http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/ 15 en Copyright 2008 Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:09:42 -0400 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.36 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Post investigative reporters Cheryl Thompson and Mary Pat Flaherty report today on county development deals worth millions of dollars that have gone to people with ties to Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson. Several of the people who won the contracts received the land [see map] at cut-rate prices, had little or no development experience or were given no-bid deals. Thompson and Flaherty discovered that among those who've gotten these deals are a business partner of Johnson's, a former business partner, a golfing buddy and a campaign contributor who held political fundraisers for him, according to government records and interviews. This latest investigation follows other issues involving favoritism previously reported by the Post during Johnson's tenure. In first four years in office, Johnson awarded more than 50 consulting and other contracts to 15 of his friends and political backers and created a dozen high-profile positions that he filled with http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/dc_region_sweetheart_deals_in.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/dc_region_sweetheart_deals_in.html Prince George's Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:09:42 -0400 Democratic lawmakers say the Bush administration knew more than it let on about a controversial oil deal between Dallas-based Hunt Oil and Kurdish regional officials in Iraq, a move that sparked condemnation for complicating the country's ability to enact a nationwide oil law. Hunt Oil, whose chief executive Ray L. Hunt is a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a major contributor to Bush's campaigns, signed a petroleum production-sharing contract in September (click here for The Dallas Morning News' coverage of the signing) with the Kurdistan Regional Government, the first since the semi-autonomous government unanimously adopted its own petroleum legislation in August. Since then, Kurdish officials have signed oil exploration contracts and hope that foreign firms will ultimately invest $10 billion in the oil sector and extract one million barrels a day from the region over the next five years. Some Iraqis have accused the Kurdish regional http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/dems_administration_knew_more.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/dems_administration_knew_more.html Contracting Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:58:43 -0400 "Washington Watchdogs," a periodic feature of the Post's Investigations blog, looks at the findings of the federal government's official investigators. A U.S.-sponsored program in Paraguay designed to help the landlocked South American country fight corruption has been sidetracked by allegations of influence peddling and favoritism, a government audit shows. Paraguayan officials had alleged that U.S. AID's contractor on the project, Alexandria, Va.-based international consulting firm Casals & Associates, had acted with favoritism during the procurement process and that other Paraguayan officials had stolen key documents. As part of the project, Paraguay would create a new national identification card and passport system, which is expected to cost several million dollars. Auditors from the U.S. AID's inspector general's office in El Salvador found that one member of the contractor selection committee had shown favoritism during the procurement process and that four Paraguyan officials were somehow involved in the stealing of a http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/usbacked_anticorruption_progra.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/usbacked_anticorruption_progra.html Washington Watchdogs Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:15:40 -0400 Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's discount on a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois has again focused attention on the senator's purchase of his home three years ago. In 2005, Obama, then a freshman Democratic senator who had first joined the U.S. Senate, bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured the loan, which was locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo," The Post's Joe Stephens reports. Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month. In March, the Obama campaign posted documents related to the home loan on its Web site. Those documents can be found here. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/obamas_mortgage_discount_raise.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/obamas_mortgage_discount_raise.html Politics Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:07:22 -0400 Moody's Corp., one of the big three credit-rating companies that have come under fire for their role in the housing collapse, today ousted another of its senior executives and said employees violated ethics guidelines in assigning top ratings to complex securities that subsequently lost as much as 90 percent of their value. Noel Kirnon, the head of the structured finance unit at Moody's that dealt with mortgage-backed securities, is the second high-profile departure this year. Kirnon's boss, Moody's President and Chief Operating Officer Brian Clarkson, said in May that he was leaving. Moody's and its competitors, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings, are under investigation by Congress, federal agencies and state attorneys general, who are trying to determine if conflicts of interest led them to rate mortgage-related securities higher than they should have been rated, fueling the credit boom. As explained in The Post's recent series on the housing bubble, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/more_problems_for_the_credit_r.