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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.

Tobacco Firms Used Suspected Drug Traffickers, EU Lawsuit Claims

By Erik Schelzig and Mary Beth Warner

WASHINGTON, November 7, 2000 —

Lawsuit accusations include money laundering, wire fraud and mail fraud.

A European Union lawsuit against two major U.S. tobacco companies says RJR Nabisco had dealings with suspected narcotics traffickers in Spain and money-laundering suspects in the Caribbean, and claims that smuggling activities by Philip Morris "have enabled drug lords to launder their illicit profits."

According to the complaint, filed Nov. 3 in U.S. District Court Eastern District of New York, both RJR and Philip Morris shipped American cigarettes to smugglers in Panama, who then re-shipped them to Europe for sale within the European Union.

In January, the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the results of its six-month investigation into global cigarette smuggling. The investigation, which focused mostly on British American Tobacco, involved the analysis of more than 11,000 pages of internal corporate documents and later prompted the British government to launch its own formal inquiry.

The EU lawsuit accused the two companies of "involvement in organized crime in pursuit of a massive, ongoing smuggling scheme." Philip Morris produces Marlboro, the world's best selling cigarette brand, and RJR manufactures the popular Camel and Winston brands.

According to the suit, RJR defendants had dealings with "individuals in Spain who they knew or should have known were identified by Spanish legal authorities as being involved in narcotics trafficking." The suit mentions one RJR customer in Spain who purchased large quantities of RJR cigarettes and smuggled them throughout the country, while at the same time being suspected by Spanish authorities of narcotics trafficking.

"Representatives of the Philip Morris Defendants are on actual notice that the source of funds used to purchase their cigarettes is drug trafficking, yet they continue to receive these funds and to sell cigarettes to these persons," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit includes the allegation that RJR produced a certain type of Winston cigarette presentation, called a "patanegra," to sell in Spain to their "best smuggling customers so as to insure that they could maintain their competitive advantage over other smugglers and the RJR Defendants could increase their market share."

The 188-page complaint alleges that Philip Morris, RJR Nabisco, Japan Tobacco (to whom RJR sold its international cigarette operations in 1999), and related subsidiaries, are guilty of violations of the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act of 1970. The accusations include money laundering, wire fraud and mail fraud.

The lawsuit contends that the companies have facilitated cigarette smuggling into Europe in violation of U.S. law and customs agreements between the U.S. and the European Union, an organization of 15 Western European nations.

The complaint alleges that "billions of dollars" have been lost through the evasion of customs duties and other fees and taxes, and seeks money damages, which could be trebled under the RICO Act.

The European complaint is the latest in a string of actions against tobacco companies related to cigarette smuggling:

  • The British Department of Trade and Industry launched a formal investigation in October into alleged smuggling activities by British American Tobacco, the parent company of Brown & Williamson Tobacco.

  • The majority of Colombian governors filed a civil RICO suit against Philip Morris in May in New York, charging that the Colombian states were defrauded of billions of dollars in lost tax revenue over a 10-year period. That suit was amended in September to include British American Tobacco.
      
  • Ecuador filed a civil RICO suit in June in Miami-Dade Circuit Court against Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and RJR.
      
  • Canada filed a $1 billion civil RICO lawsuit against RJR and its related tobacco companies in New York state in December 1999, contending cigarette smuggling across the U.S.-Canadian border. The case was dismissed last June on the basis of an 18th-century English common law rule that prohibits courts from being used to collect another country's revenue. Canadian officials have appealed the decision.
According to a RJR statement, the company has not seen the European lawsuit, but argues that any suggestion that the company "has been involved in smuggling activity -- in Europe or elsewhere -- is unsupportable and untrue." Japan Tobacco's New York office would not comment on the complaint. Philip Morris also stated that it had not seen the lawsuit. Philip Morris Europe's vice president for corporate affairs, David R. Davis, said in a statement that "we will vigorously contest the [European] Commission's unprecedented attempt to utilize American courts to impose liability on us."

Jonathan Faull, a spokesman for the European Commission in Brussels, told the Center that the lawsuit was rightly filed in the United States. "We believe that this is the proper jurisdiction, as we are alleging there's been a violation of U.S. law by U.S. companies," said Faull.

Japan Tobacco continued with smuggling policies already in place, after purchasing RJR's international tobacco business in 1999, according to the suit.

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