CIR Featured Projects
Posted June 26th, 2007 by Dave Nichols
Featured Investigation:
 | While the nation’s understaffed immigration courts strain under a backlog of more than 200,000 cases, thousands of new border agents and hundreds of government attorneys have been hired, pushing more cases onto an already overburdened system. As a result, cases often take months if not years to complete. On any given day there are more than 30,000 people in immigration lock-up. |
Recent Investigations:
 | Can General Motors be revitalized? It's a question that fills TV producer Stephen Talbot with an eerie sense of déjà vu. In 1993, he posed the very same question in "The Heartbeat of America," a CIR/FRONTLINE co-production that explored how the mighty GM had fallen on such hard times. |
 | Lawlessness and sectarian violence quickly engulfed Iraq after the fall of Saddam, leaving women especially vulnerable. Correspondents Anna Badkhen and Mimi Chakarova visited a secret women's shelter in Baghdad to document the stories of rape victims and war widows. CIR spoke to the reporters via Skype for this episode of The Investigators. |
 | Just after the U.S. took Baghdad in 2003, the Green Berets began training young Iraqis with no military experience in the desert of Jordan. The resulting brigade was a deadly, elite, covert unit, fully fitted with American equipment, that would operate for years under U.S. command and be unaccountable to the normal political process. Shane Bauer reports for The Nation. Support was provided in part by CIR's Goldensohn Fund. |
 | After the collapse of communism in 1989, millions of former Soviet bloc residents migrated abroad, breathing life into one of the oldest criminal enterprises—the trafficking of humans into sexual slavery. Since then, thousands of Eastern European women have been sold into prostitution. Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova investigates this rarely documented journey. |
 | A grand jury voted to indict Yusuf Ali Bey IV, the scion of the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery, for ordering the killings of journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other men in 2007. Prosecutors are likely to bring the case with special circumstances—allowing them to seek the death penalty against Bey IV, 23. Another man, Antoine Mackey, 23, will also be charged. |
 | Federal and state governments continue to spend billions on homeland security. How are these funds disbursed? What businesses have profited? What information has been gathered, and how is it used? Are these services making us more secure, and have they cost us civil liberties? CIR follows the money in a year-long investigation of homeland security spending. |
 | Baghdad | Los Angeles, a four-month collaboration between the Annenberg School for Communication at USC and the Center for Investigative Reporting, explores the impact of the Iraq war in Southern California through original multimedia reporting. |
 | A special CIR project exposing the flaws and unintended consequences of the campaign finance system. The Secret Money Project, a joint initiative between CIR and NPR, tracked the money and forces behind independent campaign ads in the 2008 election. Other stories co-produced with the Los Angeles Times, ABCNews.com, and Politico. |
 | A special CIR project investigating influence, agenda, and conflicts of interest in the federal courts. Stories include a troubling portrait of the system set up to protect government whistleblowers and a year-long investigation of Bush nominees for the federal bench.
|