estimated that the law will have saved the U.S. economy $2 trillion by 2020 while costing $65 billion to implement. About 85 percent of the act’s benefits come from reducing fine-particle pollution, which raises the risk of early death. Opponents of the law “deny that air pollution is deadly … or even harmful in order to try to pretend that no benefits are delivered,” Walke said.

Steve Milloy

Milloy’s July luncheon at the Rayburn House Office Building — billed as a “congressional staff and media briefing” — was little more than a plug for his latest book, “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA,” which condemns the “echo chamber of deceptive science” on ozone and fine particles. The event was hosted by Myron Ebell, who chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, a climate-skeptics’ group that began as an alliance of free-market think tanks. “It’s a lot like climate,” Milloy told the audience. “This stuff is pulled out of thin air.”

“It’s a lot like climate... This stuff is pulled out of thin air.”

Reached for comment, Milloy said the study is not an attack on the Clean Air Act but part of his 20-year effort to expose the EPA’s “garbage-in, garbage-out” air pollution research. He denied having any formal ties to API. “I am very, very disappointed in the American Petroleum Institute and all the oil companies for not defending their products, for leaving the science to people like me,” he said.

Young, who authored the study, stood behind its findings and disputed the idea that industry funding presents ethical conflicts. His study data are publicly available, he said, but the EPA isn’t as transparent. Ebell agreed, accusing the agency of using “junk science” to justify air-quality and greenhouse-gas regulation.

Despite their misgivings about the EPA, all three men have become tethered to the agency. Earlier this year, Ebell oversaw the EPA transition for Trump, leading a group that included Milloy. Young was named to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board in October.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., co-founder of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, complained that such appointments have become all too common.  “These people were fringe fanatics and industry stooges fighting on behalf of the industry a propaganda war against science,” he said.

Milloy and Ebell were listed among the authors of a $2 million plan to amplify uncertainty in climate science — as revealed in a 1998 API memo leaked to The New York Times. Both say the memo grew out of an API brainstorming session that never resulted in concrete action, with Milloy calling it “just a big joke.”

Years before, API had refuted the very concept of global warming under President Charles DiBona, who joined the institute shortly after a stint as energy policy advisor to Richard Nixon in the 1970s. White House communications show that DiBona regularly met with then-API President Frank Ikard, a close friend of Nixon’s, before becoming Ikard’s deputy in 1974.

“You heard that a scientific consensus now exists,” DiBona said during API’s annual meeting in 1996. “This claim is beyond misleading; it is dead wrong.” He borrowed an analogy from MIT physicist Richard Lindzen, who likened climate models to Ouija boards. By 2003, a group of scientists funded by API had turned out the first of several studies characterizing the warming trend as a natural phenomenon.

The same year, however, the United Nations was holding its ninth conference on climate change —  focusing on how to mitigate warming. In 2001, an international consortium of scientists had delivered its third report on the trend, reaffirming findings that climate change was real and manmade.

Reached by phone recently, DiBona declined to answer any questions about the organization he led for 18 years. Months after retiring from API in 1997, DiBona joined the board of Halliburton, an oilfield-service company then headed by future vice president Dick Cheney. DiBona is now an API honorary lifetime director and an advisory chairman for a mining investment company based in the Cayman Islands.

In recent years, fringe views espoused by API have found a receptive audience in U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), whose climate-denial credentials rival those of Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Since Smith became chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in 2013, the panel has handed out dozens of subpoenas — many to scientists at regulatory agencies and environmental groups — aiming to debunk climate research.

Smith — whose district includes San Antonio — has opened the committee’s hearing rooms to Cooler Heads Coalition events such as Milloy’s book promotion and briefings that urged the United States to drop out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. In February, he reissued a controversial subpoena to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is investigating ExxonMobil’s historical knowledge on climate change. Since he joined Congress in 1989, Smith’s top campaign donors have been from the oil and gas sector, which gave him at least $764,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Smith did not respond to requests for comment.

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In 2016, Influence Map, a nonprofit environmental research group, estimated that ExxonMobil had spent about $27 million on “climate obstruction” lobbying and advertising campaigns. That amount was dwarfed by the $65 million API spent on similar efforts, the group found. ExxonMobil is one of the oldest and largest API members.

‘Tired, old industry argument’

In July, the House passed a bill targeting what its proponents called “job-killing regulations” — namely, bedrock air-quality standards. Its lead author was Rep. Pete Olson, a Republican from the ozone-plagued Houston area. All but four of the 229 “aye” votes were cast by Republicans, Lamar Smith among them.

Under Olson’s bill, states would have until 2025 to meet the EPA’s latest ozone limit, which was supposed to take effect in October. The agency, which is legally required to update air standards to keep pace with evolving science, would be obligated to review rules for pollutants once a decade, as opposed to once every five years.

The 2017 bill is the latest iteration of a proposal Olson first floated in 2015, seeking to delay regulation of ozone. The same day his bill passed, 144 trade groups, including regional offshoots of API, pledged their support in a letter to Congress. Oil and gas interests have been Olson’s top political contributors, donating more than $1 million to his campaigns since 2007. A Senate version of the bill has not come up for a vote.

In an email, Olson’s office wrote that the congressman “believes the Clean Air Act is critically important” but has “fundamental concerns” about Texas’ ability to meet tighter standards. Pollution control, the email said, “can be done rationally and with an eye on our economy.”

By law, the EPA is not allowed to consider cost when setting ozone standards, but that hasn’t stopped API and other industry groups from injecting economics into the policy debate. Much like scientists for hire, economists have provided API with grist to challenge regulations. Armed with seemingly authoritative studies from firms such as NERA Economic Consulting, the institute has recast issues such as action on climate change as reckless moves that could tank the U.S. economy. NERA, whose clients include API collaborators such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Chemistry Council, was co-founded by Irwin Stelzer, an economist who works at the Hudson Institute, a free-market think tank.

Such studies, like the NERA report Trump cited when he announced the U.S. exit from the Paris climate agreement earlier this year, can be “extremely misleading,” often tallying every conceivable cost and ignoring every possible benefit, saidBen Franta, a Stanford University researcher investigating API’s climate activities. Because data underlying these reports are proprietary, Franta said, in many cases they can neither be verified or debunked. What’s left are unsupported arguments: “New ozone rules could be the most expensive ever,” reads an API webpage linking to dozens of NERA findings.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has taken a tack similar to API’s. Since 2013, the TCEQ has paid NERA more than $870,000 for economic research on ozone — a topic the firm studied earlier for API. More than $2.2 million in taxpayer funds have also been spent on contracts with Gradient — a consultancy previously hired by API to question the benefits of a stricter ozone limit. The TCEQ declined to comment on this story but on its website describes its mission as protecting the “state’s public health and natural resources consistent with sustainable economic development.”

Anne E. Smith, a managing director at NERA,  did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment. She was among several industry-friendly voices at a 2015 TCEQ ozone workshop in Austin led by Michael Honeycutt,  the agency’s director of toxicology. Other speakers included Gradient scientists, the editor of Critical Reviews in Toxicology, industry toxicologist Michael Dourson and air researcher Robert Phalen, known for saying the air “is a little too clean for optimum health.”

The group’s findings were later referenced by Honeycutt at a House Science Committeehearing, where he argued against a tighter EPA ozone standard. Honeycutt said the risks posed by the pollutant were “small” and any change could discourage people from “outdoor exercise.”

Speakers at the Austin workshop have risen to prominence in the Trump administration. This fall, Honeycutt, Anne Smith, Dourson and Phalen were all named to key EPA science positions as either advisers or staff. Their fringe views on ozone — championed by API — have alarmed public-health advocates and run counter to the EPA’s own findings. The agency strengthened its ozone standard in 2015 after reviewing more than 1,000 new studies.