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/more_problems_for_the_credit_r.html Business Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:52:43 -0400 The U.S. Attorney in Kansas City announced plans today to re-open a 20-year-old case into a deadly trailer explosion following an investigation by the Kansas City Star questioning the testimony of witnesses. The third part of an ongoing investigation into the explosions, which killed six Kansas City firefighters in 1988, focused on five witnesses to the explosion who said they were coerced into lying to a federal grand jury or at the trial of the five people indicted for the crime. The Star's Mike McGraw spent months re-examining the firefighters explosion case, conducting hundreds of interviews and reviewing 30,000 pages of court and investigative files and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/kc_star_report_prompts_investi.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/kc_star_report_prompts_investi.html Other Investigations Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:03:28 -0400 The asphyxiation death of a 19-year-old inmate charged with killing a Prince George's County police officer is only the latest in a string of problems for the county's jail. When it first opened two decades ago, the Prince George's County Correctional Center in Upper Marlboro was hailed as a "new generation" jail, with endless coffee and juice, exercise bicycles, weight machines and cable television for inmates -- as long as they obeyed the rules. Corrections officials from across the country dropped in to tour it. In 1994, President Bill Clinton chose it as his stage to announce a national drug policy. But the jail grew increasingly violent and became so crowded that, at its present staffing level, it cannot be fully locked down. The jail's population has risen by 47 percent in the past six years, more than double the authorized percentage. Those figures only further exacerbate the death http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/homicide_in_prince_georges_jai.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/homicide_in_prince_georges_jai.html Law Enforcement Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:11:05 -0400 The road from Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri's secret capture by CIA officials in Kuwait in November 2002 to his indictment today by U.S. military prosecutors for his alleged role in the attack on the USS Cole, a bombing that killed 17 U.S. service members, has been a long one. The charges filed against al-Nashiri are the first since the Cole bombing nearly eight years ago, The Post's Josh White reports. In the attack, a small barge laden with TNT and other explosives pulled up alongside the U.S. warship in the Gulf of Aden and detonated, blowing a massive hole in the side of the ship as it refueled at the Yemeni port. Al-Nashiri allegedly conceived the Oct. 12, 2000, plot with al-Qaeda, arranged to purchase the boat and explosives and supervised its execution, U.S. government officials say. Al-Nashiri, also known as Abu Asim al Makki, has been described as a 15-year http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/cole_bombing_indictment_a_long.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/cole_bombing_indictment_a_long.html Terrorism Cases Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:19:22 -0400 A New Yorker magazine report claims that the Bush administration is expanding covert operations inside Iran as part of a $400 million effort to spy on the country's nuclear program and support rebel groups opposed to Iran's ruling clerics. The article by Seymour M. Hersh is based on information from unidentified administration officials who had knowledge of a "Presidential Finding" on Iran, a highly classified document that lays the legal groundwork for all covert activities by U.S. intelligence officials. Spokesmen for Congressional intelligence committees declined to comment on the Hersh report, citing the strict rules of secrecy governing such documents. The CIA also declined to comment. "The CIA does not, as a rule, comment on allegations regarding covert operations," agency spokesman George Little told The Post's Joby Warrick. The report sheds new light on the abrupt resignation in March of Adm. William J. "Fox" Fallon, the former head of U.S. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/in_this_weeks_new_yorker.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/in_this_weeks_new_yorker.html Other Investigations Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:02:34 -0400 When Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.) flew to Kansas City, Mo., in May to brief crop insurance company officials on the just-passed farm bill, he scored a two-fer. * The non-profit National Crop Insurance Services, Inc., paid his $1,592 travel and hotel tab so he could speak to an "education and training" meeting of the group. * Some of the officials attending gave $7,400 to the Etheridge for Congress campaign committee at a breakfast fund-raiser that took place right before the meeting began. Etheridge chairs the House Agriculture Committee panel that oversees the federally-subsidized crop insurance program. As one of the negotiators drafting the final farm bill approved by the House on May 15, Etheridge played a key role in shaping the final legislation. After queries from The Post's Investigations Blog about the legality of the dual payments, Etheridge's office announced last week that his campaign was reimbursing National Crop Insurance http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/a_twofer_for_congressman_ether.