By Bill Dedman, msnbc.com, and Michael Isikoff, NBC News
with reporting by NBC's Azriel Relph and Lisa Riordan Seville

A Super PAC supporting Texas Gov. Rick Perry received a million dollars from a leveraged-buyout innovator who got Perry's help to locate a radioactive waste disposal facility in the state.

The PAC, called Make Us Great Again, reported receipts of $5.5 million, incuding $1 million from Contran Corp. of Dallas. The billionaire owner of Contran, Harold Simmons, has given to Republican PACs and campaigns since the 1980s, including those of Sen. John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney in 2008, and $4 million to the anti-Kerry groups Swift Vets and POWs for Truth in 2004.

Now he's allowed to give far more, in the era after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, allowing corporate donations to campaigns.

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The Dallas billionaire had already given more than $1 million to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns in recent years, under the permissive campaign finance laws in Texas, according to The Los Angeles Times.  The newspaper reported that Simmons won permission to build a radioactive waste disposal facility in Texas after Perry signed a law allowing private companies, such as Simmons’ Waste Control Specialists, to operate such sites. Despite objections of some Texas environmental officials, a Perry-appointed state commission approved the construction of the facility and opened it up to receive nuclear waste from other states.

Another donor to the PAC is Robert McNair, owner of the Houston Texans, who gave $100,000.

The full list of donors is here.

The Perry PAC drew hardly any support outside of Texas. Perry dropped out of the race on Jan. 19 after finishing last in the New Hampshire primary.

Tuesday is the day for the so-called Super PACS to file an annual report of donors. NBC News and msnbc.com will be scouring the filings, and posting details. We'll have updates on msnbc.com, and could always use your help identifying the economic and political interests behind the names.

The Political Action Committees must disclose by midnight Tuesday who gave them money, and how much they spent to support or oppose candidates in the presidential race, including the Republican candidates and President Barack Obama.

The reports may trickle in, and it wouldn't surprise us if some campaigns file late tonight as attention is focused on voting results in the Florida Republican primary.

Super PACS are known to the Federal Election Commission as independent committees, because they are forbidden to coordinate their activities with campaigns. Outside the limits of campaign finance laws, Super PACs may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals. They can use that money to advocate for or against political candidates. 

Read more about the reports filed Tuesday:

After TV cameras leave, Romney PAC discloses $18 million

Spielberg, labor union are big backers of Obama Super PAC

Major GOP Super PAC raised $51 million in 2011

Not 'Desperate' for cash: Obama lists his big fundraisers

Sugar Daddy: Huntsman's father gave $1.9 million to Super PAC

Colbert Super PAC raises $1 million; non-satirical PACs to follow

Tuesday is the day for the so-called Super PACS to file an annual report of donors. NBC News and msnbc.com will be scouring the filings, and posting details. We'll have updates on msnbc.com, and could always use your help identifying the economic and political interests behind the names.

TV political satirist Stephen Colbert kicked off the reporting by filing a statement showing $1 million in contributions to his group, Americans for A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow. You can see his announcement and filing here.

"'Yeah! How you like me now, F.E.C?" Colbert told the Federal Election Commission in a cover letter. "I'm rolling seven digits deep! I got 99 problems but a non-connected independent-expenditure only committee ain't one!''

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"We raised it on my show," Colbert told his fans, "and used it to materially influence the elections -- in full accordance with the law. It's the way our founding fathers would have wanted it, if they had founded corporations instead of just a country."

Colbert had fun on his show Monday night with some of the bogus names of donors listed on his report: Pat Magroin, Ibin Yerkinoff, and Frumunda Mabalz.

The political action committees must disclose by midnight tonight who gave them money, and how much they spent to support or oppose candidates in the presidential race, including the Republican candidates and President Obama as well.

The official deadline for filing is midnight ET (12 a.m. Wednesday), so reports may trickle in. And it wouldn't surprise us if some campaigns file late tonight as attention is focused on voting results in the Florida Republican primary.

Super PACS are known to the Federal Election Commission as independent committees, because they are forbidden to coordinate their activities with campaigns. Outside the limits of campaign finance laws, Super PACs may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals. They can use that money to advocate for or against political candidates.

Read more about the reports filed Tuesday:

After TV cameras leave, Romney PAC discloses $18 million

Spielberg, labor union are big backers of Obama Super PAC

Perry PAC's $1 million donor got help with nuclear waste dump

Major GOP Super PAC raised $51 million in 2011

Not 'Desperate' for cash: Obama lists his big fundraisers

Sugar Daddy: Huntsman's father gave $1.9 million to Super PAC

The Food and Drug Administration electronically spied on whistleblowers who alerted the Obama administration and Congress of alleged misconduct in the agency, particularly relating to what they claim was the push to approve unsafe and ineffective medical devices, according to a complaint filed in federal court.