Economics has long figured into API’s strategy to derail ozone rules. In 1971, the newly formed EPA set the ozone standard at 80 parts per billion, but in 1979 took an unexpected U-turn and weakened it to 120 ppb — angering industry and environmentalists alike. The latter called the reversal scientifically indefensible and accused the EPA of prioritizing economics over health. API promptly sued the EPA, with President DiBona claiming the relaxed standards would still cost “billions of dollars without significantly improving the quality of the environment or the health of the public.”

Spurred by lawsuits from the American Lung Association that compelled it to update air standards based on the latest science, the EPA reverted to its original 80 ppb ozone limit in 1997. The cap is now at 70 ppb, though even that number may not be protective enough, as some research has found health effects at 60 ppb.

Nonetheless, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt — a former Oklahoma attorney general with deep ties to oil and gas — tried to keep the 70 ppb standard from taking effect. He backed off on the delay after 16 state attorneys  [teAm BLUE] general sued the agency in August. In a lawsuit filed this month, however, environmental groups accused the EPA of failing to enforce the rule.

Pruitt had put forth what Dr. Greg Diette — a lung specialist at Johns Hopkins University who has testified in favor of tighter ozone standards — calls “a tired, old industry argument. They say, ‘It’s going to put us out of business,’ and it doesn’t,” Diette said. “All this stuff always comes down to who has to pay.”

But not all costs are economic. High ozone days are the hardest for Diette’s patients. “It can be terrifying — it’s the sensation of not being able to breathe,” he said. “Some feel as if they're going to pass out. Some feel as if they're going to die.”

Asthmatics can do little more than hide indoors in an air-conditioned environment. The only other option, Diette said, is to move.

Relocating isn’t possible for the Rosales family of San Antonio, who are uninsured and struggling to keep up with the cost of Gabriel’s medications. The air he breathes is expected to degrade further as oil prices rebound and drilling picks up in the Eagle Ford.

ref

https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/century-of-influence/

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A CENTURY OF INFLUENCE

The unlikely partnership between Big Oil and the White House

How the industry stalled action on climate change from the inside and sold America on fossil fuels

Illustration by Robert Fresson

by Jie Jenny Zou

Chris Young, Rachel Leven contributed reporting

December 12, 2017

A version of this article was co-published with Guardian US.

When Rick Perry was interrupted by climate-change protesters during his address to the National Petroleum Council in late September, the energy secretary was ready with a retort.

“You want to talk about something that saves lives? It’s the access to energy around the globe,” Perry said, countering a woman worried about deadly hurricanes and a man whose hometown is being submerged by the rising Philippine Sea. “I am proud to be a part of this industry. I am proud to be an American."

It was an opportunity for the former Texas governor to champion an industry he’d long embraced by showing fealty to the petroleum council, an arcane federal advisory committee dominated by energy executives. Picking up on Perry’s message was Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who has pledged to fast-track drilling and open more areas to fossil-fuel development.

The two took turns reassuring the council’s nearly 200 members during a meeting at the opulent Hay-Adams hotel in Washington, D.C., that the White House would be a friend, not foe, to Big Oil. “We’re now in the business of being partners, rather than adversaries,” Zinke said. “If I were in the industry, I’d be pretty happy.”

It wasn’t the first time that global warming had been cast aside by the Energy Department’s petroleum council, successor to a wartime body created by President Harry Truman. In 1972, the council buried the industry’s own climate research with the help oftop executives at the American Petroleum Institute (API), a longtime ally that once shared a building with the council.

API has gone far beyond the lobbying typical of trade associations, helping spawn permanent substructures within the executive branch that ensure its voice is heard. These government entities, which include the petroleum council and an obscure but powerful White House office, have for decades worked in tandem with API to fortify the oil and gas industry, its critics say, often at the public’s expense.

Excerpt from a transcript of API’s 1959 “Energy and Man” symposium at Columbia University in New York.  The Hagley Museum]

API’s history on climate issues goes back farther than most realize. As early as 1959, it grappled with global warming, hosting a conference where the looming, manmade catastrophe was discussed. As the environmental movement was blossoming, API — with the government’s support — was working behind the scenes to undermine it by distorting projections of regulatory costs. An enduring false narrative was constructed: the economy or the environment.

For nearly a century, API has enjoyed special access to the executive branch,furtively shaping policy from the inside. Now, under Donald Trump, the industry smells victory on multiple fronts with a White House that openly detests regulation as much as it does. Days before Trump’s inauguration, API President Jack Gerard heralded the “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to reshape energy policy.

Fifty-two environmental rules have since been overturned or are in the process of being rolled back. API has publicly supported at least 23 of these actions. In May, the institute also sent a 25-page wish list to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Among the items it wants reconsidered: tougher standards for ozone — the main ingredient in smog — and regulation of methane, a greenhouse gas that is far more potent than carbon dioxide.

API officials did not respond to interview requests from the Center for Public Integrity. On its website, the institute says, "We negotiate with regulatory agencies, represent the industry in legal proceedings, participate in coalitions and work in partnership with other associations to achieve our members’ public policy goals."

Neomi Rao at a congressional hearing for her 2017 appointment to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a division of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

U.S. Senate]

‘Regulate the regulators’

“I asked my staff for a joke, but it’s still going through cost-benefit analysis,” Neomi Rao said from a podium in October, drawing hearty laughs from a mostly male crowd of lobbyists, lawyers and policy analysts at the Heritage Foundation — a libertarian think tank based in Washington.

It was a tongue-in-cheek nod to the little-known agency Rao has led since July — the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs,which she called a “small but mighty” division of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Her staff of roughly 50 reviews the costs and benefits of all major federal rules, providing the stamp of approval needed to turn proposals into regulations — or spiking them.

“If you are a very pro-regulatory administration, then you are not going to appreciate the work that OIRA does,” Rao warned the audience, likening her office to a “roadblock” against burdensome policies that hurt the economy. “The pace and scope of deregulation that’s occurred is truly unprecedented, and we’re just getting started.”

“The pace and scope of deregulation that’s occurred is truly unprecedented, and we’re just getting started.”

Rao — a constitutional scholar who clerked for conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and often shared pizza with the late Antonin Scalia —  has embraced her role as “regulatory czar,” pledging to surpass a Trump executive order to eliminate two existing regulations for each one created. Though she is an ardent supporter of leaner and more restrained government, she plans to staff up OIRA and broaden its powers.

How, exactly, she’ll do this is a mystery — much like the inner workings of OIRA itself.The agency has routinely come up short of basic transparency guidelines recommended by the Government Accountability Office, garnering a reputation on Capitol Hill as a black box that heavily edits or kills regulations with little explanation in Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Cass Sunstein, who led the office during the Obama administration, has since defended the practice of derailing particular rules by putting them on a “shit list.”

While OIRA has resisted public scrutiny, it has held its doors open for industry. Since April 2014, 35 of OIRA’s 712 meetings on proposed EPA regulations have been with API representatives — including a 2015 conference call with institute President Gerard over ozone. The institute, along with the American Chemistry Council and ExxonMobil, ranked among the top 10 groups that met with OIRA from 2001 to 2011. Such encounters carry weight: A 2015 study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found the agency was more likely to edit rules when lobbied by industry than by public-interest groups. Rao’s office did not respond to requests for comment, but OIRA notes on its website that it will meet with “any party interested in discussing issues on a rule under review.”

The office’s bias toward industry can be traced to its founding. Though OIRA was created in 1980, its roots date to the EPA’s formation in 1970. As a counterweight, President Richard Nixon established the National Industrial Pollution Control Council, an advisory committee within the Commerce Department made up entirely of industry executives.