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/a_twofer_for_congressman_ether.html Congress Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:41:39 -0400 The Mississippi lawyer who became one of the wealthiest civil lawsuit attorneys in the country by taking on tobacco, asbestos and insurance companies was sentenced today to five years in prison for conspiring to bribe a judge. Richard Scruggs is famed for taking on Big Tobacco with evidence from insiders that the cigarette companies knew for decades about the harmful effects of their products. His effort, outlined in the film "The Insider," won multibillion-dollar settlements for states seeking reimbursement for their Medicaid expenditures -- and garnered Scruggs fees estimated at nearly $1 billion over 25 years. Scruggs was indicted last fall along with his son and three associates. Scruggs pleaded guilty in March to participating in a scheme to bribe a state judge in a dispute over $26.5 million in legal fees from a mass settlement of Hurricane Katrina insurance cases. Last month, Peter Boyer of the New Yorker profiled http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/the_mississippi_lawyer_who_bec.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/the_mississippi_lawyer_who_bec.html Law Enforcement Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:46:59 -0400 A top Justice Department official being investigated as part of a probe about potentially illegal hiring practices and misused travel expenses was fired after she failed to appear to a congressional hearing last week, ABC News reports. Michele DeKonty, a former chief of staff to J. Robert Flores in the Justice Department, did not appear at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last Thursday after her attorney asserted that "as a matter of prudence . . . DeKonty elected to forgo cooperation with the committee at this time." House investigators have focused on decisions by Flores, leader of a Justice Department office that dispenses juvenile justice and crime prevention grants, to give grants to the World Golf Foundation's First Tee initiative, whose honorary chairman is former president George H.W. Bush, and a sexual abstinence program promoted by Best Buddies, led by Elaine Bennett, wife of Reagan administration Cabinet http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/justice_department_official_fi.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/justice_department_official_fi.html Other Investigations Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:08:32 -0400 The Federal Elections Commission has closed a decade-old campaign finance ethics case that snared a number of top Republican donors and lawmakers, shuttered an influential Washington consulting firm and resulted in six people paying roughly $75,000 in civil fines. The case centered on a $3 million political advertising blitz aimed at bolstering Republican candidates in the closing weeks of the 1996 election, which was financed by donations from leading conservative contributors to a company called Triad Management Services. Triad billed itself as a consulting firm devoted to keeping the Republican majority in Congress, according to promotional materials in 1995 and 1996. Carolyn S. Malenick, a noted Republican donor and former fundraiser for Oliver L. North's Freedom Alliance, operated the firm as its president and sole owner. Robert L. Cone, a former Pennsylvania executive of the Graco children's products company, was Triad's primary source of funding. Donors' money went from Triad http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/after_all_this_investigation_s.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/after_all_this_investigation_s.html Politics Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:05:24 -0400 In February, the Air Force based much of its decision to give defense contractor Northrop Grumman a multi-billion contract to build tankers because it was the low bidder. But it turns out that Northrop Grumman's "low bid" was only .03 percent off the price of its nearest competitor, Chicago-based aerospace company Boeing, according to a Government Accountability Office report released today. And Boeing's costs were exaggerated, auditors said. The GAO decided last week to side with Boeing over a $40 billion contract with rival Northrop Grumman to build new aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force. The watchdog agency released its 67-page report this afternoon, explaining that while the Air Force said it choose Northrop's proposal because it was the "best value" for the government, the decision "was undermined by a number of prejudicial errors that call into question the Air Force's decision that Northrop Grumman's proposal was technically acceptable," http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/gao.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/gao.html Contracting Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:48:38 -0400 Jack Abramoff, the disgraced former GOP lobbyist who pleaded guilty for his role in a federal influence-peddling scandal, has yet to be sentenced on those charges. He is serving prison time, though, in another case involving an ill-fated Florida casino boat business, as is his former partner, Adam Kidan. The Post exposed their scheme in a May 2005 article, part of the newspaper's two-year-long investigation of Abramoff. Today a federal judge in Florida agreed to cut Kidan's prison term in half for cooperating with the authorities. Prosecutors say Kidan braved mob threats to testify about a gangland-style slaying of the man who sold his fleet to Abramoff, Kidan and a third partner, Michael Scanlon. Kidan was a longtime associate of Abramoff's who once owned the Dial-A-Mattress franchise in Washington, D.C. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/abramoff_expartner_gets_senten.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/06/abramoff_expartner_gets_senten.html Abramoff Scandal Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:52:26 -0400