The complaint, filed on behalf of six former and current employees, alleges that the FDA and a number of others violated a host of the plaintiff's rights, including freedom of speech, association and due process; unreasonable search and seizure; and the right to petition Congress. Named as defendants are the FDA and several of its employees, the Surgeon General, the Health and Human Services Secretary, among others.

“The heart of it is an injunction prohibiting the government from targeting whistleblowers or anyone who engages in First Amendment protected speech for surveillance. You know, routine monitoring or monitoring done to everybody on an equal basis is fine, but you can’t select people because of their whistleblowing for this type of instrusive, over-the-top surveillance, which is done without a warrant, without any limitations whatsoever," said Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center and lead attorney on the case.

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The FDA said Monday it would not comment on ongoing litigation.

Known originally as the “FDA nine,” the employees -- some still current, other former -- alerted the House and Energy Committee in a letter dated Nov. 17, 2008, that the administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH)  had “ordered, intimidated, and coerced FDA experts to modify their scientific reviews, conclusions and recommendations in violation of the law,” according to  the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

In a second letter to the Obama transition team, dated Jan. 7, 2009, the scientists “raised issues of public concern, including, but not limited to, corruption within the FDA device review process, managerial misconduct, dangers to public health, welfare and safety, and retaliation against whistleblowers,” the lawsuit said.

The FDA then embarked upon a "covert and secret search and seizure operation," including intercepting private communications sent by the plaintiffs to congressional representatives, emails sent from private accounts to other private accounts under "circumstances in which the plaintiffs had a reasonable expectation of privacy," and secretly "installed or activated spyware on all of the government-owned computers, electronic hardware, and networks used by the plaintiffs," the lawsuit alleged.

"This spyware allowed defendants to secretly conduct additional surveillance of the plaintiffs, including ... real-time pictures or 'screen shots' of the computer screens opened by the plaintiffs," the complaint read. "These screen shots enabled defendants to secretly view information on each of the plaintiffs’ computer screens, even if the information was not saved by plaintiffs."

Kohn said the center had learned about the surveillance through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, personnel actions and responses from the Department of Health and Human Services' Inspector General to an unsuccessful request by the FDA to investigate the whistleblowers.

"I have never seen this level of monitoring. I was never even aware that they could go in and to do the Gmail-to-Gmail," he said, noting the FDA could also “figure out who’s giving information … therefore any employee who associates with a whistleblower could find themself the target of a surveillance.”

The plaintiffs had permission to use their government-issued computers for personal purposes, the lawsuit said. Four of the original "FDA nine" chose to pursue the lawsuit.

The number of whistleblowers grew over time, and the FDA, through the alleged spying over two years, learned of the group's strategy to alert the Inspector General, among others.

"These numerous attempts by defendants to have the whistleblowers prosecuted for so-called unauthorized disclosures of confidential or agency information were continuously rejected by appropriate law enforcement officials," the complaint said. "Defendants completely ignored the warnings that the disclosures were authorized and protected by law. Instead, defendants continued to conduct their surveillance activities and continued to try to convince law enforcement agencies to charge one or more of the plaintiffs with a crime."

Eventually, two of the whistleblowers, including one acting as counsel for the group, did not have their contracts renewed by the FDA, creating a "chilling effect on all similarly situated employees/contractors/officers of the defendants," the lawsuit said. Two more of the whistleblowers are no longer with the FDA: one was allegedly fired related to the whistleblowing and another was essentially removed from their post, Kohn said.

The lawsuit highlighted areas that had raised the concerns of the FDA whistleblowers: In the 2009 letter, the group had warned that in the past, "computer-aided detection devices (“CAD”) to be used with breast mammograms were not safe or effective, but the FDA approved the devices anyway in a flawed process that ignored the science" and noted that this "type of behavior had not changed, was ongoing, and that FDA managers were still trying to approve similarly flawed CAD devices."

In another example, a doctor had determined in early 2009 that a CT colonography device was neither safe nor effective for population screening due to a high radiation dose -- thereby raising the risk of induced cancer -- but "FDA managers indicated that they would clear the device anyway," the complaint alleged.

"They’re very upset but they're primarily concerned as physicians to the harm that patients are suffering," Kohn said of the whistleblowers. "They’re looking at ... the dosages of radiation that people get from some of these devices or how some of the devices fail to detect cancers.”

