The Center for Public Integrity

October 27, 2000 — Since 1999, The Public i has attempted to obtain information about the bidding process in the sale of the Elk Hills oil reserve, which was sold for $3.65 billion in 1997 to Occidental Petroleum Corp. The Center for Public Integrity filed an administrative appeal of the Department of Energy's refusal to release the information under the Freedom of Information Act. The transaction was the largest government land sale in U.S. history.

WASHINGTON, September 5, 2000 — For nearly a quarter-century, almost since the very day of his swearing in as a U.S. senator, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch and others have waged war on the federal Clean Air Act, using virtually any and every weapon at hand. But when Hatch, former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray and Representative Tom Bliley, R-Va., fired their latest shot — a "friend of the court" brief filed in federal court arguing that the law is unconstitutional — they advanced the cause of corporate polluters — and arguably violated congressional ethics rules.

October 2, 1999 — On the Friday before Labor Day 1998, with much of official Washington already on its last summer trek to seashore or home congressional district, a brief statement appeared in the Federal Register. Only a paragraph long, the notice was six years in the making. The Environmental Protection Agency had, at last, finished its study on the risks of dry cleaning and the availability of safer alternatives.