ProPublica: Articles and Investigations

Ernie Lopez to Face Charges Again

2012-01-27T14:59:02-05:00

A Texas district attorney has decided to re-try an Amarillo man on charges that he sexually assaulted a six-month old girl, just days after the state’s appeals court threw out his 2003 conviction.

ProPublica, PBS “Frontline,” and NPR examined the case against Ernie Lopez last year, raising questions about the soundness of the medical evidence used against him. The appeals court ruled that Lopez had received ineffective counsel because his lawyer failed to challenge testimony by the medical examiner that child’s injuries were caused by abuse.

The court left it up to the local prosecutor to decide whether Lopez would go free or face a second trial.

“The case is not going to get dismissed,” Potter County District Attorney Randall Sims told ProPublica and PBS “Frontline.” Sims represents the state’s 47th Judicial District.

In a press conference yesterday, Sims made it clear that he will go forward with a second trial. “He’s coming back on the exact same charge,” said the prosecutor, according to the Amarillo Globe-News. “The case is at the exact same place any case would be right after it’s been indicted by the grand jury.”

In the years since the trial, Lopez’s appellate attorneys have marshaled an array of experts who’ve challenged the notion that he sexual assaulted and violently shook Vas, pointing to medical evidence suggesting she may have been killed by a blood disorder brought on by an infection. The condition can mimic the symptoms of child abuse.

The case highlights a growing international debate about the soundness of the science used to prosecute cases of fatal child abuse and sexual assault. At least 23 people in the U.S. and Canada have been wrongly accused of killing children, and in California, Gov. Jerry Brown is currently considering granting clemency to a woman convicted of shaking her 7-week-old grandson.

By the Numbers: Life and Death at Foxconn

2012-01-27T12:09:05-05:00

by Lois Beckett

An investigative series by the New York Times and a performance piece by Mike Daisey featured on This American Life have put the spotlight on Foxconn, the Taiwanese company whose massive Chinese factories manufacture some of the world's most popular consumer electronics.

As well as working with companies like Dell, Motorola, Nokia and Hewlett-Packard, Foxconn assembles popular Apple products like the iPhone and iPad.

Here's a quick look at what we know about Foxconn. (The company disputes workers' accounts of abusive conditions. In a 2010 company report, Foxconn said it promotes "employee respect, an atmosphere of trust, and personal dignity.")

Working for Foxconn

1.2 million: number of workers employed by Foxconn in China, according to the New York Times.

40: Estimated percent of the world's consumer electronics manufactured by Foxconn.

7: seconds it takes Foxconn's workers to complete a single step of their work, according to a survey cited by the New York Times.

12: Hours in a typical work shift, according to interviews with Foxconn employees.

83.2: Average hours of overtime worked each month, according to a 2010 survey of Foxconn employee.

13: age of a Foxconn employee Mike Daisey interviewed outside the gates of a Foxconn plant in Shenzhen.

91: cases of underage labor found by Apple's audits of its suppliers in 2010, the year Daisey visited China.

3,000: number of workers Foxconn could hire overnight, according to Apple's former worldwide supply demand manager.

10-20: percent estimated monthly turnover in Foxconn's workforce.

$7,500: amount founder Terry Gou used to start the anchor company of Foxconn Technology Group in 1974, according to the company website.

$5.7 billion: Terry Gou's estimated net worth as of March 2011.

Living Conditions

230,000: number of workers at "Foxconn City" in Shenzhen, according to the New York Times.

13: tons of rice prepared each day at the central kitchen at Foxconn City.

$0.65: meal allowance for dinner at the Foxconn City canteen in 2010.

2: number of free swimming pools there, according to The Telegraph, which noted that the pools "are said to be quite dirty."

70,000: number of workers at Foxconn's Chengdu plant who live in company dorms, according to the New York Times.

20: number of employees sometimes packed into a three-room apartment.

200: Reported number of police officers who responded to a Foxconn dormitory riot.

Deaths

17: Number of reported suicides of Foxconn workers in China between 2007 and February 2011, according to Wired. Eleven workers died after jumping off buildings in the Foxconn Campus in Shenzhen, which were then draped with preventive netting. (Wired noted that the rate actually seems to be below China's national averages.)

70: number of psychiatrists employed by Foxconn to prevent suicides, according to a 2010 announcement by CEO Terry Gou.

100: Estimated number of employees at a Foxconn factory in Wuhan who stood on the roof of a factory building this month to protest working conditions and wages. Several threatened to commit suicide, according to the New York Times.

$450: monthly salary a worker involved in that protest said employees had been promised for moving from the Foxconn campus in Shenzhen to one in Wuhan.

34: continuous hours a Foxconn employee worked in 2010 before he collapsed and died, according to media reports.

4: workers killed last year by an explosion at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China that assembles iPads.

$22: approximate daily salary earned by Lai Xiaodong, a 22-year-old college graduate, working at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China, according to the New York Times.

$150,000: approximate amount the company wired Lai's family after he was killed in the aluminum dust explosion.

Podcast: SOPA Opera

2012-01-27T11:51:24-05:00

by Minhee Cho

When popular websites like Wikipedia and Reddit decided to blackout their pages last week in protest of SOPA, otherwise known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, the controversial bill got thrown to the forefront of public discussion.

The problem was, as ProPublica's Dan Nguyen soon realized, it was extremely difficult to find information on where members of Congress stood on the bill.

"When I set out to look up information I was disappointed at how hard it was to really find much," Nguyen said. "Part of it is just the way information in general is organized for our government. It's not like there's some central site where politician A and B can just say, 'Here's my position on this,' and it's easy to find."

Lucky for us, Nguyen was inspired to independently research this information and mapped out his results on a news application he called SOPA Opera. In this week's podcast, he explains what SOPA and its Senate equivalent, Protect IP Act (PIPA), entail; how he came to create the news app; and his reaction to SOPA Opera going viral.

Read the full transcript below and subscribe to all of ProPublica's podcasts on iTunes.

TRANSCRIPT

Mike Webb: Hi, I'm Mike Webb and welcome to the ProPublica Podcast. Last week, a passionate battle took place over a proposed bill in the House known as SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and a similar bill in the Senate called PIPA, the Protect IP Act. On one side were Hollywood entertainment companies who believe SOPA will curb the illegal distribution of movies and music. On the other side were online companies like Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia who were concerned that the bills would be too difficult to implement and tantamount to censorship. So what was true and what wasn't? That's what ProPublica news application developer Dan Nguyen wanted to know.

To find out, he created an online resource on his personal website with details about the bill and info on who was for SOPA and who was against it. When the staff at ProPublica saw it, we asked him to move it over to our site and it turned out to be one of the most viewed pages in ProPublica history.

Joining us in the storage closet studio to talk about the project is Mr. Dan Nguyen. Welcome to the podcast.

Dan Nguyen: Hey, Mike. How are you doing?

Mike: All right. Dan, what would SOPA actually do if it were enacted?

Dan: SOPA is trying to go after what it calls "foreign rogue websites," and these are websites that are not on American soil that are distributing the latest Hollywood movies or music and the U.S. system can't go after them as it stands now. The law would provide this legal framework in which companies like Google would be asked to de link these foreign sites that are sharing illegally pirated material. From the American perspective, it's still illegal for you to copy your movies and send them around, but, of course, the police here can come after you. They can't really do that for an overseas site, so this is one way to stop the spread of illegally pirated material from coming outside of America into America.

Mike: The online companies were against it because they didn't want to be held responsible?

Dan: Yes. They argue that this would create an undue burden on their operations. If they are already hosting pirated content because a user uploaded it to them, they have the responsibility once they're notified to remove it and they saw SOPA as increasing that burden to a degree that they couldn't follow. That was their interest in this whole thing. The fight over SOPA and its Senate version, Protect IP, has been going on for a while, actually. I briefly read about the bills, and in most of the major online forums it's been highly talked about for months. To be honest, I didn't really pay that much attention to it but over the holiday break I think the news was that this was an imminent thing as far as it progressing through Congress.

I just wanted to know more about the bill. I also thought, judging by the volume of controversy that it had generated, at least online, that this was like the healthcare bill in the way that every politician would have said something by now on it. When I set out to look up information I was disappointed at how hard it was to really find much.

Part of it is just the way information in general is organized for our government. It's not like there's some central site where politician A and B can just say, "Here's my position on this," and it's easy to find. The easiest thing to do is go on their Facebook page. Then during the Congressional recess not many politicians had taken a stand besides the many cosponsors, of course, and a couple of dozen politicians, mostly centered in the Bay Area, who obviously have constituents who are highly against it.

Otherwise, it was really, for me, just like looking up as many Congress members as I could. It really wasn't something that was high on anyone's list beyond the people who are deeply involved in authoring and pushing the bill forward.

Mike: Who had a stake. Everything was under the radar. You wanted to figure out what was what.

Dan: Like programming. Sorry, I should say that sometimes it's hard for me to get into programming, but when I have something like a goal in mind that I can make something useful to other people while practicing programming, that's always a good incentive. Yeah, I was annoyed at how hard it was to find this information. For me, the app wasn't really that complicated. It's pretty straightforward display of who was saying what about SOPA.

Mike: Was the hardest part trying to figure out where everybody stood on the bill?

Dan: Yeah. Trying to find that information was difficult because, again, not many people had said much about it. It wasn't even that you could just visit everyone's official page. Like everyone has a different kind of way they run their official Congressional page and some of them barely update them, some of them don't have a press releases section.

Mike: Did you go to each individual page to put it all together?

Dan: Yeah. There are a good number of legislative resources that non profits like govtrack.us and opencongress.org and the New York Times, they've got pretty good repositories of the official information, so finding the sponsors was easy, obviously. Then it was just basically going to Google, Google News, typing up some congress member's name and typing in SOPA and seeing if anything came up. Usually the answer was no. Yeah, I guess I wanted to show everyone in Congress and when I first put it up it had less than 100 people on it and that was just through a ton of research. Finding stuff like the hearings and all that is not at all straightforward.

Mike: Yeah. You did it all on your own, right?

Dan: Yeah. There's one hearing on SOPA and it's in this archaic Windows web format that I had to pull out an old laptop to try to get it to view. There was no printed transcript from what I could see and then the Senate site's completely different structured. When I made the site the initial response that I got from people was, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe Senator Franken is for this bill." Actually, that was the most common name that I saw. I think people associate his neutrality stance as being one that would also be against SOPA or Protect IP and, in fact, he's one of the most fervent defenders of the law.

Mike: Because he probably has a stake as an actor.

Dan: Yeah, you can say that he was in the industry and so has a different take on it. Even after the entire blackout thing many senators, many cosponsors, backed off. I think last Friday he wrote a pretty long blog post telling people tough luck. He feels very passionate about this. So anyway, when I was making the app the initial response from people was like, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe it has this much support," or, "I can't believe that this many Republicans are against it." Because, again, I think people automatically assume that one party or the other is trying to regulate things. And I think probably one of the most useful things my app did I mean, there are a lot of great resources out there. But I think one thing mine did well was to show right away, "Oh, there's a lot of red and blue here on both sides. This is a bipartisan issue."

And that's what the backers would say, too, is, hey, that's one thing you can say about his bill, it's united a lot of people for it. And so their reasoning is, "Oh, that must be a great bill."

Mike: I think the visual aspects is what made it so appealing. You can see who's for and against it right away. So you were getting decent traffic at your site, but then you moved it over to ProPublica. Why was that?

Dan: Yeah. I mean, that was always kind of the goal. I told my boss, Scott, that I just wanted to kind of demo it on my own. Since I was doing it on my own time, I don't have the time to make sure all my I's were dotted and all that. It was good to put it out there and see what kind of criticism I would get. For the most part it was all very positive in terms of people who were trying to find out information. I always thought that ProPublica was a natural place for it, because we try to make transparent these kind of issues. You could say we could do this for any law, but SOPA was kind of the talk of the town at that point.