Frank N. Ikard, former API president]

“Virtually no major move is made in environmental policy without drawing on your advice and criticism,” Secretary of Commerce (and, later, Nixon campaign adviser and Watergate figure) Maurice Stans told the committee in 1971. Members regularly reviewed and commented on draft regulations before they were released to the public, weighing in on matters such as leaded gasoline and the Clean Air Act.

Stans took special interest in the pollution committee’s oil and gas subgroup led by Standard Oil Chairman J.K. Jamieson, who regularly invited API President Frank Ikard and API public-affairs executive P.M. Gammelgard to its meetings. Staff from the National Petroleum Council were also on hand. Together the men coordinated a public-relations effort emphasizing the enormous costs the oil industry claimed it was absorbing to improve the environment.

Excerpt from the National Petroleum Council’s 1971 summary report to the White House  National Archives and Records Administration]

In February 1971, the pollution committee advised Nixon aides to prioritize costs. The White House budget office obliged that October by creating a new program called “Quality of Life Review,” which would assess major environmental, health and safety regulations. Tapped to lead the agency was bureaucrat Jim Tozzi, who had shown a passion for deregulation at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Jim Tozzi describes himself as the father of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

Administrative Conference of the United States

“Quality of Life” became all about reining in the EPA, Tozzi explained during an interview with the Center for Public Integrity. Occupying a floor of the Executive Office Building next to the White House, his office quickly went to work on the EPA’s proposed Clean Air Act guidelines. “I was like a little despot,” Tozzi said. “Somebody needed to regulate the regulators.”

Under Jimmy Carter, the “Quality of Life” program became OIRA in 1980, with Tozzi as deputy administrator. In 1983, Tozzi left the agency to join a law firm headed by William Ruckelshaus — the EPA’s first administrator, a Nixon appointee and an early champion of cost-benefit analysis. Tozzi now runs the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, a think tank he founded and staffed with former OIRA employees that assesses regulations.

Tozzi said his plan for policing the EPA — and every other federal agency — has survived nine consecutive administrations and looks bright under Rao. “The Trump administration,” he said admiringly, “has gotten the number of regulations going out to a trickle.”

‘Virtually indistinguishable’

As Nixon’s pollution control committee quietly lobbied on industry’s behalf, the National Petroleum Council was doing its part to paint Big Oil as a linchpin of the U.S. economy.

Council members had grudgingly agreed to an Interior Department request to assess the industry’s environmental track record and plans following a 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara, California. The disaster sent an estimated three million gallons of crude gushing into the Pacific Ocean; television broadcasts showed shorelines littered with tarred birds and dolphins.

The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill in California became a pivotal point in the environmental movement.]

But the petroleum council’s ensuing two-volume report in 1972 was anything but apologetic. Totaling more than 500 pages, it defiantly cast the Santa Barbara spill as an anomaly and urged the government to continue fostering oil and gas development. Echoing economic arguments made by Nixon’s pollution committee, the council’s report cautioned against regulation that would dampen industry’s bottom line.

Among the report’s authors were Union Oil President Fred Hartley, whose company was responsible for the spill, and Standard Oil Chairman Jamieson of Nixon’s cost-obsessed pollution committee.

Citing research by API, the report also played down climate change. “Carbon dioxide concentrations do appear to be increasing for reasons not well understood,” the council wrote, adding that scientists would have to wait until the year 2000 to determine “whether or not a serious problem exists.” Even if the gas were having an effect, controlling such a ubiquitous pollutant could “impose impossible administrative and enforcement burdens,” the report said.

But things weren’t as ambiguous as the council made them sound. API papers on atmospheric pollutants in 1968 and 1969 made it clear that rising carbon dioxide levels came from the burning of fossil fuels and that warming was inevitable. The 1968 paper warned that there could be “melting of the Antarctic ice cap, a rise in sea levels [and] warming of the oceans,” while the 1969 paper noted that carbon dioxide levels would rise “as our combustion economy continues to consume increasing amounts of fossil fuel.” Several authors of the petroleum council’s report likely knew this, given that they were top API officials – including President Ikard and public-affairs executive Gammelgard.

Excerpt from a 1969 API scientific study on atmospheric pollutants.  API]

The council and API occupied the same K Street building in Washington during the 1940s. Ikard — so close to Nixon that the president wrote thank-you notes to Ikard’s wife for homemade fruitcake and get-well messages — maintained an office there. In 1972, Ikard traveled to Sweden at the White House’s behest to represent the United States at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment — the first international meeting of its kind. There Ikard would have been in a position to spread the word about global warming. There is no documentation to suggest he did.

API’s research during the 1960s makes the case “compellingly that the science is really sound,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law, an advocacy group that tracked down the climate studies. Muffett claims the petroleum council’s report is proof that high-level API executives were aware of the grave threats of warming and worked to hide the revelations.   Climate-change doubters followed suit, mischaracterizing API’s early research as evidence that warming was a hoax.

Digging through archives, Stanford University researcher Ben Franta found what he believes is API’s earliest public reckoning with climate change: a November 1959 conference it hosted at Columbia University where a renowned scientist posited the emerging threat before 300 “government officials, economists, historians, scientists and executives.”

Within years, API was feverishly commissioning air-pollution research that resulted in the 1968 and 1969 papers. “API had this long-running awareness of climate change and climate science, and in that history the message they were getting from scientists was that climate change was real,” said Franta, who is writing his dissertation on the trade group’s activities. “If they wanted to head off that threat, they were going to have to think about acting then."

API leaders have played key roles at the National Petroleum Council, a federal body chartered in 1946 whose reports claim to be nonpartisan and in the national interest. The council was founded during World War II as a quasi-government agency that aided the war effort. It later became an adviser to the Interior Department and is now attached to the Energy Department, which did not respond to requests for comment. Members of the privately funded council are prohibited from lobbying and self-dealing but a review of its secretive, 71-year history shows it has long carried water for industry, minimizing environmental concerns while promoting deeper and riskier drilling.

While the council insists it’s not a trade association, its structure is similar to API’s. Both are organized as nonprofit business leagues funded privately by annual member dues. Though the council has a spare staff of under a dozen, it took in more than $5 million in 2015 donations.

Executive Director Marshall Warfield Nichols, who began working for the council in 1971, received compensation topping $840,000 in 2015, records show. The same year, the council spent $325,000 on a contract with FTI Consulting, the same K Street firm retained by API to lobby for favorable trade policies and aggressively rebut negative press on the oil and gas industry.

When a Center for Public Integrity reporter visited the council’s office in August, staff members refused to discuss a federal law that requires the council to make the bulk of its records publicly available. It  subsequently released transcripts of some of its annual public meetings but did so unevenly, with some transcripts incomplete or heavily edited in handwriting. Some were missing.

The council has refused to provide the Center with any of its subcommittee records, and declined to provide all documents prior to 1973 — including records underlying its 1972 environmental report. Executive director Nichols declined to be interviewed, writing in an email that “it is not our practice to comment in public on matters between the Secretary of Energy and the Council or its members.” Nichols, however, shared records denied the Center with three private researchers who authored a sponsored history of the council in 2004. One of the writers had been previously hired by API to author the trade group’s own history.

The council’s composition and views have been fodder for complaints from those outside of industry. Its leaders have been the biggest, loudest voices in oil; until February, former ExxonMobil CEO and current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was council chairman. Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney led the group before he became vice president in 2001.

In 2000, Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund resigned from the council, taking issue with an oil-refining report that criticized an EPA plan to curb sulfur in diesel, citing high costs to industry. In a letter to then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, Krupp wrote that he disagreed with the council’s recommendation to “delay and weaken … programs that are necessary for cleaner, healthier air quality.”

Of the council’s 170 members at the time, only Krupp represented an environmental nonprofit. He encouraged Richardson to diversify the body’s membership to include public-health advocates and regulators. Otherwise, he wrote, its perspectives would continue to be “virtually indistinguishable from the views of the refining trade organizations.”

