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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.

ICIJ Member Works
Australian Parliament Warned On Tobacco Smuggling-Crime Link

By Bill Birnbauer and Leo Sisti

WASHINGTON, April 11, 2001 — A Public i report on tobacco smuggling and organized crime has been introduced into the Australian Parliament, amid warnings that the issues raised should figure in a billion-dollar deal involving British American Tobacco and its national affiliate.

"The report reads like something out of a James Bond novel," said Labor member Jann McFarlane of Stirling. "It includes the U.S. Mafia, Triads and Sicilian crime families."

McFarlane introduced the report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, into the federal Parliament April 1.

A close eye should be kept on the outcome of an investigation by the British Department of Trade and Industry, as well as civil racketeering cases brought by the European Community and the governors of Colombia against BAT, Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds in U.S. District Court, she said.

"An adverse finding in either of these against British American Tobacco PLC will raise questions regarding the company's corporate citizenship. This is extremely important now that British American Tobacco Australasia is almost wholly controlled by it," said McFarlane.

The British government investigation, launched last October, followed an investigation by ICIJ and reported on The Public i, which found that BAT -- the world's second-biggest tobacco manufacturer -- for decades secretly encouraged tax evasion and cigarette smuggling.

REPORTS
A further investigation by the journalists' consortium, published in March, found that senior officials at British American Tobacco, Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds worked closely with companies and individuals directly connected to organized crime in at least five countries.

BAT Australasia is being taken over by its British parent in a $1.1 billion deal that comes after its chairman, Nick Greiner, approached the UK company in 2000 because of concerns about BAT Australasia's share price.

Greiner and BAT Australasia might not have been aware, before the merger, of the "shadow on BAT Plc's reputation in relation to cigarette smuggling," McFarlane said.

She added that while the sale of illegal tobacco was highly organized and profitable, in Australia smuggling was largely confined to "chop chop" cheap, untaxed tobacco sold in plastic bags in delicatessens, pubs and from the back of cars.

However, smuggling in Asia and elsewhere was a highly organized and profitable industry, she said. In East Timor, for example, smokers could buy a carton of Marlboro for the price of a packet in Australia.

A spokesman for BAT Australasia, Brendan Brady, said BAT would comment on the British investigation only after it was concluded and reported. In Australia, the company worked closely with authorities to clamp down on illegal "chop chop" sales, the spokesman said.

Italian Report Criticizes Philip Morris

In Italy, meanwhile, a parliamentary report has criticized Philip Morris for not doing enough to help authorities track cigarette smugglers linked to criminal organizations.

Philip Morris signed an agreement in 1999 with the Italian Financial Administration, aimed at reducing smuggling. The agreement called for a special bar-code system capable of tracing the producing factory and the first purchaser of smuggled cigarettes.

RELATED LAWSUITS
Click on the links to read the full text of the RICO lawsuit filed on behalf of:
- The European Community
- The Colombian Governors
- Canada
Italian authorities insisted on having bar codes on every carton of 10 packs of cigarettes. But Philip Morris would agree only to put the bar-code on cigarette cases (10,000 cigarettes each), where bar code stamps can be more easily removed, according to the report.

"It's important to know who the first purchaser (of the seized loads) is, because through him and as a result of an intelligence action we can go back up to the organizer of the traffic," Vittorio Cutrupi, general manager of the Government-owned Italian Tobacco Monopoly, said in response to questions during commission hearings in Rome in early March.

The 130-page report, criticizing Philip Morris, was approved by the anti-mafia commission of Italy's parliament and was the result of an eight-month investigation into cigarette smuggling.

A senior member of the Anti-mafia Investigative Agency, who spoke to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on condition of anonymity, said: "Unanimously, the tobacco multinationals and the smugglers refuse the bar code system stamped on every carton because smugglers would be forced to lose time unwrapping cartons to avoid the identification of those packets."

Cigarette loads smuggled across the Adriatic from Montenegro and seized by Italy's tax and customs police, the Guardia di Finanza, have been packed in cases or cartons with no bar codes.

"The multinationals don't want to lose revenues from contraband, which represent more than 30 percent of the total world trade," the report said. It estimated that 280 billion cigarettes out of 1,000 billion cigarettes exported annually by tobacco manufacturers are traded on the black market, nearly triple the 1990 estimate of 100 billion cigarettes. The report estimated that countries suffer around $16 billion in lost tax and duty revenues from cigarette smuggling every year.

Members of Italy's Anti-mafia Investigative Agency were quoted in the report as saying that "the poor collaboration of the multinationals in the investigations on the bar-code system proves their attitude toward the matter of contraband."

"The 1999 agreement (with Philip Morris) didn't work," Italian Finance Minister Ottaviano Del Turco said during the commission hearings.

The commission report also criticized the role played by Montenegro in the contraband cigarette market. "Institutional leaders of Montenegro were aware of the contraband system and they took part in it," the report said.

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