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Bill Buzenberg interviews former Representative Lee H. Hamilton

The Center in the News . . .

A recent Council on Foreign Relations backgrounder titled U.S-Pakistan Military Cooperation cited the Center's Collateral Damage project, which found among its major findings that Pakistan was the largest recipient of U.S. military aid, receiving almost $5 billion since 9/11, with little in the form of federal oversight and accountability.

The House of Representatives recently amended the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Among the newly expanded public provisions, White House task forces will be prohibited from operating in secrecy, transcripts or recordings of committee meetings will be electronically available, and advisory committee appointments must be made without regard to political affiliation or activity. The Center's Shadow Government project investigated FACA loopholes and several conflict of interest cases more than a year ago.

The Wall Street Journal featured the Center's latest analysis of the lobby spending by the pharmaceutical industry, health product manufacturers, and their trade groups. The Center found that the pharmaceutical manufacturers and their trade groups spent a record $168 million on federal lobbying last year, a 32 percent increase from 2006.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), requested by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, tasked the Defense Department with providing greater oversight in the way it handles Pakistan reimbursement claims for coalition support funds (CSF), a program created after 9/11 to reimburse key U.S. allies in the global war on terror. In May 2007, the Center's Collateral Damage project found that post-9/11 U.S. military aid to Pakistan, totaling more than $5 billion, was subject to virtually no congressional oversight.

Washington Post national politics reporter Shailagh Murray in the paper's daily campaign 2008 blog, 'The Trail,' cited a Center interview with James A. Johnson, who recently resigned from Senator Obama's vice presidential search committee. In the interview, Johnson had "kind words" to say about veteran senator, and potential VP contender, Christopher Dodd.

On Thursday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its Phase II report on prewar Iraq intelligence. Committee Chairman John D. (Jay) Rockefeller said: "It is my belief that the Bush administration was fixated on Iraq, and used the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaeda as justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. To accomplish this, top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11. Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses." To read more about the Bush administration's false statements about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, check out the Center's War Card project.

A Morning Call.com editorial cited a 2003 Center survey that ranked all 50 states' lobby disclosure laws. Until 2006, Pennsylvania had no lobbying law at all and was ranked 50th in the nation by the Center's survey. Currently, the legislature will consider a measure that would forbid gifts and entertainment from lobbyists to public officials.

Harry Shearer, actor, entertainer, musician, artist, and creator of the song 935 Lies - featured in his upcoming CD, Songs of the Bushmen - said in The Huffington Post, "Just in case Scott McClellan wasn't keeping count, the Center was: at least 935 falsehoods told by the president and his aides in the run-up to the [Iraq] war."

The Sunlight Foundation's SunSpots blog featured the "eye-popping reports" from the Center's Shadow Government project. The Center's Shadow Government project investigated a few federal advisory committees, part of a vast maze of committees, tasked with influencing federal government agencies on a variety of safety and policy issues, often done under secretive conditions with little public accountability.

Douglas Feith, President Bush's undersecretary of defense for policy from July 2001 to August 2005, was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart May 12 and talked about the Iraq War. He said, "I think a lot of what the administration said was correct." The Center's Iraq War Card project, which documented 935 false statements made by Bush and six top administration officials in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, would prove otherwise.

Watch the world premier video of Harry Shearer's video "935 Lies." Shearer, best known for his work on The Simpsons, This is Spinal Tap, Le Show, Saturday Night Live, For Your Consideration and A Mighty Wind, unveiled a video satire based on the Center's Iraq War Card project, which documented the 935 false statements orchestrated by top Bush Administration officials in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune's Kirsten Mitchell reported that Sen. Pete Domenici and 16 other Republican senators, who support the easing of offshore drilling restrictions on the Outer Continental Shelf for oil and gas, have received more than $3 million in campaign contributions from individuals and PACS affiliated with the oil and gas industry since Jan. 1, 2007.