And so, yeah, I knew it would get bigger exposure at ProPublica. It was getting pretty good traffic from Reddit and all that. But, yeah, I had also seen that very few mainstream news organizations had really spent much time covering this, so I thought we could be one of the first out the gate. So it worked out well for everyone.

Mike: It seemed like the hardest part was sort of keeping it up to date, because so many politicians were changing positions on the law.

Dan: From that point on, when I had gotten to work I was typing out emails as fast as I could to people who were sending me in updates. I literally would be typing an email and two more would come in. So people really engaged. Obviously having Craigslist and Wikipedia and all those other sites draw attention to it. Having Craigslist link to us, and Reddit, and various other sites. Yeah, people were very interested in getting as many people and telling us about what their legislators were saying. And telling us, "Oh, I called my legislator and this is what they said."

So, yeah, it was very difficult to keep up with that, but also very gratifying to see people take such an active stance on civic issues.

Mike: Do you think people really understood what was in the bill? Or some of the fears kind of coming from the online companies?

Dan: I think as with any big piece of legislation, things are simplified. And so the way to sell people on opposing this bill is to say, "Oh, it amounts to censorship." And of course the people who back it wouldn't I mean, there's actually language in there explicitly saying, "Hey, this isn't about censoring." But what the companies are arguing is it's tantamount to it, because if you put these kinds of penalties and responsibilities on the online company, they're going to move forward with their own corporate policies that dampen speech on their networks.

And so is that going too far that that's censorship? Obviously it depends on what side of the coin you are. Of course the people who back the law talk about it in very black and white terms of how this all about stopping piracy and protecting content creators. And of course it's not that simple as well.

Yeah, it's hard to say. And much of the law was still under discussion. It was supposed to go the before the holiday recess, they were still in the middle of amending it and they didn't get through it. And they were going to jump right back into it until this blackout happened. There was a lot of moving parts.

But, yeah, I don't think it was a very easy to understand law by anyone, either by the supporters or the opponents.

Mike: Why don't you tell us a little bit about the before and after visual you created? How you put that together.

Dan: Sure. For me, that took about a minute. And it was an obvious thing to do, because I know one constant thing I heard since making this was like, again, "Oh, my gosh, look at how many people are for this versus the people who are against it." It was like 80/30 before the blackout, and then afterwards it was 60 some to 130 or so, something like that. And that was even me being way, way behind on updates. This was like way past midnight too, so I didn't get them all in. But I know, for me, it was just cool to see, again, before the blackout it was hard to find anything on record from politicians about this, and then during the blackout apparently a lot decided to jump on the bandwagon. So I knew it would be a strong visual to see what one 24 hour day of activism can bring out with hundreds of thousands of calls pouring in to our legislator's offices.

Mike: What's the status of the bill now?

Dan: It's pretty much dead in the water.

Mike: Are they going to try to rewrite it?

Dan: Protect IP was a different law. A year ago, again, proposed by Senator Leahy and blocked by Senator Widen, who's also the principle opponent in the Senate against Protect IP. So, yeah, the backers who are behind it are very much still behind it. Senator Franken, again. So they probably will rewrite the bill. From their own admissions it sounded like they had tried to tackle too much at once. They were obviously clearly unprepared for the backlash by the online community. But, yeah, there was nothing, as far as the hundreds of statements that I looked at, there was nothing that was contrite in that. Like, "Oh, we should never have even thought about this." It was more like, "Oh, we obviously need to think about... We, the legislators still care very much about stopping online piracy, so we're going to go about it in a different way. Try to come up with a better law that meets everyone's needs."

So, yeah, this is clearly something that's going to be fought repeatedly over and over again in the future.

Mike: All right. Thanks for joining us, Dan.

Dan: Mm hmm.

Mike: For more information about SOPA and PIPA and to see Dan's work, visit Projects.ProPublica.org/SOPA. And now for our Officials Say the Darndest Things Tumblr Quote of the Week. "After the Wikipedia blackout, somewhere a student today is doing original research and getting his or her facts straight. Perish the thought." Who said it? Jonathan Lamy, senior vice president of the Recording Industry Association of America, regarding Wikipedia's blackout in protest of SOPA and PIPA.

OK, that's it for this week's show. Thanks as always to Minhee Cho for producing this podcast, and a long overdue offer of appreciation to our editor, Colin Tipton, who makes this program more listenable for you. Thanks you checking it out. For ProPublica, I'm Mike Webb. We'll catch you next time.

Transcription by CastingWords

Drive-by Scanning: Officials Expand Use and Dose of Radiation for Security Screening

2012-01-27T09:30:11-05:00

by Michael Grabell

We're seeking anyone who has had personal experience with certain X-ray devices. Please see the bottom of the story for information on how you can contribute.

U.S. law enforcement agencies are exposing people to radiation in more settings and in increasing doses to screen for explosives, weapons and drugs. In addition to the controversial airport body scanners, which are now deployed for routine screening, various X-ray devices have proliferated at the border, in prisons and on the streets of New York.

Not only have the machines become more widespread, but some of them expose people to higher doses of radiation. And agencies have pushed the boundaries of acceptable use by X-raying people covertly, according to government documents and interviews.

While airport scanners can show objects on the surface of the body, prisons have begun to use X-rays that can see through the body to detect contraband hidden in cavities. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is in the process of deploying dozens of drive-through X-ray portals to scan cars and buses at the border with their passengers still inside.

X-ray scanners have been tested at ferry crossings, for visitor entries at the Pentagon and for long-range detection of suicide bombers at special events. And drawing the ire of privacy groups, Customs and the New York Police Department have deployed unmarked X-ray vans that can drive to a location and look inside vehicles for drugs and explosives.

Most federal health regulations for medical X-rays do not apply to security equipment, leaving the decision of when and how to use the scanners almost entirely in the hands of security officials.

Although the 9/11 attacks provided the impetus and prompted the spending to develop such equipment, most of the machines have been deployed only in the last few years. New attacks and ever-tighter security measures have made law enforcement officials more willing to expose the public to X-ray devices that were once taboo.

When the body scanners were introduced in prisons in the late 1990s, the Food and Drug Administration convened an advisory panel. Several of the outside scientists warned that once the longstanding practice of X-raying humans only for health reasons was ended, it was just a matter of time before the machines would become acceptable in airports, courthouses and schools.

"This is exactly what I was afraid was going to happen back when we had the FDA meetings," said Kathleen Kaufman, who as director of Los Angeles County's radiation management program served on the advisory panel.

The FDA has little authority to regulate the use of electronic products emitting radiation. Because security scanners are not classified as medical devices, the agency doesn't approve them for safety before sale. And it can go after only the manufacturers for excessive radiation -- not the users of the machines for deploying them too frequently or in other questionable ways.

Handicapping its power even more, the FDA ultimately went against the advisory panel's recommendation to adopt a federal safety standard for the new security devices. Instead, it followed congressional direction to use industry standards wherever possible and let the scanners fall under voluntary guidelines set by a nonprofit group made up largely of manufacturers and agencies that wanted to use the X-ray machines.

It is difficult to estimate the long-term health risks of low levels of radiation. At higher levels, ionizing radiation -- the energy used in the scanners -- has been shown to damage DNA and mutate genes, potentially leading to cancer. A comprehensive study by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the more radiation a person gets, however little at a time, the greater their lifetime risk of dying from cancer.

The manufacturers counter that their machines emit extremely low levels of radiation, hundreds of times less than a chest X-ray. Humans are constantly exposed to background radiation from radon in the ground and cosmic rays in the atmosphere. In comparison, the radiation from security devices is trivial, they say.

Moreover, the X-ray scanners have produced a number of success stories, intercepting immigrant smugglers, unearthing tons of cocaine and other drugs, preventing contraband in jails and adding a layer of protection to the nation's transportation system, according to the agencies that use them.

But the rapid expansion raises serious questions about whether the United States is sacrificing safety in the name of security.

"Because of the wide proliferation of these things, we don't know who's using them and how frequently," said Peter Rez, an Arizona State University physicist who has criticized the use of the machines. "It's not that the radiation from these machines is very high. It's 'Does the benefit outweigh the risk?'"

X-rays on Wheels

One of the first technologies after 9/11 that would expose humans to X-rays was the Z Backscatter Van -- essentially a x-ray scanner on a truck -- made by American Science & Engineering.

The device, which was deployed by the military to detect car bombs in war zones, uses X-rays that are designed to find organic materials such as drugs and explosives. The rays scatter back to a detector rather passing through an object as in a medical X-ray. The van can scan while driving alongside a line of vehicles or while parked as they pass by.

According to a company presentation obtained by a civil liberties group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a backscatter van delivers a radiation dose about twice that of an airport body scanner.

Soldiers serving in Iraq nicknamed the vans "white devils." Customs officers call them "ice cream trucks."

Customs and Border Protection has purchased 75 backscatter vans for use at border crossings, ports, Border Patrol checkpoints and even the Super Bowl, according to agency records. Customs spokeswoman Jenny Burke said passengers must exit the vehicle before the scan.

While the Transportation Security Administration hasn't bought them, it tested them at a Delaware ferry crossing in 2004 and at a Long Island ferry crossing in 2009, spokesman Greg Soule said. In the first test, passengers weren't in the vehicles. But in the second test, passengers remained in the vehicles but could opt out, he said. Another TSA test in 2009 was conducted in northern New Jersey on empty commuter train cars in a rail yard.

The X-ray vans have also shown up on American streets. In 2010, Homeland Security officials conducted an exercise scanning tractor-trailers on Interstate 20. And the New York Police Department uses the vans.

The NYPD has declined to release details about the use of the machines.

ABC News reporters Richard Esposito and Ted Gerstein provide one of the few accounts of the backscatter van in a book they wrote chronicling a year inside NYPD's bomb squad. Describing the security ahead of President Bush's motorcade to the 2004 Republican convention, they wrote that every vehicle entering the street in front of the hotel was ordered to drive between two unmarked white vans, which X-rayed each vehicle for bombs.

Such covert use of radiation, if done without informed consent, would violate the industry standard.

"The institution operating the system shall inform each person being screened that the system emits radiation," the standard states. It also requires that people be told the radiation dose and that there be a visible indicator when X-rays are emitted.

Joe Reiss, AS&E's vice president of marketing, said although the vans are designed for covert use, the vans comply with the standard because they have two lights that flash when a scan is in progress.

Kevin Barry, an NYPD bomb squad detective who retired in 2002, said that when he was there, the police ensured that the area was clear of people any time they used X-ray equipment and that officers wore film badges to monitor radiation exposure.

"They're very cognizant of the fact that if there's a radiation issue that they have to monitor the health issue," he said.

But even if a violation were discovered, there is little the FDA can do because the standard is voluntary and not a federal regulation.

The FDA, which said it doesn't regulate the "use" of security scanners emitting radiation, referred questions to New York State, which also said it does not regulate the scanners and referred questions to the New York City Department of Health, which also said it does not regulate the devices.

Drive-through Scanners

Customs and Border Protection is also installing 35 drive-through X-ray portals purchased with economic stimulus money, according to a company report posted on the government's stimulus website, Recovery.gov.

A test system was installed at the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego in 2008 and portals will soon be deployed in El Paso and Laredo, Texas, and elsewhere on the Southwest border, according to contract documents obtained by the privacy group EPIC.

The portals, made by AS&E, can scan cars and buses from the top and sides as their drivers pass through at 3 mph.

The scanners' X-rays have to penetrate metal and glass. But according to Customs and the company, the radiation dose is equivalent to an airport body scan.

The dose is low because Customs officers do not need as high a resolution to see bulk explosives or drugs as a TSA screener would need to see a tiny detonator or a razor blade, said Rez, the Arizona State physicist. He estimated the dose by analyzing the images with a computer program.

The company says the portal is safe for everyday use. But Burke, the Customs spokeswoman, said it won't be used on every driver crossing the border -- only those who raise suspicion and require additional inspection. Passengers will be allowed to opt out and have a Customs officer drive it through the portal for them.

Ginger McCall, director of EPIC's Open Government program, is skeptical.

