by Kim Barker , Al Shaw and Ariel Wittenberg

When super PACs announced their 2011 fundraising numbers earlier this week, it provided an early glimpse into how the new way of financing political campaigns may work in the upcoming election.

The filings showed that super PACs are indeed fundraising juggernauts, pulling in more than $98 million, with an average donation of $47,718. But so far, their sources of funding are largely transparent, not clouded in the kind of secrecy that some campaign-finance watchers had feared, and not relying that much on connected nonprofits that don’t disclose donors.  

Instead, it was separate announcements this week from a cluster of politically active social welfare groups, known as 501(c)4s for their IRS tax code, that hinted at how secret money could factor into the upcoming election -- and in a more direct fashion than initially forecast after the Supreme Court opened the door to super PACs two years ago.

On Tuesday, Crossroads GPS, the nonprofit arm of the GOP super PAC American Crossroads, announced it raised $32.6 million last year, far outstripping the super PAC itself, which raised $18.4 million.  Priorities USA and American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, the nonprofit arms of the two largest Democrat super PACs, announced they raised $5.1 million. The super PACs, Priorities USA Action and American Bridge 21st Century, raised $8.1 million.

Unlike super PACs, which are required to identify their donors, social-welfare nonprofits such as Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA -- also referred to as “dark money” groups -- don’t have to disclose contributions to the FEC, although they are supposed to report spending on political ads within a day or two. The nonprofits have to disclose their annual revenue and expenses to the IRS, but often delay such filings. A few have not yet filed their taxes for 2010. 

Campaign finance watchdogs had worried that 501(c)4s, or “c4s” as insiders call them, would filter money from unidentified donors through super PACs, but, if the recent filings are any guide, they may spend funds directly. This means c4s could have a more muscular, proactive role than previously anticipated.

“Certainly the Crossroads announcement of their fundraising totals suggest the c4s will be big players, and could be even bigger players than the super PACs themselves,” said Paul Ryan, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center.

Though social-welfare nonprofits have been around for years, they emerged as bigger players in the 2010 midterm elections.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC in January 2010 led to the creation of super PACS, the turbo-charged political action committees that can raise unlimited amounts of money from donors, including corporations, unions and nonprofits, as long as they don’t coordinate with a candidate when they spend that money.

The ruling also jump-started a new crop of nonprofits. Fifty-nine social-welfare groups reported spending more than $78.6 million on political ads during the 2010 election cycle, according to numbers provided to ProPublica by the Center for Responsive Politics. That money was spent mainly by Republican-leaning groups, including more than $26 million spent by the GOP-leaning American Action Network and more than $17 million by Crossroads GPS. For a time, those groups shared the same offices. It’s unknown where any of their money came from.

After the 2010 election, Democrats started forming their own super PACs and connected social-welfare nonprofits, such as Priorities USA Action, the super PAC, and Priorities USA, the nonprofit. Both were formed by former aides to President Barack Obama, although he and other Democrats have expressed ambivalence and even anger over the role of anonymous money in politics.

Super PAC filings released Tuesday showed  few donations from social-welfare nonprofits, or from shell companies with mystery owners.

Republicans, engaged in a bitter primary, raised more than 74 percent of the super PAC money that could be attributed to partisan groups, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. (Our “PAC Track” application keeps track of spending and donations to prominent super PACs, and has different numbers.) Of those groups, Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney, raised more than $30 million. American Crossroads, the super PAC led by former Bush White House strategist Karl Rove and other top Republicans, including former party chairman Ed Gillespie and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, raised $18.4 million.

Fourteen conservative super PACs, nine of which supported specific Republican presidential candidates, got the bulk of their more than $67 million in donations from publicity-shy conservative billionaires and companies. Almost 26 percent of donations to Republican super PACs came directly from companies, but two super PACS—the one backing Newt Gingrich, and one backing former candidate Jon Huntsman—only collected money from individuals. (About 70 percent of the donations to the Huntsman super PAC came from Huntsman’s father. The major backer of the Gingrich super PAC is Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who gave $10 million in January. That money has not yet been reported to the FEC.)