Peter Lehner, then with the Natural Resources Defense Council, resigned from the council’s advisory committee about seven years ago after just a few months as a member, writing that his “goals were fundamentally distinct from the members of the petroleum industry whose perspectives continue to dominate the [council].”

Things haven’t changed much since Krupp and Lehner left. Of 192 members on the council’s roster, 144 come from the oil and gas industry. Over its lifetime, the council claims, almost a third of its 2,800 recommendations have been “fully implemented.”

These recommendations — to open more of the Arctic to drilling, for example — stand a good chance of being embraced by the Trump administration. At the petroleum council’s meeting in September, energy secretary Perry put his audience at ease. “The government’s not going to be in your way,” he said.

https://publicintegrity.org/politics/how-a-sanctioned-russian-bank-wooed-washington/

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-ordered-pentagon-to-delay-ukraine-aid-less-than-2-hours-after-zelensky-phone-call-foiad-emails

no lnx

Trump ordered Pentagon to delay Ukraine aid less than 2 hours after Zelensky phone call: FOIA’d emails

Written by News Corpse, Daily Kos December 22, 2019

The fact that Donald Trump has now been impeached (despite what the loons on Fox News say), hasn’t slowed the discovery of new evidence of his guilt. This is one of the reasons that it’s so important to ensure a comprehensive consideration of the Articles of Impeachment when they get transmitted to the Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows this, and so do the vast majority of Americans who favor a full and fair hearing, including witnesses and document production.

The impeachment controversy has sparked as epic battle between Pelosi and the Senate’s GOP majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who has already announced that he has no intention of conducting a fair hearing and will be “taking his cues” from White House lawyers. In the meantime, new evidence has already emerged that appears to be profoundly damaging to Trump:

Chuck Schumer

SenSchumer

This email from Michael Duffey—approximately 90 minutes after President Trump’s call with the president of Ukraine—is all the more reason why we need Duffey and others to testify in a Senate trial.

The “sensitive nature”? What is that about?

A screenshot of the email from Michael Duffey]

That’s right. Less than two hours after Trump got off the phone with President Zelensky of Ukraine, he ordered the Defense Department to withhold military aid to a country that was being invaded at the time by Russia. The order included a directive to keep it quiet due to it’s “sensitive nature.”

Trump is fond of telling everyone to “read the transcript” of his phone call with Zelensky. He’s tweeted that demand 29 times in the past few weeks. Most recently, yesterday. He is referring to reading the notes made in a memo that describes his conversation with Zelensky. And he is apparently too oblivious to recognize that the memo actually confirms that he conditioned military aid on Zelensky’s promise to help him smear Joe Biden. What Trump said, in response to Zelensky’s inquiry about the aid, was…

“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”

That’s a textbook quid pro quo. Trump then talks about getting some information related to a debunked conspiracy theory about a computer server that belonged to the Democratic National Committee. But he quickly segues from that to explicit requests for dirt on Joe Biden:

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with [Rudy Giuliani and] the Attorney General [William Barr] would be great … so if you can look into it.”

This new memo was acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Center for Public Integrity.It is among the documents that the White House had previously refused to surrender to congressional investigators. There are many more that Trump continues to withhold. And he is still refusing to allow his staff to give testimony.

But if there’s one thing this memo proves, it’s that there is a real need to continue probing this criminal president and the accomplices in his administration. And when the Senate takes up the impeachment, they must permit the introduction of new evidence and testimony from relevant witnesses. The truth will likely come out eventually, anyway. But if Republicans in Congress allow Trump to deny access to it at this stage, they will be held accountable by both the courts and the voters.

==

==

https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/donald-trump-army-super-pacs-maga-nonprofits/

extensive list superpacs

eg

Rebuilding America Now

Type: super PAC

This super PAC was started by California financier Tom Barrack, a Trump confidant and chairman of the president’s inaugural committee. It spent more than $21 million during the 2016 election attacking Democrat Hillary Clinton and boosting Trump, although it’s been mostly dormant since. Now-U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., led the committee.

Tom Barrack, CEO of Colony Capital, takes the stage to speak during the final day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 21, 2016. (AP/Mark J. Terrill)

The group’s past activity has caught Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s attention. Prosecutors note former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was “instrumental” in setting up Rebuilding America Now at the same time he was Trump’s campaign chairman, an apparent violation of federal law. (The super PAC also began paying Ken McKay, a former Trump campaign adviser, days after he left Trump’s campaign, seemingly violating the 90-day cooling-off-period rule.) The group also hired Manafort’s longtime associate, Laurance Gay, as chairman. During the 2016 cycle, the super PAC paid Gay $330,000 and McKay $295,000 for “political strategy consulting.”

A spokesman for McKay and Gay told Reuters they were Trump volunteers who didn’t “possess strategic information,” so they said the cooling-off-period rule didn’t apply.

In court filings, prosecutors say Manafort lied to investigators about a $125,000 wire transfer in 2017 to the super PAC in order to cover a debt, *The New York Times* reported. A federal judge ruled in February 2019 that despite agreeing to cooperate, Manafort lied to Mueller’s team during its Russian interference investigation. He will be sentenced in March.

In 2016, the super PAC accepted six-figure donations from megadonors such as Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, real estate developer Palmer and former WWE wrestling executive Linda McMahon, now Trump’s Small Business Administration administrator. It also took $100,000 from Anthony Scaramucci, later Trump’s communications director for one week; $200,000 from coal outfit Murray Energy and $225,000 from private prison operator GEO Corrections. (The nonpartisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center filed an FEC complaint accusing GEO of violating the federal contractor donation ban. The case is pending.)

“Although GEO Corrections Holdings Inc., the company that made the donation, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the GEO Group, it is a non-contracting legal entity and has no contracts with any governmental agency,” company spokesperson Pablo Paez told VICE News in a statement, saying the donations to Rebuilding America Now are “compliant with all applicable federal election laws.”

In 2018, Rebuilding America Now received $30,000 in donations, with $25,000 coming from Florida real estate developer E. Llwyd Ecclestone Jr.

From 2017 to 2018, Rebuilding America Now spent most of its $2 million on paying Gay ($775,000) and McCay ($210,000) for consulting fees. It also used its money to fund travel and high-priced dinners — at places such as The Trump International Hotel in Washington and BLT Prime in Washington. It reported no money during that time on overtly pro-Trump communications.

==

Koch Industries, a giant oil and energy conglomerate, has InsideClimate News, a four-year-old online news startup, in its crosshairs.

In October, the company launched an online ad campaign via Google, Facebook, and its KochFacts.com website (which rebuts coverage it finds unsatisfactory) claiming that InsideClimate “misleads readers and asserts outright falsehoods” about Koch’s interest in the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline would transport crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to Gulf Coast refineries in the US, and has drawn vigorous opposition from environmentalists. Koch’s ads feature a jaundiced image InsideClimate’s founder and publisher, David Sassoon, calling him the “activist/owner” of the site. Sassoon calls the ads “media intimidation.”

It is not the first time that Koch Industries—one of the largest private companies in the country—has targeted a news outlet. In recent months, the company has employed a nearly identical strategy to criticize reporting by Bloomberg News and the Center for Public Integrity. InsideClimate’s battle with the firm is more complicated than a hackneyed David-and-Goliath story, however, revealing both the strengths and weaknesses of a young news site trying to prove its mettle.

