TPR: The Public Record "In-Depth, Investigative, Independent"

By Jason Leopold

In early fall 2003, as the scandal over leaking a covert CIA officer’s identity was exploding, President George W. Bush claimed not to know anything about the leak and called on anyone in his administration who had knowledge to come “forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true.”

How disingenuous the President’s appeal was has been underscored again by a new Justice Department court filing sketching out the contents of the 2004 interview between special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Vice President Dick Cheney.

By Jason Leopold

The Department of Defense released redacted documents Thursday related to abuse and torture of detainees held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay and other overseas prisons.

The 12 documents were released as part of the American Civil Liberties Union's long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the government.

By Jason Leopold

The Obama administration continues to back away from its grand promises of transparency and open government by using legal arguments virtually identical to those made by Justice Department lawyers working under George W. Bush to block the release of critical documents.

In two separate cases this week, Obama’s Justice Department provided additional reasons for refusing to turning over documents to civil liberties and government watchdog groups.

In the first case, Obama’s Justice Department expanded upon its legal rationale Wednesday as to why it won't turn over a copy of a May 2004 transcript of Dick Cheney’s interview with Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to probe the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. [For the definitive account on this issue please read Marcy Wheeler's excellent analysis.]

By Jason Leopold

The announcement was made following several delays over the past few weeks in the long-running court case between the CIA and the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to gain access to the report and other documents related to the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

By Jason Leopold

The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released additional documents Thursday related to the organization's long-running lawsuit over the "disappearance" of as many as 15 million Bush administration e-mails.

Thursday's batch of documents turned over to CREW by the Obama administration "appear to be copies of documents the Bush White House gave to the House Oversight Committee several years ago" when the panel was chaired by Congressman Henry Waxman. The California Democrat launched a wide-ranging probe into the matter after CREW revealed the Bush administration appeared to have purged it's e-mails in violation of federal law.

By Jason Leopold

Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves.

"Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East," the report said.

"Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the U.S. should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments.