Great Lakes Danger Zones?
Here’s the report that top officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention thought was too hot for the public to handle — and the story behind it.
Windfalls of War II
The Center reveals that military contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan grew from $11 billion in 2004 to more than $25 billion in 2006 — and that billions have gone to unidentified foreign companies.
Pushing Prescriptions
The Center’s investigation of the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying might and gifts of free travel for members of Congress — and its resulting political influence and impact on the American public.
The Center's podcast series, narrated by Bill Buzenberg, features our reporters and sources discussing investigations.
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Termites? No problem. On DoMyOwnPestControl.com, $64.99 buys a 20-ounce bottle of Termidor SC. That’s enough for anyone with a credit card and a shipping address…
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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich isn’t running for president this year, but due to a gusher of support for his campaign to promote opening up…
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Rich people live lives that most everyone else can only imagine. They can buy the nicest cars, drink the finest wines, afford the best doctors,…
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LILLEHAMMER, NORWAY, Sept. 13, 2008 — A New York Times series about deadly Chinese counterfeit drugs sold around the world and a TV4 Sweden investigation…
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WASHINGTON, D.C., July 31, 2008 — According to a new Center investigation, Perils of the New Pesticides, pyrethrins and…
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The latest media coverage of Center projects.
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WASHINGTON, D.C., July 8, 2008 — The Center for Public Integrity’s Board of Directors has elected Marianne Szegedy-Maszak as its new board chair. Szegedy-Maszak, a…
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Archive InvestigationsRusk County, Texas — A gentle twilight pink stretches across the sky, touching the waters of Martin Creek Lake. The still air, smelling only of East Texas pines, brings the faint sounds of wildlife in the surrounding woods. Smog and traffic seem much further away than the 145-mile drive to Dallas.
Washington State is tops in making it easy to track the private interests of public officials, and Vermont, Michigan, and Idaho tie for last in the Center’s national ranking. Check where your state ranks.
Post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy and military aid and assistance had a huge impact in nations around the world — and at home. This award-winning project includes 20 articles from four continents.
The Superfund isn’t so super anymore. A year-long investigation examined all 1,624 Superfund sites and found daunting toxic threats across the country 27 years after the Environmental Protection Agency program was launched.
At least 900 little-known federal advisory committees wield enormous influence over government policy, some to good ends — but many have become secretive, ideological, or packed with industry representatives.
A year-long investigation of President Bush’s initiative to fight AIDS abroad finds that conservative ideology hinders its real benefits by insisting on abstinence-only programs over promoting condom use.
This project offers a comprehensive examination of business and legislative influences on media — and includes the Media Tracker, a searchable online database of who owns the media serving any U.S. community.
200 trips to Paris? 150 to Hawaii? 140 to Italy? The Center’s investigation of how private interests gain access to members of Congress by funding supposedly educational or investigative travel.
Government contracts awarded for cleanup and reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina are collected in a searchable database, and the best coverage of what happened on the Gulf Coast is gathered and categorized.
An investigation into the state of federal lobbying identifies the top 100 lobbying companies and organizations — led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — as well as the top 250 lobbying firms.
Who’s winning the big contracts? Between 1998 and 2004 no-bid contracts accounted for more than 40 percent of Pentagon contracting, totaling $368 billion — and many contractors were generous campaign donors.
The Center for Public Integrity is dedicated to producing original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable.
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Everyone is in favor of renewable energy — even members of Congress who have voted against it repeatedly. Such are the strange politics behind the federal tax credits that help keep alive wind, solar, and other forms of alternative energy.
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The environmental impact of pesticides containing pyrethroids is causing alarm in California where a small aquatic animal, which serves as a sort of canary in the coal mine, is dying off due to soil contaminated by lawn chemicals. And what’s true for California may be true throughout the nation, authorities say.
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Members of Congress were far less likely than the Bush administration to spread false statements about the need for war in Iraq, according to a new study. The study comes on the heels of the Center’s Iraq: The War Card project, which earlier this year documented the administration’s orchestrated deceptions on the path to war.
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Revelations that the nation’s unemployment rate reached its highest level in five years in August helped make the economy issue No. 1 on the campaign trail this week. But the situation is actually worse than the media or candidates would have you believe.
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An independent review panel found last week that the Center’s Great Lakes Danger Zones project was based on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that used insufficient data. But that’s hardly a surprise, according to the chief adviser for the original report.
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Plagued by memories of Florida’s Katherine Harris and Ohio’s Ken Blackwell, a little-known 527 group helped win secretary of state posts for Democrats in five swing states during the last election cycle. Now the group has its sights on four more.
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So there was something of a hullabaloo this weekend when rumors came down that GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin was once a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. The party with the motto “Alaska First – Alaska Always” has a reputation as a secessionist organization (though that overstates the case a bit — they merely want Alaskans to have a vote to determine if they will remain in the union). The McCain camp has since shot back that Palin has never been anything but a card-carrying Republican (though there are reports that her husband was an AIP member for most of the period between 1995 and 2002).
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Looking for a reprieve from the political echo chamber this election season? Your best bet may be to head to the local movie theater, which, unlike the bookstore or boob tube, is almost certain to be free of brass-knuckle attacks on McCain or Obama. Though Michael Moore showed four summers ago with Fahrenheit 9/11, that politically driven documentaries could fill the seats, movie theaters have since mellowed. That’s in part because political attack movies struggle, not necessarily to attract an audience, but to comply with the regs laid down by the Federal Election Commission.
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The Dems may be trying to tag John McCain as George W. Bush Jr., but McCain, with his pick of Sarah Palin for VP, is clearly trying to shore up his own image as a maverick who fights for reform. Palin, the governor of Alaska, has earned a reputation as a government reformer, having run for the Statehouse on a platform of cleaning up Juneau. One of her first acts was pushing ethics bills that advocated greater access to politicians’ financial disclosure reports and restricted gifts from lobbyists to public officials. Nevertheless, as with Joe Biden, we still must ask, does anyone own Sarah Palin?
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