The doctors were being treated like "CIA agents," Kohn added. "They’re acting as if medical information is the same as … classified information on terrorism and it’s not … it’s information that patients need.”

The FDA has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit.

A former U.S. Senate investigator who had previously worked for the CIA was arrested Monday and charged with repeatedly leaking classified information to journalists as well as violating the federal law that forbids disclosing the identity of covert intelligence officers.

John Kiriakou, who between 2009 and last year worked as an investigator for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged by a federal grand jury with one count of violating the Intelligence Agencies Protection Act, two counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of lying to the CIA about his actions in an effort to convince the agency to let him publish a book, "The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror."

Kiriakou turned himself into the FBI Monday morning. In an initial court appearance in Alexandria, Va., Monday afternoon, Kiriakou waived a preliminary hearing and was released on a $250,000 bond after surrendering his passport and agreeing to stay in the Washington area and not to contact any witnesses in the case. His lawyer, Plato Cacheris, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The charges cap a three-year investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago,  into how photographs of covert CIA officers involved in the interrogation of terror suspects ended up in the Guantanamo prison cell of one of the accused 9/11 terrorists. The discovery of the photographs stunned top CIA officials. Fitzgerald was then appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder to oversee the probe because of his prior expertise in the intelligence protection act as special counsel in charge of the Bush era investigation into the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

DOCUMENT: Read the complaint against Kiriakou

The investigation initially focused on the role of defense lawyers, who used a private investigator to obtain surveillance photos of CIA officers. But the probe found no wrongdoing by the defense lawyers or the investigator. Instead, a Justice Department complaint charged, it found that Kiriakou provided information to three journalists, emailing one of them the name of a covert officer who then supplied the name of the officer to a defense investigator. (The journalist is not identified in the complaint). The complaint also alleges that Kiriakou provided another reporter at the New York Times with classified information about another CIA officer's role in the capture of accused Gitmo terrorist Abu Zubaydah. The information was included in a front page June 22, 2008, article in the Times entitled, "Inside the Interrogation of a 9/11 Mastermind" that raised questions about the use of waterboarding.

In an interview with FBI agents last week, Kiriakou denied disclosing information about the CIA officer to the New York Times reporter, Scott Shane, answering, "Heavens no," when asked if he had done so, according to the criminal complaint. But the complaint charges that Kirikou provided the reporter with the CIA officer's phone number and personal address.

The charges are the latest in a series of criminal leak cases brought by the Justice Department under President Barack Obama. But the cases have so far proven difficult for federal prosecutors; one major one, involving former NSA employee Thomas Drake, accused of leaking classified information to a Baltimore Sun reporter, resulted in a resounding defeat for the Justice Department last year when federal prosecutors withdrew all criminal charges against him.

Kiriakou spent 14 years with the CIA, between 1990 and 2004. He was hired by Kerry in 2009 to help investigate national security related issues for the Foreign Relations Committee. This came after Kiriakou gained prominence by giving a 2007 interview to ABC News about the use of waterboarding and how it allegedly broke Zubaydah in 35 seconds -- a claim that has been much disputed. (It was later disclosed that Zubaydah had been waterboarded 83 times.)  Kiriakou, who for a time worked as an ABC News consultant and appeared on several NBC News and MSNBC TV programs, later said that he did not personally participate in the waterboarding and had only read about it in intelligence reports.

A judge last year refused to find the CIA in contempt of court when it destroyed dozens of videotapes of the interrogation of Zubaydah and other detainees.

In December 2007, the CIA acknowledged doing so as part of the detention program begun after the Sept. 11 attacks.
A spokeswoman for Kerry, Jodi Seth, emailed this statement Monday to NBC News: “John Kiriakou was an investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from mid-2009 to 2011 when he left the committee voluntarily.  These charges date back to actions allegedly taken when he was employed by the intelligence community and both pre-date and are unrelated to his work for the committee. Understandably, our office has no information beyond what is publicly available, and only today did we become aware of this situation.”

In a statement issued after the charges were filed, CIA Director David Petraeus issued a statement to agency employees reminding them of the need to protect classified information.

"In return for the secrecy we need to do our work, the American people and our elected representatives expect us to uphold our nation’s laws and values," Petraeus said in the email. "When we joined this organization, we swore to safeguard classified information; those oaths stay with us for life. Unauthorized disclosures of any sort -- including information concerning the identities of other Agency officers -- betray the public trust, our country and our colleagues. Given the sensitive nature of many of our agency’s operations and the risks we ask our employees to take, the illegal passage of secrets is an abuse of trust that may put lives in jeopardy."

