A government commission that monitors and enforces human rights in India has opened a probe into allegations reported by the Center for Public Integrity that villagers living near government-run uranium mines and others living downstream have persistently been exposed to high levels of radiation and suffered ill health as a result.

The New Delhi-based National Human Rights Commission, chartered by the parliament in 1993, said in a Dec. 16 statement on its website that it has asked the head of the Department of Energy, the head of the corporation that runs the mines and the chief government official in the Indian state where the mines are located to respond to the allegations within two weeks. The charges were referenced as part of a Center series this week on issues surrounding India’s nuclear industry.

The Commission, which functions like a civil court and has the power to obtain testimony, examine documents and request affidavits, said it had opened the probe on its own authority after reading the Center’s article about toxic leaks from the Jadugoda mining complex in Jharkhand and its effects on “people, livestock, rivers, forests and agricultural produce in the area.”

The commission said one of its members, Justice Shri D. Mururgesan, had “observed” that the Center’s article raises “a serious issue of violation of rights to health of the workers and local residents, besides damage to the environment, flora and fauna.” Murugesan is a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, according to his official biography.

Prior to the joint publication of the article by the Center and by Huffington Post India, the Center had asked both the Babha Atomic Research Centre, which conducts and oversees much nuclear work for the government, and the state-owned mining company for comment on the scientific evidence that citizens were being exposed to radiation levels that in some cases greatly exceeded international standards.

They declined comment on reported deaths and radiation levels. An official of the company said on condition of not being named, however, that it had been trying to follow health standards comparable to those in other countries. Its director, Diwarkar Acharya, claimed in a previous interview that those in the region whom scientists reported had been sickened from radiation exposure might have been “imported from elsewhere.”

Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, INDIA — On October 8, 2014, Head Constable Vijay Singh awoke before dawn and scurried across the ochre gravel outside the constabulary barracks here at the Madras Atomic Power Station “looking like the monsoon was about to break,” as a ground sweeper later recalled. Singh was one of 620 paramilitaries in the country’s Central Industrial Security Force assigned to protect the facility’s nuclear-related buildings and materials, but he did not have his usual tasks in mind that morning.

By 4:40 a.m., the 44-year-old officer reached the armory, where he signed out a 9mm sub-machine gun and 60 rounds of ammunition in two magazines. Singh loaded one clip into his weapon, pocketed the other, and entered the portico of a cream-and-red, three-story residential complex. He climbed up one flight to the room where a senior colleague, Mohan Singh, dozed and abruptly opened fire at him in a controlled burst, to conserve rounds, just as he had been trained.

Then he jogged downstairs, where he shot dead two more men and seriously injured another two. With ten rounds left in his magazine, and an unused 30-round clip in his pocket, he prowled unimpeded across the gravel, with no alert called. A bystander shouted out to him, and suddenly Singh halted and dropped to his knees, an eyewitness recalled later. He was finally surrounded and led away, glassy-eyed, “as docile as anything, a neat guy, his hair still perfectly parted,” the witness said.

The episode was a fresh example of what officials here and outside India depict as serious shortcomings in the country’s nuclear guard force, tasked with defending one of the world’s largest stockpiles of fissile material and nuclear explosives.

An estimated 90 to 110 Indian nuclear bombs are stored in six or so government-run sites patrolled by the same security force, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an independent think tank, and Indian officials. Within the next two decades, as many as 57 reactors could also be operating under the force’s protection, as well as four plants where spent nuclear fuel is dissolved in chemicals to separate out plutonium to make new fuel or be used in nuclear bombs.

The sites are spread out over vast distances: from the stony foothills of the Himalayas in the north down to the red earth of the tropical south. Shuttling hundreds of miles in between will be occasional convoys of lightly-protected trucks laden with explosive and fissile materials — including plutonium and enriched uranium — that could be used in civilian and military reactors or to spark a nuclear blast.

The Kalpakkam shooting as a result alarmed Indian and Western officials who question whether this country — which is surrounded by unstable neighbors and has a history of civil tumult — has taken adequate precautions to safeguard its sensitive facilities and keep the building blocks of a devastating nuclear bomb from being stolen by insiders with grievances, ill motives, or in the worst case, connections to terrorists.

Although experts say they regard the issue as urgent, Washington is not pressing India for quick reforms. The Obama administration is instead trying to avoid any dispute that might interrupt a planned expansion of U.S. military sales to Delhi, several senior U.S. officials said in interviews.

The experts’ concerns are based in part on a series of documented nuclear security lapses in the past two decades, in addition to the shooting:

• Several kilograms of what authorities described as semi-processed uranium were stolen by a criminal gang, allegedly with Pakistani links, from a state mine in Meghalya, in northeastern India, in 1994. Four years later, a federal politician was arrested near the West Bengal border with 100 kilograms of uranium from India’s Jadugoda mining complex that he was allegedly attempting to sell to Pakistani sympathizers associated with the same gang. A police dossier seen by the Center states that ten more people connected with smuggling were arrested two years after this, in operations that recovered 57 pounds of stolen uranium.

• Then, in 2003, members of a jihad group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, were caught in a village on the Bangladesh border with 225 grams of milled uranium — allegedly illicitly purchased from a mining employee — that they said they intended to wrap around explosives. The Indian authorities initially claimed it was from Kazakstan but concluded later it was more likely from a uranium mining complex at Jadugoda, in eastern India.

• In 2008, another criminal gang was caught attempting to smuggle low-grade uranium, capable of being used in a primitive radiation-dispersal device, from one of India’s state-owned mines across the border to Nepal. The same year another group was caught moving an illicit stock of uranium over the border to Bangladesh, the gang having been assisted by the son of an employee at India’s Atomic Minerals Division, which supervises uranium mining and processing.

• In 2009, a nuclear reactor employee in southwest India deliberately poisoned dozens of his colleagues with a radioactive isotope, taking advantage of numerous gaps in plant security, according to an internal government report seen by the Center.

• And in 2013, leftist guerillas in northeast India illegally obtained uranium ore from a government-run milling complex in northeast India and strapped it to high explosives to make a crude bomb before being caught by police, according to an inspector involved in the case.

The paramilitary Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which has a total of 95,000 personnel under civilian rather than military control and a $785 million budget, is supposed to keep all these nuclear materials from leaking from India’s plants. But it is short-staffed, ill-equipped, and inadequately trained, according to a confidential, draft, Home Ministry report about the force’s future, dated November 2013, seen by the Center for Public Integrity.

“Weapons supply is down by 40 percent, and training equipment by more than 45 percent” compared to what officials running the force had sought, the report stated. Its size should be twenty percent larger, it added. “Morale is low as security levels remain high …. There is a danger of the force falling behind in terms of its level of equipment and also competence.”

A former three-star Indian Police Service officer, who ran a large Indian force under the Home Ministry alongside the CISF, said in an interview that the force’s training, weapons and technical equipment lagged well behind comparable security forces elsewhere in the world. “From passive night goggles that cannot see in low light to outmoded communications equipment that does not work over long distances, they’re as good as blind and dumb,” said the ex-officer. “The monies promised two years ago to overhaul it … mostly failed to materialize,” he claimed.

This critical account roughly matches what the U.S. intelligence community has stated in its annual classified rankings of global nuclear security risks, based on detailed assessments of safeguards for materials that could be used in explosives or “dirty bombs” laced with radiation, according to three current or former senior Obama administration officials.

They said that India’s security practices have repeatedly ranked lower in these assessments than those of Pakistan and Russia, two countries with shortcomings that have provoked better-known Western anxieties. In all the categories of interest to the U.S. intelligence experts making the rankings — the vetting and monitoring of key security personnel, the tracking of explosives’ quantities and whereabouts, and the use of sensitive detectors at nuclear facilities and their portals — the Indians “have got issues,” a senior official said, speaking on condition he not be named, due to the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue.

Cautioning that Washington probably does not know everything that India has done to protect its facilities because of its obsessive nuclear secrecy, the official said that according to “what we can see people doing … they should be doing a lot more.” He added that it is “pretty clear [they] are not as far along as the Pakistanis,” explaining that as with the Russians, India’s confidence in being able to manage security challenges by themselves has repeatedly closed them off to foreign advice not only about the gravity of the threats they face but about how to deal with them.

Poor safeguards against the insider threat

When U.S. officials made their first-ever visit to the restricted Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Mumbai, a complex where India makes plutonium for its nuclear weapons, their observations about its security practices were not reassuring. “Security at the site was moderate,” a cable from November 2008, approved by embassy Chargé d’Affaires Stephen White, told officials in Washington.

Identification checks at the front gate were “quick but not thorough,” and visitor badges lacked photographs, meaning they were easy to replicate or pass around. A security unit at the center’s main gate appeared to be armed with shotguns or semi-automatic Russian-style rifles, the cable noted, but as the U.S. delegation moved towards the Dhruva reactor, where the nuclear explosive material is actually produced, there were no “visible external security systems.”

White’s cable noted that a secondary building where engineering equipment was stored also had “very little security.” While there was a sentry post at a nuclear Waste Immobilization Plant that processes radioactive water, no guards were present, and visitors’ bags were not inspected. No security cameras were seen inside, White added. The cable was disclosed by Wikileaks in 2011.

A U.S. nuclear safety official, also on the visit, who still works in the field and was not authorized to discuss it, told the Center in an interview that “laborers wandered in and out of the complex, and none of them wore identification.” He said that “the setup was extraordinarily low key, considering the sensitivity,” explaining that guards could not see camera footage from other locations. There is little evidence that conditions have changed much since then, officials say.

U.S. and Indian officials also have privately expressed worry about the security surrounding India’s movement of sensitive nuclear materials and weaponry. An industrialist who provides regular private advice to the current prime minister about domestic and foreign strategic issues said in an interview, for example, that due to India’s poor roads and rail links, “our nuclear sector is especially vulnerable. How can we safely transport anything, when we cannot say for certain that it will get to where it should, when it should.”

The adviser said that as a result, fissile materials in India have been moved around in unmarked trucks that “look like milk tankers,” without obvious armed escorts. He called this “urban camouflage,” meant to avoid the clamor that would ensue if a security convoy attempted to navigate traffic-choked roads like the one leading from a nuclear fuel fabrication plant in Hyderabad, in south-central India, to a test center for India’s nuclear submarines on the coast at Visakhapatnam. An armed convoy, he said, might need 14 hours to traverse that 400-mile distance.

Experts say the movement of the vehicles is tracked by special devices and communications. But two recently-retired scientists from BARC echoed the adviser’s concern in interviews. “Using civilian transport is a case of making the best of the worst: Far better not to be noticed at all, if you cannot control the environment you’re traveling in,” one said. Western officials have said that Pakistan uses similar unmarked convoys to move its nuclear materials, without obvious protections.

Official inquiries into the Mumbai attack in 2008, where ten Pakistan gunmen laid siege to the city after arriving at night by boat, showed that nuclear installations close to the city were staked out as potential targets before the terrorists settled upon a Jewish center, a railway station and two five-star hotels.

But to date, most of the troubling incidents at nuclear facilities in India have involved insiders, making the presence of aberrant employees the most tangible threat and the focus of intensive government efforts, according to a presentation made by Indian experts at a U.S. National Academy of Sciences workshop on nuclear security in Bangalore in 2012. They said that CISF forces assigned to protect India’s nuclear materials get extra training and are rotated regularly among such sites, possibly to deter corruption. Ranajit Kumar, the head of the Bhahba center’s physical protection system section, told the workshop that anyone who takes a new assignment on any classified project is supposed to undergo a new background check.

But an internal government report about the shooting here in Kalpakkam, drafted by officials in the Home Ministry, and dated December 2014, warned that many warning signs about Vijay Singh, the perpetrator, were ignored. It said that despite having an explosive temper and telling a doctor he was suffering from stress and exhaustion — issues that forced his withdrawal from weapons duties — Singh was promoted to the rank of head constable due to staff shortages and sent here from another nuclear installation without any psychological assessment or records recounting his problematic behavior.

At his new posting, he was given access to a submachine gun even though colleagues considered him unwell, as they told investigators later. He complained of being picked on by another head constable, and as the Diwali festival approached in October he asked for leave to visit his family. He was refused and instead ordered to serve overtime, due to a public call by Al Qaeda’s leader to “raise the flag of jihad” across South Asia by targeting sensitive sites in India. When the CISF officer’s final bid for leave was turned down, he told a colleague that “he would burst like a firecracker,” a colleague told police, in a witness statement seen by the Center — and one day later, he did.

Similar lapses had occurred seven years earlier when an employee at the Kaiga nuclear reactor deliberately poisoned several others, subjecting them to a radiation dose 150 times that in a chest x-ray. A report completed in December 2009 by the plant’s operator, seen by the Center, pointed to failures in technical monitoring as well as a “human reliability program” that was “ineffective if not misconceived” by the plant operator. Security cameras were not fixed on the key areas of the installation, and some were immobile and incapable of operating in the dark. It said the contamination was “an act of deliberate sabotage,” and that the perpetrator had eluded detection and capture due to numerous security lapses.

Asked about these matters by the Center, India’s Atomic Energy Commission declined to reply, following its usual habit of rebuffing inquiries about sensitive, nuclear-related matters. The AERB initially pledged to offer responses but then declined, as did the Home Ministry, which oversees the CISF.

Spurning U.S. offers of help

Since Nov. 30, 2001, when the CIA began investigating rumors that Al Qaeda was trying to obtain nuclear materials or finished weapons to be used against the West, the U.S. government has campaigned around the globe — sometimes unsuccessfully — for heightened vigilance in India and other countries with substantial stockpiles of explosive materials.

According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, an independent, nonprofit group, India’s stockpile of about 2.4 metric tons of highly-enriched (weapons-usable) uranium puts it at fifth place among all nations, and its stock of approximately 0.54 metric tons of separated (weapons-usable) plutonium puts it at ninth place. But its security practices put it even higher on the list of Western anxieties.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group in Washington, reported last year for example that India’s nuclear security practices ranked 23rd among 25 countries that possess at least a bomb’s-worth of fissile materials. Only Iran and North Korea fared worse in the analysis, which noted that India’s stockpiles are growing and said the country’s nuclear regulator lacked independence from political interference and adequate authority.

