The Muckraker

In a new episode of iWitness, FRONTLINE/World's web series, curator Joe Rubin talks to Gigi Ugulava, the mayor of Georgia's capital Tbilisi and a confidant of President Mikhail Saakashvili.

Ugulava describes the mounting refugee crisis facing his city as Georgians flood in from Gori and other towns bombed by the Russian army, and how the city is reacting as Russian tanks remain less than 40 miles from the capital. Ugulava tells FRONTLINE/World that when it comes to Tbilisi, Georgians are drawing a red line. "If Russia will succeed here, they will be halfway to reestablishing the Soviet Union and nobody can stop them then."

>> Watch the episode on the iWitness website.

CIR's Will Evans has this report on the Secret Money Project blog:

Attack Ad Veteran Teams With Attack Book Author

Jerome Corsi may be getting all the attention right now for his anti-Obama attack book, but there's another veteran political operative who has been toiling away to take down the Democratic candidate with a Swift-Boat-style campaign. And now, the two are working together.

Floyd Brown, whose most famous effort was the "Willie Horton ad" that damaged Democrat Michael Dukakis' presidential campaign in 1988, has been working on a viral campaign to send anti-Obama videos to millions of voters. His main organization, the National Campaign Fund, runs the Web site ExposeObama.com, which features videos linking Obama to gang violence and questioning Obama's assertion that he's never been a Muslim (below).



(The Obama campaign's "Fight the Smears" Web site has a special entry for Brown.)

Brown, in an interview today, says he has two more upcoming videos based on a collaboration with Corsi, co-author of the book that launched the crippling Swift Boat veterans critique of Democrat John Kerry in 2004. The new ads are based on Corsi's new book, "The Obama Nation."

But this election is different from the ones that produced Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Willie Horton ad.

Brown is running a strictly regulated political action committee funded only by small donors, instead of a 527 organization with unlimited donations like the Swift Boat group. That 527 and others were later fined by the Federal Election Commission for violating election laws, and Brown says that's enough to scare him off. "Would you go to jail for a political message?" he asked rhetorically.

And instead of concentrating on televised ads as he did in 1988, Brown is focusing almost all of his resources on a viral email and web campaign to spread his message.

"An ad on Monday Night Football where the guy's getting up to grab a beer [during commercials] is not more effective than where someone sits down and clicks an ad to watch all the way through," said Brown, who also notes that Web ads are much cheaper.

"We have just had a blitzing program, to blitz conservative websites and conservative email lists," he said. "We've sent millions of emails."

Brown says he's focusing on swaying conservatives because, when his group launched its effort earlier this year, some religious conservatives had a positive view of Obama. That—thanks to controversy over Obama's former pastor and, Brown says, the ExposeObama.com campaign—has faded.

Certainly, Brown's group has gained some traction. From April through June it raised nearly half a million dollars from small donors, according to FEC filings.

But why hasn't his or any other ads had the same impact as the Swift Boat ads or Willie Horton?

Brown tried casting one of his Obama ads as "Willie Horton II," (below), but that hasn't panned out.



Brown thinks the Horton ad—which blamed Dukakis for temporarily releasing a convicted felon who then raped a woman—gets too much credit, anyway. Dukakis, he says, helped do himself in. President Clinton, on the other hand, was much better at deflecting attacks. And what about Obama?

"If television and Hollywood manipulation are what decide this election, then Obama wins hands down," Brown says. "He's got the dough, he's got people like [David] Geffen and the whole Dreamworks crew. He's had a very effectively crafted campaign."

But it's not over yet.

"The Willie Horton ad didn't air till Labor Day," Brown says. "There's still a lot of time for things to happen."

—Will Evans

A new project by CIR and NPR follows the money behind independent campaign ads leading up to the 2008 election. The Election 2008: Secret Money Project tracks the funders of ads intended to sway voters—much like the ones launched by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the independent organization that attacked Senator John Kerry in 2004.

Watch the ads. Read the analysis. See who's paying, and who they're connected to. A recent post on the Secret Money Project by CIR's Will Evans:

Former Swift Boat Donor Finds New Target

Mark Udall, meet Bob Perry.

Udall, a Democratic member of Congress from Colorado, is running for Senate this year in a race that is attracting out-of-state money from all sides.

Perry, a Texas developer, gave $4.4 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to help defeat John Kerry in 2004. FEC reports reveal that the Texan dropped $400,000 this month to air an ad criticizing Udall for "wasteful" spending.

Perry gave the money to the Club for Growth. The group said in a press release that the ad will be up for 2 weeks.

