Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

1. Contract but no Contacts: McCain Campaign Official's Firm Collects Millions from Saudis but no Meetings with Members of Congress

   By Anupama Narayanswamy Apr 15, 2008 2:50 p.m.

   In the five years prior to joining Arizona Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, Thomas Loeffler's lobbying firm contacted U.S. government officials, including members of Congress, staff and executive branch officials, an average of 58 times during every six month reporting period on behalf of the government of Saudi Arabia. In the year that Loeffler has served on McCain's campaign, employees at the firm reported only one contact on behalf of the Saudis, though it continued to receive fees from the oil kingdom some $3.5 million in all, according to the federal disclosure documents.

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2. New Iraq FARA filings

   By Anupama Narayanswamy Mar 5, 2008 10:25 p.m.

   The day after President Bush vetoed the 2008 Defense Appropriations Act, mainly because he objected to a section relating to Iraq, a little known New Jersey law firm filed lobbying disclosure forms on behalf of the Iraqi government requesting ...Presidential action to preclude Section 1083 from becoming law as to Iraq," documents show. The firm, Maggs & McDermott LLC, filed registration forms with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act on Dec. 29, 2007.

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3. Working the phones for Where Are They Now?

   By Anupama Narayanswamy Jan 29, 2008 9:42 p.m.

   Since we've not had too many volunteers making phone calls to verify if the information collected as part of our distributed research project is accurate, I'm making calls this afternoon.

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4. Earmarks Boost Small Kentucky Businesses

   By Anupama Narayanswamy Dec 18, 2007 8:53 p.m.

   After it hired a lobbyist and its employees' contributed to a member of Congress' leadership political action committee, a Kentucky company saw its defense business quadruple thanks to earmarks.

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5. GovernmentDocs.org Debuts from CREW

   By Anupama Narayanswamy Nov 8, 2007 8:43 p.m.

   Our friends at CREW are providing a fantastic resource for reporters, bloggers, citizens and government document junkies--GovernmentDocs.org: An online compendium of scanned images of documents acquired from government agencies through the Freedom of Information Act by (right now) a handful of nonprofit groups (including the correspondence logs collected through Real Time's FOIA project). Documents that once would have been filed away can have second and third lives online, where they can be read, annotated, tagged, and otherwise scrutinized by anyone who signs up to create an account.CREW also uses OCR technology to make the images word-searchable; the results aren't always perfect but they do make the documents easier to navigate.

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6. Oversight Committee Seeks for More Blackwater Documents

   By Anupama Narayanswamy Oct 19, 2007 9:09 p.m.

   Rep. Henry Waxman's oversight committee sent out letters today to the Department of Defense, the Department of State and to Blackwater CEO Erik Prince asking for various sets of documents regarding contracts going back to 2003.

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7. Congressional Oversight of Blackwater Hampered by Lack of Documents

   By Anupama Narayanswamy Oct 16, 2007 6:56 p.m.

   Nine months before Blackwater USA employees took part in a shootout in which eight Iraqi civilians were killed, a few members of Congress raised concerns about the performance of the private military company that provides security services for the Departments of State and Defense in Iraq. In 2007, five members of Congress sent at least six letters to the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom raising questions about the company, raising questions about the controversial firm.

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8. The Favor Factory: Earmarks and Campaign Cash Connections

   By Anupama Narayanswamy Oct 5, 2007 7:22 p.m.

   Three members of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee have received an average of $102,600 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of the companies they've favored with earmarks in the first six months of 2007. The rest of the members of the subcommittee have netted collectively $180,000an average of about $12,800 per memberfrom the beneficiaries of their earmarks.

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9. Getting information during a "war-time situation"

   By Anupama Narayanswamy Sep 19, 2007 7:25 p.m.

   I've been calling various Army public affairs officials to get some information about Blackhawk helicopters and was passed from one official to another. I finally reached the right department and I was asked to send an e-mail listing my questions.

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10. Department of Energy correspondence logs

    By Anupama Narayanswamy Sep 10, 2007 7:03 p.m.

    This article in the Washington Post yesterday on the earmarking process cites letters sent to the Department of Energy written by members of Congress including Rep. Rahm Emanuel in support of projects at the Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago and the Illinois Institute of technology.

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11. Ted Stevens' Financial Disclosures

    By Anupama Narayanswamy Aug 23, 2007 5:55 p.m.

    After filing for extensions, Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) personal financial disclosure forms for 2007 were available with the Senate Office of Public Records this week. Scanned PDF's are here. On the same day, July 17, there were also a few amendments that were filed that are here. (Most of them are about rifles presented to the Senator by the Kenai River Sporting Association.)

12. Office of Administration not subject to FOIA

    By Anupama Narayanswamy Aug 22, 2007 4:18 p.m.

    According to this AP article, the Justice Department is maintaining that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

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13. Letters from Defense

    By Anupama Narayanswamy Aug 16, 2007 6:51 p.m.

    We just received few of the letters we had requested from the Department of Defense from the January batch of correspondences. We received only a partial response to the FOIA where we had selected specific letters from the correspondence logs.

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14. Out of Compliance: Nonprofit with ties to Stevens' PAC, Tardy on Paperwork and Fees to the State of Alaska

    By Anupama Narayanswamy Jul 23, 2007 6:43 p.m.

    An Alaskan nonprofit foundation that raises money to make the records and mementos of Sen. [Ted] Stevens' career in public service" has failed to file registration documents or pay fees since 2004, according to the Alaska Department of Law. In response to a FOIA request to the department for all documents filed by the Ted Stevens Foundation (recently renamed the North to the Future Foundation), we received papers filed in 2003 and were told by department officials that none had been filed since then.

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Investigations by Sunlight Foundation reporter Anupama Narayanswamy