"You know what else started out as a secondary screening mechanism?" she asked. "Airport backscatter machines. The TSA said 'don't worry' to the American public. 'These are only going to be used as secondary screening devices.' And look how that turned out."

"Intelligent Pedestrian Surveillance"

There are now about 250 X-ray body scanners in airports nationwide. But government agencies are exploring additional uses for the technology.

In 2010, the military brought two TSA body scanners to the Pentagon visitors' entrance, where they were tested by Defense Department staff. But plans were put on hold pending TSA testing of new privacy software that wouldn't show an image of a person's body.

"There's now technology which makes it look like a cartoon figure," said Chris Layman, spokesman for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. "We wanted to make sure that if we did this, all the privacy concerns are taken care of."

The Department of Homeland Security has funded research for walk-through X-ray body scanners that could be used at special events, and for long-range X-ray scanners to detect suicide bombers in crowds, according to documents obtained by EPIC.

Using similar backscatter technology, the walk-through scanner would speed up checks that now require people to stand with their hands over their heads while scanned. In tests of the long-distance scanner, according to contract documents, officials wanted to see whether it could identify people with metal and dense plastic from up to 30 feet away.

"Customers need a greater capability than what is currently available for detecting IEDs on people," Homeland Security officials wrote in a statement of work for a technology dubbed the "Intelligent Pedestrian Surveillance Platform." "This is especially relevant at high-volume public areas and entrances to important infrastructure."

The radiation dose for such a scanner was listed in 2006 as 10 times higher than that of an airport scanner.

Intelligence released last summer that terrorist groups are considering implanting bombs in their bodies has raised concerns that the TSA would one day deploy X-ray scanners that can see into the body. In the past, the agency has declined to say whether it had ever considered the technology, known as "transmission X-rays."

But other Homeland Security documents, also obtained by EPIC and provided to ProPublica, show that in 2010, Homeland Security's science and technology division entered into an agreement with the FDA to test such technology.

"Transmission X-ray devices are being considered by DHS for passenger screening," the statement of work says. "The proposed use of transmission methods for routine passenger screening may have significant health & safety implications and requires special study and evaluation."

John Verrico, a spokesman for the department's science and technology division, said the proposed tests never went forward and the discussion of transmission X-rays was ultimately removed from the final statement of work.

"Transmission X-ray systems have not been tested," he said in an email. "Personnel have viewed vendors' demonstrations at their locations to evaluate the maturity of the equipment and the state of the technology."

"Treating People Like Luggage"

Such machines, however, were introduced in prisons in 2011.

A transmission X-ray body scanner, the RadPRO SecurPASS, is sold by Virtual Imaging, a Florida subsidiary of Canon USA. In the last year, it has been installed at the Cook County Jail in Chicago; several jails in Florida and Alabama; and the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, a temporary detention center for inmates being transported across the country.

The dose has two settings. The standard setting delivers a radiation dose about 10 times higher than that of an airport body scanner. But to produce a better image, the operator has the ability to switch to a higher exposure, said Kris Kessler, creative marketing manager for Virtual Imaging.

That dose is still a fraction of the radiation received in a chest X-ray or cross-country flight. But it's more than 50 times higher than that of an airport scanner.

Even with the standard setting, the quality of the image produced by the SecurPASS is so good that people don't have to take off their jackets or shoes, as they do before going through the airport scanners, Kessler said.

"It's almost like we're treating people like luggage," he said.

The device has already made some interesting finds. One inmate was found to have swallowed 10 pouches of heroin, Steve Patterson, then the Cook County Sheriff's Office spokesman, told ProPublica last year. Another inmate, he said, was found to have kidney stones.

Jails use the SecurPASS mostly on prisoners as they leave and come back from work detail, Kessler said. But some facilities are considering using it on employees as well, he added, to prevent them from bringing in contraband.

Dennis Wolfe, Virtual Imaging's national sales manager for security products, said he has had conversations with the TSA and that a test lasting several months was overseen by Homeland Security science and technology staff in 2010 and 2011. The department denied that.

The device, which was initially used to prevent theft in diamond mines, has already been used at London's Heathrow Airport to scan suspected drug mules. (Customs officials in the United States and other countries can, with a traveler's consent, order a medical X-ray, which would deliver a higher radiation dose.)

For now, however, Virtual Imaging is focusing on corrections facilities.

Chris Burke, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said the system is running a pilot test of various scanners but has not made a decision.

Still, Wolfe said he expects many federal prisons and larger jail systems to be using the SecurPASS in the next few years. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist," he said. "If somebody's hiding something up their butt, which technology are you going to use?"

The rapid growth of X-ray scanning for security and the limited authority granted to regulators make it difficult to keep track of the equipment.

Two airport body scanners, for example, were recently auctioned off by the General Services Administration. A new scanner typically sells for $170,000. But these scanners, which had been in storage, were sold for a total of $600.

Under FDA regulations, sellers would normally be required to keep records of who purchases their X-ray products. But because the FDA never adopted a mandatory safety standard for the airport body scanners, this rule does not apply.

To help determine the extent of the use of these devices, we're seeking stories from those who have had personal experience. Please share your stories in a private email to xray@propublica.org.

We are especially interested in the following:

Have you seen the NYPD backscatter vans? If so, where and how were they being used?

Have you gone through a Z Portal at the border? What was your experience?

If your car was scanned by a backscatter van by Customs or Border Patrol, were you asked to get out of the car or did you remain inside?

If you work in a prison or jail with an X-ray body scanner, how are they used?

Have you seen these technologies anywhere we didn't mention in the story?

Do you know of other security X-ray products that are being used or developed?

Any information is appreciated.

Dems Governors’ Gathering Gets Big Bucks Selling Prime Spot Next to Gov. Cuomo

2012-01-26T15:45:16-05:00

by Cora Currier

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will spend this weekend discussing infrastructure projects at the Democratic Governors Association's winter policy meeting. The meeting will focus on public-private partnerships, and Cuomo is the big draw, a rising star who just unveiled a massive infrastructure fund for the state.

He's also the event's big fundraising draw, luring the "private" in "public-private." The Wall Street Journal and New York Times obtained a letter from a lobbyist to prospective corporate donors, offering them a spot on the panel with Gov. Cuomo for a $50,000 donation to the DGA. (Cuomo's panel was the top spot; places on other legislators' panels were offered for $25,000.) The event is closed to the media and the public.

There are, of course, countless ways to give money to politicians, but the solicitation seems to put a twist on your typical rubber-chicken fundraiser. The event was billed as a policy discussion.

Cuomo's allure for corporate donors is particularly notable. He campaigned under the slogan "Clean Up Albany" and pledged to rid New York of "pay-to-play" situations in which corporations or their lobbyists offered campaign donations or other gifts in exchange for access to government officials and contracts. During the campaign, Cuomo championed his record as an attorney general who cracked down on pay-to-play and illegal campaign finance contributions from nonprofits.

Campaign finance groups have applauded Cuomo's efforts as well. In his State of the State address in early January, he called for lower limits on campaign contributions, stricter enforcement and voluntary public financing of elections. Of course, that would affect only New York state, not the federal campaign finance laws that allow independent groups to collect unlimited corporate donations.

The fundraising by the governors' association appears to be perfectly legal. Unless there is concrete evidence that a campaign contribution constitutes an actual intent bribe, it is protected as free speech and is not a gift subject to ethics regulations. There's also nothing in campaign finance law that prevents donors from paying to attend events with elected officials nor anything that prevents corporations from making unlimited contributions to independent groups like the DGA. Indeed, even if a corporation that donates to the DGA and attends a panel with Cuomo later lands an infrastructure contract in New York state, there would likely be no legal violation.

New York lobbyists like Tonio Borgos, who sent the letter, are often "bundlers," acting as conduits between politicians and interest groups, bringing in a lot of cash, and potentially amplifying their influence and that of their clients. (Burgos was an aide to Cuomo's father, Mario Cuomo, during the latter's tenure as governor, and at least one of Burgos' clients, The Wall Street Journal noted, is involved in private-public partnerships.)

A DGA spokesman said there was nothing unusual about this event, and that the association had not coordinated with fundraisers. It declined to name the panel participants. (The DGA does disclose its top donors but not the attendees of specific events). Neither Burgos nor the governor's office returned calls requesting comment. In a statement to the Times, Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto said that "any funds raised go to the DGA, not the governor's campaign."

Russ Haven, legislative counsel for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said the perception of a conflict of interest is inherent in campaign finance law. "We have pretty good disclosure laws, so tongues will wag, but a donation doesn't necessarily prove anything," Haven said. "That's the problem with the system — everything's up for suspicion, even if you get something on the merits, even when things work the way they are supposed to."

Bill Would Require Independent Study of X-Ray Body Scanners

2012-01-26T09:03:05-05:00

by Michael Grabell

Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the homeland security committee, plans to introduce a bill in the coming days that would require a new health study of the X-ray body scanners used to screen airline passengers nationwide.

The Transportation Security Administration began using the machines for routine screening in 2009 and sped up deployment after the so-called underwear bomber tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day of that year.

But the X-ray scanners have caused concerns because they emit low levels of ionizing radiation, a form of energy that has been shown to damage DNA and mutate genes, potentially leading to cancer. ProPublica and PBS NewsHour reported in November that the TSA had glossed over cancer concerns. Studies suggested that six or 100 airline passengers each year could develop cancer from the machines.

Shortly after our report, the European Union separately announced that it would prohibit X-ray body scanners at its airports for the time being “in order not to risk jeopardizing citizens’ health and safety.”

The new bill drafted by Collins would require the TSA to choose an independent laboratory to measure the radiation emitted by a scanner currently in use at an airport checkpoint. The peer-reviewed study, to be submitted to Congress, would also evaluate the safety mechanisms on the machine and determine whether there are any biological signs of cellular damage caused by the scans.

In addition, the bill would require the TSA to place prominent signs at the start of checkpoint lines informing travelers that they can request a physical pat-down instead of going through the scanner. Right now, the TSA has signs in front of the machines noting that passengers can opt out. But the signs mostly highlight the images created rather than possible health risks.

The bill is the latest volley in a back-and-forth between Collins and the TSA. At a hearing in November, TSA administrator John Pistole agreed to a request from Sen. Collins to conduct a new independent health study.

But a week later at another hearing, Pistole backed off the commitment citing a yet-to-be-released report on the machines by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.

“I have urged TSA to move toward only radiation-free screening technology,” Collins said in a statement to ProPublica. “In the meantime, an independent study is needed to protect the public and to determine what technology is worthy of taxpayer dollars.”

The TSA uses two types of body scanners to screen passengers for explosives. The X-ray machines, known as backscatters, look like two refrigerator-size blue boxes and are used at Los Angeles, Chicago O’Hare, New York’s John F. Kennedy, and elsewhere. The other machine, which looks like a round glass booth, uses electromagnetic waves that have not been linked to any adverse health effects. Those machines are used at airports in Dallas and Atlanta, among others.

The TSA says the radiation from the X-ray machines is minute, equivalent to that received in two minutes of flying at altitude. That measurement has been verified in previous tests by the Food and Drug Administration, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the Army Public Health Command.

“All the previous independent testing showed that the machines are well below the national standard,” TSA spokesman Greg Soule said.

A group of vocal critics, primarily based at the University of California, San Francisco, has cast doubt on those tests, suggesting that the device used to measure the radiation isn’t equipped to provide accurate measurements on body scanners, among other flaws.

While not commenting specifically on the drafted legislation, Soule said, “the TSA is committed to working with Congress to explore options for an additional study to further prove these machines are safe for all passengers.”

Texas Court Voids Conviction in Child Death Case

2012-01-25T17:56:48-05:00

by A.C. Thompson

This story was co-published with PBS Frontline.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today set aside the conviction of Ernie Lopez, an Amarillo man found guilty in 2003 of sexually assaulting six-month-old Isis Vas. The baby died shortly after the purported attack.

Lopez has been serving a term of 60 years in Texas prison for the crime. But a joint reporting effort by ProPublica, NPR, and PBS "Frontline" last year explored the possibility that Lopez might be innocent.