Watch the ad:

This week, the Online News Association announced the finalists for its Online Journalism Awards, honoring excellence in digital journalism. Among them were nine investigative reports, many of which used multimedia tools to get behind the story with powerful visuals, databases and original documents.

Investigative, Large Site

> Unequal Justice | DallasNews.com, The Dallas Morning News
Five-part series uses video, print and interactive features to probe why so many Dallas County murderers are on probation. Also nominated for the Knight Award for Public Service.

> Talking to the Taliban | TheGlobeandMail.com
Provides a portrait of Taliban foot soldiers in their own words, based on interviews conducted by a single researcher with a video camera and standardized questionnaire. All 42 transcribed, raw videos are included in the six-part series, along with graphics, maps and discussions with reporter Graeme Smith. Also nominated in the Multimedia Feature, Large Site category.

> Inside the CIA's Notorious "Black Sites" | Salon.com, Mark Benjamin
The "first in-depth, first-person account from inside the secret U.S. prisons," given by Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a Yemeni held for 19 months without being charged.

> Big Phat Liar | TheSmokingGun.com
Print story unravels how "a federal inmate duped the Los Angeles Times, fabricated FBI reports, and linked Sean 'Diddy' Combs to 1994 ambush of Tupac Shakur."

Investigative, Small Site

> Schools Promote Students Despite Widespread Failure | Azstarnet.com, Arizona Daily Star
Three-part series uses print and video storytelling to uncover social promotion of failing students in Tucson-area schools, then provides original documents and a database of local school performance to dig deeper.

> Blood and Money | EastValleyTribune.com, East Valley (Ariz.) Tribune
Traces the path of human smuggling from Mexico to Arizona using a three-part print series, videos in both Spanish and English, and interactive route maps.

> Coincidence or Cluster | NWHerald.com, The Northwest (Ill.) Herald
Six-part series on the McCullom Lake brain cancer lawsuits and the stories behind them, told through videos, interactive maps and original documents gathered over a six-month investigation.

> The Permanent Republican Majority | RawStory.com, The Raw Story
Five-part investigation into the "architects and the execution of backroom Republican politics," starting with the jailing of Don Siegelman, former Democratic governor of Alabama.

> 'I Didn't Do That Murder': Lebrew Jones and the death of Micki Hall | RecordOnline.com, The Times Herald Record (Middletown, N.Y.)
Uses videos, graphics and original case files to investigate the 20-year-old murder case of a New York City prostitute, and the man who says he was wrongly convicted.

The winners will be announced at the 2008 ONA Conference Awards Banquet on Sept. 13 at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C.

A type of "safe" pesticide found in household products—from lice shampoo to Raid bug spray—is responsible for a surge in injuries and deaths over the past decade, according to Environmental Protection Agency data acquired by the Center for Public Integrity. In a new report, "Perils of the New Pesticides," CPI reveals that "the number of reported human health problems, including severe reactions, attributed to pyrethrins and pyrethroids increased by about 300 percent over the past decade ... [the chemicals] accounted for more than 26 percent of all fatal, 'major,' and 'moderate' human incidents in the United States in 2007, up from 15 percent in 1998."

Pyrethrins, extracted from the chrysanthemum plant, and their synthetic relatives, pyrethroids, have exploded in popularity over the last decade. They are now used in thousands of consumer products from Hartz Dog Flea & Tick Killer to Raid Ant and Roach Killer. These chemicals are found in bug-repellant clothing, flea collars, automatic misting devices, lawn-care products, and carpet sprays. Manufacturers developed them as safer alternatives to a class of compounds, derived from Nazi nerve gases, called organophosphates, found in products such as Dursban. The chemicals were widely used in American homes as recently as the late 1990s but are no longer approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for indoor use.

The EPA released its pesticide incident-reporting database in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from CPI earlier this year. The database was called one of the “Ten Most Wanted Government Documents” by the Center for Democracy and Technology.

>> Read "Perils of the New Pesticides" by the Center for Public Integrity.

While the Occupational Safety and Health Administration handed out its third largest fine in history, outside critics and an internal whistleblower are calling for more stringent regulations and for the agency to better police its own workers.

The Imperial Sugar explosion in February, which killed 13 workers, put OSHA in the spotlight. While OSHA announced an $8.7 million fine on Friday, Imperial Sugar said that it met OSHA regulations and will fight the fine, according to an article in the New York Times.

Critics, on the other hand, want OSHA to tighten rules and ramp up oversight. Safety violations are often grouped into the agency’s “general duty” clause, allowing inspectors to cite companies for unsafe practices that are not specifically regulated.

