All Blog Posts from Investigative Round-Up

The Washington Times:
During the worst economic downturn in decades, the federal program that provides free legal help to impoverished Americans has spent tax dollars on a decorative natural-stone wall, no-bid contracts for consultants, alcohol for a congressional party and more than 100 casino hotel rooms that were never occupied, government documents show. (read the article)

LA Times:
The CIA kept a highly classified counter-terrorism program secret from Congress for eight years at the direction of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, according to sources familiar with an account that agency Director Leon E. Panetta provided recently to House and Senate committees.
(read the article)

Washington Post:
Four months after he was sworn in, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta learned of an intelligence program that had been hidden from Congress since 2001, a revelation that prompted him to immediately cancel the initiative and schedule a pair of closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill.
(read the article)

Los Angeles Times:
A report due to be released today by a Republican senator contends the Obama administration's stimulus program is fraught with waste and incompetence -- evidenced by a turtle crossing in northern Florida that will cost more than $3 million and a snafu in which thousands of Social Security checks went out to people who had died.
(Read the article)

Los Angeles Times:
Loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester in a rapidly expanding multibillion-dollar state program that provides personal caregivers to the impoverished elderly and disabled. Hundreds of reports of scams and swindles are going without investigation. (Read the article)

Haaretz:
American sources told the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan that Israel Defense Forces chief Gabi Ashkenazi provided fresh intelligence to the United States concerning Iran's nuclear facility in Arak during his visit to Washington earlier this week, according to Israel Radio.
(Read the article)

U.S. News & World Report:
The American Civil Liberties Union announced today that it has filed a federal lawsuit against Michigan electoral officials over what the organization characterizes as two "statewide voter purge programs" that it claims would "disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Michigan voters"—many of them college students—in advance of the fall presidential election.
(read the article)

AP:
San Francisco is delaying a controversial program that would provide identification cards to all residents regardless of legal status.
(read the article)

New York Times:
Federal investigators on Monday raided the downtown offices of a city-chartered nonprofit agency accused of abusing a federally financed program that was created to clean up houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
(read the article)

AP:
A Department of Homeland Security program to strengthen port security has gaps that terrorists could exploit to smuggle weapons of mass destruction in cargo containers, congressional investigators have found.
(read the article)