It said the risks stemmed in part from India’s culture of widespread corruption — which helped force the nation’s ruling Congress party from power in May 2014 — as well as its general political instability. “Weaknesses are particularly apparent in the areas of transport security, material control, and accounting, and measures to protect against the insider threat, such as personnel vetting and mandatory reporting of suspicious behavior,” the group’s report stated.

But India has rebuffed repeated offers of U.S. help. Gary Samore, President Obama’s coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction from 2009 to 2013, said that at preparatory meetings for international summits on nuclear security in 2010 and 2012, “we kept offering to create a joint security project [with India] consisting of assistance of any and every kind. And every time they would say, to my face, that this was a wonderful idea and they should grasp the opportunity. And then, when they returned to India, we would never hear about it again.”

India also refused to collaborate with the Nuclear Threat Initiative project by sharing or confirming information about its practices, unlike 17 of the other 24 countries in the study. They responded ferociously to its conclusions, according to a researcher connected to the project, who was not sanctioned to talk about it. Officials at the Indian Atomic Energy Commission verbally attacked Ted Turner and Sam Nunn, the NTI’s founders, in conversations with Indian journalists, the researcher said.

In countries such as India that are resistant to hearing direct U.S. advice, the Obama administration has tried what an official referred to as a “work-around” — the creation of training centers around the globe where Western experts working in collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency can encourage better safeguards. Twenty-three such centers, deliberately named Nuclear Security Centers of Excellence in a bid to get local buy-in, have been created so far.

The Indians “are happy to be in a place to have a conversation about nuclear security that is not judgmental,” a senior Energy Department official said, explaining the concept behind placing such a center in India.

But internal U.S. government cables asserted several years ago that while India initially seemed to embrace the idea, it eventually rejected it, to Washington’s surprise. In a Feb. 22, 2010, cable disclosed later by Wikileaks, then-U.S. ambassador Timothy Roemer said that instead of focusing on nuclear security, India finally decided to set up “a research and development center dedicated to the world-wide deployment of [nuclear reactor] technologies” that the country likes, but experts in Washington consider dangerous on grounds that they could contribute to the use and spread of nuclear-explosive materials.

The center “would be an Indian government body, staffed by the [Department of Atomic Energy], whose primary focus was research and development” on new reactors, Roemer wrote. This approach “did not fully meet the U.S. vision,” he added. India subsequently renamed the facility its Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership, and it began limited operations this year with closed workshops on the physical protection of nuclear materials and facilities scheduled alongside nuclear advocacy seminars entitled “Splitting Atoms for Prosperity” and “Atoms for Progress.”

Despite the celebration of close U.S.-Indian ties during President Obama’s visit to Delhi in January, “there is still no deep technical relationship” between the two countries on nuclear security issues, a White House official conceded in a recent interview, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We only hope that this will slowly change.”

At the moment, India is seeking three favors from Washington: It wants U.S. help to gain membership in the Missile Technology Control Regime, an international forum meant to limit the spread of nuclear-tipped missiles, which would give it access to certain otherwise restricted foreign space-launch technologies. And it wants to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, composed of nations that agree to respect nonproliferation rules when they trade in nuclear-related technologies. Both ambitions reflect India’s desire to be accorded the status of a major world power, U.S. experts say.

It also wants to acquire U.S. defense technologies by co-producing weapons systems in India with key Pentagon contractors – an issue discussed between Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Indian defense minister Manohar Parrikar during the minister’s weeklong visit to Washington beginning on Dec. 4.

But the Obama administration decided not to use these issues as leverage to force better security measures for nuclear explosives, the senior U.S. official said, because of its judgment that doing so would only prompt India to walk away.

A former senior U.S. nonproliferation official said this was a mistake. Washington, he said on condition of not being named, “has allowed itself to be put into the position of not wanting to displease India for fear of putting things off-track” in its new, warming relationship, and it has wrongly “allowed the Indians to wall off things they are not interested in talking about” while its ties to the United States grow.

An official in Britain’s Foreign Office, who also spoke on condition he not be named, expressed a more jaundiced view of this reluctance to press Delhi harder.

“Nothing can be allowed to get in the way of investment in the capacious Indian market,” the British official said, describing the current American mindset. “India has effectively bought itself breathing space, over a lot of concerning issues, especially nuclear security, by opening itself up for the first time to significant trades with the U.S. and Europe.” The financial gains, he said, are “eye-watering.”

According to the U.S. Commerce Department, trade with India grew from $19 billion in 2000 to more than $100 billion in 2014. U.S. exports exceeded $38 billion — including substantial new U.S. arms shipments — supporting 181,000 U.S. jobs. Indian direct investment in the United States totaled $7.8 billion while U.S. investments reached $28 billion.

Washington, the British official explained, does not wish to provoke a spat over nuclear security simply because doing so could threaten this lucrative trade, which benefits many U.S. companies.

R. Jeffrey Smith reported from Washington, D.C., and California. Adrian Levy is is an investigative reporter and filmmaker whose work has appeared in the Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, and other publications. His most recent books are: The Meadow, about a 1995 terrorist kidnapping of Westerners in Kashmir, and The Siege: The Attack on the Taj, about the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. He reported from India and the United Kingdom.

Penny is 39 years old. He lives in Clermont, Florida, and has four children. Until September 25, 2014, life was treating him well. His flooring company had just secured its first big contract.

That morning, Penny was feeling lethargic and pulled into a McDonald’s for a cup of orange juice. Seconds after he drank it he doubled over in pain. “It felt like someone stabbed me in the stomach with a machete,” he said. A co-worker drove him to the emergency room.

When he awoke in the hospital, his wife, Lori McNamara, was beside him, crying. “I go, ‘What’s the matter? I’m still here,’ ” Penny said. The surgeon who’d opened up his abdomen had found it full of cancer — type to be determined. The doctor “pretty much told me to get my affairs in order, right there on the spot.”

Physicians, scientists and union officials had people like him in mind when they convened in New York in 1990 to discuss what they called the looming “third wave” of asbestos disease. The fire-resistant mineral first had killed asbestos miners, millers and manufacturing workers. Then it had taken out insulators, shipbuilders and others who worked with asbestos products. Eventually, conference attendees agreed, it would be roused from its dormant state in pipes, ceiling tiles and automobile brakes and kill again.

Environmental consultant Barry Castleman went to the New York conference. The takeaway, he said, was that “in-place asbestos was going to pose a continuing danger to millions of workers and to the general public.”

The Environmental Protection Agency has banned some, but not all, asbestos products in the United States; 400 metric tons of the mineral were consumed in 2014, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. “The consumption’s gone down by over a thousand-fold” since the 1970s, said Castleman, who testifies almost exclusively for plaintiffs in asbestos-disease cases and was retained by Penny's lawyer. “The problem is the asbestos is still there.”

Even brief, light exposures to asbestos can breed mesothelioma, diagnosed in about 2,700 people each year in the United States. Most get it in the lining of the lung, or pleura.

What’s worse is when workers are covered in dust during asbestos-removal jobs — and possibly condemned to mesothelioma, lung cancer or the lung disease asbestosis years later — because their bosses cut corners on protections to save money.

Craig Benedict went after such people as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, working in tandem with criminal investigators from the EPA. He handled more than 100 prosecutions of "rip-and-run" asbestos-abatement contractors over 15 years and put people in prison — perhaps most notably, a father and son named Raul and Alex Salvagno. After being convicted by a jury, they were sentenced to 19 ½ years and 25 years, respectively, and ordered to pay $23 million in restitution to workers for overseeing dangerously slipshod work at hundreds of locations over a 10-year period. They secretly owned a laboratory that falsified up to 75,000 asbestos sample results to convince clients the jobs had been done safely.

Benedict, who retired last year, saw victims of all stripes: Homeless people, children, immigrants and inmates. “We found asbestos in a box of lollypops a bank handed out to customers,” he said. In another case two teenage brothers were told to tear open bags of asbestos from an abatement project and “put them in a Dumpster with the regular trash. They would end up being coated head to foot with asbestos debris.” Illegal work was done at New York’s Asbestos Control Bureau and a state police barracks. It was done in a conference room used by state legislators and a supply room frequented by workers at a hospice.

Benedict said he was “never surprised” and “never jaded” by the things he witnessed. In the most egregious cases, he said, it was as if the employers “took their workers outside, lined them up against the wall and shot them with high-powered weapons. They knew — just as certainly as someone who actually did that — that their actions over time had a very high likelihood of resulting in death or serious bodily injury.”

‘I just didn’t worry about it’

Kris Penny was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, and grew up mostly on Air Force bases; both his father and stepfather were in that branch of the service. He held a series of trucking, sales and factory jobs in Ohio, Georgia and Tennessee after graduating from high school. He moved to Orlando in 2002, worked briefly for one cable-pulling firm and then moved to another, Danella Construction.

At Danella in 2003 and 2004, Penny squeezed into BellSouth manholes from Orlando to West Palm Beach. He and his co-workers would pull fiber-optic cable into asbestos-cement conduit runs, often after removing old copper-wire cable. Bursts of compressed air were used to propel string that dragged the cable between manholes. The practice kicked up dust, which at times got “pretty thick,” Penny said. “If it became too much we would jump out of the manhole.”

In his lawsuit, Penny alleges that BellSouth, now part of AT&T, never told him or other Danella workers that the conduit contained asbestos, even as it cautioned its own employees not to use compressed air or break the pipe without wetting it down. Such warnings were being delivered “by the mid-’90s at the latest, years before Kris ever got into a manhole,” said his lawyer, Jonathan Ruckdeschel.

“BellSouth claims that they stopped installing new asbestos conduit in the early ’80s, so any pipe he was working with had to have been in the ground for at least 20 years by the time he got there,” Ruckdeschel said. “And yet there’s nothing inside the manhole to tell the worker, ‘Don’t do the things that are going to cause you to get exposed. Be careful — this is asbestos-cement pipe. Invisible amounts of asbestos dust can cause you to die.’ ”

In a deposition in October, former BellSouth supervisor Jeffrey Rolfsen testified that the company relied on Danella to enforce safety rules, though BellSouth had the authority to stop the work if it had been uneasy with the contractor’s practices. “I just didn’t worry about it,” Rolfsen said. “They knew what they were doing better than I knew.”

In a written statement to the Center for Public Integrity, AT&T said, “We hire sophisticated contractors that are experienced in dealing with asbestos, and we require them to comply with [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] regulations.” The company said in a court filing that Penny “knew and understood the risks and hazards of asbestos and voluntarily exposed himself to these risks” and that his “injuries, if any, were caused by his own negligent conduct, or by the negligent conduct of others.”

Danella officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the Center for Public Integrity.

Jesse Davis, a safety coordinator for the Communication Workers of America, says telecommunications workers nationwide are at risk of exposures similar to Penny’s. “We’re finding more and more where asbestos-containing conduit exists,” Davis said. “Every manhole they go in, they should be asking about the presence of asbestos.” He highlighted two incidents involving CWA members.

In 2011, 31 Verizon cable workers were on a job in Fairfax, Virginia, when a passerby told them the type of conduit they were handling contained asbestos. The Virginia Occupational Safety and Health Program later cited Verizon for three serious violations of its asbestos standard, all of which the company contested. Two of the citations were dropped as part of a settlement; Verizon agreed to improve worker training. In a statement, it said it did “not believe there was any actual employee exposure to asbestos-containing materials” in Fairfax.

In 2014, a member of a Verizon crew in Lynchburg, Virginia, mindful of CWA warnings, asked a union representative to test conduit he and 19 others had been working on. The pipe’s asbestos content turned out to be 35 percent. The state issued six citations, which Verizon said it has contested. It declined to comment further.

Grim prognosis

Ruckdeschel says it’s unusual for him to represent someone as young as Penny. Most of his clients are in their 60s, 70s or 80s and were exposed to asbestos decades ago. Penny is at the low end of the latency period for mesothelioma, thought by experts to be at least 10 years.

Penny understands that his prognosis is bleak; most people with his disease survive only a year or two. He went to Baltimore in August for surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center, hoping to extend his life. There Dr. H. Richard Alexander opened his abdomen, removed as much of the cancer as possible and hit Penny with a stiff dose of heated chemotherapy.

McNamara, Penny’s wife, was distraught during the 8 ½-hour procedure. Her husband’s illness, she said at the hospital, “just changed our life completely. People get up, and they go to work, and they come home, and they have dinner. And they do all these things, and our life is just not like that.” She worries most about their 6-year-old daughter, Cloey, who’s close to her father and asks if he’s going to die. Penny had choked up while talking about Cloey — “my best friend in the whole world” — the night before.

Penny came through the surgery reasonably well — “a strong guy, as fit as they come,” Alexander reassured McNamara afterward — but has faltered since. He had two more operations in Baltimore, one to repair a rupture and the other so an infection could be flushed from his belly.

He went home to Florida and did not improve. There were more procedures and hospital stays. His weight dropped from 200 lbs. to about 130. In a videotaped deposition on October 27 — taken as the discovery phase of his lawsuit was winding down — he looks exhausted and skeletal. He points out his feeding tube and colostomy bag in a photograph. He speaks of being so bereft of energy that he has to “think about every step” he takes and “time everything I do.”

There will be more like him, Ruckdeschel predicts — relatively young people who get sick from even limited contact with asbestos. “And we have to just wait as the years and the decades go by.”

After growing up in a country with limited freedoms and an oppressive government, Tutu Alicante still wasn’t prepared when he heard about a violent clash between the military and young men who had organized a protest in his hometown of Annobón, Equatorial Guinea.

Alicante, who was living in the capital city, remembers learning in August 1993 that the military, known for cracking down on political dissidents, detained and tortured the protesters. A protester and bystander were killed, as reported in a State Department document.

The military went looking for Alicante’s cousin at his cousin’s home. When he wasn’t found, they burned the house down. When Alicante’s father told him that there was nothing they could do, he resolved to effect change from afar.

Four months later, Alicante left for the United States and became a human rights lawyer. Upon launching an organization to promote Equatoguinean human rights, the nation’s president labeled him a “national traitor.” Knowing that the fate of human rights activists in Equatorial Guinea is typically imprisonment or worse, Alicante considers his repatriation inconceivable. In the United States, meanwhile, he’s encountered well-funded efforts to protect and polish the image of Equatorial Guinea’s government.

Since 2010, the government of Equatorial Guinea has paid $3.1 million to Washington, D.C.-based communications firm Qorvis/MSLGroup to help with the image of its president, currently the longest-serving head of state in Africa, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of Justice Department disclosures.

