by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica and Doug Smith, Los Angeles Times - April 16, 2009
Civilian contractors died like soldiers. They were injured like soldiers. But back home, the U.S. government consigned the wounded and their families to a private insurance system that shunted them to substandard treatment and delayed their care as they suffered from devastating injuries, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times, ABC News and ProPublica has found. Read more...
Every taxpayer dollar, every recipient and every program. The bailout project we're unveiling today lays it all out. And it's all translated into English. 
One of the OLC memos released appears to inadvertently reveal that a top al-Qaida suspect captured in northern Iraq in January 2004 was held by the CIA in a secret prison.
Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden was fond of saying that when it came to handling high-value terror suspects, he would play in fair territory, but with “chalk dust on my cleats.” Four legal memos released yesterday by the Obama administration make it clear that the referee role in CIA interrogations was played by its medical and psychological personnel.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, which authored the memos, legal approval to use waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other abusive techniques pivoted on the existence of a “system of medical and psychological monitoring” of interrogations. Medical and psychological personnel were assigned to monitor interrogations and intervene to ensure that interrogators didn’t cause “serious or permanent harm” and thus violate the U.S. federal statute against torture.
The reasoning sounds almost circular. As one memo, from May 2005, put it: “The close monitoring of each detainee for any signs that he is at risk of experiencing severe physical pain reinforces the conclusion that the combined use of interrogation techniques is not intended to inflict such pain.”
In other words, as long as medically trained personnel were present and approved of the techniques being used, it was not torture.
The memos provide official confirmation of both much-reported and previously unknown roles of doctors, psychologists, physician assistants and other medical personnel with the CIA’s Office of Medical Services (OMS).
The drum beat continues. Two banks failed last night. American Sterling Bank of Sugar Creek, Missouri and Great Basin Bank of Nevada located in Elko.
Every week, we take stock of how the week unfolded for the stories we're tracking in Scandal Watch (see the right sidebar). Here is how we do it. And, as always, feel free to suggest new scandals.
TARP cash was supposed to ultimately wend its way to borrowers, but it seems to have gotten stuck in bank coffers along the way: Lending actually fell in February at the 21 largest banks receiving bailout bucks, the Treasury said this week. (Mortgage lending did see a significant boost, though.) Meanwhile, mortgage lenders are lifting foreclosure moratoriums, putting more people out on the street just as the Obama administration unrolls its "homeowner bailout."
Last month President Obama launched the so-called homeowner bailout—a $75 billion plan that he said will help an estimated 9 million American borrowers modify or refinance their mortgages.
Rather than take his word for it, in the coming months, we’re going to be tracking just how successful the plan is. In particular, we’ll be following several borrowers who are looking for relief.
That means we need your help. If you are applying for a loan modification through the government’s plan, we want your story. Also feel free to forward this request on to family, friends and neighbors.
Before Steven Rattner achieved the lofty title of car czar in the Obama administration, he may have been the "senior executive" named in an SEC complaint alleging Quadrangle Group, which Rattner co-founded, is caught up in an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving New York's pension fund, reports the Wall Street Journal. Said executive allegedly agreed to buy the rights to a low-budget movie named "Chooch," co-produced by the deputy comptroller, and was then promised a $100 million investment.
Also, the shuttering of Washington lobbying powerhouse PMA Group after the FBI raided its offices last year is being felt in Congress, the Washington Post reports. FEC reports show that three senior members of the House Appropriations Committee, Peter J. Visclosky (D-IN), James Moran (D-VA) and John P. Murtha (D-PA) -- who has ties to the lobbying firm's founder -- saw large individual donations drop 76 percent in the first quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year.
Check out more of our roundup of the best investigative stories around the Web. Was there a story we missed? Please keep sending us your picks or include them in the comments section below.
This is the latest roundup from our stimulus blog.
The Associated Press reports that several states are complaining of not having enough money to oversee the disbursement of the billions of dollars they’re receiving from the feds. Nebraska’s governor’s office told lawmakers at an Appropriations Committee hearing that it expects to spend more than $1.2 million over two years to oversee the spending of about $1.5 billion in federal stimulus funds.
The Texas state Senate voted yesterday to accept $555 million in stimulus money for its jobless fund, defying Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who does not support expanding the unemployment insurance program. The measure received bipartisan support but still has to pass the state House. Perry is one of a number of Republican governors who threatened not to accept federal stimulus money.