 ===

http://www.alternet.org/books/heres-how-chemical-companies-decide-whats-toxic-not-epa-or-fda

an excerpt from the new book Nation on the Take by Wendell Potter& Nick Penniman (Bloomsbury Press, 2016):

Arsenic, like formaldehyde, can cause health and developmental problems and at high levels is linked to certain cancers. Columbia University professor Joseph Graziano jokes, darkly, that arsenic makes lead look like a vitamin. That’s because, as he told the Center for Public Integrity’s David Heath, it “sweeps across the body and impact[s] everything that’s going on, every organ system.” It’s in weed killers marketed to fight your lawn’s crabgrass, and, in many places, it’s in the water we drink.

A 2008 draft assessment by the EPA estimated that arsenic was seventeen times more potent than previously thought. In assessing the impact of arsenic on women in particular, the agency estimated that if a hundred thousand women were to consume the legal limit of arsenic currently permitted, 730 would get bladder or lung cancer.

After seeing the draft assessment, the producers of arsenic-based pesticides that hired Charlie Grizzle to lobby for them, Drexel Chemical Co. and Luxembourg-Pamol, began to take action, as did mining companies like Rio Tinto, which also would have been affected by the regulation. As the Center for Public Integrity’s David Heath reported, a group of lobbyists, including Grizzle, set up a meeting with Representative Mike Simpson, the Republican from Idaho, who by 2015 had received a total of $8,000 in campaign donations from Grizzle, according to data compiled and analyzed by the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics.

All it took to send the EPA’s draft assessment to the National Academy of Sciences for a review was for a congressman to slip one paragraph into in a 221-page spending bill. When Heath asked Simpson about the paragraph, he said he worried about small communities not being able to meet drinking water standards.

Such stealth maneuvers are not uncommon in Congress. A senator, for example, cananonymously put a hold on legislation, completely blocking it. Committee members can insert language written by lobbyists directly into a large spending bill before anyone has adequate time to review it. As Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine, bemoaned to Center for Public Integrity reporter David Heath in June 2014: “It’s happening more and more in this Congress that we see less and less of what goes on behind the scenes, that members aren’t informed until the last minute. So things like this, major policy changes like this, can happen somewhat in the dark of the night with very little information to the public.”

When confronted by a reporter, Simpson said he didn’t know that the paragraph inserted into the spending bill kept a weed killer containing arsenic on the market, and he said he had “no idea” that Grizzle had donated to his campaigns.

Delays continued in subsequent years as industry-funded scientists presented their views to the Academy, sometimes without disclosing their financial ties. (The Center for Public Integrityreported that one such scientist suggested that an arsenic dose even higher than the current drinking water standard doesn’t cause cancer.) The result: in 2015, seven years after the EPA’s draft assessment that arsenic is considerably more dangerous than previously thought, many public health experts said the federal government was continuing to allow too much arsenic in our water and in products like weed killers. 

“Nobody’s Looking Out for Our Welfare”

“We have a broken Toxic Substance Control Act,” says Tom Neltner. That’s the big problem that “federal health officials, prominent academics and even many leaders of the chemical industry” agree on, the Atlantic’s senior health care editor, Dr. James Hamblin, wrote in 2014.

The obstacles for public health are (1) the vast majority of the eighty thousand industrial chemicals available for use are not regulated or even tested by the government, and (2) companies are not even required to submit most of them for testing.

“What most Americans don’t realize is nobody’s looking out for their welfare,” Mount Sinai’s Philip Landrigan told us. “The great fear is always that there might be other chemicals out there that have never been tested but to which children are exposed.”

In addition, the EPA (like the FDA) has to meet a very high standard before it can ban a toxin. The EPA has banned or limited only five. Weak laws even made it difficult to ban asbestos.

There were signs in 2015 that the chemical safety laws might be strengthened when legislation to update the laws for the first time in thirty-nine years received bipartisan support in the Senate. It would, among other things, require more frequent testing at the federal level and make it easier for the government to pull products off the shelves.

Sponsored by industry favorite David Vitter and New Mexico Democrat Tom Udall, who in the past has supported increased environmental protection, the bill even received kudos of sorts from some environmental advocacy groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, which view the legislation as an improvement over the broken status quo. Other green groups maintained it was much too weak. Senator Barbara Boxerwas pushing a separate, more stringent bill that allowed for testing of more chemicals each year.

Vitter’s spokesman wrote that the “legislation provides common-sense reforms that are necessary to update the United States’ forty year old chemical regulatory program. Senator Vitter has worked with colleagues across this aisle, stakeholders from all sectors, and the EPA to draft this legislation that will drastically increase EPA’s ability to ensure the safety of chemicals being used in the United States.” It soon became apparent, however, that the bill was being vetted—and possibly even written, at least in part—by industry lobbyists. Using metadata on a Microsoft Word document circulated by Udall, a reporter for Hearst Newspapers found that the document originated at the American Chemistry Council. Senator Boxer said she felt certain the industry wrote it, citing a Senate information technology staffer who investigated the issue.

Udall, who the New York Times suggested had formed an “unlikely alliance” with the chemical industry, maintained that the document originated in his office. One of his aides told Hearst that “it was shared with a number of stakeholders including at least one other senator’s office.One of those stakeholders was the ACC.” But the council did not deny authoring that draft of the bill. “There’s no way for anyone to tell,” a council spokesperson said. Others, including Udall’s office, said anyone could change some metadata. A spokesperson for Udall said the senator has been engaged with all groups on all sides of the issue.

Regardless of who wrote the bill’s language, the end product was more than palatable to the chemical industry. The American Chemistry Council called the bill the “culmination of a multi-year effort” to secure “compromise, common-sense” legislation that it characterized as “a balanced, science-driven solution that reassured the public that our products are safe and that keeps our economy growing.”

The ten biggest chemical companies spent $154 million lobbying on the bill over 2013 and 2014, the watchdog group MapLight found. In contrast, public interest, environmental, and medical groups together spent less than $18 million. The environmental groups spent $6.6 million.

Those chemical companies also contributed almost more than $4 million in campaign contributions to several candidates’ campaigns in the 2014 election as the sponsors were shepherding the bill through Congress, MapLight found. TheACC also donated $150,000 to a super PAC supporting Vitter’s gubernatorial bid in Louisiana.

The ACC also spent $4 million plus on TV and radio advertising in support of the reelection of Udall and the industry’s other allies in Congress, the Timesreported. The ads portrayed Udall as a man who brings “both sides together to get results.” According to the Times, Udall “emphatically rejects” that he was doing the industry’s bidding: “We can’t do something that is pie in the sky; we have to deal with reality,” he said. 

The Center for Public Integrity is a U.S.-based non-profit investigative journalism group that was founded by Charles Lewis.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists "was launched in 1997 as a project of the Center for Public Integrity to extend globally the Center's style of watchdog journalism in the public interest by marshaling the talents of the world's leading investigative reporters to focus on issues that do not stop at water's edge." ^[1]^

History

When the CPI was established in May 1990, advertising and government grants were ruled out. Aside from foundations, the CPI gained $US500,000 in its first five years from a smattering of corporations -Intel, W. R. Grace & Co, DuPont and Milliken & Co, and a public service employees union.

Corporate and union funding inevitably attracted criticism about potential conflicts of interest that echoed charges the CPI levelled at others. The CPI now excludes funding from corporations or unions and is laregly funded by philanthropic foundations.

Charles Lewis, a former producer at CBS and ABC television networks, founded CPI and served as its executive director until 2004.