Qorvis/MSLGroup has monitored media, drafted letters to the editor and distributed press releases on behalf of Equatorial Guinea to news outlets and the State Department, disclosures show. Press releases have highlighted everything from the country’s literacy rate and eradication of disease to its acceptance of political opponents, disclosures show.

Qorvis/MSLGroup and the Embassy of Equatorial Guinea did not respond to requests for comment.

For Alicante, it's a clear example of how human rights abuses can continue when an autocrat escapes international criticism, he said.

“Are they enabling a dictatorship to exist and to get away with atrocities? Without a doubt. That’s exactly why they’re hired,” Alicante said.  

The country desperately needs the scrutiny, human rights advocates say. But its situation is not unique.

A Center for Public Integrity review of records disclosed to the Justice Department reveals that the 50 countries with the worst human rights violation records have spent $168 million on American lobbyists and public relations specialists since 2010.

The countries included in the analysis were those with the worst scores on the human rights indicator of the Fragile States Index, an annual report published by the nonprofit Fund for Peace, which measures the vulnerability of nations.

What’s more, the number of active contracts for representing countries with poor human rights records has climbed by 40 percent from 2013 to 2015.

A right to petition

Foreign countries’ rights to petition the U.S. government are legally protected the same way domestic clients’ are, although compared to domestic lobbying, their activity faces a much higher level of disclosure with the Justice Department.

American University government professor James Thurber said the uptick in activity by foreign governments shows they are discovering the importance of lobbying and “changing perceptions” in the U.S. capital.

“These other countries that have very specific problems of human rights — they’re discovering how Washington works,” Thurber said.

Maran Turner, the executive director of Freedom Now, an organization that advocates for the rights of prisoners of conscience, or people imprisoned for religious or political beliefs. She’s observed public relations campaigns by foreign governments becoming “more and more commonplace,” she said and she’s found it “incredibly frustrating and very worrying and very upsetting.”

Turner’s work often involves bringing attention to specific cases of international political prisoners, but it’s hard to compete with the work of public relations and lobbying firms on behalf of the countries in question on Capitol Hill, she said.

In Equatorial Guinea, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo seized control in a military coup in 1979. Despite the country having Africa’s highest gross domestic product per capita, the majority of its 740,000 citizens live in poverty.

The latest State Department report on human rights in Equatorial Guinea documents routine torture by police, arbitrary detentions and politically motivated kidnappings and killings. An increase in violent crime largely came from military and national security forces, according to the report.

Alicante now runs EG Justice, a nonprofit that raises awareness of the country’s human rights abuses and promotes accountability, civil liberties and rule of law by working with institutions like the United Nations, the African Union and governments in Europe.

Alicante has come across dozens of press releases written and distributed by Qorvis/MSLGroup praising the supposed good things happening in his country, he said.

“Equatorial Guinea Reports Significant Reduction in Poverty and Improvements in Health” is the headline for one released in September. “Women In Equatorial Guinea Have Strong Leadership Role In Government And Business, Say Top Women Political Leaders” reads another from August.

Alicante said his small operation is no match for the multimillion-dollar communications firm.

Alicante had one interaction with the PR professionals, he said. While organizing a roundtable discussion on Equatoguinean human rights in Washington, D.C., several years ago, he invited the ambassador for Equatorial Guinea to attend and respond.

On the morning of the event, he received a call. Qorvis let him know that the ambassador could not make it, but the firm would send an employee in her place.

Ketchum and Russia

Qorvis/MSLGroup is second only to Ketchum, a public relations and marketing agency, in terms of how much money it’s received to represent human rights violators in recent years.

Together, Russia and its government-owned natural gas company, Gazprom, paid Ketchum more than $40 million from 2010 to 2014, about $3.5 million of which was dispersed to legal and lobbying firms in subcontracts. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said earlier this year that the contract ended with Ketchum because communications work could not be successful with “anti-Russian hysteria” and a “hateful environment” prevalent in America.

Ketchum used media outreach, websites and press releases to paint Russia as a prime investment destination. “Invest in Moscow: Education, Healthcare and More,” read one headline. Others referred to “sustainability in Russia’s economic development.” In September 2013, Ketchum “placed” a much talked about New York Times op-ed, penned by Putin himself to discourage the United States from taking military action in Syria.

Ketchum and the Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director of Human Rights Watch, advocates for global human rights issues before the government. Beyond seeking to shape public opinion, foreign entities also often try to influence policy, she said.

The firms’ approaches are typically two-pronged: counter and downplay their clients’ human rights violations and highlight U.S. interests, she said.

“One of the challenges is that the United States has interests with a lot of these countries,” she said. “That’s why there isn’t a very clear and definitive rejection of involvement with countries that are sort of the worst human rights abusers.”

For Equatorial Guinea, a country that at one point exported two-thirds of its oil to the United States, there is much at stake. In last year’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, President Barack Obama included President Obiang in a White House dinner while excluding other autocrats who lead Zimbabwe, Eritrea and the Central African Republic.

Anti-propaganda measure

Representation of foreign clients faces stricter regulation and more extensive disclosures with the Justice Department than that of domestic clients. Anyone working to influence U.S. policy on behalf of a foreign client, whether by lobbying or engaging in public relations, must register with the Foreign Agents Registration Unit of the Justice Department and disclose the contract, details of all political activity and any distributed materials.

Passed in 1938 in response to German propaganda agents active in the United States prior to World War II, the Foreign Agents Registration Act sought to illuminate the sources of influence aimed at public policy and opinion.

There is widespread non-compliance with filing deadlines, and many registrants fail to include required disclosure language about who prepared any distributed materials, according to a report last year by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog group. 

Report co-author Lydia Dennett said enforcement of the law is lax.

“The fact that the Department of Justice doesn’t enforce them as much as they could definitely hurts the transparency angle, which is the whole point of the law,” Dennett said.

Justice Department national security spokesman Marc Raimondi said in an email that the Foreign Agents Registration Act Unit regularly monitors online and print media “to identify individuals and entities that may not be in compliance with the Act.

“When questions regarding possible noncompliance come to the attention of the FARA Unit, by any means, it takes appropriate steps to seek compliance with the Act,” he said. This means inspecting and contacting current and potential registrants about the obligations under the law, he said.

During the past 10 years, the Justice Department has brought four criminal cases relating to willful violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, three of which resulted in a conviction or guilty plea, Raimondi said.

Foreign principals spend nearly a half-billion dollars annually to try to influence U.S. policy and opinion, according to a Project on Government Oversight estimate. Domestic lobbying, by comparison, has totaled about $3.25 billion for each of the past two years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Qorvis/MSLGroup has received more than $20.6 million since 2010 working for governments with poor human rights records, according to the Center for Public Integrity review of Justice Department disclosures.

Since 2010, Libya, Bahrain, China, Sri Lanka and others that rank poorly for human rights in the Fragile States Index have turned to the firm for representation.

Saudi Arabia’s image problem

Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally that has nevertheless suffered from a major image problem thanks to its repressive monarchy, significantly boosted Qorvis/MSLGroup’s fees for public relations work, paying the firm $14.2 million since 2010.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Qorvis began defending Saudi Arabia against claims that the country was soft on terrorism. The work led three founding partners to quit over discomfort in representing the Gulf nation. Two years later, the FBI searched the firm's offices for information about its work for Saudi Arabia in connection with an investigation into compliance with foreign lobbying regulations. (No charges were filed.)

In 2011, more than a third of the firm's partners quit. The firm’s work for foreign governments was at least partially responsible for some of the departures that year, said a former Qorvis employee who did not want to be named.

Saudi Arabia, the firm’s biggest foreign client, has spent $46 million in total on contracts to improve its image in the United States over the past five years. It is the top spender on representation among countries with poor human rights records. This year, it hired five firms.   

Top priorities for the Saudi Arabian government include maintaining American support for its bombing campaign in Yemen, which backs the government’s fight against rebels. The campaign began in March.

Speaking at the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in October in New York, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir called the kingdom’s military intervention in Yemen its “last option,” conducted at the request of the Yemeni government.

“The Coalition forces in support of legitimacy in Yemen have made great achievements in liberating numerous areas from the grip of insurgents,” Al-Jubeir said, later adding, “Currently, the Kingdom and coalition partners are intensifying efforts with international organizations to deliver humanitarian aid to Yemen.”

Saudi Arabia hired law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman for “information gathering on U.S. Middle East policy” in March and the same month hired international law firm DLA Piper, which contacted more than four dozen offices on Capitol Hill regarding “issues affecting U.S.-Saudi Arabia national security interests.” DLA Piper did not respond to requests for comment.

At $14 million, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman was the third-highest paid firm in the Center for Public Integrity review of data. The King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy, a Saudi Arabia-based center established by royal decree to build the country's alternative energy capacity, paid the firm $13.9 million for legal services. The firm and its client did not respond to requests for comment.

Cleveland-based International Merchandising Corp., which ranks No. 5 in the Center for Public Integrity’s review, maintains a contract with Saudi Arabian client “Kingdom 5-KR-215, Ltd.” for branding and marketing in the United States. For $7.9 million, the firm has promoted Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a businessman and investor who founded and owns the Kingdom Holding Company, according to the contract.

The International Merchandising Corp. did not respond to a request for comment.

For the Saudi government, Qorvis/MSLGroup has researched public opinion, attended events, set up a website to explain operations in Yemen from a Saudi perspective and distributed several press releases on the same subject. “Saudi King Doubles Humanitarian Aid to Yemen to More Than $500 Million,” reads one headline on a press release. The firm also launched a news website, with some spotlight on Saudi Arabian counterterrorism efforts in the region.   

In Syria, the Saudis and their American allies oppose the government and instead support the rebel faction known as the Syrian Opposition Coalition. Qorvis has run the online communications and coordinated meetings on Capitol Hill for the coalition, sometimes without disclosing Saudi involvement.

Al-Jubeir also said at the U.N. General Assembly that Saudi Arabia will continue to push for a political solution to the Syrian crisis, which he called “one of the worst humanitarian disasters witnessed by our contemporary history.”

Meanwhile, despite expressing “deep concern” over the large number of civilian deaths from Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen, the United States has continued to support the nation with weapons and intelligence.

So while Saudi Arabia, with American support, leads the air campaign against rebels in, causing hundreds of civilian deaths in the process, they, along with the United States, condemn the Syrian government for its campaign against rebels that has also resulted in numerous civilian deaths.

Atiaf Alwazir, a Tunisia-based researcher from Yemen and founder of the media collective Support Yemen, said she’s observed Saudi Arabia’s decades-long ability to maintain a positive image in regional and international media. The long-held feeling of mistrust toward the nation among Yemenis only increased with the war, she said.

“The hypocrisy of condemning a government for civilian casualties while you are committing them is just outrageous,” Alwazir said.

Alwazir said many in her home country feel that Saudi Arabia acts in its own self-interest and relies on the United States’ help. The voices of human rights groups are “often muted compared to this great lobby,” she said of the Gulf nation. Her sense is that Saudi Arabia wants Yemen to “always remain dependent” on it, she said.

The Embassy of Saudi Arabia did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Call in the cavalry’

Legal and lobbying powerhouse Squire Patton Boggs ranks No. 4 in the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis with $11.7 million received from contracts with human rights violators since 2010. It currently represents China on Capitol Hill in trade and security issues and consults with the Cameroonian government on the State Department’s reports on human trafficking and human rights. The State Department pointed out Cameroon’s use of torture on detainees, lack of fair trials and poor prison conditions in its annual report.

The latest disclosures show that Squire Patton Boggs has had more than two-dozen phone calls and met with the State Department and members of Congress often on U.S.-Cameroon relations between June 2014 and June 2015.

The firm has also done millions of dollars’ worth of work for Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.

Disclosures show that for Cameroon last year, the firm “facilitated Congressional meetings to brief policymakers on developments in Cameroon including those affiliated with regional security.”

In February of this year, six senators submitted a resolution, which later passed, stating that the Senate “stands with … the people of Cameroon” and others in response to risks of violence from Boko Haram, a Nigerian-based terrorist group.

Squire Patton Boggs met with two of those senators last year and contacted three others by email.

George Washington University Law School professor Ralph Steinhardt said that in Washington, D.C. there are increasingly complicated government processes and a “robust regulatory environment” in which foreign governments must work. He added that this work can also offer opportunities for countries to seek responsible counsel.

“You can understand why they would want to call in the cavalry and get some kind of help,” he said.

Squire Patton Boggs did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Open and fair’ elections

Beyond the top five firms are notable contracts like that between Podesta Group and Azerbaijan, a country whose government represses political activists, human rights advocates and journalists.

In September, Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison after being convicted on charges including tax evasion and abuse of power — charges widely condemned by human rights groups and journalism organizations. Ismayilova is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for Public Integrity.

Podesta Group declared Azerbaijan’s 2013 election as a step in “strengthening its democratic society” despite human rights group Freedom House calling it “marred by candidate and voter intimidation … and other serious irregularities” in a report.

Podesta Group has represented Azerbaijan since 2013, receiving $1.9 million for its services since then.

Other nations, such as Vietnam, Thailand and Egypt, have also hired Podesta Group. Egypt, however, paid much more money to strategic communications firm Glover Park Group.  

After the United States cut military aid to Egypt in 2013, the nation hired Glover Park Group to “provide public diplomacy, strategic communications counsel and government relations services.” Since the start of the contract, Egypt has paid the firm $5.2 million.

The firm organized dozens of meetings between Egyptian government officials and members of Congress, media, think tanks and retired military personnel, disclosures show. The Obama administration restored military aid to Egypt in March, citing the need to combat Islamic State militants. Human rights organizations document Egypt as having little tolerance for political opposition and excessive military power over civilians.

Glover Park Group and Podesta Group did not respond to requests for comment.

Joseph Sandler, an attorney with Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock, said though there are lobbyists “that freely register for the world’s worst regimes,” they are still in compliance with the law.

It only becomes problematic when there’s lobbying in secret, experts said.

“There are definitely some people out there who are skirting this — who should be registered under FARA and are not,” Sandler said.

Human Rights Watch’s Prasow said it comes down to free speech — foreign governments are also protected under the First Amendment.

“As long as there’s transparency connected to it, that’s what matters,” Prasow said.

What also matters, at least to the clients of these U.S.-based public relations firms, is that these regimes are getting their money’s worth. 