In Jefferson, Mo., yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced details of how the Department of Energy will dole out $3.3 billion in funding for building an electrical smart grid. Under the plan, the Department of Energy will provide grants up to $20 million for smart grid technology projects.
And yesterday, the Government Accountability Office released a report (PDF) stating that plans from the Small Business Administration for an emergency lending program are nearly six weeks overdue. It’s been exactly two months since President Barack Obama signed the stimulus bill, and deadlines are already creeping up.
Project of the day: Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen broke ground on the state’s first Recovery Act project—replacing three aging timber bridges that are nearly four decades old.
This is the latest from our new bailout blog. Check out our all-seeing database of the bailout billions.
Since we launched Eye on the Bailout Wednesday, we’ve gotten a couple of questions about what data, exactly, we’re showing here and why. Up at the top of the page, you can see “the $1.1 trillion taxpayer-funded bailout.” But you might have seen press reports that put the number at more than $10 trillion.
The key is the source of the money. We have chosen to focus on money coming from the Treasury Department, which is taxpayer money – spent with Congress’ authorization.
Other calculations that come up with far higher totals include commitments from the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – spending that raises fundamentally different issues since it’s not taxpayer money. The Fed, for instance, is a mixture of public and private elements with the power to create money. The FDIC is a government agency funded by member bank fees. Both, of course, can have enormous impact on the economy, so they bear close watching, and we’ll be referencing them frequently on the blog here.
One side note: In a number of instances, the Treasury has joined with the Fed and FDIC to bail out an individual institution like AIG or Citigroup. In those cases, our database will show you how much Treasury has committed, but you can see the total commitment (including what the Fed and FDIC put up) by clicking on the individual entries.
Here’s more background on our methodology.
Any other questions?
This is the latest from our new bailout blog. Check out our all-seeing database of the bailout billions.
Good morning! Three big stories this morning:
1) Citigroup posted a first-quarter net profit today. As many sources note, one major factor is an accounting change that allows companies to record the market value of their debt as unrealized gain. That won Citi $2.5 billion in paper gains: They posted a $1.6 billion profit. Calculated Risk wonders, "So when do they pay back the TARP money?"
2) The New York Times reports that AIG CEO Edward Liddy owns a significant stake in Goldman Sachs. Goldman is, the Times notes, "one of the biggest beneficiaries of the government rescue" of AIG.
Among the OLC memos released today, one appears to inadvertently reveal that a top al-Qaida suspect captured in northern Iraq in January 2004 was held by the CIA in a secret prison.
After Hassan Ghul was arrested in early 2004, President Bush told reporters: "Just last week we made further progress in making America more secure when a fellow named Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Hassan Ghul reported directly to Khalid Sheik Mohammad, who was the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. He was captured in Iraq, where he was helping al Qaeda to put pressure on our troops."
Military officials and former CIA director George Tenet described Ghul as an al-Qaida facilitator who delivered money and messages to top leaders.
The U.S. government never publicly discussed Ghul again.
The 9/11 Commission report said Ghul was in "U.S. custody." But the government itself never discussed Ghul’s whereabouts. And the CIA has never acknowledged holding Ghul.
Three years after his capture, human rights groups were surprised when Ghul was not included among 14 high-value detainees who were transferred out of the CIA’s black sites program and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2007.
Since then, he has been considered a missing, or ghost detainee. But in the heavily redacted OLC memo dated May 30, 2005, government censors appeared to have missed a single reference to his name and confinement during a lengthy description of the interrogation techniques used against him.
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As President Obama determines whether to release memos that the Bush administration kept secret, check out our interactive list of relevant memos, both public and secret.
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Many California Health Workers Not Checked for Criminal Pasts California's failure to check the criminal backgrounds of health professionals extends well beyond nurses.
Post-Katrina, White Vigilantes Shot African-Americans With Impunity In the days after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans fractured along racial fault lines as its government collapsed.
How the West's Energy Boom Could Threaten Drinking Water A rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the Colorado River and its tributaries threatens its future.
At Siemens, Bribery Was Just a Line Item To understand Siemens' $1.6 billion fine, it’s worth delving into the story of former Siemens exec Reinhard Siekaczek.
20 Years After Lockerbie, Aviation Security Gaps Remain A review of security breaches, government testimony and audits shows there are still gaps terrorists could exploit.
How Stimulus Spending and Unemployment Match Up A ProPublica analysis shows that on a per capita basis, states with higher unemployment rates tend to get less transportation and infrastructure spending.
History of U.S. Gov't Bailouts See How Past Gov't Bailouts Measured Up
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