A 15th conservative super PAC, Revolution PAC, which backs Ron Paul, missed the FEC filing deadline, but so far has spent almost $126,000 on ads and has given another $10,000 to another pro-Paul super PAC.   

The four best-known Democratic super PACs didn’t raise nearly as much—perhaps because President Barack Obama is relying on more traditional sources of funding, or because Democrats don’t have to worry about a primary. They raised more than $13.7 million, getting the bulk of their donations from unions, liberal PACs and Hollywood types. Almost 36 percent of the donations to the liberal super PACs were from unions and union PACs.

Tuesday’s filings included only a handful of donations that raised questions about transparency.

A social-welfare group called the League of American Voters, Inc. gave $25,000 to American Crossroads on Dec. 12. The league, formed in the summer of 2010, is likely related to a better known Republican-leaning nonprofit, Americans for Tax Reform, run by strategist Grover Norquist; it rents office space from the group, and gets calls through its phone line.

But it’s not clear what the League of American Voters actually does. An intern who answered the phone said she was told the man who ran the group, Bob Adams, a longtime GOP activist, rarely came to the office. Adams did not respond to an email from a ProPublica reporter.

A Democrat-leaning super PAC, Citizens for Strength and Security, reported that almost all of its $72,000 came from a social-welfare nonprofit, also called Citizens for Strength and Security. Both are run out of post-office boxes at a UPS store on M Street in Washington.

The New York Times also reported on Thursday that $500,000 of the donations to Restore Our Future came from two companies with questionable backgrounds: Paumanok Partners LLC and Glenbrook LLC.

Some campaign-finance watchdogs had a problem with super PACs that reported receiving large payments from affiliated nonprofits for overhead and administrative expenses. A conservative super PAC, Freedomworks for America,  reported getting almost half its total contributions--$1.34 million—as “in kind” payments from a linked social-welfare nonprofit, Freedomworks.  The two leading Democrat super PACs, Priorities USA Action and American Bridge 21st Century, reported that they received a total of $438,000 from their affiliated nonprofits, for rent and other expenses.

Other Republican super PACs reported getting much less money from their affiliated nonprofits for operating expenses. Two Republican super PACs, Club for Growth Action and the Congressional Leadership Fund, reported getting less than $30,000 from their affiliated nonprofits for shared expenses. American Crossroads reported getting nothing from Crossroads GPS.

“Bottom line, you still have a problem that secret money is being channeled into the super PAC to help it function without the name of the donors ever being known ,” said Fred Wertheimer, who runs Democracy 21, which advocates campaign-finance reform. “In essence you are hiding the donors.”

The most prominent c4s seem to be saving their money for the general election. Crossroads GPS has spent less than $61,000 on political ads in the last year, paying for one anti-Obama ad in December and another released Wednesday. Other conservative social-welfare nonprofits, such as American Action Network and the National Organization for Marriage, have reported spending nearly $300,000 on ads for this election cycle. It’s not clear how much either group raised in 2011, as that amount of money does not have to be made public.

Liberal social-welfare nonprofits also appear to be waiting to spend their money. Priorities USA has not reported spending anything; American Bridge 21st Century Foundation has spent only $5,089 on an ad opposing Mitt Romney on Jan. 20.

UC Irvine professor Rick Hasen, an election-law expert who runs a popular blog, said early reports indicated that people and groups that didn’t mind being publicly identified gave to super PACs, while those preferring anonymity gave to c4 groups. But it was too early to say what might happen in the coming months, he added.

“Whatever conclusions people are tempted to make right now, you have to be tentative, it’s a moving object,” Hasen said. “Campaign finance is changing so quickly, it’s difficult in the midst of the election to get a handle on what’s going on.”

Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica, and Chris Arnold, NPR News

Senator Robert Casey (D-PA) sent a list of questions about Freddie Mac’s controversial trades to the mortgage giant’s regulator, highlighting how much remains unknown even after a flurry of statements from the regulator.

ProPublica and NPR reported on Monday that Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage-insurance company, placed multibillion-dollar bets that pay off if homeowners stay trapped in expensive mortgages with interest rates well above current rates.

