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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.

U.K. Considering Formal Investigation Into Cigarette Smuggling

By Duncan Campbell

LONDON, June 15, 2000 — The British government is considering launching an in-depth investigation into "extremely serious" allegations of international tobacco smuggling by giant tobacco multinational BAT (British American Tobacco).

In a scathing report about the conduct of the tobacco industry, Britain's House of Commons Select Committee on Health said that the allegations, reported in Britain's Guardian newspaper and based on research by the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, "merit careful investigation."

"The allegations need to be looked at independently and we therefore call on the DTI [Department of Trade and Industry] to investigate them," the committee reported on June 14. Under Britain's 1985 Companies Act, companies that are suspected of fraud and misconduct can face investigation by DTI commercial inspectors who are granted powers of search and seizure, and who have the right to take evidence under oath from company employees and directors.

The report on the "Tobacco Industry and the Health Risks of Smoking" was the result of a detailed nine-month investigation. It was unanimously approved by members of Parliament from all parties.

Citing evidence subpoenaed from advertising agency files that showed how another tobacco company had advertised to boost smuggling, the committee warned, "we do not believe it would be appropriate for health policy to be shaped by the activities of criminal gangs."

This company, Gallaher Group PLC, largest manufacturer of tobacco products for the British market, and its advertisers were "aware of the knowledge that the goods will be smuggled back into this country . . . their advertisers appear to deliberately frame their strategy to appeal to the criminals undertaking the smuggling."

If the company concerned genuinely believes that the "problems associated with smuggled tobacco are a 'tragedy,' they should make sure that all their business practices and those of their advertisers work against the illegal trade rather than encourage it," the committee ruled.

"The tobacco industry has run rings around the British Government for 50 years," Committee Chairman David Hinchliffe said. Referring journalists to industry lobby payments to members of Parliament that had been disclosed, he charged that there had hitherto been "manipulation of the political process around tobacco legislation." The British government's failure to totally ban cigarette advertising on racing cars, he said, had been "pusillanimous." Health targets to curb smoking had been set too low.

A spokesman for the secretary of state for trade and industry, Stephen Byers, said that the proposal to investigate BAT's alleged involvement in smuggling was being taken "very seriously . . . [he will] actively consider the report's recommendations."

BAT responded by restating that "The company has appointed a leading independent UK law firm with no previous connections to the Group to examine its current business practices and report to a special committee of independent non-executive directors. Their findings will be reported to shareholders and will be shared with the Department of Trade and Industry, and with the Committee, if they so wish."

However, Committee members had said that they were not satisfied with an internal “audit committee” inquiry that BAT promised to launch in February. “We will be calling for its findings when they are available. But this is not enough,” they reported.

The Health Committee also asked: "If [the allegations] prove to be substantiated, the case for criminal proceedings against BAT should be considered; if they prove to be false, then those perpetrating them should publicly apologize to BAT for what will have amounted to a malicious slur on the company's name."

ICIJ's reports on international tobacco smuggling, in late January and early February, explained how British American Tobacco condoned tax evasion and exploited the smuggling of billions of cigarettes in a global effort to boost sales and lure generations of new smokers. One report dealt with Latin America, including Colombia. A second report focused on Asia.

The reports were based on company documents disclosed in 1999, after the settlement of litigation by Minnesota against the five largest international tobacco companies. BAT then placed about 8 million pages of documents in a public depository in Guildford, England, as outlined by court order.

BAT is the second-largest international tobacco company, after Philip Morris. Philip Morris was recently named in a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act lawsuit filed in New York state by a majority of Colombian governors who allege the tobacco giant swindled them out of billions of dollars through cigarette smuggling into that South American country.

An international study four years ago suggested that about one-third of global tobacco exports were never officially imported to any country, according to trade statistics. Instead, they disappeared into black markets all over the world. BAT's own documents, reproduced in the report, suggest that by 1993, the global market in smuggled cigarettes was about 300 billion a year. The same documents called for the company to prioritize "the active and effective management of such business."

In internal company papers, smuggling was referred to as "DNP," or "Duty Not Paid." BAT told the committee that the phrase did not necessarily mean smuggling. But, according to BAT chairman Martin Broughton, "that is not to say that there are not times where DNP would be the same as smuggled in one market."

Hinchliffe, the committee chairman, told journalists and industry representatives in London that he had taken note that BAT had declared that it would not sue over allegations that the company and its senior staff had been involved in smuggling. "I personally pressed BAT whether they intended to take legal action and they said they did not," he said.

"You will draw your own conclusions from that, as I did mine," he added.

BAT's policy on access to disclosed company records was "indefensible," the committee added. If BAT did not rapidly change its policy on access, and place on the Internet documents already scanned, "the obvious inference should be drawn that they are resisting any attempts to have wider public access to this material."

Committee members had hired a professional archivist to accompany them when they inspected the Guildford Depository. Dr. Caroline Shenton found that the staff and managers were untrained, that restrictions on access were inexplicable, and that there was no reason why hundreds of thousands of documents already scanned had not been put on the Internet.

The committee also inspected BAT's modern research and development facilities and noted that "with their highly qualified staff and state of the art equipment . . . [the contrast with] the archive, with its untrained staff and slow computers, was stark."

BAT was also slammed in the committee report for its attitude to the World Health Organization, which is attempting to limit the death rate expected as a result of smoking between now and 2030, when the annual death toll is predicted to rise from 4 million to 10 million. "To call an organization committed to improving global health 'zealots' and a 'super-nanny' because of its concern about the 10 million deaths which will be caused by tobacco each year by the late 2020s seems to us bizarre . . . it would be a hollow victory if, as a result of more stringent action taken on tobacco control in the developed world, smoking related deaths were merely exported to the world's poorer nations."

Concluding his presentation of the report, MP Hinchliffe warned, "the tobacco epidemic has hardly begun."

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