So while there were 44 violations issued for spark-producing electrical equipment, which is regulated, under the general duty clause there were only two, one at each plant, for faulty ventilation and two for failing to maintain dust collection systems.

“It’s basically an admission that their standards have gaps,” Mr. [Eric] Frumin said.

For example, many safety violations aren’t on OSHA’s list of regulations, so inspectors have to cite them as general violations.

Large explosions and other tragedies briefly spotlight draw attention to workplace safety. But job-related health issues, as opposed to accidents, account for 80 percent of all workplace problems, Adam Finkel, OSHA’s former director of health standards, notes.

In 2002, Finkel leaked documents showing that OSHA was not testing its own inspectors for beryllium exposure. Finkel was transferred to a non-supervisor position within OSHA later that year. OSHA did not start testing inspectors until 2004. A year ago, a federal judge ordered OSHA to release the inspection data after Finkel filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Alternet reports:

The results were "a big eye-opener" for Finkel. Of OSHA's 989 inspectors in March 2005, 271 were tested, and 10 – or 3.7 percent ¬– were confirmed positive for sensitization. Based on information from Newman, the beryllium expert, Finkel had expected only 1 to 2 percent would be positive. As of March 2008, the numbers had increased only slightly, to 11 confirmed positives out of 301 tests.

What do those results mean for the hundreds of other OSHA inspectors -- not to mention 1,000 or more retirees? "I don't know if it's the tip of the iceberg or the whole iceberg," Finkel says. So he went back into the ring with OSHA, filing a Freedom of Information Act request to find out how much beryllium the inspectors were exposed to. Then he went a step further, requesting records from all inspections where OSHA took samples for air contaminants.

>>Learn more about whistleblowers in the CIR and Salon report The War on Whistleblowers.

The American Journalism Review features the Chauncey Bailey Project in its August/September issue, with senior writer Sherry Ricchiardi calling it "the biggest journalistic show of force since 1976."

From AJR:

During the past 10 months, media professionals in the Bay Area have taken collaborative journalism to new heights as they produced more than 140 stories related to Your Black Muslim Bakery and Bailey's assassination.

It's the biggest journalistic show of force since 1976, when reporter Don Bolles' car was blown up by a bomb while he was investigating organized crime in Phoenix. Journalists from all over the country gathered to continue Bolles' work under the banner of the Arizona Project.

At the first anniversary of Bailey's death, reporters continue to peel away layers of intrigue about a Bay Area crime family that for years confounded Oakland police and city officials. Leadership of Your Black Muslim Bakery, founded by Yusuf Ali Bey in 1971, has been implicated in such crimes as torture, murder and child rape.

As the project broke important stories, a one-for-all-and-all-for-one mentality took hold among the core group of reporters and news managers. "We're competitive with each other until something like this befalls one of us," says [Oakland Tribune reporter Josh] Richman, who has devoted large blocks of time to the investigation. "Then we work as a team to get to the truth."

More recent news on the Chauncey Bailey Project:

>The National Association of Black Journalists has honored the project with its Best Practices Award, reports the Oakland Tribune:

"It is horrendous when a journalist is killed for reporting on a story that needs to be told," said Barbara Ciara, president of the association. "This is really something that deserves to be honored, so it was an easy decision."

>The trial of Devaundre Broussard, the bakery handyman charged with murder in the 2007 slaying who since recanted, has been postponed. From the Oakland Tribune:

Judge C. Don Clay granted the delay to allow Broussard's attorney, LeRue Grim, more time to review evidence in the case. Clay set Sept. 19 for a hearing to set a trial date.

According to Grim, the secret police video released by the Chauncey Bailey Project on June 18 may exonerate his client. From KCBS:

Grim claims law enforcement videotape shows Devaughndre Broussard was ordered by Yusuf Bey IV, the leader of the now-defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery, to falsely confess to Bailey's murder.

Watch the video or share it with others on Vimeo, YouTube or blip.tv.
See more stories by the Chauncey Bailey Project.

FRONTLINE/World iWitness posted two video reports this week about the capture and arrest of Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic this past Monday. iWitness curator Joe Rubin talks to reporter Saska Rankovic, who worked as an independent journalist under Milosevic and has been covering a divided Serbia for the last few years.