Major Institutional Funders

• Annenberg Foundation
• Arca Foundation
• Morton K. and Jane Blaustein Foundation
• Carnegie Corporation of New York
• Nathan Cummings Foundation
• Educational Foundation of America
• Everett Philanthropic Fund at the New York Community Trust
• Ford Foundation
• Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund
• Haas Charitable Trusts
• William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
• JEHT Foundation
• John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
• John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• John & Florence Newman Foundation
• Park Foundation, Inc.
• Popplestone Foundation
• Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy
• The Joan Shorenstein Center at Harvard University
• Wallace Global Fund

Source

Directors

• Bill Buzenberg
• Hodding Carter III
• Bruce A. Finzen
• Bill Kovach
• Susan Loewenberg
• Bevis Longstreth (Ex Officio)
• Paula Madison
• John E. Newman, Jr.
• Geneva Overholser
• Charles Piller
• Allen Pusey
• Ben Sherwood
• Sree Sreenivasan
• Marianne Szegedy-Maszak

Source

Advisory Board

• James Macgregor Burns
• Joel Chaseman
• Alan J. Dworsky
• Edith Everett
• Gustavo Godoy
• Josie Goytisolo
• Herbert Hafif
• Rev. Theodore Hesburgh
• Kathleen Hall Jamieson
• Sonia R. Jarvis
• Charles Ogletree
• Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
• Harold M. Williams
• William Julius Wilson

Source

Contact details

910 17th Street, NW, Suite 700

Washington, DC 20006

Phone: (202) 466-1300

Web: http://www.publicintegrity.org

Websites:

• • Lobby Watch
  • Windfalls of War
  • 11-part series: Making a Killing: The Business of War
  • Outside Interests
  • Outsourcing the Pentagon
  • Silent Partners

• International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
• The Public-I
• RSS Feed

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch articles

• International Consortium for Investigative Journalism
• Bill Allison, former staff
• Building an Investigative News Network Conference

References

1. ↑ About, Center for Public Integrity, accessed June 11, 2008.

External links

• Bob Burton, "Journalism's new standard bearers", Media, The Australian, July 19, 2001.

Categories:

• Journalism
• United States
• International
• Non-Government Organizations

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is a Polk-award-winning US-based nonprofit investigative journalism organization whose stated mission is "to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty by powerful public and private institutions in order to cause them to operate with honesty, integrity, accountability and to put the public interest first."^[1] With over 50 staff members, CPI is one of the largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative centers in America.^[2]

While CPI describes itself as an organization that is "nonpartisan and does no advocacy work,"^[3] the organization has been criticized for coordinating with advocacy groups.^[4] CPI has been characterized as a "progressive"^[5] and "liberal group."^[6][7]

CPI releases its reports via its web site to media outlets throughout the U.S. and around the globe. In 2004, CPI's The Buying of the President book was on the New York Times bestseller list for three months.^[8]

History

1989-2004

CPI was founded in March 1989 by Charles Lewis, a former producer for ABC News and CBS News 60 Minutes.^[9][10] According to a magazine profile, Lewis was motivated to start CPI because he had become "disenchanted by what he considered the sorry state of American investigative reporting and the sorrier state of American government."^[11]

In May 1990, Lewis used the money he had raised and his house as collateral to open an 1,800-square-foot (170 m²) office in Washington D.C.^[10] In its first year, the CPI's budget was $200,000.^[8] In 1996, CPI launched its first website, although CPI did not begin to publish reports online until 1999.^[8]

In 1997, CPI launched the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, an international network that includes 160 investigative reporters in over 60 countries.^[12] As of February 2013, Gerard Ryle is the director of ICIJ.^[13] In 2001, Global Integrity, an international project, was launched to systematically track and report on openness, accountability and the rule of law in various countries. It has since been incorporated independently.^[14]

Lewis served as director until January 2005. As of his departure, CPI had published 14 books and more than 250 investigative reports. In 2005, CPI had a staff of 40 full-time Washington-based reporters who partnered with a network of writers and editors in more than 25 countries.^[8] Years later, Lewis said he decided to leave his position at CPI because "he didn't want it to become 'an institution that was Chuck's Excellent Adventure."^[15] Lewis' departure surprised and upset philanthropists Herb and Marion Sandler, who had partially funded the CPI's activities.^[16]

2005-2007

In December 2004, CPI's board of directors chose television journalist Roberta Baskin as Lewis's successor. Baskin came to CPI after directing consumer investigations for ABC News's 20/20 and serving as Washington correspondent for PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers.^[17] Lewis wrote that "most of the Center’s carefully assembled, very talented, senior staff had quit by the fall of 2005."^[8]

In September 2005, CPI announced that it had discovered a pattern of plagiarism in the past work of staff writer Robert Moore for CPI's 2002 book Capitol Offenders. CPI responded by hiring a copy editor to review all of Moore's work, issuing a revised version of Capitol Offenders, sending letters of apology to all reporters whose work was plagiarized, authoring a new corrections policy, and returning an award the book received from Investigative Reporters and Editors.^[18] Moore went on to work for a political consulting firm that specializes in opposition research.^[19][20] In March 2007, Moore told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the Center's official version "is not accurate in telling the full story of why I left the center," but did not elaborate.^[20]

Baskin led the organization until May 24, 2006.^[21]

2007-present

In 2007, Rawls was succeeded by William Buzenberg, a vice president at American Public Media / Minnesota Public Radio.^[22] Buzenberg was first interviewed for the position in 2004 during the hiring process that ultimately led to the selection of his predecessor, Roberta Baskin.^[15]

According to a report by Lewis, "the number of full-time staff was reduced by one-third" in early 2007.^[8] By December 2007, the number of full-time staff had dropped to 25, down from a high of 40.^[15] At the time, Buzenberg said "It's a great, great place, but I will not mislead you... [Lewis] quite frankly left the center in great shape financially, but when you have a visionary who leaves, how do you continue? 'With difficulty' is the answer.^[15]"

Baskin publicly disputed Buzenberg's claims in a letter to the American Journalism Review where she wrote, "contrary to the statement from current Executive Director Bill Buzenberg, the center was not left "in great shape financially" by my predecessor. Much of the money raised during the year prior to my tenure was used to offset budget overruns on several previous projects. I replaced our director of development and made fundraising my number one priority, much as Buzenberg has done. As a rookie fundraiser, I take pride in the fact that I was able to raise millions of dollars.^[18]

In 2008, Lewis reflected on the transition period following his resignation and said, "I regret what happened to my staff and the condition of the Center. It’s no secret it had a less than enviable few years. But that’s one of the reasons I thought it was important to leave. I had founded it and run it for 15 years, and at some point the founder does have to leave the building...I don’t regret it, I think it was important that I left, but I do feel badly about the hardship it brought to people I think the world of."^[23]

In 2010, The Huffington Post Investigative Fund merged into the CPI, and eight Huffington Posts journalists moved to CPI.^[2]

In 2011, CPI eliminated 10 staff positions in order to compensate for a $2 million budget shortfall. Buzenberg and other senior staffers also took salary cuts. CPI board chairman Bruce Finzen said the budget would be “reduced between $2 and $3 million, more like $2.5 million. The budget for next year will be in the 6 to 7 million range.” As of 2012, there are over 50 staffers at CPI, making it one of the largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative centers in the country.^[2]

In April 2011, with support from the Knight Foundation, CPI launched iwatchnews.org as its main investigative reporting website.^[24]

Organizational structure

Funding

CPI is supported by individual contributions and grants awarded by charitable foundations. A list of CPI's donors may be found on the organization's official website.^[25] CPI's annual reports are also available on the organization's website.^[10] CPI ceased accepting contributions from corporations and labor unions in 1996.^[10] In its first year, CPI's budget was reported to be $200,000.^[8] In 2010, CPI had $9,264,997 in revenue and $7,708,349 in expenses.^[26]

CPI reports receiving foundation support from a number of foundations, including the Sunlight Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Open Society Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.^[25] The Barbra Streisand Foundation reports that it has funded CPI.^[27]

Board of directors

CPI's board of directors includes Bruce A. Finzen (chair), Sheila Coronel (vice-chair), William Buzenberg, Christine Amanpour, Arianna Huffington, Craig Newmark, Gilbert Omenn, Frederic Seegal, Molly Bingham, Charles Eisendrath, Dan Emmett, Jennifer 8. Lee, Susan Loewenberg, Bevis Longsteth, Olivia Ma, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, Matt Thompson, and Charles Piller.^[28]