In the years since Lopez's trial, a host of physicians have reviewed the medical evidence in the case, raising questions about the soundness of his conviction. Many of these specialists have come to believe that Vas actually died of natural causes, and that Lopez never assaulted the child at all.

During a tearful prison interview, the inmate insisted he wasn’t a sex offender and killer. "That's not my character," he said. "That's not who I am."

"We are very pleased with the Court of Criminal Appeals' decision to set aside Ernie’s conviction," said one of Lopez’s attorneys, Heather Kirkwood, in an email. "The Texas courts deserve ample recognition for the careful review of the record that led to today’s decision."

The Lopez case highlights the growing international controversy about the reliability of the science used to prosecute cases of fatal child abuse and sexual assault. In Canada and the U.S. at least 23 people have been wrongly accused of killing children based on questionable medical evidence, and California Gov. Jerry Brown is currently considering commuting the sentence of a grandmother convicted of fatally shaking her 7-week-old grandson.

The Texas court didn’t rule on Lopez’s culpability and did not set him free. Instead, the court concluded that Lopez received ineffective legal representation during his trial because his lawyers failed to challenge the prosecution’s medical evidence.

The ruling, which affirms the findings of a lower court, calls for Lopez to be returned to Amarillo, where local prosecutors will have the option to try him a second time or simply let him go.

In August 2010, Potter County Judge Dick Alcala recommended that Lopez's conviction be overturned, stating that Lopez's original attorneys had failed to "fully investigate the medical issues of whether a sexual assault had occurred" and "the cause of death of the child."

Kirkwood, who began representing Lopez after he’d been sent to prison, said she was hopeful that her client would be released on bond while District Attorney Randall Sims decides whether or not to retry Lopez.

During the appeals process, the prosecutor’s office tapped a number of medical experts who supported the conclusion that Vas had been sexually assaulted and abused.

A phone call to Sims was not immediately returned.

Obama’s Gerrymander

2012-01-25T13:56:40-05:00

by Lois Beckett

We’ve been following the ways that politicians and special interests try to influence the redistricting process for their own gain, often at the expense of voters.

An article this week in The New Yorker suggests that President Barack Obama’s own political rise in Chicago was partially the result of gerrymandering.

As The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza reported, Obama worked with a Democratic redistricting consultant to draw a state senate district tailored for him.

Lizza wrote about the incident four years ago, detailing how Obama had learned the hard way that a University of Chicago academic was not necessarily someone whom all of Chicago’s African-American voters would trust.

In 1999, Obama suffered a serious defeat when he tried to take on longtime South Side Congressman Bobby Rush, who represents a district that is more than 62 percent African-American.

Two years later, with the Democrats in control of Illinois redistricting, Obama was apparently able to reshape his state senate district to his own specifications, which included drawing in wealthy supporters from Chicago’s Gold Coast.

Lizza interviewed John Corrigan, a Chicago Democrat who worked on the 2001 redistricting process:

Corrigan remembers two things about the district that he and Obama drew. First, it retained Obama’s Hyde Park base — he had managed to beat Rush in Hyde Park — then swooped upward along the lakefront and toward downtown. By the end of the final redistricting process, his new district bore little resemblance to his old one. Rather than jutting far to the west, like a long thin dagger, into a swath of poor black neighborhoods of bungalow homes, Obama’s map now shot north, encompassing about half of the Loop, whose southern portion was beginning to be transformed by developers like Tony Rezko and stretched far up Michigan Avenue and into the Gold Coast, covering much of the city’s economic heart, its main retail thoroughfares, and its finest museums, parks, skyscrapers, and lakefront apartment buildings. African-Americans still were a majority, and the map contained some of the poorest sections of Chicago, but Obama’s new district was wealthier, whiter, more Jewish, less blue-collar, and better educated. It also included one of the highest concentrations of Republicans in Chicago.

“It was a radical change,” Corrigan said.

Lizza wrote that the gerrymandering effort “may have been the most important event in Obama’s early political life” because it gave him the resources, both financial and political, to run for the U.S. Senate in 2004.

We asked both Corrigan and Obama’s campaign for comment but haven’t received responses.

Obama has occasionally spoken about how redistricting can cater to politicians and not voters.

“The system of redistricting in the U.S. tends to allow representatives to choose people instead of people choosing representatives,” Obama told The Hyde Park Herald in 2001. “It’s just politics.”

Obama was responding to apparent evidence that he was himself the target of a gerrymander. The Hyde Park Herald reported in 2001 that Obama’s home and the home of another Rush opponent were carefully drawn out of Rush’s congressional district, which would have made it harder for them to challenge him in the future.

Rush’s spokesman at the time denied that the congressman had anything to do with the map lines that excluded Obama and another candidate.

“Members of Congress don’t draw congressional maps,” Rush’s current chief of staff, Stanley Watkins, said in a statement emailed to ProPublica.

House Panel Queries Attorney General About Pardon Office

2012-01-25T12:57:46-05:00

by Dafna Linzer

The House Judiciary Committee has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to outline any plans for changes to the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the wake of a ProPublica investigation that found white applicants were nearly four times as likely to receive a presidential pardon as minorities.

The committee's inquiries into the Justice Department office were included at the top of a long list of questions from Republican and Democratic members following Holder's appearance before the panel in December to testify on other matters.

The pardon-related questions were written by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who serves as ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security and represents a district where African-Americans make up more than half the population. “I am troubled by recent reports outlining persistent and significant problems at the Office of the Pardons (sic) Attorney,” Scott said in a statement to ProPublica. Scott said he is “awaiting a response” from Holder.

Each year, the pardon office sifts through hundreds of requests for presidential pardons, selecting a few for the president's signature. The vast majority of applications are discarded by the pardon attorney and never seen by the White House.

At his confirmation hearing in January 2009, Holder spoke at length about presidential pardons and lessons he had learned while serving as deputy attorney general during the presidency of Bill Clinton. “I think we have to work to improve the pardon process within the Department of Justice,” Holder told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In his questions to Holder, Scott wrote that ProPublica's stories on pardons, co-published with The Washington Post, showed “significant and persistent problems within the Office of the Pardon Attorney. You testified when you were confirmed that you would study the problems with the clemency advisory process and fix them. Please let us know what you have found and what changes you have made or plan to make,” Scott wrote.

Holder, who became embroiled in the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich at the end of the Clinton administration, declined repeated requests from ProPublica to be interviewed about the pardons process. His deputy, James Cole, has also declined interview requests.

Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said the agency has received the questions “and will respond accordingly.” Sweeney said the department is continuing to evaluate ProPublica's statistical analysis showing a racial disparity in pardons. During his two-term presidency, George W. Bush pardoned 189 people, including seven African-Americans. President Obama has pardoned 22 people, including two minorities.

ProPublica's analysis also showed that married applicants were twice as likely as single applicants to be pardoned and that an applicant with congressional support was three times as likely to succeed. Scott specifically inquired about the effect of political support on pardons.

Known as “Questions For Response,” the committee's lengthy list of inquiries, which included questions on a variety of Justice Department issues and programs, was sent to Holder on Jan. 20. The questions will be made public and entered into the committee record along with Holder's answers once they are received.

Scott provided his questions regarding pardons to ProPublica.

Questions for Attorney General Eric Holder

Following are questions about the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney sent to Attorney General Eric Holder by the House Judiciary Committee:

On December 3, the Washington Post printed an article that reported significant and persistent problems within the Office of the Pardon Attorney. You testified when you were confirmed that you would study the problems with the clemency advisory process and fix them. Please let us know what you have found and what changes you have made or plan to make.
It has been reported that the pardon attorney no longer assigns commutation cases to staff attorneys, and does not write a recommendation in the large majority of these cases.
How does this fulfill the Department's responsibility to advise the president about the merits of each case?
Doesn't this make the commutation process meaningless for most applicants?
How can the pardon attorney himself conduct a meaningful review of thousands of commutation petitions?
Even if most of these should be denied, if no one is really looking at them, how do you know each one is without merit?
We can all agree that no system is perfect. The legal system is no exception. There are mistakes. The Constitution gives the president a role in fixing such mistakes. How does this procedure help the president do that?
How does the pardon office identify the rare exception that deserves a closer look? Political support? Media attention? If so, is that the best way — the most fair way — to make these decisions?

Inside Romney’s Tax Returns: A Reading Guide

2012-01-24T17:02:26-05:00

by Lena Groeger

In response to growing pressure from voters and competitors, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released 550 pages of tax returns Tuesday, covering two years of income. As one of the richest men ever to run for President, Romney's filings are enormously complex, and the subject of close scrutiny. News organizations are making their way through the returns. Here's our guide to where to look to make sense of the numbers.

The Washington Post, one of the news outlets with early access to the returns, reports that Romney got most of his income -- $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million in 2011 — from profits, dividends or interest from investments. As you can see in the Post's annotated guide, none of that money came from wages or salaries, which is the main source of income for most Americans. Because most of his earnings came from capital gains, Romney paid just under 14 percent of his income in taxes in 2010. In comparison, in 2010 Obama was taxed at 26.3 percent and Gingrich at 31.7 percent. Even these figures understate the difference: Romney paid Medicare taxes on only his speech fees, while most Americans pay the 1.45 percent Medicare levy on nearly all of their income. See more candidate comparisons in this New York Times chart, or this one from CNN.

The American Enterprise Institute blog notes that Romney actually pays a higher effective tax rate than 60 percent of Americans (a family making around $45,000 would have an effective tax rate of 7.4 percent). But as Reuters explains, 14 percent is less than half the top rate on ordinary wages, which can be taxed up to 35 percent. Romney paid or will pay a total of about $6.2 million in taxes on his income from 2010 and 2011. Over those two years, he and his wife Ann have given about the same amount in charitable donations, including $4.1 million to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Salt Lake City Tribune notes that Romney is one of the Mormon Church's biggest benefactors, and pays about a tenth of his income in tithe.

The Times' Caucus blog is keeping a live blog of findings as reporters comb through the returns. Some of their latest discoveries:

Speaking fees: Last week Romney told a crowd in South Carolina: “I get speaker's fees from time to time, but not very much." Turns out his author/speaking fees amounted to precisely $528,871 in 2010, and $110,500 in 2011.
The top 0.006 percent: According to the IRS, anyone who makes more than $10 million would be in the top 0.006 percent of taxpayers (according to their latest numbers from 2009). With an income of $21 million in 2010, Romney would be even higher.
Mortgage? Like Gingrich, Romney doesn't seem to have a home mortgage, as neither took a deduction in 2010. Obama, on the other hand, took a home mortgage interest deduction of $49,945.

Romney's 2010 tax return indicated he had a "bank account, security account or other financial account" in Switzerland, but the account was closed in 2010, his aides told the Wall Street Journal. The return also reports financial accounts in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

As noted in Bloomberg Businessweek, the recent release is likely to spark renewed controversy over how the tax code treats the extremely wealthy. The phrase at the center of this debate is “carried interest.” Partners in private equity firms, hedge funds and real estate developments get most of their compensation through carried interest, and since those earnings don't count as ordinary income, they are taxed much less.

In a short primer on the subject, the Wall Street Journal describes it this way:

Put simply, carried interest is a share of a partnership's profits that is taxed as a capital gain as opposed to ordinary income. It is a good deal: The top rate on gains held longer than a year is 15%, so the tax on carried interest is usually less than half the top 35% rate on ordinary income. There aren't FICA or Medicare taxes, either.

Benjamin Ginsberg, the Romney campaign's chief counsel, disclosed to the New York Times that Romney earned $7.4 million in carried interest from private equity firm Bain Capital in 2010.

Obama has repeatedly called the tax code's treatment of carried interest a “loophole” that's “just not fair,” and Warren Buffett mentioned it earlier last year when he demanded that the government stop coddling the mega rich. New York Mayor and billionaire Mike Bloomberg told the Wall Street Journal that “If it were up to me, I would end the concept of carried interest.”

