In the spring of 2006, Boeing paid one of the largest fines ever imposed on a U.S. company for violating the Arms Export Control Act. From 2000 to 2003, the aerospace and defense giant had defied State Department regulations and warnings about the unauthorized export of commercial aircraft equipped with a microchip that had military applications. (By Jim Morris and Marina Walker Guevara)

Growing up in southeastern Washington State, Trisha Pritikin played among the waters and islands of the Columbia River and gave little thought to the looming neighbor upstream: the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a sprawling complex of factories where, beginning in the mid-1940s, the U.S. government secretly manufactured plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. Pritikin, whose parents worked at the Hanford site, was unaware that radioactive residues from the facility had not only contaminated her riverside playgrounds but had also leached into her yard, tainted the milk she drank, and possibly even been tracked across the rugs in her family's home. (By Marina Walker Guevara)

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the world's largest retailer, has transformed its once-tiny political action committee into one of the nation's biggest corporate PACs by promising salaried managers and other executives that it will make corresponding donations in their names, on a two-to-one basis, into a company-controlled charity.

The unusual sweetener, unveiled at company meetings in 2001, has clearly fueled the dramatic growth of Wal-Mart's "Responsible Government" PAC. That year, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Wal-Mart's PAC counted more than 380 contributors of $200 or more. In 2002, with the incentive in place, the number of $200+ contributors to Wal-Mart's PAC zoomed to more than 1,040, and by 2004 it was up to more than 1,240.

The Center for Public Integrity has unearthed a series of videotapes (see box, right) that show Wal-Mart executives making pitches for the "double your money" PAC program, as it was billed internally, at company events in 2001 and 2004. The tapes, drawn from a mammoth archive of Wal-Mart video footage, offer unique insights into how the company induced ever-larger numbers of salaried managers to earmark a part of each of their paychecks for the PAC. (By Bill Hogan)

Alaska Republican Don Young, currently under fire for possibly illegal earmarking for a project near Naples, Florida, was one of Congress's most frequent fliers, racking up more than $20,000 in special-interest sponsored travel to the Sunshine State over a five-and-a-half-year period. (By Caitlin Ginley)

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has studiously avoided discussing her five-and-a-half-year tenure as a director of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer. (By Bill Hogan and Alan Green)

A bill passed during a special session of the Louisiana State Legislature puts the state's financial disclosure standards on a par with the best state disclosure laws in the nation, a new analysis by the Center for Public Integrity shows. (By Sarah Laskow)

The Center for Public Integrity's efforts to shed light on local Internet availability are having an impact in the legislative and regulatory debate over broadband. For example, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, last month introduced S. 1492, the Broadband Data Improvement Act. The bill would require the FCC to supplement the information it currently collects about broadband deployment with more localized data, including ZIP code plus four digits. (By Drew Clark)

The Center for Public Integrity's recent report about the Bush administration's 935 false statements in the run-up to the Iraq war sparked a heated exchange between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and an influential member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

For more than seven months, the nation's top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially "alarming information" as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates. (By Sheila Kaplan)

Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.