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is a project of the CPI focussed on cross-border issues such as "cross-border crime, corruption, and the accountability of power".^[29] In 2013 the consortium had 160 member journalists from 60 countries.^[29] The ICIJ brings together teams of international journalists for different investigations (over 80 for Offshore leaks). It organizes the bi-annual Daniel Pearl Awards for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. The ICIJ's Director since 2011 is Gerard Ryle; other staff members include Michael Hudson, while the Advisory Committee in 2013 includes Bill Kovach, Phillip Knightley, Gwen Lister, and Goenawan Mohamad.^[29]

Ideology

CPI has been characterized as a "liberal group" by a Los Angeles Times 1996 news story and a 1996 New York Times editorial.^[6][7] Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a progressive media watchdog, has described CPI as "progressive."^[5] The Center describes itself as "strictly nonpartisan" and does not "lobby or endorse any legislation, political candidates, or parties."^[30]

Reports

CPI's first report, America's Frontline Trade Officials, reported that nearly half of White House trade officials studied over a fifteen-year period became lobbyists for countries or overseas corporations after retirement. According to Lewis, it "prompted a Justice Department ruling, a General Accounting Office report, a Congressional hearing, was cited by four presidential candidates in 1992 and was partly responsible for an executive order in January 1993 by President Clinton, placing a lifetime ban on foreign lobbying by White House trade officials."^[8][11]

CPI Fat Cat Hotel 1996

In 1996, CPI released a report called Fat Cat Hotel: How Democratic High-Rollers Are Rewarded with Overnight Stays at the White House. This report, written by Margaret Ebrahim, won an award from the Society of Professional Journalists. The report was an examination of the connection between overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom during the Clinton presidency and financial contributions to the Democratic Party as well as the Clinton re-election campaign.^[31]

1997 Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law, and Endangers Your Health

Toxic Deception investigated the way in which toxic chemicals were regulated by the federal government.

CPI Windfalls of War 2003

In 2003, CPI published Windfalls of War, a report arguing that campaign contributions to George W. Bush affected the allocation of reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq.^[32] Slate ran a piece arguing that due to a statistically insignificant correlation coefficient between campaign donations and winning contracts, "CPI has no evidence to support its allegations."^[33]

CPI LobbyWatch 2005

CPI first reports on LobbyWatch were released in 2005.^[21] In their January 2005 publication entitled "Pushing Prescriptions" CPI revealed that major pharmaceutical companies was the number one lobbyist in the United States spending $675 million over seven years on lobbying. They continued with this series in 2005 revealing how pharmaceutical companies had contacts even within the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Trade Representatives.

CPI Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown? 2009

CPI's report, Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown?, ^[34]^ looking at the roots of the global financial crisis, was featured in numerous media outlets, leading Columbia Journalism Review to ask, “Why hasn’t a newspaper or magazine done this?” ^[35]^

CPI The Climate Change Lobby Explosion 2009

More than 100 newspapers, magazines, wire services and web sites cited CPI's report, The Climate Change Lobby Explosion, an analysis of Senate records showing that the number of climate lobbyists had grown by three hundred percent to four for every Senator.^[36]

Tobacco Underground 2010

Tobacco Underground, an ongoing project tracing the global trade in smuggled cigarettes,^[37] produced by CPI's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, was honored with the prestigious Renner Award for Crime Reporting from Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), and the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Online International Reporting.[citation ^needed]^ The Tobacco Underground Project was funded by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health. It is a cooperative project between the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) with journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. Journalists in Brazil, Belgium, Canada, China, Italy, Paraguay and the UK also participated.^[38] that won the Overseas Press Club Award and Investigative Reporters and Editors's Tom Renner Award for crime reporting.^[39][40]

Sexual Assault on Campus 2010

In 2010, CPI partnered with National Public Radio to publish Sexual Assault on Campus, a report which showcases the failures of colleges and government agencies to prevent sexual assaults and resolve sexual assault cases.^[41]

Secrecy for Sale 2013

In 2013, International Consortium for Investigative Journalists released the results of a 15 month long investigation based on 260 gigabytes of data regarding the ownership of secret offshore bank accounts. The data was obtained by Gerard Ryle as a result of his investigation into the Firepower scandal. The ICIJ partnered with the Guardian, BBC, Le Monde, the Washington Post, SonntagsZeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung and NDR to produce an investigative series on offshore banking.^[42][43] ICIJ and partnering agencies used the ownership information to report on government corruption across the globe, tax avoidance schemes used by wealthy people, the use of secret offshore accounts in Ponzi Schemes, the active role of major banks in facilitating secrecy for their clients, and the strategies and actors that make these activities possible.^[44]

Praise

Kevin Phillips of National Public Radio has said, "no other investigative organization shines so many probing flashlights into so many Washington dirty-laundry baskets."^[11]

In 2006, Slate media critic Jack Shafer described CPI as having "broken as many stories as almost any big-city daily in the last couple of decades".^[45]

Awards

CPI received the George Polk Award in 2003 for its investigation of US military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan ("Windfalls of War: U.S. Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan"). Its work led to widespread media coverage that increased congressional scrutiny of military spending.^[46][47]

In 2011, CPI won a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for their investigation of weak inspections endangering factory workers and surrounding communities.^[48]

In 2012, CPI reporter Michael Hudson won a "Best-in-Business" award for digital investigative reporting from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Hudson won the award for his report entitled The Great Mortgage Cover-Up.^[49]

CPI's work has also received awards from PEN USA, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, the National Press Foundation, the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and others.^[50]

Criticism

Sources of funding

Criticism of CPI frequently addresses the source of its financial support.^{[51][52][53][54][55}] Despite its claims to be a nonpartisan news organization that subscribes to the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics,^[56] CPI has been accused of bias towards left-wing political causes because it has accepted money from organizations and individuals that favor liberal policies and/or actively oppose right-wing political causes.

Funding from George Soros

CPI has been criticized for accepting large funds from George Soros, a politically active billionaire and critic of the Bush administration.^[53][54][55] The web site of one of Soros' organizations, the Open Society Institute, discloses four grants to the CPI, all made before George W. Bush's entry into the 2004 presidential contest. They are:

• A $72,400 one-year grant in 2000 supporting "an investigative journalism series on prosecutorial misconduct."^[57]

• A $75,000 one-year grant in 2001 supporting "an examination of wrongful convictions resulting from prosecutorial misconduct."^[58]
• A $100,000 one-year grant in 2002 "to investigate the political spending of the telecommunications industry on the federal, state and local levels."^[59][dead ^link]^
• A $1 million three-year grant in 2002 "to support the Global Access Project."^[60][dead ^link]^

Despite their previous connections, CPI documented Soros' political donations during the 2004 political elections as a part of its "Silent Partners" project, which won an Online Journalism Association award for its reporting on the "527" groups that bypassed campaign finance disclosure regulations to funnel millions of dollars to both candidates.^[50] It also produced a detailed profile of Soros family political activity during the 2012 election.

In 2009, CPI reported that it received $651,650 from the Open Society Institute.^[61]

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post wrote, "that CPI has engaged in a non-stop accusations against the Kochs and that CPI is also funded by Soros money (at least in part) raise suspicion as to whether this is advocacy journalism (reporting with an agenda) or truly independent journalism."^[4]

Funding from Bill Moyers and the Schumann Foundation

A 1999 report in the Seattle Times raised questions about the ethical behavior of PBS journalist Bill Moyers by documenting examples of his work that featured sources whose organizations have been funded by the Schumann Foundation, a philanthropic group he heads. Among the recipients of Schumann grants featured in Moyers' journalism has been CPI's founder Charles Lewis.^[62]

In 2004, Moyers and CPI were further criticized by Cliff Kinkaid of Accuracy in Media,^[54] who emphasized that Moyers has also served on the board of the Open Society Institute,^[63] a foundation started by a George Soros that has itself also funded projects at CPI.