Questions the Senator put to the regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, include why Freddie made the deals in the first place; when the FHFA learned of the trades; what role, if any, the FHFA played in them; and what the FHFA plans to do about the billions of dollars worth of deals Freddie still has on its books.

Freddie began increasing those deals, called inverse floaters, deals dramatically in late 2010, the same time that the company was making it harder for homeowners to get out of such high-interest mortgages.

No evidence has emerged that these decisions were coordinated, and Freddie says that they weren’t.

But the trades highlight a conflict of interest: Freddie’s charter calls for the company to make home loans more accessible, but Freddie also has giant investment portfolios and could lose substantial amounts of money if too many borrowers refinance.

Freddie and its sister company Fannie Mae are regulated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. But with those companies in government conservatorship, the FHFA is more than a regulator. It also acts essentially as Freddie’s board of directors.

In a letter to Senator Casey dated Tuesday, FHFA acting director Edward DeMarco said that last that Freddie’s trades, known as inverse floaters, had raised “concerns.” He explained that FHFA believed “that the risk associated with these transactions is inconsistent with FHFA’s goals of having Freddie Mac reduce its risk profile and avoid unnecessary complexity that requires specialized risk management practices.”

In a previous statement, Mr. DeMarco said that those concerns forced Freddie to agree not to engage in any new inverse floater deals. Freddie had stopped making the deals a few months earlier, according to the FHFA, but it is unclear why. Freddie retains about $5 billion worth of the floaters on its books.

In his letter today to Mr. DeMarco, Senator Casey wrote:

…I would appreciate you addressing some additional questions:

· What rationale did Freddie Mac have for its increased purchase of inverse floaters in 2010 and 2011?

· What was FHFA’s involvement in the sale? Please detail for me when FHFA was made aware of these purchases, and when they intervened.

· What type of oversight does FHFA practice over Freddie Mac’s investment division? Are potentially risky trade pre-approved by you or other FHFA officials?

· Although Freddie Mac has ceased their purchase of the types of securities in question, they are still in their portfolio. How does FHFA plan to address these securities moving forward?

· What steps will you take to ensure that in the future FHFA is able to intervene before risky trade take place?

by Blair Hickman

Here are this week's top must-read stories from #MuckReads, ProPublica's ongoing collection of the best watchdog journalism. Anyone can contribute by tweeting a link to a story and just including the hashtag #MuckReads or by sending an email to MuckReads@ProPublica.org. The best submissions are selected by ProPublica's editors and reporters and then featured on our site and @ProPublica.

Brown ordered firing of regulator who took hard line on oil firms, Los Angeles Times
After a top regulator refused to authorize more lenient oil drilling laws, California Gov. Jerry Brown had him fired. The method in dispute, underground injection, is a particularly risky form of oil extraction — but is also, Brown's administration argues, a source of jobs in California's struggling economy.
Contributed by @ashleypowers

FDA staffers sue agency over surveillance of personal email, The Washington Post
After a group of FDA employees warned Congress about agency approval of risky medical devices, the FDA secretly monitored their personal email — a practice the group says eventually contributed to harassment or dismissal. The whistleblowing group worked in an office reviewing devices for cancer screening and other purposes.
Contributed by @Jake_Bernstein

Quietly, U.S. Moves to Block Lawsuits by Military Families, The Atlantic
A 1946 law protects the U.S. government from medical malpractice suits "arising out of the combatant activities of the military or naval forces, or the Coast Guard, during time of war." However, federal lawyers are quietly trying to expand the government's immunity, making it difficult for current and former members of the military to bring their medical grievances to trial.
Contributed by @TheAtlantic

Failure to bring border-crossing fugitives to justice a national problem, Chicago Tribune
An analysis of nearly 10,000 international fugitive leads has revealed a nationwide failure to extradite criminal suspects even when their location is known. High extradition costs, diplomatic and political conflicts and miscommunication have all contributed to problem, with only a "fraction" of the fugitives abroad brought back to the U.S. to stand trial.
Contributed by @brianboyer