So far, for Equatorial Guinea, things are going swimmingly.

Despite its human rights record, it continues to export its oil to the United States, several U.S. oil companies invest in the nation’s resources and little effort has been made by the U.S. administration to crack down on or even criticize the government’s policies.

Cady Zuvich contributed to this story.

The Federal Election Commission, a government agency tasked with policing what’s expected to be the nation’s most expensive election ever, will drag itself into the new year perhaps more internally injured than at any point in its 40-year history.

It will do so under the leadership of Matthew Petersen, a Republican who his five commission colleagues, in a perfunctory vote, today appointed chairman for 2016. The job switches annually between Republicans and Democrats.

But Petersen, a soft-spoken and professorial attorney by trade, says his tenure at the FEC’s helm will prove decidedly different than that of Democrat Ann Ravel, the current chairwoman who’s used her office’s meager power — a bully pulpit, mainly — to its maximum.

“I’ve learned to take a more low-profile approach,” he told the Center for Public Integrity in an interview earlier this month. “I don’t feel any need to have my face out there any more than it is.”

Low profile is something Ravel is not.

Ravel has toured the country touting what she considers the virtues of remaking the FEC into an aggressive watchdog it’s not.

She’s penned op-ed pieces scolding and slamming her Republican colleagues for, in her estimation, failing to enforce election laws.

And when those Republicans balked at writing stricter rules governing certain political activities, Ravel joined with fellow Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub in an unprecedented attempt to force them to act — petitioning her own agency not as appointed government officials, but as private citizens.

Republican Commissioners Caroline Hunter and Lee Goodman, who have each chaired the FEC themselves, say to varying degrees that Ravel is more concerned with cultivating her reformist public image than protecting political actors’ rights or tending to nuts-and-bolts agency functions.

Regardless of who’s right, such personal and ideological rifts have meant the commissioners have largely been unwilling to tackle the nation’s thorniest election law issues this year, such as the degree to which super PACs may work with the political candidates they support and the occasions when politically active nonprofits may keep their donors secret.

Even cases bordering on the ridiculous fall flat: When FEC staffers informed a pro-Carly Fiorina super PAC that using a candidate’s name within its own is illegal the group, which had christened itself “Carly for America,” simply morphed into “Conservative, Authentic, Responsive Leadership for You and for America” — or, “CARLY for America.”

The FEC has taken no material action against the pro-Fiorina group since.

Obscure body parts are, however, a hot commission topic: In mid-November, Ravel appeared on a The Daily Show segment during which comedian Jordan Klepper asked her whether the FEC was more or less useless than men’s nipples.

Her response: “I would say that the FEC and men's nipples are probably comparable.”

That didn’t sit well with her Republican counterparts.

“I just can't stress enough how inappropriate I think that is … a new low,” Hunter said during an extended critique of Ravel’s leadership this year while seated a few feet away from her at the commission’s public meeting on Nov. 17.

Ravel didn’t apologize. Far from it, she doubled down.

“I have no regrets about anything that I have said,” she told Hunter. “We owe it to the American public to be doing our job.”

Small ball

Enter Petersen’s office in downtown Washington, D.C., and one will be greeted with an impressive collection of Los Angeles Dodgers memorabilia, from photographs to bobblehead dolls.

A Southern California native with a seemingly eidetic memory for sports, Petersen says he has no expectations the FEC will hit many, if any, legal home runs under his chairmanship.

Singles are more like it.

“I don’t come into 2016 with any grand vision, a five-point plan. I have a fairly realistic notion of what’s going to happen and what’s not,” Petersen recently told the Center for Public Integrity, noting that the FEC can’t play Congress and write its own election laws. “Whenever compromise on a topic is possible, I want to find it.”

Topping Petersen’s agenda-of-the-possible is completing an overhaul of the agency’s public-facing website, FEC.gov, which has plodded along this decade with the form and function of something from the Internet’s Ask Jeeves age — much to the chagrin of people attempting to access politicos’ financial information or hunt down agency rulings.

Both Democratic and Republican commissioners agree that a new website is painfully overdue. A “beta” version of a new and improved site went live in October. Through last week, the beta site had logged more than 58,000 page views, and the FEC had received 93 comments on how to further improve it, said Alec Palmer, the agency’s staff and information technology director.

Petersen’s other to-do items include loosening regulations on state and local political parties that govern how they may fundraise, register voters and advocate for candidates — one of fellow Republican Goodman’s pet issues.

Petersen also wants to modernize the agency regulations pertaining to technology — references to telegraphs, typewriters and such still persist and political committees can’t officially communicate with agency by email. He also wants to provide greater protections to candidates whose campaigns have fallen victim to embezzlement.

Furthermore, he expects the agency to take up a package of proposed reforms floated by a bipartisan group of election law practitioners, which include revising forms and streamlining various campaign finance reporting requirements.

“Not the sexiest items,” Petersen conceded, “but important.”

Petersen will have a partner of sorts in Steve Walther, the FEC’s new vice chairman— a Democratic appointee who identifies as an independent.

Like Petersen, Walther typically avoids histrionics. Walther also tends to be the most Socratic of the FEC’s six commissioners, preferring detailed lines of inquiry over speeches and soliloquies.

Make no mistake: Walther’s track record during his 10 years at the FEC trends decidedly liberal whereas Petersen is a solid conservative.

Nevertheless, Walther told the Center for Public Integrity: “I plan to work very collegially with Matt, and I consider him to be a gentleman’s gentleman.”

Activists livid

Even if the FEC in 2016 is kinder and gentler, campaign finance reform activists worry it will be no more functional — and possibly less.

Unlike most governmental commissions, the FEC features an even number of commissioners: three Democratic appointees, three Republicans.

Majority still rules at the FEC. But good luck finding a 4-2 or 5-1 majority on matters of consequence — particularly if the consequences of agency action land in the laps of presidential candidates, super PACs or “dark money” nonprofits that influence elections without revealing who funds them.

On such matters, 3-3 deadlocks are the norm.

With this backdrop, left-leaning reformers’ predictions for the FEC’s role in electoral politics next year generally fall somewhere between dire and apocalyptic.

“The agency is not going to be a bit player, it’s going to be a zero player,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of reform group Democracy 21.

“It’s like a high school party, and the parents not just walked away from the house, but said to the teenagers, ‘Have the biggest party you can!’” said Nick Penniman, executive director for bipartisan group Issue One.

“Candidates, super PACs and others have run roughshod over our campaign finance laws since the beginning of the 2016 cycle,” said Paul S. Ryan, deputy executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, which is led by former Republican FEC Chairman Trevor Potter. “They’ll undoubtedly continue to do so through the general election, confident that the FEC won’t hold them accountable for their lawbreaking.”

Such statements could have just as well been made by Ravel, who, in an interview earlier this month, said her Republican colleagues simply weren’t willing to do anything more than “vote as a bloc on issues of significance.” (Without at least one Republican, Democrats can’t advance much of anything, and vice versa.)

Ravel pointed to a compromise she and her Republican counterparts struck just after she joined the commission in late 2013.

In exchange for Ravel’s support on rewriting agency rules to align with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Republicans agreed to conduct an open, public hearing on election law matters — something the agency simply hadn’t done in recent years.

Republicans expected something academic, focused on the Supreme Court’s recent McCutcheon v. FEC decision.

But when the February affair turned into a lengthy free-for-all and platform for reformists to air grievances, Republicans were steamed. Hunter described the hearing as “not only not productive, but counterproductive.”

Ravel, however, reveled in it, particularly since much of the discourse centered around her personal priority of unveiling the true nature of secret money being used in political elections. Afterward, a Republican commissioner was “threatening me and yelling at me,” saying, “This is going to be a very long year for me,” Ravel said.

She declined to identify the commissioner.

“It made it quite clear that there was never going to be any reciprocal, amicable attempts to find common ground,” Ravel continued. “So I decided to put my energies elsewhere, there’s no question. In a lot of ways, I accomplished what I wanted.”

Added Weintraub, her Democratic colleague: “We are in sync with the American people” when it comes to our views on money in politics.

For Hunter, the public — even the most liberal campaign finance reform advocates — shouldn’t view Ravel as some kind of hero.

“She’s given them, in a sense, false hope, suggesting ideas that are unrealistic, even unconstitutional,” Hunter said.

And much as Ravel likes to say Republicans are the problem, Hunter argues it’s Ravel who wasn’t willing to work with them.

Similarly, Goodman said that Ravel, who led the agency’s regulations committee, a forum for hashing out meat-and-potatoes election law matters, only conducted two meetings all year. Ravel said there wasn’t much point since Republicans only wanted to take their own counsel, but Goodman argues that its representative of “a year of lost opportunities for the commission.”

Now that Petersen is in charge, how will things change?

“I hope [the commission] goes back to regular order, so to speak,” Hunter said.

‘No contact’

One trend that’s becoming the norm is the declining number of political groups or other organizations seeking the FEC’s formal advice on election law matters.

At only 12 this year, this number represents an historical low after slipping for several years. It’s an indication, Ravel says, that fewer and fewer political actors care about what the FEC says, or don’t want the bother or expense of dealing with a commission that may very well deadlock on their case.

All the while, the FEC has gone 29 months without duly appointing a general counsel to lead its legal operations. In the meantime, the United States has legalized marriage for same-sex couples, allowed women to serve in military combat and explored Pluto, more than 3.1 billion miles from Earth.

In August, commissioners finally appointed Daniel Petalas, the FEC’s associate general counsel for enforcement, as acting general counsel for four months. They’ve since extended Petalas’ tour of duty while commissioners continue searching for a permanent replacement for Tony Herman, who resigned on July 5, 2013.

Part of the problem, Petersen says, is Congress won’t heed the FEC’s standing request to boost the general counsel’s salary range — something the FEC itself can’t do. As a result, the agency finds itself in a peculiar situation where a young attorney working as a commissioner’s assistant could theoretically earn a higher salary than the agency’s top lawyer.

Furthermore, the FEC continues to grapple with dozens of unresolved enforcement cases, some of which are now years old.

If the FEC can’t change itself, who will?

There are 26 bills and resolutions pending in Congress that mention the FEC by name in some fashion.

Some aim to strengthen political disclosure laws. Others call for limiting the power of super PACs, or reforming the FEC, or protecting politically active nonprofit groups from government overreach. Almost all of them languish in a U.S. House or U.S. Senate committee. None have become law.

Prospects for an FEC overhaul in particular are low, but there is a “growing recognition in the public that the FEC is broken,” said Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., an outspoken campaign reform advocate.

“Unfortunately, there are some in Congress — notably, [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell — who are perfectly content with the status quo,” he said.

Representatives for McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, could not be reached for comment.

The senator’s attempts this month to relax election restrictions via Congress’ omnibus spending bill are, however, a clear indication of his interest in further deregulating political campaigns.

So don’t expect Congress to step up, even as the FEC’s six commissioners today briefly put aside their differences for a moment to send lawmakers a legislative wish list, as they do each December. Each year, a grinchy Congress all but ignores it.

The new legislative agenda passed today by the FEC includes calls for the electronic filing of U.S. Senate campaign finance reports, a fix to the general counsel salary issue and a prohibition on political operatives and politicians from pocketing the cash raise by any kind of political committee — not just candidate’s official campaign committees, as is the case now.

President Barack Obama, in a forum no less than his 2015 State of the Union Address, called for“better politics” where “we spend less time drowning in dark money for ads that pull us into the gutter.”

But Obama has himself not been swift to act, either.

The president has been “unwilling to do the bare minimum,” said Kurt Walters, campaign manager for Rootstrikers, which this month released a 34-page report lambasting Obama’s handling of political money issues.

One immediate action Obama could take is replacing five of the six commissioners — Ravel is the exception — whose terms have expired. They continue to serve regardless, as the law allows.

Tradition holds that the White House and Republican leaders in the Senate work deals to nominate FEC commissioners before they face Senate confirmation hearings. But nothing’s stopping Obama from going a different route — say, creating a bipartisan nominating commission — to identify suitable FEC commission prospects.

The White House said in a statement Thursday that there are "no personnel announcements at this time." It did not respond to questions about activists criticisms of Obama.

Ravel, when asked if Obama had contacted her during her time leading the FEC, shook her head.

“No. I’ve had almost no contact with the White House,” she said.

But she quickly added that Obama’s lack of communication isn’t necessarily a bad thing, at least for her.

“No one there has told me that they are concerned about my behavior,” she said, smiling.

What’s next

Washington, D.C., is not, and has never been, a home for Ravel. Beyond her work travels, she regularly commutes cross-country to her family California. She’s only seen her infant granddaughter twice this year.

An obvious question, then, is: Is she done?

When asked by the Center for Public Integrity, Ravel didn’t pause in declaring that no, she’s not about to quit despite rumors that her resignation is imminent now that her leadership term is over.

Might she stay at the FEC through the 2016 election and beyond? “Yes, it’s possible,” Ravel said, adding that she’ll continue to serve so long as she believes she can accomplish some of her goals.

Her GOP counterparts, likewise, are intending to stick it out. Petersen, Hunter and Goodman each said that they, too — absent White House intervention — have no plans to leave before 2016 is out.

And despite a survey of government employees that pegged the FEC’s staff as one of the most disgruntled among all small government agencies, Petersen says he’s optimistic about improving staff morale — even morale among the agency’s commissioners.

“I have no personal animus for any of them,” Petersen said of his colleagues. “I don’t feel like this is a miserable place to be.”

This story was co-published with Al Jazeera America.

Despite facing mounting evidence they were overpaying some Medicare health plans by tens of millions of dollars a year, federal officials dialed back efforts to recover as much of the money as possible, newly released government records show.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services records reveal that officials there as early as 2008 identified a group of privately-run Medicare Advantage health plans they suspected of ripping off the government, even dubbing them “high-flyers.”

But CMS officials chose to do just 30 in-depth financial audits to recover overpayments each year, even though the records make clear they could complete many more.

“Given our current staffing and contractor resources, we can do up to 80 audits a year,” reads an undated CMS document.

But CMS officials subsequently proposed to the White House Office of Management and Budget that only the 30 audits be conducted. OMB did not respond to requests for comment. A CMS record says the “consensus was to audit 30 contracts per year .”

 In February 2012, CMS announced it would do just that —which meant about five percent of the roughly 600 Medicare Advantage contracts in force would be audited in a year.