Yet James Stewart, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who writes a business column for the New York Times, doesn't see it that way. Last year he wrote that carried interest is “indistinguishable from nearly all other forms of compensation that are treated like capital gains, such as stock options, deferred stock grants for corporate executives and many forms of incentive compensation, which is widespread across many industries. Like all capital investments, carried interest entails risk, since there's no way of knowing what it will be worth until long after the labor is performed, often years later.”

In a political climate characterized in part by the Occupy movement and “99 Percent,” these concerns aren't likely to disappear any time soon. In fact, as Politico notes, the Romney tax returns are fodder for the White House, which plans to tackle precisely this issue of economic fairness at tonight's State of the Union.

Obama’s Unfulfilled State of the Union Goals

2012-01-24T15:48:03-05:00

by Cora Currier

President Barack Obama's previous State of the Union speeches have pushed passage of such hallmark initiatives as the stimulus bill, health-care reform, the drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays. But some big ideas from previous SOTU addresses have been abandoned.

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler has done a line-by-line analysis of some of the specific promises made in the 2010 and 2011 addresses, and how they've held up. Here we track the evolution of a few of Obama's promises in the SOTU addresses — and why he's struggled to keep them.

Energy and Infrastructure

Obama's speeches have pushed investment in alternative energy technology and major green infrastructure projects as a linchpin of his overall economic recovery plan, but Republicans in Congress have stymied these ambitions. Obama's 2009 speech claimed the stimulus bill would double the U.S. supply of renewable energy in three years and vowed to invest $15 billion in research and development for alternative energy and fuel-efficient cars. In 2010, U.S. energy from renewables averaged around 8 percent, unchanged from 2009; an updated figure is not yet available.

In his 2010 speech, Obama appeared to acknowledge Republican interests, mentioning “tough choices” on new nuclear power plants and offshore oil and gas exploration. But that year's climate-change bill languished in the Senate over disagreements on carbon caps and new efficiency standards.

Obama's 2011 speech kept to the theme of technological advance under the rubric “Winning the Future.” He vowed that by 2035, 80 percent of the country's electricity would be from clean energy and again called for increased funding for research and development. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce bluntly called the 2035 goal “impossible.” Obama's plan to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within 25 years has made essentially no progress. The one project that did begin — in California — since has stalled.

Obama's energy goals have run up against a Congress hostile to costly projects in general and particularly suspicious of environmental regulation. The bankruptcy of solar-panel maker Solyndra Inc., which had received a $535 million federal loan guarantee, furthered the case of critics who argued that spending on clean energy was wasteful.

Taxes

In every SOTU to date, Obama has called for a tax on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans — in other words, an end to the George W. Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year. Obama agreed to temporarily extend the Bush tax cuts in 2010 as part of a deal with Republicans that also extended jobless benefits. Last year, Obama and congressional Democrats abandoned plans for a millionaire's surtax in return for Republican backing to extend a payroll tax cut.

Then there is tax reform. Each year, Obama has called for a simplifying the individual tax code and for a lower corporate tax rate. Cutting the 35 percent corporate tax rate has support from some Democrats and Republicans as well as many corporations and business groups. But as Marian Wang explained last year, any effort to overhaul the tax code inevitably means opposition — from groups that benefit from loopholes and tax breaks that reformers hope to repeal.

Guantanamo

In his 2009 SOTU, Obama pronounced the closing of Guantanamo Bay a centerpiece of his foreign policy. “In words and deeds, we are showing the world that a new era of engagement has begun,” he said. As ProPublica's coverage has shown, the administration continued to make periodic calls for Guantanamo's closure but could not overcome opposition to it. In March 2011, the administration revised its stance on Guantanamo, allowing for military trials of prisoners there to resume instead of moving them to federal criminal courts.

The DREAM Act

In last year's SOTU, Obama spoke at length about the need for comprehensive immigration reform, and he expressed support for legislation to grant legal residency to some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children. The DREAM Act failed to pass Congress in 2010 or 2011. Without a new immigration policy, the administration changed enforcement strategy, and exercises “particular care” in deciding on deportations, especially in the cases of students and young people. According to The New York Times, this approach has been applied unevenly and has caused confusion among enforcers and immigrant families alike.

Senate Watchdog Targets High-Prescribing Medicaid Docs

2012-01-24T14:04:51-05:00

by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber

An influential U.S. senator is grilling officials in nearly three-dozen states, demanding to know how they are cracking down on physicians who prescribe massive amounts of potentially dangerous prescription drugs.

Iowa Republican Charles Grassley sent letters to 34 states Monday asking what steps they had taken to investigate doctors whose prescribing of antipsychotics, anti-anxiety drugs and painkillers to Medicaid patients far exceeds that of their peers.

The request is a follow-up to a 2010 letter Grassley sent all states that requested statistics on top prescribers of these drugs.

“These types of drugs have addictive properties, and the potential for fraud and abuse by prescribers and patients is extremely high,” Grassley wrote in Monday’s letters. “When these drugs are prescribed to Medicaid patients, it is the American people who pay the price for over-prescription, abuse, and fraud.”

ProPublica reported in November that Florida allowed at least three physicians to keep treating and prescribing drugs to the poor amid clear signs of possible misconduct. One doctor kept prescribing narcotic pain pills to Medicaid patients for more than a year after he was arrested and charged in 2010 with trafficking in them.

A number of the top-prescribing Medicaid doctors around the country are listed in our Dollars for Docs database of payments made by 12 pharmaceutical companies to physicians for speaking and consulting Medicaid, jointly funded by the states and federal government, provides health care coverage to about 60 million low-income enrollees.

Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has long argued for greater transparency in health care. The painkillers and mental health drugs Grassley is inquiring about are among the top drivers of Medicaid drug spending.

His letter to Ohio notes that the top prescriber of the anti-psychotic Abilify wrote 13,825 prescriptions in 2009 — about 54 prescriptions per weekday. Ohio paid $6.7 million for that those prescriptions, state officials reported to Grassley.

The biggest prescriber of another anti-psychotic, Seroquel, wrote 18,890 scripts at a cost of $5.7 million. Grassley wrote the tally would amount to nine prescriptions per hour. When Ohio submitted the data to Grassley last year, it did not identify the doctors by name or license number.

“After an extensive review of prescribing habits of the serial prescribers of pain and mental-health drugs in Ohio, I have concerns about the oversight and enforcement of Medicaid abuse in your state,” he wrote. “While I am sensitive to the concerns of misinterpretation of the data you provided, the numbers themselves are quite shocking.”

Grassley’s letter to Maine cites a physician who wrote 1,867 prescriptions for the powerful painkiller OxyContin in 2009, nearly double the second-highest prescriber. The doctor also wrote 1,723 prescriptions for another painkiller, Roxicodone, nearly three times as many as the next highest prescriber.

Calls to officials in Ohio and Maine have not been returned.

In his letters to the 34 states, Grassley asked that officials tell him by Feb. 13 what action, if any, they have taken against top prescribers, whether those doctors are still eligible to bill Medicaid, whether any of the doctors were referred to their state medical boards for investigation, and what systems have been set up to track possibly excessive prescribing, among others.

Grassley is sending letters to 12 other states that never provided him data, as requested, on their top Medicaid prescribers. Four other states will not receive follow-up letters because the senator felt their initial responses to his 2010 letter were adequate.

ProPublica reported in November that since Grassley’s initial letter requesting the data in 2010, Louisiana, Arizona, Oklahoma and New York have kicked some high-prescribing physicians out of Medicaid. California has temporarily suspended or placed restrictions on 15 to 20 doctors in the past two years for prescribing disproportionately high volumes of painkillers and antipsychotics to Medicaid patients.

But Grassley said more needs to be done.

“When a doctor writes more prescriptions than seems humanly possible, it makes sense to ask questions,” he said in a statement to ProPublica. The statement noted that some states never responded to his original letter in 2010.

“If state and federal taxpayers are being cheated because of inappropriate prescriptions,” Grassley said, “the state and federal governments have to get to the bottom of it and stop it.”

Little Progress in Congress on Push for Forensic Standards

2012-01-23T12:29:17-05:00

by Lena Groeger

Update (1/26): This post has been updated to reflect a comment from Rockefeller's office on the timeline for introducing legislation.

Three years ago, the influential National Academy of Sciences released a scathing report broadly condemning the work of criminal labs in the U.S. Too often, the report found, forensic labs do subpar work and rely on unproven techniques such as analyzing bite marks or examining the markings on a bullet. As the report noted, sloppy forensic work has played a part in many wrongful convictions. (We've detailed other forensic failures in our ongoing series on the country's death investigation systems.)

The report and experts say the shortcomings could be addressed in part by a national forensic science agency that could rigorously test forensic science techniques to see if they actually worked. Another key reform from the report, once again widely endorsed by experts, would establish enforceable standards and set up a mandatory certification and accreditation process for forensic science professionals and labs.

The report's conclusions, which one legislator called "damning" and "terrifying," prompted a series of Senate hearings to examine ways to strengthen the troubled forensic science system.

So, three years on, where do things stand in Congress? Not very far from where they started.

Early last year, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced a bill to implement many of the report's proposed reforms. The bill has moved little since then. When asked for comment, the senator's office said he is still discussing the bill with law enforcement but hopes the committee will consider it this year.

Experts say even if the bill passes in its current form, it would not implement a key recommendation. The bill proposes the creation of a national forensic science agency like the NAS report suggested but would put the new office within the Department of Justice. The report strongly advised that the new agency be completely independent from any existing department, especially the DOJ.

From the report:

[N]o existing or new division or unit within DOJ would be an appropriate location for a new entity governing the forensic science community... The entity that is established to govern the forensic science community cannot be principally beholden to law enforcement. The potential for conflicts of interest between the needs of law enforcement and the broader needs of forensic science are too great.

"[The DOJ] is the last place the NAS report wanted the agency, for the most obvious of reasons," said Marvin Schechter, a criminal defense attorney in New York City and former member of the committee that wrote the NAS report. "For over 100 years, forensic science in this country has been under prosecutorial law enforcement control, and it's been a disaster."

Harry Edwards, a law professor at NYU and co-chair of the committee that wrote the NAS report, said forensic scientists shouldn't work within law enforcement, "not because we do not trust law enforcement officials but because they serve different roles than scientists who are charged with assessing forensic evidence."

The establishment of a new forensic science agency in the Department of Justice would raise important questions about who would report to whom, who would pick the oversight committees and who would have the authority to approve or veto judgments by each group, Edwards said.

In a statement on Jan. 25, 2011, Leahy said there was simply not enough support for a wholly independent agency, which would impose too high a cost on taxpayers. The proposed forensic science office "capitalizes on existing expertise and structures, rather than calling for the creation of a costly new agency," Leahy said.

Leahy acknowledged the argument for independence, and as a result, his bill has a "hybrid structure." A Forensic Science Board of forensic and academic scientists, prosecutors and defense attorneys would make recommendations to the director of the forensic science office. Additionally, committees of scientists would look at each forensic science discipline -- from bite marks to blood spatters -- to figure out research needs and standards.

But Schechter said this layered system would only introduce more problems. "Because Leahy took [the national agency] out of an independent entity," he said, "he had to fit it into the DOJ like a square peg in a round [hole]. The result has been a chaotic if not twisted bill."

DOJ involvement doesn't have to be an either-or decision, said Peter Neufeld, a founder and director of the Innocence Project, a national organization that works to exonerate innocent prisoners and reform the criminal justice system. Neufeld said a national agency of forensic science should be a collective undertaking. A scientific agency with research experience, such as the National Science Foundation, could be in charge of setting forensic standards, and the DOJ could be in charge of accreditation, certification and implementation, he said.

While the Leahy bill has languished, Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.V., is also considering legislation to mandate improvements to forensic science. In December, he held a hearing on the subject. (Here's the full video of the hearing and testimonies.) In a recent letter, the president of the American Statistical Association urged Rockefeller not to follow Leahy's approach and to instead create an independent agency.