Michael Isikoff is NBC News national investigative correspondent. Msnbc.com news services contributed to this report.

LONDON -- A landmark lawsuit alleging that dictatorships and other oppressive regimes are using Interpol's alert system to harass or detain political dissidents is being planned by rights activists and lawyers.

Campaigners allege that rogue states have fabricated criminal charges against opposition activists who have been given refuge in other countries and then sought their arrest by obtaining "red notices" from the global police body.

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There are currently about 26,000 outstanding red notices. While they are only designed to alert other nations' police forces that an Interpol member state has issued an arrest warrant, some countries will take suspects into custody based on the red notice alone.

In one case, Rasoul Mazrae, an Iranian political activist recognized by the United Nations as a refugee, was arrested in Syria in 2006 as he tried to flee to Norway after a red notice was issued.

Mazrae was deported back to Iran, where he was tortured, according to a report by Libby Lewis, of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He was later jailed for 15 years, Amnesty International says.

'Torturers and murderers'
In one of the latest cases, a red notice has been issued for Benny Wenda, a tribal leader who campaigns for independence for the West Papua region from Indonesia. He was granted asylum in the U.K. after claiming he had been tortured and prosecuted for inciting people to attack a police station. Wenda says he was in a different country at the time of the incident.

• Wanted activist Benny Wenda tells of 'bow and arrows' revolt

Mark Stephens, a leading British human rights lawyer, told msnbc.com that the red notice system can allow Interpol to unwittingly become "an aider and abettor of torturers and murderers in oppressive regimes."

Amid mounting anger within the legal community, the U.K.-based rights campaign group Fair Trials International is now seeking people who allege their red notices are politically motivated to take part in a class action lawsuit against Interpol.

If successful, the case would potentially make France-based Interpol subject to the rulings of a court for the first time.

That would have implications not just for political dissidents, but could also create an extra legal hurdle for any country seeking to extradite alleged terrorists, murderers, international fraudsters, and other criminals based in another country.

Jago Russell, the chief executive of Fair Trials International, highlighted that Interpol's 190 member states include "countries that routinely abuse their criminal justice systems to persecute individuals."

Despite this, there is no independent court where someone can challenge a notice and "no remedy for the damage that notices can cause," he said.

Iran, Syria, Myanmar, Sudan, Belarus and Zimbabwe — all widely condemned for human rights abuses by their governments — are members of Interpol and each country currently has red notices listed on its website.

"Powerful international organizations with the ability to ruin lives have to be accountable for their actions," Russell wrote in an email.

"Interpol's own credibility relies on proper accountability mechanisms to weed out cases of abuse, but if Interpol refuses to put its own house in order it could ultimately be up to the courts to step in and demand action," he added.

There have been legal challenges to Interpol's decisions heard in some countries' courts in the past, but these have failed "to hold the organization to account," Russell wrote.

Russell hopes that a court with jurisdiction over a number of countries, such as the European Court of Human Rights, will take a different view.

"This would no doubt be a long, hard process but with thousands of people affected by red notices every year and, with the rule of law at stake, it would be worth the fight," he said.

Political persecution
Fair Trials International is currently highlighting Wenda's case in particular and trying to help get his red notice removed.

He escaped from prison before being sentenced and fled Indonesia in 2002. Wenda traveled to the U.K., where he was granted asylum due to Indonesia's persecution of him on political grounds, according to Fair Trials International.

Wenda then renewed his campaign, meeting politicians and others as he traveled the world. He also has a website highlighting the West Papuan cause.

In 2011, he became aware that Interpol had issued a red notice. According to those details of the notice that have been made public by Interpol, Wenda is wanted for "crimes involving the use of weapons/explosives" by the Papua Regional Police.

According to Wenda, he was charged with inciting an attack on a police station and burning buildings that resulted in the deaths of a number of people even though he says he was not in Indonesia at the time.

Wenda says he was tortured, held in solitary confinement, and the judge and prosecutor requested bribes among other irregularities during the trial.

Wenda believes the red notice was sought partly to try to prevent him from traveling outside the U.K. to highlight the plight of West Papuans.

A report by the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at the Yale Law School in 2003 found that "the West Papuan people have suffered persistent and horrible abuses" at the hands of the Indonesian government since the area was annexed in 1969. It also accused Indonesian military and security forces of engaging in "widespread violence and extrajudicial killings."

The research team concluded that historical and contemporary evidence "strongly suggests that the Indonesian government has committed proscribed acts with the intent to destroy the West Papuans ... in violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."