The agency expected to complete the first batch of these audits, which covered 2011 spending, and to “recoup overpayments” in early 2014, according to another document. But it has yet to do so. A spokesman said the Medicare agency “anticipates completing” the audits in 2016.

The risk in risk scores

The CMS records were recently released to the Center for Public Integrity through a court order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The privately-run Medicare Advantage plans offer seniors an alternative to traditional Medicare and in recent years have signed up more than 17 million members, about a third of people eligible for Medicare.

Since 2004, the government has paid the health plans using a risk score it calculates for each patient based on diseases reported by the health plans. Medicare expects to pay higher rates for sicker people and less for those in good health. But overspending tied to fast-rising risk scores has cost taxpayers billions of dollars in recent years, as the Center for Public Integrity reported in a series of articles published last year, leading to widespread suspicions that some risk scores are being purposefully inflated

Many of the records released by CMS are heavily redacted, with dates and the names of their authors sometimes missing. More than 1,400 pages have been “withheld in their entirety” by CMS, including names of the health plans and how much they were overpaid.

Grassley’s ire

The government’s relaxed pace in chasing down overpayments — and the secrecy surrounding the audit results — brought a sharp rebuke from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley.

“The agencies are responsible for getting the payments right in the first place and pursuing full refunds of all over-payments for the taxpayers,” the Iowa Republican said in a statement. 

“The agencies also have an obligation to be as transparent as possible about audits, over-payments and everything else in the public interest about a taxpayer-funded program,” Grassley added.

Despite the redactions, the records offer significant new details about the fitful pace of Medicare Advantage audits, which appear so far to have cost taxpayers more to carry out over the years than they have clawed back.

In recent months, the Obama administration has called for a crackdown on medical billing abuses. In February, White House budget director Shaun Donovan called for a “more aggressive strategy” against “improper” payments.

The CMS records make clear that Medicare Advantage overpayments have piled up mainly because the complex “risk score” formula used to pay the plans has few safeguards to discourage abuse. One memo describes it as an “honor system.”

Grassley called that remark “worrisome.” “This is a multi-billion-dollar government program, not the office coffee kitty. CMS, DoJ (Department of Justice) and Congress have to get it right,” he said.

A CMS spokesman did not directly address written questions posed by the Center for Public Integrity about the history of the audits.  But the agency offered a statement that read in part:  “CMS takes seriously program integrity and payment accuracy in Medicare Advantage, and is taking steps to protect taxpayers, Medicare beneficiaries, and the Medicare program.”

‘Substantial overpayment’

The CMS records include an earlier confidential audit of 2005 payments to 22 Medicare Advantage health plans; it showed that auditors couldn’t confirm 31 percent of the patients had the diseases Medicare was paying plans to treat.

Some plans were much worse than others. The average error rate for 17 of the 22 plans was more than 10 percent above the norm, with some even higher.  The confidential 2005 audit, conducted by consulting firm BearingPoint, projected 2005 losses at $4.2 billion from what it termed a “substantial overpayment” to Medicare Advantage plans.

Demanding all the money back “may be defensible to public entities such as Congress,” but might also lead some insurers to “opt out” of Medicare Advantage, the report added. Since debuting in 2004, the program has won many fans among both seniors and members of Congress.

The audits are called RADV, for Risk Adjustment Data Validation. Auditors review medical records of a sample of 201 patients to verify they have the diseases their health plan is being paid to treat.

If patient files don’t confirm the diagnoses, CMS asks for a refund. The agency planned to extrapolate the payment error rate to a contracted plan’s full membership. Extrapolation is widely used by federal officials in calculating medical overpayments. In this case, that sort of extrapolation would have put some large Medicare Advantage plans on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in refunds.

High stakes

CMS records suggest that pushback from the industry, including threats of lawsuits over the legality of the audits, and other delays and missteps, gave the agency pause with extrapolating.

“A lot of money is at stake” from these audits, which “has the plans very nervous,” says one CMS record.

In one undated presentation, officials argued for a “conservative estimate” of overpayments, noting “we think it puts us in the best position to withstand litigation challenges.”

CMS officials also appeared to have doubts about the legality of RADV because it lacked a formal appeals process. Setting one up took until February 2012 and in the meantime the health plans weren’t penalized — even though officials knew payment errors were wasting billions of tax dollars.

Audits for 2007, for instance, dragged on for more than five years before ending with a whimper. CMS had anticipated collecting from $500 million to $800 million from 37 health plans audited that year, the newly released records show.

 That never happened. Instead, CMS collected less than $14 million and some health plans, including UnitedHealth Care, have spent years appealing to get at least some of that money back.

The audit program fell short of expectations at several other points as well.

A Dec. 22, 2010 internal memo said that CMS expected to launch audits of 2008 spending “soon” and that “at least forty” would take place. During 2008, CMS had estimated “improper payments,” to the health plans at nearly $7 billion, mostly overcharges.

Yet CMS ended up scrapping the 2008 audits and didn’t conduct them for 2009 or 2010, apparently because officials believed they had waited too long to get the process up and running.

“If we move forward with 2008, we would be reviewing (medical) records from 4 to 5 years ago,” an unnamed official said in one internal presentation. The official suggested instead that the agency start extrapolation audits for the 2011 payment year.

The speaker went on to reflect frustration with RADV audits which “have taken much longer than we ever dreamed possible.” The official called it a “learning process.”

Apart from discussing “high-flyers” at two internal meetings, there’s no evidence CMS tried to figure out precisely how many plans—including some operated by major corporations with millions of Medicare members— were exaggerating how sick their patients were to fatten the bottom line.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, spends about $17 million a year conducting RADV audits and estimating payment errors. So far, these efforts have returned about $15 million to the agency.

By contrast, other medical fraud and abuse efforts are said to more than pay for themselves. HHS announced in March 2015 that fraud recovery efforts department-wide returned $7.70 for every dollar spent.

CMS officials have said the threat of being audited, and a provision of the Affordable Care Act requiring prompt return of any excess payments, has led Medicare Advantage to voluntarily send back more than $1 billion to the treasury, mostly since 2010. The CMS spokesman said audits of 30 Medicare Advantage contracts and their spending from 2012  have begun  and that plans were chosen based on “how aggressively they report diagnosis codes to CMS for payment.”

But Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group, said it was troubling that the audits haven’t delivered better results. “You really have to enforce audits and act on them and not let the bad actors off the hook,” he said.

In December 1997, a company called Select Steel moved to enter the then-bustling economy of Flint, Michigan.

It applied for an air permit with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, seeking to build a “mini-mill” abutting the city’s northern edge that would melt and recast scrap metal. The mill would send up to 100 tons of lead per year, as well as particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

Residents of the area already were dealing with pollution from the wood-burning Genesee Power Station. Nonetheless,in May 1998, state regulators approved Select Steel’s permit.

“This was just more unethical pouring of stuff into the North End,” said Father Philip Schmitter, pastor at Christ the King Catholic Church in Flint.

As it turned out, the Select Steel mill was never built. But the threat of its existence prompted angry residents to file a complaint against the state with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Civil Rights. The case led to the office’s first formal decision and set it on a course that many believe is misguided.

Because of Select Steel, the office to this day relies heavily on science — too heavily, critics say — to investigate alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination by recipients of federal funding such as states and cities.

The prospect of a new pollution source is not enough to show a discriminatory impact on a community, the EPA has decided. Instead, it parses data to see whether emission levels will rise above legal limits set by the agency to prevent harm to the environment and human health.

The Select Steel case “casts a shadow on civil-rights enforcement,” said Marianne Engelman Lado, of the public-interest law firm Earthjustice. “It raises significant questions about EPA’s backbone and willingness to enforce the civil-rights statute.”

In a statement to the Center, EPA officials defended their approach.

“In accordance with case law and [Department of Justice] guidance, all federal agencies, including the EPA, must determine whether there is sufficient harm for a disparate impact complaint to be actionable,” the statement said.

A Center for Public Integrity investigation in August found that the Office of Civil Rights has routinely failed to enforce Title VI. The office has dismissed nine out of every 10 community claims alleging environmental discrimination, the Center found, and has never once issued a formal finding of a Title VI violation.

EPA officials say they have begun the work of turning the office around. They have announced plans to do more frequent compliance reviews and publish an annual report to chart the office’s progress. This month they issued a notice of proposed rulemaking removing certain deadlines and put out a case manual for investigators examining civil-rights claims.

Boom and bust

An hour northeast of Detroit, Flint was built on the back of General Motors. The automaker’s 400-acre complex, dubbed “Buick City,” which paralleled the Flint River and employed more than 27,000 workers, dominated the city’s landscape for much of the 20^th century. For many in Flint, the path to the middle class went through the assembly lines.

By 2014, 15 years after the automotive industry fled, 41 percent of Flint’s 99,002 residents lived in poverty; the median household income was $24,679. Rising crime has pegged Flint among today’s most dangerous American cities.

Schmitter has seen the city boom and bust. For years, he was co-director at the St. Francis Prayer Center, a Catholic retreat on the north side of Flint, but he also lived in the community. He was well acquainted with the challenges some poorer residents had to face.

A social-justice stalwart, Schmitter sensed trouble when, in 1992, the Genesee Power Station sought a home in Genesee Township, just beyond the Flint city limits.

“That’s a favored tactic of big business,” Schmitter said. “They go to a city, but put the facility in the neighboring township.”

He and his late colleague, Sister Joanne Chiaverini, filed a civil-rights complaint with the EPA, protesting the facility’s permit. They filed another complaint in 1994, but the power plant went into operation the following year, as they waited for a response.

In June 1998 the church filed another complaint, this time asking the EPA to intervene in the proposed Select Steel project. It claimed state regulators had “sped through” the permitting process to avoid a court order requiring them to provide “meaningful” citizen participation and conduct an environmental review for each new polluting facility.

“The same unfair and disparate burden of pollution will fall on a group of minority, low income people, as in the case already before the EPA,” Schmitter and Chiaverini wrote, referring to the Genesee complaint. “We await your prompt and decisive action!”

Embracing science

More than 500 miles from Flint, in Washington, D.C., things were heating up for civil-rights investigators and administrators at the EPA.

In the late 1990s, civil-rights cases were still a novelty at the agency. By the time Select Steel came across investigators’ desks, the EPA had only received 50 complaints.

“There was no case law, there was no policy. There was no environmental framework for doing the analysis,” then-director Ann Goode said in a recent interview with the Center, “so all of this was fresh ground.”

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights had called for the EPA to develop guidelines for handling allegations of discrimination cases, while Congress pushed for a more scientifically rigorous approach by the agency overall. The civil-rights office tapped the EPA’s Science Advisory Board to analyze two proposed methods of assessing Title VI complaints.

The board dismissed as "insufficient" a method that considered the environmental harm caused by industrial facilities in a given area, comparing exposures in minority communities to those in white communities. Another method took into account the pollution burden from stationary, mobile and other sources in an area and compared it to legal limits. That method showed promise, the board said.

In Flint, then-EPA analyst Loren Hall was putting a version of this concept into practice. A monitor in a city park kept track of air pollution from the factories that loomed over neighborhoods. Hall looked for data suggesting Select Steel would have an “adverse disparate impact.”

He found none, he said; the levels of pollutants released by existing facilities were “way below” the legal threshold. As a result, his analysis of the project would hinge on the levels projected in the Select Steel permit. Those, too, did not give the agency the ammunition it needed to issue a finding of discrimination.

On October 30, 1998, after working around the clock to meet a promised deadline, the EPA found that the permit did not violate the civil rights of African-American residents. The mill clearly would discharge mercury and other pollutants, the agency found, but because emission levels would not exceed environmental standards, there was no adverse disparate impact.

“Health-based standards have nothing to do with civil rights,” said Engelman Lado, of Earthjustice. “The act of spewing the mercury is a disproportionate effect ­— that’s bad enough. It doesn’t have to be peer-reviewed bad. It just has to be a bad effect.”

In the end, community opposition proved too much for the steel company. Plans for the Flint mill were scrapped, and Select Steel eyed a new location near Lansing.

Plans for that facility also were abandoned after the company failed to get financing.

Debate over ‘adversity standard’

The Select Steel case remains a touchstone, sparking a debate over the EPA’s adversity standard that rages still.

Under Title VI, advocates argue, the mere act of releasing a toxic substance like mercury should constitute disproportionate harm. Instead, they say, the agency substitutes environmental law for civil-rights law.

“We’re still at an impasse,” Engelman Lado said. “This fight over the adversity standard is one of the key barriers for them enforcing civil rights.”

 Goode said she empathizes.

“It’s understandable from the community’s perspective; they haven’t gotten a win,” she said. “I wouldn’t be satisfied if I were sitting on that side. No way.”

Still, Goode defended EPA’s reliance on science-based analysis, saying it lends legitimacy to the agency’s decisions.

 “There has to be some logic to this,” she said. “I don’t think you could issue an opinion otherwise.”

Hall also stands by the Select Steel analysis.

“It’s not that the environmental justice concerns aren’t credible,” he said. “But at [the Office of Civil Rights] we have to prove adverse disparate impacts by a preponderance of the evidence.”

Adapting civil-rights law for the environmental context has proven tricky, said Joseph Rich of the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights. Most cases dealing with disparate impacts involve housing or employment issues, he said, leaving the EPA to do the best it can with the case law that’s out there.

 “They’re all looking at the same basic standard, but how you apply it ... is a difficult issue,” said Rich, who co-directs the committee’s fair housing program.

The EPA for years has grappled with how to evaluate civil-rights cases.

In 2000, it drafted policy guidelines that allowed targets of civil-rights complaints to argue there was no discrimination if a facility complied with environmental standards. The agency issued a position paper in 2013 promising to eliminate that defense under pressure from advocates. In its statement to the Center, the EPA said it is “still considering and working on this issue.”

While the EPA sorts things out, Schmitter and others in Flint are still waiting to see what will come of the Genesee Power Plant case, pending since 1994. Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against the EPA on behalf of five community groups, including the St. Francis Prayer Center, with civil-rights cases that have been pending for at least a decade.

“I’m not happy with the distinction of filing the oldest unacted-upon case in the history of EPA,” Schmitter said. “That’s not a battle ribbon I want to be wearing.”