Super Bowl Lands On Taxpayers' Backs, Bloomberg
As the market turned sour, taxpayers in central Indiana dug deep to foot the bill for the stadium where the Super Bowl will be played. City officials have dubbed the stadium and the surrounding village the "epicenter of awesome," but the actual return on investment remains unclear.
Contributed by @BloombergNews

Did the stimulus do anything for transparency? Governing
Whatever the ultimate economic impact of the stimulus, one result is clear: increased government transparency on both the state and federal levels that has resulted in the release of an unprecedented amount of data. Many see this transparent recovery as a blueprint for the future of open government.
Contributed by @tinatrenker

These stories and many more can be found at ProPublica. You can also subscribe to a daily #MuckReads email or follow ProPublica on Twitter. Reader submissions are key to making #MuckReads a success — please contribute!

by Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica and Chris Arnold, NPR News

Freddie Mac’s regulator gave new detail today on why it halted the company’s controversial trades in complex mortgage-backed securities last year. In a letter to Senator Robert Casey (D-Pa), the Federal Housing Finance Agency said the trades were risky and required specialized risk management.

ProPublica and NPR reported on Monday that Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, placed multibillion-dollar bets that pay off if homeowners stay trapped in expensive mortgages with interest rates well above current rates. With Freddie in government conservatorship, the FHFA is more than its regulator. It also acts essentially as its board of directors.

“FHFA’s concerns arose through its supervisory process, which found that the risk associated with these transactions is inconsistent with FHFA’s goals of having Freddie Mac reduce its risk profile and avoid unnecessary complexity that requires specialized risk management practices,” FHFA acting director Edward DeMarco wrote.

As part of the government bailout, Freddie and its sister company Fannie Mae were required to sell down their investment portfolios every year. In the mortgage-backed securities transactions at issue, known as inverse floaters, ProPublica and NPR reported that Freddie had sold off some investments yet retained most of the risk – possibly violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the government agreement. Freddie is below the portfolio threshold mandated by the government agreement.

It is unclear if DeMarco was referring to the portfolio-reduction mandate that Freddie operates under. FHFA didn’t respond to a request for comment about the letter to Senator Casey.

Senator Casey was not satisfied with the response from FHFA, according to a congressional staffer, because questions remain unanswered.

In his letter to Senator Casey, DeMarco wrote that Freddie’s investment “did not – and was not intended to – have any impact on homeowners’ ability to refinance.” He wrote that “the underlying premise of the ProPublica story, that Freddie Mac securitization and investment practices are meant to inhibit mortgage refinancing, is simply incorrect.”

ProPublica and NPR did not state that the transactions “did” or were “meant to inhibit mortgage refinancing.” Here’s what the original story said:

Freddie began increasing these bets dramatically in late 2010, the same time that the company was making it harder for homeowners to get out of such high-interest mortgages.

No evidence has emerged that these decisions were coordinated. The company is a key gatekeeper for home loans but says its traders are “walled off” from the officials who have restricted homeowners from taking advantage of historically low interest rates by imposing higher fees and new rules.

According to the FHFA, Freddie has ceased making new inverse floater investments. However, the agency says that Freddie retains $5 billion of these investments on its books. They continue to require the same “specialized risk management” that prompted the FHFA to halt any new inverse floater deals, raising the question of whether the FHFA will force Freddie to sell them.

by Cora Currier

Earlier this week, ProPublica and NPR detailed how Freddie Mac placed bets against homeowners that paid off if borrowers were unable to refinance their mortgage loans. The story highlighted the conflicted role of the huge and now government-controlled Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae: They are supposed to maximize their profits and thus pay back taxpayers, while many feel that, as government wards, they should also be helping millions of struggling Americans stay in their homes.

Here's our attempt to explain Fannie and Freddie's role in the housing market, and why it seems as if their actions often go against the interests of homeowners.

What are Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae supposed to do?