Rockefeller has yet to propose a bill, but, according to a committee aide, he is hoping to introduce one this year.

False Joe Paterno Death Report Relied on Faulty Sourcing

2012-01-23T10:28:59-05:00

by Daniel Victor

This story was co-published with Poynter.

The Onward State tweet that erroneously reported Joe Paterno's death Saturday night and led to an avalanche of false reports in other outlets was based on the work of two student reporters: One was snookered by a false email, and one overstated his knowledge of the events, according to the site's co-founder.

A third student, Managing Editor Devon Edwards, decided to pull the trigger on the tweet. Edwards resigned Saturday night.

The independent, online-only, student-run site is an agile and highly collaborative organization with a staff of 30-50, including eight editors. Each story is run through two editors, and major decisions are hashed out among editors and reporters through Yammer, an internal messaging system.

The fateful tweet was no snap decision. The site has a complex editorial process that's designed for the Web and has earned praise for its vision — but like any editorial process, it can easily be disrupted by bad reporting and pressure-packed situations.

"I'd have to say that this event … taught me how ego can be a very toxic thing for a news organization,” said Davis Shaver, who co-founded the site as a Penn State freshman in 2008. "Ego to act like you know something you don't, ego to want to be the first person to break it.”

Paterno died at 9:25 a.m. Sunday, well after the previous night's reports had been shown to be erroneous.

The Breakdown

The two reporters appeared to be offering what the editor believed was independent confirmation of the same fact: that a high-ranking athletic department official had emailed the football team news of Paterno's death. One reporter spoke with someone who had seen the email, Shaver said.

The other claimed to have a similar source with the email. After discussing what they had, Edwards made the final decision to send the tweet, Shaver said.

The report was picked up, unattributed at first, by CBS Sports. The CBS Sports report was repeated by @BreakingNews, which has 3.5 million followers. (CBS Sports and Breaking News later apologized.)

But less than 15 minutes later, Mark Viera of The New York Times reported a family spokesman's denial. Onward State began to see that its reporting wouldn't stand up.

Editors learned that the second reporter exaggerated his knowledge. "We later found out there were additional degrees of separation between the person and the email,” Shaver told me by phone.

To make matters worse, the email turned out to be fake. "We later found that the email … had been fabricated and was not in fact an authentic email,” Shaver said. "We don't have any reason to believe that the email was intended to deceive Onward State; however, we are still in the process of getting more information on the email and the specific chain of events.”

Considering it started out as a dorm-room blog with three writers, Onward State's editorial process has undergone several overhauls. About a month into its first year, they realized: Maybe we should have copy editors. As they grew, they continued to create more lines of defense to limit errors, both factual and grammatical. The editorial structure is updated each semester, Shaver said.

But without any professional advisers or connections to the university — and being a brand-new model that approaches news differently than a traditional newsroom — they've had to adjust their approach on the fly.

"We have to make sure the next time there is the chance of misreporting something of this magnitude, that the systems and processes are in place to prevent that,” Shaver said.

‘Acts of Journalism'

By the way: Onward State doesn't consider journalism to be its main craft. Did I forget to mention that?

It's easy to be fooled. It has dozens of writers. The reporters have broken significant stories. It has grown its original reporting after an initial focus on aggregation.

But Shaver's initial intention was to build an online coffee house, a hub for community discussion and student voices.

"I wouldn't characterize it as journalism,” he said. "But I would say we have students who commit acts of journalism sometimes.”

Yet most of the site's defining characteristics come from the world of online journalism. The "acts of journalism" line is a common refrain in networked journalism circles. Many of the site's inspirations come from common examples of Web success: It borrowed from the aggregation strategies of The Huffington Post, the snark of Gawker, and the visual elements of The Sartorialist and Boston.com's The Big Picture. Writers are encouraged to build their personal brands and eschew "the view from nowhere.” Opinion is routinely mixed into "news” stories, and they have a stout social media presence.

"We didn't subscribe to any traditional journalistic sets of knowledge,” Shaver said. "We were basically trying to design an outlet from the ground up, and that included making an editorial process that works for students.”

Curt Chandler, a senior lecturer at Penn State who focuses on multimedia reporting, said the site's reporting is generally well-regarded. In one high-profile example, it broke the story of a missing student being found dead on campus a full hour before any other media.

It started at a time when the independent student newspaper, The Daily Collegian, was not active in social media.

"They took a look at what the student newspaper was doing and thought that they just weren't fast enough with getting their information out to the audience,” Chandler said. "And they were right. The student newspaper was very print-centric at that point.”

The Daily Collegian started its Twitter and Facebook accounts in 2010.

"The Collegian has been online for more than a decade and has won awards almost every year for its website,” four former Collegian editors said in a statement. "But there's no question that Onward State helped show that online conversation had to be a priority.”

Being Right or Being First?

Shaver heard the criticism that Onward State was more interested in being first than in being right, but he doesn't see it as either/or.

"I think that being right is more important than being first,” he said. "But they're both values of any legitimate online news organization.”

As students — and usually unapologetic fans of Paterno and the football team — the gravity of their error was not lost on the staff. They were sickened in both a professional and personal sense, Shaver said.

Edwards, the managing editor, posted an apology and offered his resignation Saturday night. He did not respond to a Facebook message asking for comment and has told other reporters he won't be commenting further. No successor was named, "but we hope to identify new leadership as soon as possible,” said Shaver, who graduates this spring. He says the site will continue after that, with a "strong support team at our publishing company/corporate partner Lazerpro Digital Media Group, which also publishes StateCollege.com” and "a talented group of student staff that ranges across class years” who will learn from this experience.

On Sunday morning, Shaver explained, in detail, "what happened last night.” As much heat as they were taking for the mistake, they were earning a small bit of praise for quickly owning up to it.

"After we realized what had happened, there was really no question in our mind that we had to respond immediately, emphatically, and in a way that corresponds to our values,” Shaver said. "For us, that's transparency.”

If nothing else, Chandler said, the journalism students at Penn State have learned a lot in the past few months.

"They have been so aggressive on Twitter, everybody realizes it could easily have been them.”

Daniel Victor has a journalism degree from Penn State. He did not work for Onward State or The Daily Collegian.

Actual Winner Unclear in Supreme Court’s Ruling on Texas Redistricting

2012-01-20T16:49:13-05:00

by Lois Beckett

Jan. 23: This has been updated and corrected.

The Supreme Court ruled this morning that federal judges in Texas overstepped their bounds in drawing a minority-friendly set of interim maps for the state to use in the 2012 elections.

The Court ruled unanimously that the judges should have given more deference to the new district maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Texas legislature even though parts of these maps may discriminate against Latinos.

The Department of Justice has argued that the state legislature’s plans would harm minorities and violate the Voting Rights Act. A panel of federal judges in Washington, D.C., is in the process of determining whether those plans did, in fact, break the law. Because that decision may not be made in time for the next elections, federal judges in San Antonio were tasked with drawing interim maps for the state to use. The maps used in Texas’ next elections could impact the balance of power in Congress. They will likely determine whether the four new congressional seats awarded Texas via the census will be held by Democrats or Republicans.

The Supreme Court’s decision leaves the fate of those seats in limbo. The maps created by Texas’ legislature were seen as likely to give at least three of those new congressional seats to white Republicans, while the rejected maps drawn by the federal court in San Antonio were seen as more favorable to Democrats.

Instead of ruling that Texas should use either of these sets of maps, the Court sent the federal judges in San Antonio back to the drawing board, ordering them to base their maps more closely on the state’s plan. They should make changes, the court ruled, only when there are specific legal challenges to the map that are likely to succeed.

The Court stated that judges have no business making their own policy choices via map lines. But how this decision will affect the maps Texas will use in the 2012 elections is unclear.

Texas’ attorney general, Greg Abbott, who had challenged the federal judges’ maps, celebrated the decision. “The Court made clear in a strongly worded opinion that the district court must give deference to elected leaders of this state, and it's clear by the Supreme Court ruling that the district court abandoned these guiding principles,” Abbott said in a new

"The state of Texas has argued throughout this process that we think it's appropriate for the legislature's maps to be the interim maps. They're the only maps that have been signed into law," said Lauren Bean, a spokesperson for the attorney general's office.

But Luis Vera, an attorney for the League of United Latin American Citizens, which is challenging the Texas legislature’s maps, said this morning that he saw the Supreme Court as primarily asking the federal court to better justify the changes it had made to the state’s plan.

The federal court in Washington, D.C., that is reviewing Texas' plans denied the state's request for quick approval of the maps last year. The court said the state "used an improper standard to determine which districts afford minority voters the ability to elect their preferred candidate of choice," and ruled that allegations that Texas' plans "were enacted with discriminatory intent" demanded further review.

Although some have interpreted the Supreme Court's ruling as a win for Republicans, it's not so clear that's the case. The justices' ruling seems to still allow the lower court to make substantial changes' to the Republicans' maps. The court said the judges should redraw maps in instances where "legal challenges are shown to have a likelihood of success," and noted at least one congressional district that was subject to "strong challenges" and should be redrawn. (See correction below.)

Texas had argued that the Supreme Court should allow the state to do an end run around the Voting Rights Act by granting the state permission to use the legislature’s maps in the 2012 elections, even though they had yet to be “precleared” by federal judges in Washington.

Federal “preclearance” is a requirement imposed by the Voting Rights Act on states, like Texas, with a history of discriminating against minorities at the polls.

While the Supreme Court did not directly challenge the Voting Rights Act in its decision, as some observers had speculated might happen, it did note that the Court has “serious constitutional questions” about whether the preclearance mandated by the Voting Rights Act represents an “intrusion on state sovereignty.”

“While [the decision] doesn’t eliminate section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, it weakens it,” said Matt Angle, a longtime Democratic redistricting strategist and director of the Lone Star Project, which has been supporting one of the plaintiff groups in the Texas redistricting lawsuit.

Angle said the Court’s decision offers a way for state governments to temporarily dodge the full scrutiny of the law.

“It provides an incentive for states to draw discriminatory plans at the outset, and then stall and delay on preclearance so they can get as much of their flawed plans used in the next election as possible,” Angle said.

The Court’s decision also puts the burden of proof on citizens who are being discriminated against, rather than the politicians crafting discriminatory plans, Angle said.

But he said he expected the federal court in D.C. to rule against Texas' maps, and that the maps would be redrawn in time for the 2012 elections, which means “in practical terms, for this election,” the ruling “doesn’t have a great impact.”

Correction (1/23/12): Citing a court order, an earlier version of this post stated that a federal court in Washington, D.C., had said that the maps drawn by Texas' state legislature were problematic. In fact, the court ruled that the state's defense of the legislature's maps -- not necessarily the maps themselves -- were problematic.

Top MuckReads: Errant Alaskan Rescue, Nuclear Waste and Mitt’s Money

2012-01-20T15:02:23-05:00

by Daniel Victor

Here are this week's top must-read stories from #MuckReads, ProPublica's ongoing collection of the best watchdog journalism. Anyone can contribute by tweeting a link to a story and just including the hashtag #MuckReads or by sending an email to MuckReads@ProPublica.org. The best submissions are selected by ProPublica's editors and reporters and then featured on our site and @ProPublica.

Is riveting Alaska icebreaker voyage a humanitarian or economic mission? Alaska Dispatch

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell urged the federal government to green-light an exceptional sea voyage to a remote community that he said was in danger of running out of fuel. But people were not in immediate, if any, danger, and critics say the much-celebrated mission mainly benefited a nearby goldmine.

Contributed by @alaskadispatch

Romney Parks Millions in Cayman Islands, ABC News

Mitt Romney has millions in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, but it is not apparent on his financial disclosure firm. A Romney spokesperson said Romney would pay the same in taxes regardless of where the funds are based.

Contributed by @ABC

Science Funding Slashed Under Corbett Administration, StateImpact Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration has diminished funding for scientific research at a time it says it’s basing its Marcellus Shale drilling policies on sound science. Projects examining the impact of drilling and climate change were removed from a recommended funding list.