Award for "Big Oil: Bad Air"

On the awards front, the Environment team led by Jim Morris, scored big with the Knight-Risser Award for Western Environmental Journalism awarded by Stanford University. The winning entry was the “Big Oil: Bad Air” project which dealt with the hitherto unreported local health consequences of the U.S fracking boom.

It’s a multi-award-winning project with Inside Climate News and The Weather Channel.

“Judges praised Big Oil, Bad Air as a thorough examination of a particularly complex subject – toxic air emissions from oil and gas production. They felt its extensive multimedia presentation made it accessible and of interest to audiences on multiple fronts. And it showed the power of media collaborations on such important topics,” the citation read. 

As always, awards are an important industry recognition and I hope give our donors evidence that our peers respect the work of this relatively small organization which punches far above its weight in these competitions.

Impact through others

We also welcome recognition from industry heavyweights like the Washington Post and New York Times when their editorialists in particular note our agenda-setting work. In that spirit New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has twice noted Center work in RECENT op-eds, one noting the epic State Integrity project and the work of our reporter Nick Kusnetz [in a piece in the Washington Post] in exposing corruption at the state level. Margaret’s second piece also called out the Center but was more of a PLEA for the business of investigative reporting.

Spotlight may be the best disinfectant

Much of the recent interest in investigative reporting has been prompted by the movie Spotlight, the remarkable story of the Boston Globe investigation into pedophile priests. I saw it at a premiere in Washington run by Diana Schemo of 100Reporters.org which has created a Washington investigative film festival. It’s a powerful film and a good watch which may give even the most hard-bitten journalist chills. It’s led to then-Boston Globe editor Marty Baron, now at the Washington Post, being hailed by Esquire as the Best News Editor of All Time. It’s also interesting that the film was part-funded by First Look Media created by e-Bay founder Pierre Omidyar. Full disclosure: His philanthropic group Omidyar Network and its offspring Democracy Fund are backers of Center projects. Here’s a Poynter piece on what it believes Omidyar is trying to do with First Look.

Of course we’d argue the best way to support investigative journalism is to donate to the Center. Thank you.

Swiss Leaks recognition for our partner

In London, The Guardian— whose recently retired editor Alan Rusbridger might arguably challenge Marty Baron as “world’s best news editor” — won a Press Gazette“investigation of the year” award for its work with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) project on Swiss Leaks or HSBC. 

As Gerard Ryle, the ICIJ Director, noted: "What I liked is that when giving Rusbridger his (lifetime achievement) award SwissLeaks (HSBC Files as they called it) was cited along with Snowden et al as one of the biggest investigations of our time.”

Recommendations from others

FastCompany recommended Yue Qiu and Chris Zuba-Skees’ graphical story-telling for the State Integrity project as its “infographic of the day”. 

Longreads.com included Susan Ferriss’ powerful indictment of the criminalization of children as one of its Big Reads of 2015. Columbia Journalism Review recommended Dan Wagner’s great work with the Seattle Times on Warren Buffett’s gouging mobile home empire as one of its Best of Journalism in 2015 list. The CJR also highlighted the Center’s work with the Post & Courier of Charleston as part of its best of local investigative reporting.

It’s terrific for the team to have that level of recognition from peers.

What we’re reading

I thought this piece in The Economist on Donald Trump summed up the phenomenon well.

This Guardian piece on the disappearing American Middle Class is exactly why we created the new No Way Up project. (Fred SCHULTE kicked off the new project with this appalling piece on loansharks aka title loan firms.)

I just finished the audio book version of “Between the World and Me”, a letter to his son by the African-American writer and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. As a newcomer to the United States it was for me one of the most powerful statements on the racial divide here I’ve found. It made me think and you can’t ask for much more than that.

I welcome feedback on this note.

[This is an edited version of speech given by Center for Public Integrity CEO Peter Bale to an audience at ORF, the Austrian state broadcaster in Vienna last month, as part of a panel for the Alpbach Forum. The event posed the question "Who will save quality journalism]

Who will save quality journalism? It’s a big question with many assumptions behind it: particularly the idea that quality journalism, if we can define that, is in fact at risk.

I would argue it is flourishing. And that indeed is the argument I made late last month to forum organized by the Austrian think tank, the Alpbach Forum, in Vienna. But that doesn’t mean it will flourish forever. And finding the business model that will allow it to succeed is a quest we must attack with intensity.

But first let’s go back to quality, and just how to define it and let me also explain why it’s me delivering this message.

I’m the chief executive of the Washington-based investigative news organization, the Center for Public Integrity, which also houses the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

I am also president of a news industry organization, the Global Editors Network, which promotes innovation in newsrooms.

So, I am intimately involved in this theme after a long time in journalism in newspapers, as a foreign correspondent and editor, and roles in television and online.

But don’t let me suggest I have the answers. I have thoughts about the question and I do believe there is more high quality journalism around now than ever before – so I am an optimist.

I also mistrust certainty among journalists and those who comment with absolute certainty instead of doubt.

As CP Scott, the legendary editor of The Guardian wrote:
'Comment is free, but facts are sacred'

I’d like to use some examples from the Center and the Consortium to address this question of quality journalism and raise some questions about the role of journalism in civil society. I’ll also address regulation of the media, the protection of the right to free speech and a little about the influence of technology, social media and advertising.

The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit, a charity news organization funded by philanthropic groups and individuals.

Our backers support the fundamental role of journalism in civil society – something I think we often forget or have taken for granted.

There is a truism in the world of American journalism that the purpose of a newspaper, is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”.

That isn’t a bad mission statement but I wonder how many of us can honestly say our publications achieve that standard.

Do they challenge the status quo or are they part of it?

I have always felt that it was the journalist’s job to give the underdog a voice.

To me, deciding what you as a journalist or as a journalism brand stand for is part of deciding what your future is.

These issues of fairness, observation and calling out society’s ills have arguably grown in importance with the focus on inequality in our society since the 2008 financial crisis.

It often surprises me when I look at the work of journalists at the Center for Public Integrity, how much of our work comes back to issues of inequality and the influence of money in politics.

Our work in Environment and Workers Rights exposes the influence of lax regulation, watered down at the behest of powerful business interests, that leaves tens of thousands of people exposed to dangerous chemicals.

Our work on Broadband Internet access – which some countries have asserted is a human right – shows that a duopoly of two of the most powerful companies overcharge most Americans and deny the poorest decent access.

Even our work through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – huge exposes on tax avoidance by dictators, companies and household names -- is ultimately about inequality.

In February the ICIJ broke the Swiss Leaks story – the revelation that the Swiss branch of HSBC had been engaged in harboring tax avoidance on an industrial scale.

The French economist Thomas Piketty, famous for his treatise on inequality and its dangers: Capital in the 21^st Century, told the ICIJ: “The offshore industry is a major threat for our democratic institutions and our basic social contract…Financial opacity is one of the key drivers of rising global inequality.”

Shining a light on dark corners is what we, and I believe most, quality journalism is supposed to do.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” as US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, said.

So now we must turn to a related but crucial question: what is the business model that will allow quality journalism to not only survive, but thrive as well?

One answer may be non-profit specialist organizations—like the Center for Public Integrity or ProPublica here in the States.  

You’re starting to see some of these emerge in Europe as well—the German investigative group Correctiv and Netzwerk Recherche are trying to promote the same idea of tax-advantages for journalism.

I’d also argue that the mainstream media industry has to work harder on multiple fronts. No one owes us a living and no one owes newspapers a reason to keep publishing. Too much of the debate concerns the method of publishing, and we lose sight of the objective, which is to keep funding great journalism no matter how it is consumed.

So we will have to work harder to understand the forces that are changing our industry, primarily the technology, and figure out how to harness those forces in order to connect with the audience and understand its needs.

Social media companies have done that better than we have by listening to their audiences, and reacting.

When Facebook realized the world was moving to mobile it moved with it, even ahead of it, investing heavily in mobile ahead of the curve of advertising— but just in time, as it turned out.

Facebook made $2.9 billion from mobile in just the second quarter of this year – 76 per cent of its total revenue.

The media brands that are thriving, or at least achieving high valuations, are those breaking the link between the printing press or the studio and the product; they are technologically minded and ruthlessly focused on the needs of their audience and its consumer experience.

Buzz Feed is now valued at more than $1.5 billion after a $250m investment by NBC Universal.  Vice Media is said to be worth $2 billion and have revenues of $1 billion.

It’s easy to criticize these outlets, but important to remember that each is investing in quality journalism: Buzz Feed is funding major investigative work as well as popular fare. It knows what its audience is doing moment to moment, what headline works best, which story is most read or most shared or rated highest.

Vice has committed to coverage in Ukraine, Libya and every hot spot including an amazing series from a reporter embedded with ISIS in Syria– something more conservative media groups would have baulked at.

In Europe, POLITICO – a fixture in Washington and one packed with advertising aimed at policy makers – launched POLITICO  Europe in Brussels, in a joint venture with the German publisher Axel Springer.

Axel Springer—along with Schibstead of Norway– is arguably one of the few truly innovative European media companies.

Why? Perhaps because Axel Springer systematically sends executives for lengthy spells to Silicon Valley where they learn to think differently, faster, to take risks, and in the jargon of the Valley to “Fail Fast”.

Axel Springer also bought Business Insider– an upstart business media brand taking on the likes of Forbes and Bloomberg with a sassy recipe of aggregated content and speed. Springer paid $343 million for Business Insider – valuing the group at $450 million.

What Buzz Feed and Business Insider have is a combination of cutting-edge technology and a Silicon Valley attitude of moving rapidly to achieve scale. Employing that recipe has allowed them to produce both profits and quality.

And these tools have proven vital when they compete against the real behemoths of the modern media industry: Facebook and Twitter and Google. In the winner takes all world of the Internet it really is a matter of dealing with those three.

In 2011, research from the Pew Center in the US reported that 11 per cent of US news consumers got their news from “Facebook or Twitter”. In 2014, that rose to 30 per cent, nearly triple in three years.

An alternative to the power of the big social and search platforms is to close off the rest of the Internet and accept that your site or property is niche, a beautiful high-end asset you are prepared to share for a price with like-minded souls.

To some extent that’s the approach of the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times, which have accepted limited growth in exchange for a high-quality audience prepared to pay for the  product. There is profitability in a subscription model for the well heeled.

These are properties of high quality in journalism and audience, and thus advertising as well. They are luxury products and there’s no surprise they are filled with advertisements for Louis Vuitton or Rolex.

Brand advertising, the least transactional perhaps, can be thought of as doing well and several media brands are doing well at it, particularly with what is known as Native Advertising, where the same quality of storytelling goes into explaining brand stories as the news itself.

An illuminating example of how this can co-exist and with quality journalism is Quartz.com, the business-advertising site which practically invented “native advertising” and in the work of the New York Times.

Outside those specialist, club-like environments, scale is now king.

Which brings us full circle. Will Google and Facebook or Twitter “save” quality media?

Each is adamant it’s a platform and that neither is a creator or editor of content.

But what is a Like or Heart or a Google+ share but an endorsement, a filter, a stamp of approval?

What is an algorithm that chooses what surfaces on my Facebook feed but the most powerful editor in the world? It’s tuned to me, my network and the judgments made not by editors but by hidden software writers in Mountain View and Menlo Park.

Like it or not,  they are making editorial judgments without the ethical training and experience of journalists, something Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center at Columbia, is investigating.

That’s why with the Paris attacks Facebook was filled with ill-informed criticism that the Western media was somehow ignoring terror attacks in Kenya or Beirut. They hadn’t, it’s just you don’t have friends there and nor did your associates and so when Paris broke it was inevitably stronger within the Facebook algorithm in your feed.

It is also true that social media dominance – and therefore the immediate future of media -- is being built in the United States, not in Europe.

Why are there no serious European rivals?

Why is Europe utterly failing to provide the climate to create world-beating news media or social media companies?

I suspect it has a lot to do with different attitudes about the use of technology, the sort of utopian can do spirit of Americans and their readiness to break with tradition, to disrupt the existing order.

I believe Europe’s struggle for media success and its ambiguity towards big data and freedom of expression also has something to do with the First Amendment to the US Constitution and the absence of any similar protection for free speech on the European  continent.

“Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” This simple addition to the US Constitution is, I would argue, more relevant now than at any time since it was added in 1791.

The Internet – an American creation – is arguably a First Amendment space and I would argue we should fight to keep it that way, free from the interference of governments in less free societies and even in Europe.

We should celebrate this freedom and protect it. Not easy in a society worried about terror that seems to be accepting more and more secret surveillance from its governments.

With no constitutional protection for journalism or freedom of speech in the UK or most of Europe, we have more at risk than we may realize.

And lastly in terms of business models, what of national broadcasters like [Austrian national broadcaster] ORF and the BBC in the UK?

I watch what is happening in the UK where the BBC is under attack from a Conservative government that has wrongly but without much uproar started to treat the BBC like an arm of the government, changing its budget and purposes almost at will.

While it is true that a fee based on the ownership of a TV may no longer a viable model for long-term funding, to focus on that and not on the public good the BBC generates, the immense “soft power” in its creative output, news coverage and global footprint creates seems to me to be a crime.

Anyone considering the future of a state or other form of national broadcaster should look at the consequences of getting rid of it: listen to National Public Radio or watch PBS television in the United States. They do brilliantly but their constant appeals for support are exhausting and their output a fraction of their commercial competitors.

Also remember that it was only in 1987 that the Federal Communications Commission in the United States cancelled a nearly 40-year-old Fairness Doctrine, requiring television news be “honest, equitable, and balanced”.

Can anyone really believe as they watch Fox News that the dialogue in the United States has been improved by letting the market have free range to ignore accuracy or fairness in favor of partisan, inflammatory and just plain wrong information? Are we countering ignorance or feeding it?

Who is questioning the explosion of nonsense, whether about immigration, China, climate change, or Islamic extremism?

When I was young people who wanted to change the world chose journalism. Now they choose computer science, coding.

It’d be great to combine those two choices into a single world-changing view. Thankfully some are doing just that.

Indeed, amidst all the listicles and cat videos are multiple models and indeed some quality journalism. There is great work out there coming to a digital device if you choose it. You have more access to more information from more sources than ever.

The social and search engines are the gateway and the publisher en masse.

But beneath them are tens of thousands of high quality outlets, many thriving. Some will find a niche market, some will get their readers to support them, and others will gain philanthropic support.