Fannie and Freddie were created to make homeownership more accessible. They are Government-Sponsored Enterprises — private companies chartered by the government to expand access to credit, particularly for low- and middle-income homeowners, and to foster stability in the mortgage market. Fannie Mae was founded as a government institution during the Great Depression and privatized in 1968. Freddie Mac has been private since it was founded in 1970. (Freddie was started in part to divide responsibility in the mortgage market, but there's no real difference between the two now, except that Fannie is larger.) But "private" is not exactly the right word — Freddie and Fannie are exempt from most state and local taxes, as well as some SEC regulations, and they have access to a credit line from the federal government. And they still have their chartered obligation to make mortgages more available.

Fannie and Freddie can't make loans directly. Instead, they guarantee existing mortgages, and repackage and pool them into bonds called mortgage-backed securities. Someone who buys the bonds from Freddie gets the interest and the original principal even if a homeowner defaults. In exchange for that guarantee, Freddie collects a fee from the buyer of the bonds and can use that to guarantee more mortgages (or to buy mortgages that stay in their portfolio). This handy New York Times graphic shows the various flows of debt: The idea is that by basically ensuring that someone (often Freddie or Fannie) will guarantee a mortgage, it becomes easier for anyone to get a mortgage.

So, how did they get so big?

Because Fannie and Freddie have been able to borrow lots of cheap money.

For years, investors have loaned them money at lower-than-average interest rates, allowing Fannie and Freddie to expand their portfolio of mortgages and securities. As a history compiled by the Congressional Budget Office shows, investors have treated Fannie and Freddie as essentially risk-free. The assumption, which has turned out to be correct, was that the government would never let Fannie and Freddie fail. The two companies used that windfall not only to invest in more mortgages but to try to increase their profits by pouring money into a variety of fancy financial instruments.

Fannie and Freddie became, as The New Yorker's James Surowiecki described them, the "duck-billed platypuses of the financial world" — strange institutions with the perceived safety of a government guarantee and the high-risk strategies of a private corporation. And that led them to become the giants of the mortgage market, managing a massive portfolio of debt. In 2008, they had a combined $5 trillion in debt and guarantees.

Why are taxpayers on the hook for their mistakes?

The bubble burst — and Fannie and Freddie's execs had overreached.

In the last stretch of the boom, the two companies had loaded up on iffy mortgages. When the housing market began to turn in mid-2006, delinquency rates rose, increasing the chances that Fannie and Freddie would have to make good on their guarantees. Compounding their problems, it became harder for Freddie and Fannie to borrow money as concerns mounted about the companies' health. In the mid-2000s, they admitted to overstating earnings and making billions of dollars' worth of accounting errors.

By 2008, they were in trouble. That $5 trillion in debt and guarantees was backed by only $80 billion in core capital. The federal government took them over, becoming the major shareholder of both companies, while the Federal Reserve bought up most of their debt and the Treasury Department pledged to cover their losses. The taxpayer buyout of the two companies has cost roughly $169 billion.

The SEC filed a lawsuit against the companies' executives in December, accusing them of misleading investors about the riskiness of their investments.

The companies' high compensation of their executives has also been under fire from Congress. Although the bailout calls for Fannie and Freddie to wind down their portfolios of mortgages, they continue to make billions of dollars' worth of risky investments like the "inverse floaters" we described.

So, do Fannie and Freddie actually help homeowners? And why can't the government force their hand?

The companies say that by bolstering their finances, they are helping to stabilize the housing market as a whole, but Freddie and Fannie have hampered many of the administration's plans to provide relief for struggling homeowners.

The two report to a regulatory body called the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has acted since the bailout as their board of directors and shareholders, making their major decisions. In the wake of our story, the White House and several senators have called for more oversight and an explanation as to why Freddie's investment strategy seems to run counter to the mandate to help homeowners.

More broadly, the Obama administration and the acting head of FHFA, Edward DeMarco, have often clashed over the goals of the companies.

This week, President Obama outlined a new set of initiatives aimed at making it easier for homeowners to refinance and encouraging loan forgiveness. But Fannie and Freddie have previously refused to participate in loan forgiveness programs, and they continue to tussle with the administration on the issue. (It seems unlikely that any of Obama's proposals will get through Congress, and ProPublica has documented extensive problems with similar programs aimed at preventing foreclosures.)