"I think it is so pitiful, for the man who was so powerful during that war period ... after all he was the master of life and death ... It is so pitiful," Rankovic says of Karadzic's capture and the way he's been living in disguise for more than a decade.

iWitness also checks in with Hasan Nuhanovic, who lost his mother, father, and brother in the massacre at Srebrenica. Nuhanovic was featured in a FRONTLINE/World documentary in 2006 about the hunt for Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic: "The Men Who Got Away."

"There is no place for euphoria," Nuhanovic says of Karadzic's arrest this week. "It came 13 years late. He's still in custody in Belgrade. We'll see when he is going and how he is going to be transferred to The Hague international tribunal. We'll see what happens when he gets there ... It's one important step forward, of course. But many problems remain unresolved."

>> Watch these iWitness episodes and more online.

Not to be missed today: The ACLU's release of three memos it received from the Department of Justice and the CIA in response to a FOIA request. All three, issued between 2002 and 2004, detail the authorization of "enhanced" interrogation tactics for use on specific detainees.

From the AP:

The Justice Department in 2002 told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed "in good faith" that harsh techniques used to break prisoners' will would not cause "prolonged mental harm."

The Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion signed by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee was issued the same day he wrote a memo for then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales defining torture as only those "extreme acts" that cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure. The Bybee legal opinion defining torture was withdrawn more than two years later.

The new documents indicate that senior Bush administration officials were aware of the controversial and potentially problematic use of certain interrogation methods, including waterboarding.

Track those officials yourself with today's interactive flash feature from Slate, Crimes and Misdemeanors: An interactive guide to Bush-administration lawbreaking:





Says Slate:

The accompanying diagram highlights a truth of criminal conspiracy: Whenever legal liability is spread among many actors, it becomes difficult to ascertain with any specificity who's on the hook for what. This, to steal a phrase from Douglas Feith, is "the whole point."

While the graphic doesn't offer any new information, it does give a stark, powerful visualization of which officials have been involved in warrantless wiretapping, coercive interrogation, Department of Justice hiring and firing practices, and the destruction of CIA video tapes – and which ones might stand a chance of being prosecuted.

For example, here's what Slate detailed on Bybee:

Jay Bybee
Office of Legal Council
Implicated in: coercive interrogation

As the head of the OLC, Bybee signed the infamous August 2002 torture memo. Now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, he was confirmed before the memos leaked and hasn't come under the same scrutiny as Yoo. Should he? By all accounts, Bybee relied heavily on Yoo's work. But the ACLU just released another memo that Bybee signed, which explicitly approved enhanced interrogation techniques for use on a specific detainee, based on the questionable theory that they did not constitute torture because "we believe those carrying out these procedures would not have the specific intent to inflict severe physical pain or suffering."

Case for prosecuting: By signing these memos, Bybee took responsibility for them. He may have also helped draft them. Yoo testified before Congress in May that his superiors reviewed and edited the torture memos.

Case against prosecuting: As with Yoo, there is resistance to prosecuting Bybee for giving legal advice. He is a sitting federal judge to boot. And as far as we know, there's no evidence that he helped set policy on interrogation.

Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon will be online Friday at noon EST to discuss the story behind the project, and its possible impact.

Last year, the Emmys created a category for online documentaries and multimedia projects. Nominees include major media organizations and user-generated content. The reports span the relocation of trailer home dwellers in California to NATO soldiers in Afghanistan on a humanitarian mission.

The Washington Post received the most nominations. "A Nation Divided" examines how three different American towns deal with losses in the Iraq war. Reporter Travis Fox returns to New Orleans in "After the Destruction." Iraqi and Vietnam veterans speak about their experiences in "Living with PTSD." "OnBeing" lets normal people in Washington, D.C. speak about pet peeves and life.

FRONTLINE/World followed the British NATO commander in "Afghanistan: The Other War." Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova examines prostitution in Dubai, while Victoria Gamburg went to Russia to look at Moscow’s version of Sex and the City.

The San Jose Mercury News follows a community of trailer home residents as they are dislocated in "Uprooted" and a health care reform campaign in Sacramento for “Into the 25th Hour.”

A New York Times reporter follows a homeless man through the process of moving from a cave in the Bronx to an apartment in Little Italy in “Life in Transition.”

MediaStorm and The Los Angeles Times follow a marine home after serving in Iraq in the "Marlboro Marine." MediaStorm was also nominated for an audio slideshow: "Crisis Guide: Darfur."

Current TV's Christof Putzel received two nominations for "Mogadishu Madness", a story about the new self-proclaimed government in Somalia, and "From Russia With Hate", about a growing anti-immigrant Neo-Nazi movement.

>> View these projects and the complete list of broadband Emmy nominations.