Jeff Bezos spent $250 million of his own money on the Washington Post – now undergoing a major technology-led revival. Pierre Omidyar, billionaire founder of e-Bay, says he will put a similar sum into his journalism start up.

There’s never been greater access to more diversity of opinion and more access, yes, even to quality.

As consumers have our own role to play. We need to defend the quality proposition and be prepared to pay to support it: to defend civil society by funding journalism to keep shining a light on dark corners.

Journalism and media companies have to show they are up to that job as well. They have to fight and innovate on new technology, embrace new methods of delivery, and connect with their audience: with consumers who have more choice and greater access to the truth than ever - with you.

The Center for Public Integrity is pleased to welcome two prominent new members to its Board of Directors.

Elspeth Revere boasts of a long career in philanthropy, which includes her distinguished tenure directing the MacArthur Foundation's support for journalism and media.  In December 2015 she retired as Vice President for Media, Culture and Special Initiatives at MacArthur after 24 years of service. Her work has been devoted to using philanthropic tools to support civil society initiatives and organizations.  She has most recently focused on strengthening American democracy and supporting a set of public interest news organizations, including those that conduct deep investigative reporting, nourish a vibrant arts community in Chicago, and produce documentary films on social issues that educate their audiences and inspire action.  Her earlier work addressed human rights, copyright in the digital age, and community service for young people.  She started her career as a city planner in Chicago, her home town.

“Elspeth is one of the most experienced philanthropic leaders working in media and we are fortunate to have her expertise now available to the Center,” said Chief Executive Office Peter Bale.   

Meanwhile,former New York Times Washington bureau chief Bill Kovach isreturning to the Board. Kovach, a journalist and writer for more than 60 years, began his career the Johnson City (Tennessee) Press-Chronicle in 1956. From 1960 until 1967 he was a reporter for The Nashville Tennessean, where he covered the civil rights movement, Southern politics and Appalachian poverty. Following a journalism fellowship at Stanford University, Kovach joined The New York Times in 1968. He spent a total of  18 years at The Times, the last eight—from 1979 to 1986—managing the paper’s operations in the nation’s capital.  He later served as executive editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for two years, during which time the paper won two Pulitzer Prizes and was nominated for seven others.

“Bill is a legend and we’re lucky to have him back on the Board to add to the journalistic weight guiding the Center,” said Peter Bale.

Kovach and Revere are the latest in a number of recent additions to the Center for Public Integrity Board of Directors—including Richard Lobo, former Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, and Ninan Chacko, the CEO of Travel Leaders Group, former CEO of PR Newswire.

In the northern Honduran town of El Progreso, 53 men and women belong to an exclusive but undesirable club: the Association of Migrants Returned with Disabilities. Each attempted to reach the United States by riding freight trains across Mexico, and each suffered debilitating injuries along the way. It’s a measure of their desperation to find work in America.

“Even though you know the risks, you never think it’ll happen to you,” Jose Luis Hernandez, the association’s president, told the Center for Public Integrity in an interview for NPR’s Latino USA.  The trains, which carry goods to the U.S. on a common route, collectively are known as La Bestia– The Beast. Despite its many dangers, the rail network offers the quickest and cheapest way through Mexico. The trains’ riders are among Latin America’s poorest migrants. 

Hernandez, 29, left Honduras when he was 17. After 20 days of riding boats, buses and La Bestia, he climbed onto his final train to Ciudad Juarez, on the Mexico-U.S. border. Tired, with swollen feet, he decided to take off his shoes. In the process, he slipped to the ground and his leg landed on the tracks. It was quickly crushed by the train’s wheel; he lost his right arm and left hand trying to break free.

After two years recovering in Mexican hospitals, Hernandez returned to Honduras. Now, missing two limbs, his prospects of earning a living are slimmer than when he left.

“Realistically, in Honduras, a person like us is worth less than nothing,” Hernandez said. “You have to have a lot of mental strength to endure all of that.” In the past five years, three association members from El Progreso have committed suicide. Others have been victims of drug-related killings.

The number of migrants permanently injured on their ride north is difficult to assess. Many do not survive; others continue to the U.S. or remain in Mexico. In Honduras, the National Commission of Support for Migrants Returned with Disabilities was formed in 2009 and began keeping track of injured migrants. Its casualty list includes nearly 500 names; Hernandez’s group estimates 200 more have yet to come to the commission’s attention.

In February, 17 men injured while riding La Bestia on an earlier trip north decided to try again after years of failing to find work and appealing to the Honduran government for aid. This time with prosthetics, they walked and took buses, a slower, more expensive journey with risks of its own. They passed places where some of them had fallen before.

“Some of the guys couldn’t stop crying. It was terrible,” Hernandez said. “To hear the awful wail of the train when it starts and stops. All those sounds stayed etched in our minds.”

By the time the group of travelers presented itself to U.S. immigration officials at the border, six men had abandoned the journey and returned to Honduras. The 11 who remained were taken to the South Texas Detention Center, where they experienced conditions their lawyer described as degrading and dangerous. Hernandez, who has one leg and one arm, was shackled. Others with crutches and prosthetics bathed in an open shower with a tile floor.

The asylum-seekers were detained for six weeks before being released on humanitarian parole. A Texas-based legal service center arranged for them to travel to their original destination, Washington, D.C., where they are meeting with policymakers and community organizers to discuss the extreme hardships disabled migrants face in Honduras. They’re also advocating for policies that can enhance economic opportunities in Latin America for those who have yet to make the journey north.

“Many of my compañeros [in Honduras] are much more injured than I am, and they can’t support themselves,” said Jose Ifrain Izaguirre, who lost a leg to La Bestia. “They motivate me to do this.”

Two-and-a-half years after the Internal Revenue Service apologized for using "inappropriate criteria" to scrutinize tea party-aligned nonprofits applying for tax-exempt status, President Barack Obama has signed into law a new measure that makes it easier for nonprofit groups to receive a tax break — or sue the agency to avoid legal limbo.

Such groups have proliferated in recent years and become increasingly active in elections in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

These nonprofits, many of which are organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, need not publicly disclose their donors. And their primary purpose must be the "promotion of social welfare,” not electoral politics.

More than 100 groups seeking tax-exempt recognition that were deemed to be potentially political by the IRS waited more than a year for answers from the agency, according to a May 2013 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

The inspector general’s report prompted multiple congressional investigations and the resignation of several IRS officials, including Lois Lerner, who led the IRS division responsible for overseeing tax-exempt organizations.

Yet long waits and legal uncertainty did not keep some well-financed groups from being heavily involved in elections — and pushing the legal limits.

In response, many campaign finance reform advocates have called for the IRS to develop new rules clarifying the degree to which nonprofits may be involved in politics. But the new spending bill signed by Obama prohibits the IRS from issuing new rules while giving groups themselves more recourse.

Dan Backer, a Republican attorney specializing in campaign finance and tax law issues, called the development "fantastic" and predicted the tax-exempt application process would be "much faster" now for groups organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.

Previously, only charities organized under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code had the ability to take the IRS to court to force a determination — or to appeal the IRS' decision about whether they should receive tax-exempt status.

Now all groups organized under section 501(c) — including charities, "social welfare" organizations, labor unions and trade associations — can sue the IRS if the agency doesn't issue a determination within 270 days.

Several conservative groups identified in the inspector general’s report had waited more than 1,000 days for the IRS to take action. Because of the long waits and intensive questioning, some withdrew their applications to for tax-exempt status.

Jan Witold Baran, head of the political law practice at the Washington, D.C.-based firm Wiley Rein, said the change will make suing the IRS "much easier and also much cheaper."

This legislative language was first introduced by Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., in 2014. It was included in the 233-page tax extenders bill passed by Congress last week and was incorporated into the 2,000-plus page omnibus spending bill signed by Obama on Friday.

Reached by the Center for Public Integrity, a spokesman for Coats could not immediately comment. But in a 2015 press release, Coats praised his bill for providing "a much-needed avenue of relief for nonprofits whose applications for tax-exempt status are languishing at the IRS."

Nonprofits push rules

In 2010, the Citizens United ruling loosened rules regarding corporate political spending.

Deep-pocketed 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofits have been among those taking advantage of the decision, spending millions of dollars to support their preferred candidates even though the “primary purpose” of such groups can’t be electoral politics.

For instance, Crossroads GPS, which was launched, in part, by veteran Republican political strategist Karl Rove, has spent more than $110 million on advertisements calling for the election or defeat of candidates since its creation in 2010. To date, its application for tax-exempt status as a "social welfare" nonprofit has neither been approved nor denied by the IRS.

The consumer interest group Public Citizen filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that Crossroads GPS was violating the law and should have registered as a political committee rather than a "social welfare" nonprofit. Political committees are required to disclose their funders.

An investigation by the FEC's office of general counsel that was recently made public determined that Crossroads GPS likely broke the law. But a majority of the six-member commission — which is comprised of three Democratic-aligned commissions and three Republicans — could not reach an agreement on the case.

Similarly, a group called Freedom Path — which, likewise, has not been officially recognized as a 501(c)(4) by the IRS — spent more than $1 million on messages designed to help boost Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah during his contentious 2012 primary fight.

The Center for Public Integrity later revealed that Freedom Path received $750,000 in seed money from the trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

The pro-Hatch group has already sued the IRS — not for its indecision but rather for prematurely releasing its application for tax-exempt status to the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica. In that document, Freedom Path told the IRS it did not plan to participate in elections.

Records show the IRS has only rejected the applications of 501(c)(4) groups a handful of times for being too focused on partisan politics. 

The liberal group Arkansans for Common Sense was one such organization.

In 2010, Arkansas for Common Sense spent about $1.3 million, mostly on ads designed to aid Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., who fended off a primary challenge that year but ultimately lost her seat to Republican John Boozman.

Its application for tax-exempt status was rejected by the IRS in 2014.

Changes afoot

The new law signed by Obama on Friday will also prohibit IRS employees from using personal email accounts to conduct official business and bar the agency from imposing the gift tax on contributions made to 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups.

It further requires groups formed under section 501(c)(4) to notify the IRS of their existence, something they weren't previously required to do.

Though many such groups choose to file official applications for IRS approval, they weren't required to. IRS recognition gives them legal certainty with regard to their tax status.

The new law requires new 501(c)(4) nonprofits to provide notice of their creation to the IRS within 60 days or pay a penalty.

Jason Torchinsky, a lawyer whose clients include Freedom Path, said the impact of the changes won't be entirely clear until the IRS writes regulations explaining how they will be put into practice.

But he called the notice provision "significant” because “it's new and it changes current practice."

Other tax lawyers and campaign finance reform advocates had been hoping that the IRS would, in 2016, issue updated guidance to 501(c)(4) nonprofits regarding the degree to which they may engage in electoral politics.

They have called for new bright lines about spending rules, rather than the current practice of relying on the "facts and circumstances" on a case-by-case basis.

However, a separate provision in the omnibus spending bill prohibits the IRS from spending money to implement any new rules concerning nonprofits' politicking.

Greg Colvin, a San Francisco-based lawyer affiliated with Public Citizen’s Bright Lines Project, said the new measures mean “we’re stuck with a very difficult system” and an “unstable status quo” in which “those who want to push the envelope can as much as they want to.”

Philip Hackney, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University Law Center who formerly worked at the IRS’ office of the chief counsel, said the new provisions, especially the freeze on new rules, show that “Congress is expressing that it does not trust the IRS.”

Conservatives have largely praised the new measures.

"We are making strides in getting and keeping the IRS out of the speech policing business," said Republican lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who represents many of the tea party groups scrutinized by the IRS. "There is more to do next year, but this is a big step in the right direction."

This story was co-published with Al Jazeera America.

Despite saying they have no legal basis to do so, Virginia state officials have denied the Center for Public Integrity immediate access to annual corporate reports filed with the state by the nation’s three major auto-title lenders.

The title-loan companies TitleMax of Virginia; Anderson Financial Services LLC, doing business as LoanMax; and Fast Auto Loans Inc. argue that releasing the reports would seriously damage their businesses.

In November, the Center for Public Integrity sought copies of the 2014 annual reports the three lenders filed with the Virginia Bureau of Financial Institutions. In addition to revenues, the lenders must report data such as the number of title loans and their terms, the number of defaults and how often they sue customers or repossess their cars. The companies also must disclose if they have been the subject of any “regulatory investigation” for misconduct anywhere in the country within the past three years.

In a filing made public on Monday, state officials, in reaction to petitions filed by the three loan companies that argued the information should not be made public, said they were “not persuaded” by objections from the title companies. Officials also said they “were unaware of any statutory or other legal basis preventing the reports from being treated as public records.”

Still, the officials recommended that the issue be taken up as part of the rule-making process, which would give all parties time to make their case. In the meantime, they recommended that the records remain confidential.

Jay Speer, executive director of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, said state officials were “perhaps being overly cautious” in withholding the records. “Why would it be bad for the public to know they [title lenders] are being fined in other states?” he said.

The title loan industry, which is dominated by three Georgia-based companies, has come under fire from consumer advocates and some lawmakers for charging interest rates that can exceed 300 percent in some states and seizing the cars of borrowers who fail to repay their loans.

A Center for Public Integrity investigation found that the title lenders have fended off tighter state oversight of their operations behind millions of dollars in campaign contributions, aggressive challenges to regulators who seek to rein them in and by writing loan contracts that leave aggrieved borrowers with little legal recourse.

Title loans are legal in about half the states, and the three major companies operate more than 3,000 stores, including more than 200 in Virginia.

Virginia officials said nobody had asked for the reports before the Center for Public Integrity filed its request. Officials told the Center they could find no reason not to disclose them under the state’s public records law.

Virginia Commissioner of Financial Institutions E.J. Face Jr. wrote in Nov. 19 letters to the companies that his office was “unable to identify a statutory or other legal basis” for keeping the records secret.

But Face gave the lenders a chance to challenge his decision, and all three promptly did.

Making the data public “could endanger the safety and soundness of Fast Auto,” that company wrote in a Nov. 30 legal brief.

TitleMax argued it would suffer “irreparable damage” as a result. The company said anyone “could, at a glance, identify the strengths and weaknesses of TitleMax’s products and their financial risks.”

LoanMax wrote that it would be at a “competitive disadvantage” because competitors could see states “in which LoanMax is at increased risk for regulatory scrutiny due to past regulatory actions.”

Loan Max asked that its report be kept confidential “until there is a hearing on this matter and all other remedies, including an appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia, have been exhausted.”