Contributed by @StateImpactPA

In D.C. loan program, mortgage defaults abound, The Washington Post

D.C. is giving low-income buyers subsidies for homes they can’t afford. Nearly one in five of the homeowners is behind on mortgage payments — three-times the overall rate in the region.

Contributed by @j_nb

Problems plague cleanup at Hanford nuclear waste site, USA Today

A 10-year effort to clean up 56 million gallons of radioactive nuclear waste “faces enormous problems just as it reaches what was supposed to be its final stage.” Design problems could halt operations before much of the waste is treated.

Contributed by Brad Heath

In the super PAC era, do handshakes even matter? Associated Press

Political ad spending correlates more closely with election results than any other known factors, including a town’s political party makeup and frequency of candidate visits.

Contributed by @iWatch

These stories and many more can be found at ProPublica. You can also subscribe to a daily #MuckReads email or follow ProPublica on Twitter. Reader submissions are key to making #MuckReads a success — please contribute!

Years After Evidence of Fracking Contamination, EPA to Supply Drinking Water to Homes in Pa. Town

2012-01-20T14:58:46-05:00

by Abrahm Lustgarten

First, the earth around the rural town of Dimock, Pa., was cracked open as gas drillers used fracking to tap the vast energy supplies of the Marcellus Shale.

Then, in April 2009, residents there lost their access to fresh drinking water. Wells turned fetid. Some blew up. Tap water caught fire.

Now, nearly three years later — and after a string of lawsuits and state investigations has ushered Dimock to the forefront of the environmental debate over drilling but failed to resolve the water problem — the Environmental Protection Agency is stepping in to supply drinking water itself.

On Friday, the agency announced it would bring tanks of drinking water to four homes, including that of Julie Sautner, whom ProPublica first interviewed about her water problems in 2009.

“Data reviewed by EPA indicates that residents’ well water contains levels of contaminants that pose a health concern,” the agency said in a statement. Tests showed dangerous levels of arsenic, a carcinogen, as well as glycols and barium in at least four wells, and the EPA is apparently concerned that the contamination may be more widespread.

According to the statement, the EPA plans to test the water supplies in 60 additional homes for hazardous substances.

In 2009, Pennsylvania officials charged Cabot Oil & Gas, the company that drilled the wells in Dimock, with several violations it said had contributed to methane gas leaking out of the gas wells and into drinking water. For a time, Cabot supplied drinking water to a number of homes in the area but then stopped.

The EPA has waded into the Dimock issues slowly over the past few months, provoking a defensive stance from the state’s lead environmental regulator, who earlier this month called the EPA’s understanding of the Dimock situation “rudimentary.”

But the state has not undertaken the scope of water analysis the EPA now plans to do, and until the EPA stepped in Friday, Dimock residents had found little resolution.

Environmental groups are applauding the EPA’s move. "This finding confirms what Dimock residents have said for months, that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection should have never allowed Cabot to end deliveries of clean water," said Environmental Working Group senior counsel Dusty Horwitt.

But they also say the time has come for the EPA to address water contamination concerns in other communities across the country where residents say drilling has harmed their water.

In December, the EPA concluded that fracking was likely to blame for a similar rash of groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyo. The agency is conducting a multiyear national study of fracking’s effects on water supplies.

We have previously reported about water and drilling concerns in parts of western Wyoming, as well as central and southern Colorado, Texas, Ohio and elsewhere.

In the Gusher of Super PACs, Even One Named ‘The Internet’

2012-01-20T13:53:23-05:00

by Kim Barker

Sure, there’s the GOP symbol, but the real elephant in the room at any of the Republican debates since December has been the super PAC, the turbocharged political action committee able to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on political ads — as long as that spending isn’t coordinated with a particular campaign.

Mitt Romney supporters used Restore Our Future to tank Newt Gingrich in Iowa, while Gingrich supporters relied on Winning Our Future for revenge in South Carolina.

Jon Huntsman’s campaign would probably not have lasted as long as it did without Our Destiny. Now that Rick Perry is out of the race, throwing his support to Gingrich, the real question is what will happen to the war chest of Make Us Great Again.

But those are just the super PACs you’ve already heard about — the ones that candidates grouse about at debates, with Romney calling one Winning Our Future ad that portrayed him as a corporate raider “probably the biggest hoax since Bigfoot.”

As the countdown continues to the South Carolina primary Saturday, it’s worth taking a step back and considering all the confusing names, and all the confusing money that might be spent in the coming months. It’s also worth considering how we got to this new frontier, which even campaign operatives say is messy: Two years ago on Saturday, the Supreme Court, in its ruling on Citizens United vs. FEC, cracked open the door for super PACs. Two months later, a federal appeal court’s decision in Speechnow.org vs. FEC threw it wide open. Now, registering as a super PAC is as simple as sending a letter and a form to the FEC.

So far, at least 283 super PACs have registered, although 60 are run by one Florida man, Josue Larose, and seem to serve no other purpose but piling up paperwork for the FEC. And so far, super PACs have spent more than $29 million on the presidential race. (You can follow the money with our PAC Track application.) Although it’s not yet clear how that compares with overall spending by the candidates themselves, reports indicated that super PAC spending in Iowa outstripped the candidates' by 2-to-1, said Paul Ryan, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center.

More spending, likely the most ever in an election season, is on the horizon. And even though some super PACs seem to be parodies (like comedian Stephen Colbert's Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, which has probably done more to deliver “super PAC” into the American lexicon than any politician), the groups insist they are real.

“There’s all kinds of games going on,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit pushing to rein in super PACs. “Some group has put up a website telling you how to get around disclosure. Look, we have huge problems on our hands, and we get to celebrate the cause of many of these problems on Jan. 21, the second anniversary of the Citizens United decision. We have to deal with them as best we can.”

Here’s a rundown of some new super PACs and examples of how confusing things can get:

The Patriot Super PAC, which registered with the FEC on Tuesday, boasts a website promising to be the “future home of something quite cool.” It will work to defeat President Barack Obama, but it shouldn’t be confused with the conservative Patriot PAC, which promises to be the “point of the spear” and asks people to sign a petition without providing the text. Nor should either be mistaken for the Patriot Majority USA PAC, which supports Senate Democrats.

Protecting Our Vote PAC registered on Jan. 13, with one of the best signatures in any super PAC filing. Its mission is unclear: The website simply says, Protecting Our Vote PAC. American Sunrise registered as a super PAC the same day, organized in part by Lora Haggard, the former chief financial officer for onetime Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

Citizens for Prosperity and Good Government, not to be confused with the nonprofit conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, registered on Jan. 10.

Some people registering super PACs appear to be confused themselves. Patricia McBride of Wasco, Calif., registered Citizens Fireup Super PAC on Jan. 9 to support or oppose Obama but neglected to say which angle she’ll take. McBride also wrote that she wished to establish the super PAC as a (c4), which is shorthand for a 501(c)4, the IRS code for a social-welfare nonprofit. Although 501(c)4s are allowed to make certain political expenditures, they are not allowed to be super PACs. Regardless, the FEC appears to have registered the group.

On Jan. 5, a super PAC called “a SuperPAC” registered with the FEC, with a website at www.asuperpacforhire.com, which includes a way to donate. It also features the explanation: “Have you ever wanted a message to get out to the voting public about a candidate running for federal office but didn't want the mess of production, compliance, or disclosure paperwork? a SuperPAC wants to get the TRUTH out too.”

Treasurer Matthew Balazik of Frederick, Md., said the group is real. Ads on its website, which proclaim “Paid for by a SuperPAC,” target Democrats who’ve turned Republican.

“We’re pretty conservative around here,” Balazik wrote in response to an email. “We believe fundamentally that you should be able to speak publically (sic) and anonymously so long as you do not violate anyone else’s rights.”

When asked if anyone had tried to hire a SuperPAC super PAC, Balazik wrote simply: “That’s a good question.”

On Jan. 4, “The Internet” registered as a super PAC. Unfortunately, its website doesn’t appear to be working, but it does raise the specter of ads proclaiming, “paid for by The Internet.”

On Dec. 22, the Real Leader PAC registered as a super PAC, with a website that still leads to nowhere.

The previous week, Cain Connections PAC registered as a super PAC, with no website, days after Herman Cain had dropped out of the Republican race. Its mission is unclear.

Earlier in December, the American Crosswinds PAC— sounding remarkably similar to the Republican fundraising juggernaut American Crossroads super PAC — registered as a super PAC, although it has no website and no email address.

On Dec. 1, Feel the Heat PAC registered from a Washington P.O. box — just like many real super PACs. Its website never got up and running, and reception must have been cool: On Tuesday, it terminated itself. The Restore Trust PAC, started by the same person, had similar issues.

Also in December, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Today — clearly a play on Colbert’s super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow — registered with the FEC. On Dec. 12, it announced it wanted to be a super PAC, with a typo: “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Toady.”

Todd Bailey, who formed the super PAC, said it’s working for the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has decried the Citizens Unitedruling and the effect of money on politics. In other words, a joke on a satire is operating in earnest, apparently under the theory, “if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.”

“There’s a tool that’s been created that everyone’s using,” Bailey said. “You have to make a choice. Either stand on sidelines, or get in the game and use a tool that you’re really not comfortable with.”

Barbour Says Pardoned Murderers Deserved ‘a Second Chance’

2012-01-19T14:46:04-05:00

by Dafna Linzer

In an interview and opinion piece in the Washington Post, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said this week he was confident that a group of convicted killers, rapists and other criminals had been successfully rehabilitated in state prison and did not pose a risk to the public.

"They deserve a second chance, and I'm the only one who can give it to them," Barbour said on CBS This Morning.

Barbour ordered the releases of 26 prisoners, including men who had been convicted of murder, just as he was leaving office. Barbour had come to know some of the men through a state program that allows select prisoners to work odd jobs around the governor's mansion.

Most of the men who worked at the mansion Barbour wrote, "have been murderers, convicted of crimes of passion. Experts agree that these inmates are the least likely to commit another crime and the most likely to serve out their sentences well."

"My state spends about $350 million on corrections every year, much of it for rehabilitation, and a lot of guys, a lot of guys aren't ever going to be rehabilitated," Barbour said in the Wednesday interview with CBS's This Morning. But those he released "have been. They've redeemed themselves."

Barbour was criticized early in his governorship for a lack of pardons and then faced new criticism when he began pardoning murderers who worked at the mansion. In the Post, Barbour wrote that his predecessors had also pardoned such convicts. By the time he left office, Barbour had issued more than 200 acts of clemency, more than any recent predecessor.

But this last round of pardons raised the ire of Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, who claimed Barbour may have violated the state's constitution. A state judge, responding to the attorney general's concerns, temporarily blocked the release of 21 of the prisoners. Hood is now seeking to invalidate the pardons of at least 10 people Barbour ordered released.

Not all governors have the power to pardon. But at the federal level, the power belongs to the president alone. ProPublica's recent examination of pardon decisions by President George W. Bush found that white applicants were nearly four times as likely to receive pardons than minorities. Other factors, such as financial stability, employment, marital status and the support of a member of Congress, also increased the likelihood of receiving a pardon.

The president's power to pardon is enshrined in the Constitution. It is an act of forgiveness for a federal crime. It does not wipe away the conviction, but it does restore a person's full rights to vote, possess firearms and serve on federal juries.

Presidents are rarely faced with the possibility of pardoning violent criminals. Most applicants convicted of federal crimes served sentences for financial or drug-related offenses. Hundreds of ex-felons apply for presidential pardons each year but few are granted. President Obama has pardoned 22 people, none of whom committed violent crimes. Obama has also denied hundreds of requests.

But Barbour wrote that the murderers who were pardoned "have paid the price for their crimes, having served an average of 20 years' imprisonment." The power to pardon in Mississippi, he wrote, "is based on our Christian belief in repentance, forgiveness and redemption -- a second chance for those who are rehabilitated and who redeem themselves."