Funding from supporters of legal restrictions on campaign finance

Writing in The Wall Street Journal in March 2005, commentator John Fund accused CPI of being a member of what he termed the "campaign finance lobby.^[64]" Citing a speech by Sean Treglia, former program manager at Pew Charitable Trusts, Fund argued that a "stealth campaign" by "eight liberal foundations" fomented a false sense of public demand for new restrictions on the financing of public campaigns.^[64] Fund singled out CPI as a front group pushing Pew's agenda, arguing that "reporters are used to attempts to hoodwink officials into thinking an issue is genuinely popular, and they frequently expose them. But when "good government" groups like the Center for Public Integrity engage in the same tactics, journalists usually ignore it."^[64]

CPI's Bill Allison responded to criticisms arising from Tregalia's speech by emphasizing that Pew's contributions to the CPI's work on campaign finance have always been forthrightly disclosed.^[65] In a published argument with blogger Ryan Sager, Allison also disputed the notion that the CPI's work amounted to advocacy. Allison stated, "the purpose of our grants is to do things like code hundreds of thousands of public records, put them in a database and post them on our Web site so anyone can use them. The amount of money we've gotten to push campaign finance reform is $0.^[66]

In another essay on CPI's website, Allison challenged CPI's critics, and Fund specifically, arguing that "[Fund] doesn't cite a single instance in which the Center has attempted to "hoodwink" government officials (or anyone else, for that matter) into thinking campaign finance is a genuinely popular issue, because he can't. We simply don't operate that way. We don't do public relations campaigns. We don't lobby Congress. We don't petition the Federal Election Commission. We don't pretend we have legions of individuals contributing money to support our work. Our paid membership amounts to around six thousand people; we'd certainly be happy to have more...as for Mr. Fund, back in the days when campaign finance issues were of concern to him, he sought us out to lend authority to his writings on John Huang and quoted us in an Oct. 29, 1996, column on the subject. Is it Mr. Fund's view that when he wrote about various DNC campaign finance violations, he was trying to hoodwink federal officials into thinking that people cared about the issue?^[67]

Looting the Seas controversy

In November 2010, CPI published a report on bluefin tuna overfishing entitled "Looting the Seas."^[68] Politico reported that "to obtain key information for the project,  CPI's own lawyer and an outside law firm both determined that CPI's staff likely broke the law in obtaining information for the report. In addition, one of the experts quoted in the associated documentary was paidreporters accessed a database maintained by an intergovernmental fisheries regulatory body with a password given by a source, likely breaking the law." $15,000 as a project consultant to CPI.^[69] The investigative methods used to produce the report became a point of contention within the organization when CPI employee John Solomon made a number of accusations against the team that had worked on the series. CPI board member and former New York Times Washington bureau chief Bill Kovach was asked by CPI president William Buzenberg to look into the matter. Kovach concluded that CPI's reporting was "sound, ethical and fully in the public interest."^[70] In addition, the board hired an outside law firm to answer the legal questions. Columbia Journalism Review reported: "As for the legality of using the password to access data, the lawyers concluded that, in theory, a prosecutor might argue it violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But whether it actually did was open to debate. And, in any case, it was highly unlikely that charges would ever be brought." In the wake of the controversy, David Kaplan and John Solomon resigned from CPI. CPI officials also withdrew their entry of the tuna story for a Pulitzer Prize.^[69] Andy Revkin of the New York Times wrote, "the relationship of the television production to a United Nations agency and an environmental group can prompt questions about objectivity, but the package, over all, appears robust."^[71] The Looting the Seas series won two journalism awards: the Renner Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors^[72] and the 2010 Whitman Bassow Award from the Overseas Press Club of America.^[73] According to CPI, in November 2011, representatives of roughly 50 countries that trade in bluefin tuna agreed to overhaul the system for tracking catches.^[74]

Coordination with advocacy groups

In 2011, Politico called into question CPI's collaboration with advocacy organizations. Politico reported that CPI had coordinated the release of a report on Koch Industries with Greenpeace. Politico also reported that Pew Charitable Trusts, a funder of the Looting the Seas report, hosted a screening of a CPI documentary and then organized a call to action with other NGOs for the protection of bluefin tuna. In 2008, CPI published a report on tobacco that was both funded by and promoted by an advocacy group called Tobacco Free Kids.^[4][75][76]

Published books

• Beyond the Hill: A Directory of Congress from 1984 to 1993. University Press of America. 1995. ISBN 0-8191-9820-X.

• The Buying of the President. Avon Books. 1996. ISBN 0-380-78420-3.

• Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law and Endangers Your Health. Carol Publishing Corporation. 1997. ISBN 1-55972-385-8.

• The Buying of the Congress: How Special Interests Have Stolen Your Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Avon Books. 1998. ISBN 0-380-97596-3.

• Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species. Public Affairs. 1999. ISBN 1-58648-374-9.

• The Buying of the President 2000. Harper Perennial. 2000. ISBN 0-380-79519-1.

• Citizen Muckraking: Stories and Tools for Defeating the Goliaths of Our Day. 2000. ISBN 1-56751-188-0.

• The Cheating of America: How Tax Avoidance and Evasion by the Super Rich Are Costing the Country Billions, and What You Can Do About It. William Morrow & Company. 2001. ISBN 0-380-97682-X.

• Capitol Offenders: How Private Interests Govern Our States. 2002. ISBN 1-882583-14-0.

• Harmful Error. 2003. ISBN 1-882583-18-3.

• The Water Barons: How a Few Powerful Companies are Privatizing Our Water. 2003.

• The Buying of the President 2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and His Challengers--and What They Expect in Return. Harper Paperbacks. 2004. ISBN 0-06-054853-3.

• The Corruption Notebooks. 2004. ISBN 1-882583-19-1.

• Networks of Influence: The Political Power of the Communications Industry. Center for Public Integrity. 2005. ISBN 1-882583-20-5.

• City Adrift: New Orleans Before & After Katrina. Louisiana State University Press. 2007. ISBN 0-8071-3284-5.

Further reading

• Keiger, Dale (November 2000). "An "i" Toward Tough Journalism". John Hopkins Magazine. Retrieved 2012-06-09.
• Buzenberg, Bill (January 1, 2008). *Q&A*. Interview with Brian Lamb. Q & A.
• Glaser, Mark (25 February 2004). "Center for Public Integrity Leading the Way for Serious Online Journalism". Online Journalism Review.
• Lewis, Charles (May 3, 2004). "Are We Better Off: This is Reform?". Mother Jones.
• Lewis, Charles. *Digging Where Journalists Don't Dig* (Speech).
• Lewis, Charles (August 9, 2005). *Expanding The Definition of News Media Trust, A Jay Rosen-Led Conversation* (Speech). San Antonio, Texas.
• Lewis, Charles (September/October 2007). "The Nonprofit Road". Columbia Journalism Review.
• Lewis, Charles (February 1, 2006). *Stories from a Watchdog Journalist*. Interview with Ken Adelman. Washingtonian.
• Lewis, Charles (March 4, 2005). *The Digging Life*. Interview with Bob Garfield. On The Media. WNYC.
• Lewis, Charles (November 1, 1998). *The Buying of the Congress*. Interview with Brian Lamb. Booknotes. C-SPAN. Washington, DC.
• Lewis, Charles (November 20, 2006). *Charles Lewis on the Future of Investigative Journalism on the Web*. Interview with John McQuaid. NewAssignment.net.

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