The Washington Post's Matthew Mosk reported that Steven A. Betts, a top presidential campaign fundraiser for Sen. John McCain, was one of several Arizona developers who benefited from McCain-engineered land swaps.

TheStreet.com's John Stout cited the Center's Buying of the President 2008 chapter on Stealth Campaigns in "How Much Does It Cost to Buy a Presidency?" Political non-profit groups, such as MoveOn.org and the American Leadership Project, "will probably play an important role in this presidential election," he said.

Advisory Board

JAMES MacGREGOR BURNS, a political scientist, historian and Pulitzer-Prize winning Presidential biographer, serves as senior scholar at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. The author of more than a dozen books, Burns has devoted his career to the study of leadership in American political life.

JOEL CHASEMAN, Chairman of the Board of Advisors of Nearware Networks, a company pioneering the use of artificial intelligence in marketing, served as the Chairman of the Washington Post Company's Post-Newsweek Stations, as a director of both KingWorld Productions and the Washington Post Company, as Chairman of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and as a trustee of the Museum of Radio and Television.

EDITH EVERETT is co-founder and president of the Everett Family Foundation, whose priorities are education and young people. For over 30 years she was senior vice president of investments at Gruntal & Co., a New York Stock Exchange member firm. She currently serves on a number of philanthropic boards including Human Rights Watch, American Jewish Committee, International Hillel and the Blaustein Institute for Human Rights, and for 23 years she was a board member of the City University of New York.

GUSTAVO GODOY, a broadcast journalist and four-time Emmy Award winner, is the executive editor and publisher of Vista, a monthly magazine that reaches Hispanic Americans in top markets across the nation. Now entering its 18th year, Vista's circulation is more than 1.1 million per month.

JOSIE GOYTISOLO co-founded and served as the CEO of Divina.com, an online women's network for the United States, Latin America and Spain. The four-time Emmy winner was an executive producer at WPLG-TV, Channel 10, in Miami. Prior to that, she was news director of the Miami-based Telemundo Television Network.

HERBERT HAFIF, an attorney, pioneered class action litigation and major defense fraud cases. He was selected Trial Lawyer of the Year, Consumer Advocate of the Year, Red Cross Philanthropist of the Year and voted Outstanding President of the California Trial Bar.

REV. THEODORE HESBURGH, the President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, has served on 12 Presidential Commissions. His stature as an elder statesman in American higher education is reflected in his 135 honorary degrees, the most ever awarded to an American.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON is an author and the Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania. An expert on political campaigns, she frequently appears as a commentator on CBS News, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, National Public Radio and CNN's Inside Politics.

SONIA R. JARVIS is an attorney based in Washington, DC specializing in civil rights, diversity issues, nonprofit counsel, and general civil matters. A former executive director of the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation, she is currently a visiting professor at the School of Public Affairs at the City University of New York. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale University Law School.

CHARLES OGLETREE holds the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law Chair at Harvard Law School. In 2001, Professor Ogletree received the prestigious Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion of Merit from the Washington Bar Association and in 2000, was selected by the National Law Journal as one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America."

CHARLES PILLER, co-founding Board member and chairman, is an investigative journalist specializing in science and technology. An author of two books, he is currently a science writer for the Los Angeles Times, based in San Francisco.

BEN SHERWOOD is a bestselling author and executive producer of the ABC program "Good Morning America." Previously he was senior broadcast producer of the "NBC Nightly News" with Tom Brokaw, his efforts honored three years in a row with the Edward R. Murrow Award for best newscast and several national news Emmys. From 1989 to 1993 he worked as an investigative producer with ABC News' "PrimeTime" Live in New York and Washington.

HAROLD M. WILLIAMS, former Dean of the Graduate School of Management at UCLA for seven years, is President Emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, California. Williams served as the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 1977 to 1981 and currently is Of Counsel for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, author and the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University, is a leading authority on race and poverty in the United States. A MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1987 to 1992, he was a recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States.