Deutsche Analyst Sounded Alarm When Asked to Alter Numbers

2012-01-19T09:04:53-05:00

by Carrick Mollenkamp, Special to ProPublica

At a time when mortgage-backed securities were imploding and customers were fleeing the market, a junior analyst at Deutsche Bank AG protested when he was asked to alter the numbers in a spreadsheet to make a Deutsche security look less risky to ratings agencies, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The analyst, this person said, was asked by a mid-level Deutsche executive in late 2007 to make it appear that the investment would produce more cash than the bank actually expected at certain time points.

The request came at a crucial moment. In the last months of 2007, investors had grown skittish about such investments amid signs that the housing bubble was deflating, if not bursting. Up and down Wall Street, banks were trying to persuade ratings agencies that large portions of their mortgage-backed securities merited the coveted AAA stamp, meaning that they posed negligible risks of default. The analyst was asked to alter the spreadsheets in order to get a better rating, the person said.

The analyst's protest prompted an internal investigation conducted by a law firm, according to five current and former Deutsche employees. The protest and probe have not been previously reported.

Much remains unclear about this incident. It could not be learned whether false information was actually provided to the ratings agencies, nor whether the internal investigation dismissed or substantiated the analyst's account.

Two Deutsche employees who worked on the same team as the analyst told ProPublica they knew of no wrongdoing, and Deutsche issued a strong denial. "Any suggestion that we misled ratings agencies is unfounded and categorically false," said a Deutsche spokesman, who declined to answer specific questions about the analyst's protest or the internal inquiry.

But four years later, the revelation that an analyst protested raises questions about how vigorously, if at all, the government is investigating Deutsche Bank and its practices leading up to the financial crisis. In any case, ProPublica has learned, neither the S.E.C. nor any other government regulator or law-enforcement agency has interviewed the analyst.

The SEC's director of enforcement is Robert Khuzami. Before joining the SEC in 2009, he had been Deutsche Bank's general counsel for the Americas since 2004. He worked as one of the bank's top lawyers during the time the analyst raised questions. Khuzami has said he would recuse himself from any actions regarding Deutsche.

Another key SEC official -- George Canellos, who oversees enforcement for the New York regional office -- used to be a corporate lawyer who defended Deutsche against M&T Bank Corp. M&T, which was suing Deutsche over a security similar to the one the analyst raised objections to, had sought to depose the analyst and obtain the results of Deutsche's internal inquiry, according to people familiar with the lawsuit.

In December, M&T settled with Deutsche for $55 million in cash, M&T said Tuesday in its fourth-quarter earnings statement.

An SEC spokesman said the agency doesn't discuss whether it is investigating a firm. In general, spokesman Kevin Callahan said, Khuzami doesn't work on matters related to Deutsche, and Canellos is recused with respect to any matters related to Deutsche Bank's CDO business.

"We have policies and procedures for all staff to even prevent even the appearance of a possible conflict of interest," Callahan said. "We have experienced and professional staff ... to follow the evidence no matter where it leads, how complicated the product or which firms are involved."

The analyst's protest sheds light on a little-understood function, called modeling, that was critical to many of the transactions that wreaked major damage during the financial crisis. Modelers created vast and intricate spreadsheets that estimated or "modeled" how the securities were likely to perform, including on payment schedules.

The Analyst

Through 2006 and into 2007, a part of Deutsche Bank known as the CDO Group was humming. CDOs, or collateralized debt obligations, were securities, underpinned by mortgages, that the bank sold to investors. Even as it hawked these CDOs, Deutsche Bank and some clients were often betting that they would fail, because the mortgages that backed them looked increasingly likely to default. In essence, the bank was selling to investors a product that the bank itself believed was composed of "crap," as one Deutsche executive famously put it.

During 2006 and '07 -- when CDO sales peaked -- Deutsche ranked fourth in issuing CDOs behind Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co., according to a 2011 report on the financial crisis issued by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Inside Deutsche's CDO Group, pressure to complete and sell the deals was intense, according to the Senate investigation, court records and people familiar with the Deutsche team. Investors were beginning to balk at purchasing CDOs because of signs the housing market was weakening. Employees often worked until 1 a.m. before being driven home in company-supplied town cars.

Among the hardest workers was a team of financial modelers and analysts. But despite their long hours, they "needed more bodies to process the work that was coming through," said a person familiar with the situation. So, some of the work was farmed out to a relatively cheap but highly skilled source of labor: Deutsche's Global Markets Centre in Mumbai, India. There, workers proficient in mathematics helped assemble and input the data for key spreadsheets.

Workers in Mumbai eagerly wanted to join Deutsche's prestigious and lucrative desks in London or New York. Few got the chance. One employee who did was Ajit Jain.

Jain had studied at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi and joined Deutsche in June 2006, according to employment records kept by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. He joined the New York office in September 2007, when the CDO Group was struggling to find investors.

Within a short time of his arrival, according to three people familiar with the matter, Jain raised questions about whether spreadsheets were being improperly altered. His complaints went to senior levels within Deutsche, including its legal and compliance departments, according to people familiar with the matter.

A Deutsche spokesman said Jain wasn't available for comment.

Those spreadsheets were often so large and complex they could take several minutes to open on a computer, according to a person familiar with them. The spreadsheets involved fiendishly complex arrays of inputs and sophisticated calculations, involving everything from the default rates of the mortgages that backed the CDO, to when borrowers would pay off their loans. But one purpose of the spreadsheets was simple: to estimate how much cash the CDOs would generate at certain time points.

One place those estimates went was to ratings agencies such as Moody's and Standard & Poor's.

The Quest for a AAA Rating

A CDO is divided into different slices, called tranches, depending on the risk and potential return. These tranches were rated by one of the ratings agencies. For a CDO to be sold, it was crucial that the largest tranche be rated AAA, indicating that this investment was low-risk because it was the last layer to take losses.

But there was a catch: The ratings agencies relied heavily on the banks themselves to estimate the payment schedule on the underlying assets of the CDO, according to a person familiar with the work done at the ratings agencies. It was an "honors" system, this person said, in which the ratings agencies "outsourced" to the banks the inputs for the spreadsheets.

Those spreadsheets are the essence of what are known as CDO models, because the spreadsheets provide a model of how the CDO is likely to perform.

Meanwhile, banks knew how to engineer the key elements of a CDO spreadsheet so that it would spit out cash flow and other outcomes that would meet the ratings agencies' off-the-shelf formulas, according to a former ratings analyst and a former CDO manager who worked with Deutsche. In other words, banks structuring the deals knew what outcomes were necessary to receive a AAA or AA rating, and they knew how to adjust the spreadsheets to produce these outcomes, these people said.

That's the same conclusion that John Griffin came to. A professor of finance at the University of Texas at Austin, he co-authored a 2011 paper on CDO modeling that said banks pushed increasingly for top-tier AAA ratings, and that ratings agencies succumbed to the pressure. This led to a "downward movement in standards over time," Griffin said in an interview.

"Cash flow modeling is more susceptible to influence from the investment bank," the paper said.

Griffin and his co-author, Dragon Yongjun Tang of the University of Hong Kong, wrote that former employees at two investment banks told them that banks had learned how to tailor CDO models to obtain good ratings.

That is very similar to what Jain told his bosses was happening at Deutsche. According to the person familiar with the matter, a mid-level Deutsche executive asked Jain to alter the spreadsheets by changing certain payment schedules to win a higher rating.

It is not known whether Deutsche submitted such modified spreadsheets to a ratings agency to receive better ratings. As best as could be determined, the specific CDO Jain complained about was not sold to investors. It is not known why.

The Internal Investigation

According to people with knowledge of the internal probe, the alarm Jain sounded went to senior levels inside the bank, including Deutsche's compliance and legal departments.

Soon, Deutsche called in the New York law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy to conduct an investigation. The law firm interviewed employees on the CDO desk, according to people familiar with the situation.

Two employees on the desk, in interviews with ProPublica, said they knew of no improper modeling, and a third said he didn't know because he wasn't part of the modeling unit.

"I personally don't think there is anything interesting," said Konstantin Kulev, who worked as a modeler on the CDO team, according to people familiar with the situation and internal Deutsche documents. In an interview with ProPublica, Kulev declined to answer specific questions.

Milen Shikov, another senior modeler, said in an interview that he knew Jain "did raise some questions" about the CDOs. But Shikov said the matter was "resolved."

Shikov recalled that he was interviewed by a law firm -- he could not remember the firm's name -- for three hours. He said he gave the law firm's questioners an email exchange with a ratings agency that he said showed Deutsche had followed the ratings agency's guidelines for preparing cash flow estimates.

A Milbank, Tweed spokeswoman declined comment. A Deutsche spokesman declined to discuss the inquiry or release the law firm's findings, but he categorically denied the bank had misled any ratings agency.

Lawsuits and a Senate Investigation

It is not known whether the SEC is investigating Deutsche. The SEC has settled with other large banks, such as Citigroup Inc. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. Critics of the agency say its settlements have been too small and have allowed the banks to neither admit nor deny wrongdoing.

Last month, M&T settled its civil suit against Deutsche, ending the high-profile case that had been wending its way through a New York state court.

M&T had alleged that Deutsche improperly sold slices of a $1.1 billion CDO called Gemstone VII that lost more than 95 percent of their value within months. M&T, according to its complaint, bought two layers of Gemstone VII: a $42 million layer rated AAA and a $40 million layer rated AA. "The AAA ratings and AA ratings were major considerations in M&T's determination to invest in the Gemstone VII notes, because they indicated that the notes were safe, stable and nearly risk-free investments," M&T claimed.

The complaint does not mention how payment schedules were modeled. But M&T contended that Deutsche and the outside Gemstone VII manager "gave false information to Standard & Poor's and Moody's, the two leading credit ratings agencies, to induce them to rate the Gemstone VII CDO notes higher than the notes deserved so as to overstate their quality and safety."

Jain's objections did not concern Gemstone VII but a later, similar CDO, according to people familiar with the matter. As part of its investigation for the suit, M&T learned of Jain's protest and the internal Deutsche inquiry, according to the person familiar with the suit, and sought to depose Jain and obtain the inquiry report.

Judge John Michalek sealed the case in April, and now M&T has settled. So the suit has revealed very little new information about Deutsche's practices.

Deutsche declined to discuss the lawsuit. In court papers, Deutsche and its law firm, Milbank, Tweed, said M&T knew the risks of investing in securities underpinned by subprime loans. A Deutsche court filing in 2008 called M&T a "sophisticated participant" in mortgage securities and that the bank had "received detailed written disclosures about the risks of the investment." The document added that M&T "was counseled to perform its own due diligence" and was told "it could not rely" on Deutsche.

At least one lawsuit concerning Deutsche's CDOs is continuing. An affiliate of Germany's IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG sued Deutsche in October after the affiliate lost money investing in five Deutsche CDOs, according to court documents from that case. The IKB affiliate alleges that by late 2005, "Deutsche knew that the subprime market had increasingly come to resemble a house of cards teetering on the verge of collapse." The court filings do not mention the modeling Jain raised questions about.

A Deutsche spokesman declined comment. One of the most detailed public accounts of Deutsche's CDO business is the 646-page, 2011 report produced by the Senate investigation. But the report does not discuss how payment schedules for Deutsche CDOs were modeled, or the internal inquiry that stemmed from Jain's alarm.

The Senate report discusses Greg Lippmann, a Deutsche risk manager who oversaw the assets in Gemstone VII and other CDOs, and helped Deutsche earn $200 million by betting against some of the bank's mortgage-backed securities. Lippmann called assets that went into the CDO a "pig" and "crap," according to the Senate report.

Deutsche's views "were fully communicated to the market through research reports, industry events, trading desk commentary and press coverage," a bank spokeswoman said. "Despite the bearish views held by some, Deutsche Bank was long the housing market and endured significant losses."

Within a few months after Jain raised the alarm, many on Deutsche's CDO team had left the bank, according to FINRA records, and now work for boutique firms that specialize in buying distressed mortgage bonds -- exactly the kind of bonds that destroyed the CDOs they once created at Deutsche.

Jain remains at Deutsche.