The two aims of Fannie and Freddie are continually at odds — policies encouraging refinancing and forgiveness for more mortgage holders can increase costs to the taxpayer-owned companies. While the administration has made relief for homeowners their priority, DeMarco says his agency's priority is to protect Fannie and Freddie's profits, aka taxpayers' assets. Of course, many of those taxpayers are struggling homeowners, and that is at the heart of the dilemma over Fannie and Freddie's future.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told NPR she was shocked by a recent meeting with DeMarco. "It was the worst meeting I've ever had in my life," said Boxer. "His interest is making sure Fannie and Freddie do well financially."

Will they be around much longer?

Probably, even though there's rare bipartisan consensus that they shouldn't be.

Both the Obama administration and congressional Republicans want to get rid of Fannie and Freddie. Obama's plan gradually winds them down to a position equivalent to private-sector mortgage companies while giving the market time to adjust to their removal. Republicans want a more immediate rollback of their influence.

These plans were unveiled almost a year ago, but the companies are still massively important to the mortgage market, guaranteeing approximately 70 percent of the country's home loans. Their elimination might make it more difficult to get a mortgage loan, and it remains unclear what kind of assistance for homeownership could, or should, replace them.

by Lena Groeger

A few weeks ago, the Food and Drug Administration hit the American Red Cross with a nearly $10 million fine for safety violations, lax oversight and faulty testing of its blood services. The fine is just the latest of more than a dozen the Red Cross has racked up in the last decade.

In 2003, a federal court, frustrated by repeated blood safety violations by the Red Cross, gave the FDA the power to fine the organization. Forty-six million dollars in penalties later, many of the same violations -- understaffing, ineffective screening of donors, failure to recall infected blood -- are outlined in the recent letter the FDA sent to the executive vice president of Biomedical Services for the Red Cross.

The 32-page letter describes hundreds of violations over several months in 2010 at 16 Red Cross facilities across the country, and details how the Red Cross repeatedly failed to properly track and record information about donors and blood units. (To see the actual document and others like it, go to our timeline of Red Cross fines.)

For example, the agency failed to notify health departments when donors had infectious diseases such as HIV and syphilis, failed to add new donors with infected blood to a national list of people who aren't allowed to donate, and failed to review records of donors who had bad reactions, such as a 16-year-old who lost consciousness and fell to the floor after giving a unit of blood. It also failed to follow written procedures, such as the case of a phlebotomist in Arizona who stuck herself with a needle before sticking a donor with the same needle to draw blood. The case went unreported for a month, because a staff member "was not aware of the need to immediately notify a Medical Director," according to the inspection letter.

In a recent statement, the Red Cross said it was disappointed that the FDA issued the fine for "an inspection conducted so long ago" and noted that it has "already taken corrective steps to address those matters and that improvements in operations have been made."

In an email to ProPublica, a Red Cross spokeswoman also said there is no evidence that these violations endangered any patients, adding that the blood supply is safer than it has ever been. The spokeswoman said the agency has made significant improvements, including reducing the number of problems system-wide by at least 65 percent, and is investing in technology upgrades. For example, the agency recently upgraded software and computer equipment at blood drives to better collect and track donor information.

The FDA's letter laying out the fines says the Red Cross "has known of these continuing problems and has failed to take adequate steps to correct them." The FDA also noted that "many of the violations recounted in this letter are virtually identical to violations charged in previous [letters]." In June 2010 the FDA imposed a $16 million penalty on the Red Cross for the same type of violations.

The chronic problems raise the question of whether penalties are working at all.

The Red Cross has been making promises and failing to keep them for over a decade, according to Sidney Wolfe, who heads the health research group at the consumer watchdog organization Public Citizen. Wolfe said he wrote to head of the FDA in 2000, urging it to hold the Red Cross in contempt of court. A federal court first put the Red Cross under government supervision in 1993 after finding blood safety lapses. A decade later, in 2003, the court empowered the FDA to impose fines.

"But fast-forward nine years ahead, and we have the same violations," Wolfe said.

If the Red Cross disagrees with an assessment, it can ask the FDA to reevaluate the penalty, but in most cases the fine only changes by a few thousand dollars.