Ken Schraud, spokesman for the state financial institutions agency, said the commission “will weigh the legal arguments presented and rule accordingly by further order.”

A Florida man has so far this month created more than 350 political groups — including hundreds of federal super PACs that claim to represent interests ranging from racquetball to the petroleum industry.

And no, the super PACs’ creator is not a seasoned campaign fundraiser. Nor is he a billionaire primed to dole out cash to his favored presidential candidates.

He’s “Josh Larose,” usually known to exasperated election regulators as Josue Larose, and by any name, a political fetishist quite unlike any other.

His obsession: super PACs. Since 2010, Larose has registered hundreds upon hundreds of these and other political groups under his name.

Although super PACs may legally raise and spend unlimited money, almost none of Larose’s groups ever generate a dime.

This contrasts with super PAC fundraising machines such as Right to Rise USA, which supports Republican presidential candidate and fellow Floridian Jeb Bush. The pro-Bush group has spent more than $43.6 million on ads so far this year.

“It’s hard to understand why he does this,” Larry Noble, general counsel for Campaign Legal Center and a former Federal Election Commission general counsel, said of Larose.

If Larose has a reason, he isn’t saying: He hung up when the Center for Public Integrity called for comment.

Larose’s chronic super PAC creating has long dumbfounded federal and state election regulators alike. He registers super PACs, forms political parties and even runs for political office. But his actions come to a halt once he files the required paperwork.

And more, it creates headaches for the federal and state commissions charged with regulating campaign finance.

The Florida Elections Commission in 2014 found Larose, who lives in Deerfield, Fla., in violation of 2,052 counts of election law. The charge: dishonestly filling out campaign finance reports.

While leading 331 political committees in Florida and running to be the Sunshine State’s governor in 2010, Larose falsely reported receiving millions of dollars from nonexistent donors, according to records from the Florida Elections Commission.

Among Larose’s other claims: Florida Division of Elections employees attempted to elicit a $10,000 bribe from him.

Larose owes more than $513,000 in fines for his election violations. The Florida Elections Commission declined comment.

Inactive super PACs like those of Larose draw ire from federal regulators, too.

The FEC has ratcheted up its enforcement of zombie super PACs — those that exist on paper but don’t engage in politics. The FEC has the power to “administratively terminate” such inactive groups, and in 2012, it shut down 61 groups run by Larose.

Beyond that, the FEC can’t do much to stop Larose. “We don’t have a lot of authority in this area,” FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel acknowledged.

Meanwhile, agency staffers must spend time and resources processing his paperwork, tracking his super PACs’ activities and warning him when he fails to comply with various federal requirements.

Larose’s newest batch of super PACs bear names such as World Professional Judo League, America’s Supermarkets Industry Roundtable and Romanian Chamber of Commerce of America.

In fact, Larose created 100 “chamber of commerce” super PACs during December, all claiming geographic locations in various foreign countries and U.S. states.

The granddaddy of chambers — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — isn’t likely to take action against Larose as is doesn’t trademark the generic term “chamber of commerce.”

However, U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokeswoman Blair Latoff Holmes quickly noted: “These groups are not affiliated with the U.S. Chamber in any way.”

Since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision, anyone can form a super PAC with relative ease.

Farce political committees have long existed. Among the newest class are Leveraged Pelican PAC, Americans for Crushing It and Empire Strikes PAC.

Dozens of people have also formed fake presidential campaigns, often using ridiculous names or claiming to be those of cartoon or movie characters.

As it stands, anyone — including Larose — can form a super PAC, despite the headache the most inactive ones create for regulators.

“Any waste of resources is a problem,” Noble said. “But he does have a right to do this.”

Guns take more than 30,000 lives in America each year.

But there’s a less-visible, even deadlier scourge that’s been mostly lost in an era of mass shootings and terrorism scares: work-related illness, which kills 50,000 annually, according to the best government estimate. Hundreds of thousands more are sickened by job-related exposures to toxic substances.

Occupational disease lacks the macabre drama of a San Bernardino or a Newtown. The bodies cannot be easily counted. The victims may hang on for years or decades before quietly succumbing. Often, their deaths are acknowledged only by their families, friends and former co-workers.

In a series called “Unequal Risk,” the Center for Public Integrity has tried to bring this little-understood, little-examined topic into the light. The most important takeaway: many work-related diseases are preventable.

Actually, it’s worse than that. In effect, these diseases are legally sanctioned by the United States government, which has made the conscious decision to treat workers more callously than the general public when it comes to protection against toxics.

The casualties of this policy have names: Chris Johnson, Mark Flores, Johnathan Welch, Gene Cooper. The first two struggle with debilitating conditions. The last two are dead – Welch at only 18.

What’s remarkable is that the agency charged with regulating toxics in the workplace, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, admits that for the most part it’s unable to do so. OSHA, Congress, industry and the White House all bear responsibility.

The nation’s worker-protection laws are so weak — and offer so little deterrent value — that the departments of Labor and Justice just announced plans to bolster the use of environmental statutes as a workaround. Violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act at most are misdemeanors, but environmental crimes can bring felony convictions. Agency officials say employers with safety problems are often environmental offenders as well; they’ve urged federal prosecutors to investigate both types of crimes together.

The devaluing of the American worker doesn’t stop with the infliction of illness. It continues when he or she tries to win benefits through state or federal compensation programs, or seeks redress in the courts.

Often those who litigate are doing so for their families, not themselves. Such is the case with Kris Penny, a 39-year-old Floridian who is dying of an asbestos-related cancer called mesothelioma. Penny believes he was exposed to asbestos while installing fiber-optic cable a little more than a decade ago. No one warned him to take precautions, he says. “I’m not going to be the last guy this happens to, I can promise you,” he told us the day before he underwent radical surgery in Baltimore last August.

The outlook for worker health in this country is not encouraging. Certain uses of asbestos are still legal in the United States, though more than 50 countries have banned it. While a relatively modest 400 metric tons of asbestos were consumed in the U.S. last year, untold amounts are still embedded in buildings and infrastructure. Demolition, utility and other workers can knock it loose, sending invisible and potentially deadly fibers airborne.

“The stark realization that asbestos is legal, lethal, and everywhere is igniting feelings of anger, fear, and disgust,” says Linda Reinstein, CEO and co-founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization. “Similar to gun violence, many people have become numb and complacent about asbestos.” Reinstein, whose husband died of mesothelioma, has pressed tirelessly for a ban and has become a fixture on Capitol Hill.

Some members of Congress have different plans. In early January, the House is expected to vote on a bill proponents say would discourage “false or exaggerated” claims against asbestos trusts set up by corporations that made or used the mineral. The legislation, which passed the House two years ago, would require claimants to disclose personal information such as work histories, diagnoses, partial Social Security numbers and the amounts of money being sought.

Key sponsor Blake Farenthold, a Texas Republican whose district includes industry-rich Corpus Christi, says all of this is necessary to “ensure that funds meant to benefit legitimate future asbestos victims are not used to pay abusive claims.”

But the legislation has triggered fierce opposition, notably from mesothelioma victims.

“We have heard that [it] is needed because of an epidemic of fraud against the trusts,” nine widows and patients wrote in a February letter to lawmakers. “But the evidence doesn’t support this claim. This bill treats us and other asbestos victims like criminals rather than innocent victims of corporate deceit.”

The real aim, they wrote, is to create delays so claimants die before they can recover anything from the trusts: “It’s astonishing to us that, of all the issues Congress could be addressing relating to asbestos, you have chosen one that does nothing for victims, but … gives additional tools to the asbestos industry to drag out these cases and escape responsibility.”

Things have always been weird in Washington. But 2015 provided more than a few "huh?" moments for even the most insider of Washington insiders.

Here are some things from 2015 we didn’t see coming.

The Deez Nuts saga

It all started with a poll.

After Deez Nuts was introduced to the world as a presidential candidate, hundreds of jokesters followed. As if the Federal Election Commission doesn’t have enough on its plate with keeping track of the millions of dollars entering the 2016 race, it also has to sort the real candidates from the Obi-Wan Kenobies, Queen Elsas and three fake Joe Bidens.

James Bond and the other international man of mystery

The 007 actor Daniel Craig gave $50,000 to a super PAC claiming to support Bernie Sanders. But as Center politics reporter Michael Beckel found out, we’re not exactly sure where that money is going. Maybe Albania.

One thing is certain: Sanders himself isn’t happy about the group using his name.

What does ‘full service president’ mean, anyway?

Most of the Clinton family news this year has been about Hillary. However this year, the Center for Public Integrity finally got an answer to a two-decades old question about Bill Clinton. It started with an investigation that revealed almost half the sleepover donors of Bill Clinton's White House have supported Hillary since January 2013.

After our findings were published, Democratic fundraiser Patricia Duff called the Center to explain once and for all what she meant by calling Bill Clinton a “full service president.”

Strange things afoot in the states

Only three states earned grades above a D+ for transparency and accountability in our 2015 State Integrity Investigation. With such low scores, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that our 50 state-based reporters turned up a few strange stories. Some highlights:

In Arkansas, a state senator used campaign funds to buy an $8,000 home sound system and to cover $1,000 in country club expenses. Arkansas also allows lobbyists to provide meals for government officials, as long as they invite a “specific governmental body.”

In California, a state Senator plead guilty this past summer to taking bribes from FBI agents, political racketeering and running guns in the Philippines.

In Idaho, the head of the state Racing Commission was a paid lobbyist for a Wyoming gaming company that operates the slot machine-like games regulated by the Idaho commission.

See how your state ranked in our investigation and read more strange stories of lax accountability in the states.

For many years now, the Center for Public Integrity's mission has been to "serve democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of public trust by powerful public and private institutions, using the tools of investigative journalism." In 2015, our staff did just that. 

Stories by the Center for Public Integrity helped serve democracy,  from Virginia to India. Here’s a sample of what our journalism, with your support, helped accomplish in 2015.

EPA promises change in civil rights office

Changes planned for the Environmental Protection Agency’s beleaguered civil rights office came trickling in after the Center launched its Environmental Justice, Denied investigation in August.

Just this month, the EPA promised a “wholesale attempt” to fix the office, which has never formally found a civil rights violation in 22 years of claims.

Johns Hopkins shutters black lung program

It’s been two years since the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News first published Breathless and Burdened, investigating how coal miners with black lung disease were denied benefits. Many of the miners' claims were denied based on the review of their cases from a coal industry-supported program at Johns Hopkins University.

In September, Johns Hopkins said it had quietly shuttered the black lung program under the leadership of Dr. Paul Wheeler.

The Department of Labor had previously told more than one thousand miners that their black lung benefit claims may have been wrongly denied as a result of Wheeler’s readings of their X-rays.

Reform for school police

The video of a school police officer in South Carolina flipping a student from her desk brought national attention to school resource officers, a subject the Center for Public Integrity has written about repeatedly. 

In April, a Center investigation found Virginia officials used harsh disciplinary measures for seemingly minor indiscretions. A disproportionate number of those disciplined in Virginia are minority and disabled students. The commonwealth has been quietly moving forward with reforming its policies.

A bipartisan commission formed to push reform on the issue, and more than 150,000 people signed a petition asking Virginia prosecutors to drop charges against Kayleb Moon-Robinson, a 12-year-old autistic boy charged with a felony after kicking a trash can.

Corporate tax transparency and a hit to Swiss bank secrecy

Protesters across Europe marked the one year anniversary of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' Luxembourg Leaks investigation by demanding fairer tax systems that would put an end to the use of tax loopholes by multinational companies like Amazon, IKEA, Apple and more.

ICIJ, a project of the Center, published the investigation in collaboration with dozens of media partners in late 2014, and exposed how 370 of the world's biggest corporations were avoiding billions in taxes by routing profits through the tiny European tax haven of Luxembourg.

The "LuxLeaks scandal," as it became known, led to a European Parliament investigation which saw executives from Google, Amazon, Walt Disney and Facebook grilled by members of parliament over their tax affairs. LuxLeaks was cited multiple times in 2015 as the catalyst for significant tax policy reform across the continent, and the European Parliament announced in December that its own LuxLeaks investigation would continue in 2016.

One of the world's largest bank's, HSBC, also faced a year of controversy following the publication of ICIJ's Swiss Leaks investigation in February. Based on a trove of documents leaked from inside the bank's private Swiss branch, the investigation revealed how the bank helped criminals, tax dodgers, traffickers, politicians and celebrities maintain secret accounts and hide their wealth.

Public outrage following the revelations prompted a rare raid by Swiss authorities on the bank's Geneva branch. Prosecutors opened an investigation and ultimately forced the bank to pay a record-breaking fine. Outside Switzerland, other governments-including those in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Belgium-promised investigations of their own, while in the United Kingdom the bank's chief executive and chairman faced parliamentary committee hearings. The bank took out full page advertisements in multiple U.K. newspapers to apologize to its customers and promise reform.

Other ways in which our stories made a difference:

• Families can now send money to prison inmates for free in every state but one where JPay, the focus of a 2014 Center investigation, does business.
• An Australian senator has called for reforms to Australia’s Africa-based mining industry
• A human-rights commission initiated a probe into India’s nuclear program that exposes villagers to deadly levels of radiation.
• The World Bank announced an action plan to reform the way it protects vulnerable communities in the path of development projects.

Center for Public Integrity investigations wouldn’t be complete without the work of multimedia editor Eleanor Bell and environmental reporter Maryam Jameel.

This past year brought an especially rich bounty of compelling video that helped bring our stories to life. The results include an animation and our most ambitious storytelling project yet.

Here are some of the stories the Center caught on video this year:

Why nobody knows what’s really going into your food

A loophole in a 57-year old law means companies can add substances to their food without ever consulting the Food and Drug Administration about potential health risks. Read this investigation.

The impenetrable world of Mark Flores

Yvette Flores unknowingly worked around lead and other harmful substances while she was pregnant; a severely disabled son was the result. Read this investigation

Australia’s footprint in African mines

Australian-listed mining companies are linked to hundreds of deaths and alleged injustices which wouldn't be tolerated in better-regulated nations. Read this investigation and watch the multimedia report.

The ‘time bomb … in the chests and the lungs of Americans.’

Life was going smoothly for Kris Penny. Then he got a rare type of cancer called mesothelioma almost always caused by asbestos exposure. Read this investigation