Most of the recent problems inspectors cited have to do with managing records and tracking blood donors. The Red Cross says it is unaware of any infections or deaths that stemmed from problems noted in the report, and that "serious problems" account for only three percent of the total problems found.

The FDA doesn't think that's good enough.

"FDA cannot definitively say there was never any danger to the blood supply since the violations can create conditions that could lead to potential safety consequences," said FDA spokeswoman Patricia El-Hinnawy.

The government requires that the Red Cross (like any blood services operation) have multiple safeguards for its blood services. That includes asking a donor questions to identify any risks, checking his or her name against a national list of people who aren't allowed to give blood, testing for infectious diseases, keeping track of blood units so infected blood isn't released, and investigating any deviations from standards.

Because blood transfusions always carry a degree of risk, the FDA considers every step in that process critical to minimizing problems. "Failure of an individual safeguard does not automatically translate into the release of unsafe products," an FDA spokeswoman told ProPublica in an email, "however, it may increase the potential for risk."

In 2008, the Red Cross consolidated its blood work to two facilities: one in Charlotte, N.C., and the other in Philadelphia. The offices are in charge of managing, tracking and, if need be, recalling blood. But according to the inspection letter, both offices have been chronically understaffed, and simply haven't been able to carry out their required functions in a timely or effective manner. As of 2010, the offices had a backlog of about 18,000 donor management cases.

by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber

Now you see it. Now you don't.

Since April, drugmaker Allergan, best known for its wrinkle-fighting drugs Botox and Juvederm, has been posting on its website the payments it made to physicians for promotional speaking and consulting and the value of meals it provided to them.

But the Irvine, Calif., company recently removed all except the most recent payments from its website, erasing the record of those it had paid to help market its products from the third quarter of 2010 to the second quarter of last year.

Allergan's website now includes only those payments it made to doctors in the third quarter of 2011 -- and then only ranges, not specific dollar amounts.

Allergan's removal of the data won't prevent the public from viewing it. ProPublica's Dollars for Docs database of industry payments to doctors includes the figures Allergan had reported for the last half of 2010. Later this month, the company will post data for the full year 2011, and that will be added to the ProPublica database as well.

Allergan is among 12 pharmaceutical companies that post such payments to the web, either voluntarily or as a result of legal settlements with the U.S. government over allegations of improper marketing and illegal kickbacks to doctors. (Allergan pleaded guilty in September 2010 to a misdemeanor charge of promoting Botox for uses not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It paid $600 million to resolve related criminal and civil lawsuits.)

Allergan is the only company to pull earlier payments from its site. The other 11 companies simply add new data while maintaining an archive of previous releases.

Allergan spokeswoman Heather Katt said in an email that Allergan remains in compliance with the terms of its corporate integrity agreement with the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

As part of that legal agreement, Katt said, Allergan was required to expand its disclosures in a second phase starting in November. In addition to speaking, consulting and meals, it now posts payments for research, royalties, travel and educational materials. Allergan decided to take down the earlier disclosures to avoid confusion, she said.

"The earlier reports were accurate, but represented limited data and as such would not provide meaningful or accurate comparisons," Katt said.

Donald White, a spokesman for the health department's inspector general, agreed that Allergan was in compliance with its corporate integrity agreement despite the removal of payment data.

Allergan's Katt said removing the older information was "in the spirit of providing the general public with the most current and comprehensive information."

Every pharmaceutical company will have to publicly report all payments to physicians nationwide beginning next year under a provision of the health-care overhaul known as the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.

by Michael Grabell

A group of five Republican and Democratic senators on the homeland security committee introduced a bill today that would require an independent health study of the X-ray body scanners used in airports nationwide.

We have been reporting on the cancer risk associated with the Transportation Security Administration’s scanners and on the expansion of X-ray equipment at the border, in prisons and on U.S. roads.

In addition to mandating a health study, the bill would also require the TSA to place larger signs in front of security lines advising airline passengers about the radiation and the option to have a physical pat-down instead.

"An independent study is needed to protect the public and to determine which technology is worthy of taxpayer dollars," said Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the homeland security committee. "Surely passengers should be well informed of their screening options."