'My people are crying'
Wenda says that his people continue to be "killed, raped and tortured."

"I think Indonesia is just trying to stop me and my campaign. I think that's the reason. I think this is just political motivation," Wenda told msnbc.com. "I'm not terrorist, I'm not criminal. Who's real terrorist or criminal? It's Indonesia itself. 

"My people are crying ... That's why I am up and down the country, traveling the world, telling the truth."

Human Rights Watch's World Report 2012 also highlights that the U.S. provides "extensive military assistance to Indonesia" and adds that "impunity for members of Indonesia’s security forces remains a serious concern, with no civilian jurisdiction over soldiers who commit serious human rights abuses."

Jennifer Robinson, a London-based human rights lawyer and member of International Lawyers for West Papua, told msnbc.com in an email that "the charges that form the basis of the Interpol warrant are the very same politically motivated charges brought against Benny in 2002 -- and the very same charges that were the basis of the UK's decision to grant him political asylum."

"I attended his trial in West Papua on these charges, heard the evidence and witnessed the flagrant breaches of due process at that trial. I am witness to the fact the charges are without evidential basis," she added. "This was recognised by the U.K. in granting Benny refugee status for the political persecution he suffered in Indonesia. Now Indonesia is seeking to abuse the Interpol system to extend its political persecution across borders, undermining the protection afforded to Benny under the U.N. Refugee Convention."

In addition to the threat of arrest in the country of refuge, Fair Trials International says that a red notice makes international travel risky — partly because countries tend to deal with each one on a case-by-case basis.

And even if a court in one country decides not to extradite the wanted person, the red notice remains and another country could take a different decision.

The stigma of being wanted for an alleged crime can also make everyday life difficult -- by making it hard to get a bank account, for example, due to background checks.

Michelle Estlund, a Coral Gables, Fla.-based lawyer who writes a blog focusing red notices, told msnbc.com that there should be some kind of quasi-judicial proceedings to level the "playing field" between an Interpol member state and an individual. Part of the issue, she said, is that Interpol initially assumes that red notice applications are properly submitted.

"If you are I are playing basketball and I haven't followed the rules and I haven't told you where the hoop is, it's going to be very hard for you to win, especially if the referee is presuming everything I do to be right," Estlund said.

Little transparency?
It is possible to complain about red notices but critics say the procedure suffers from a lack of transparency.

Complaints to Interpol that red notices are issued because of politically motivated charges are considered internally at first and then by a specially created body called the Commission for Control of Interpol's Files (CCF).

However, the panel -- which consists of five unpaid commissioners and three members of staff -- holds its discussions in private and does not have to give any reasons for its decisions.

There are few successful challenges. According to statistics published in the commission's latest annual report, 16 percent (or 32) of 201 requests that it received in 2010 raised questions about "the application of Article 3 of Interpol's constitution." Article 3 prohibits Interpol from activities of a "political, military, religious or racial character."

The CCF dealt with 170 requests in 2010 and 26 percent (or 44) of those cases resulted in the deletion of an Interpol file. Assuming 16 percent of those were Article 3 complaints, then just seven people had red notices removed in 2010 after claiming they were being prosecuted for political or other such unjustified reasons.

Billy Hawkes, the CCF's chairman, said the body examined complaints "very thoroughly."

"We recognize the dangers of red notices being used inappropriately for political objectives," he told msnbc.com from Dublin, Ireland. "Obviously we must all be concerned about the rights of individuals and dangers of abuse of the red notice system."

Hawkes warned, however, that adding judicial oversight of Interpol's red notices could hamper its ability to help catch criminals.

"We must remember that the object of a red notice is to have fugitive criminals stopped as quickly as possible, so they can face trial in the country they have committed the crime," he added.

One potential obstacle to taking legal action against Interpol is a deal it made with the French government that gives it immunity from some French laws. It is unclear how a European court would regard that deal.

'Unfairness'
Anand Doobay, a U.K.-based lawyer, confirmed to msnbc.com that he was "investigating the possibility of some kind of legal challenge on behalf of clients who are affected by politically motivated prosecutions which have resulted in Interpol red notices being issued."

"The unfairness which is caused by having an unwarranted Interpol red notice is very difficult to address," he said.
"What we are looking at is ways of trying to deal with the unfairness."

Estlund, the Florida-based lawyer, said oppressive regimes should not be expelled from Interpol because they might become "safe havens for people who have committed real crimes."

Instead she argued that red notice requests from countries with a record of corruption should be subject to greater scrutiny. "I do think Interpol is capable of doing that," she added. "I don't think it's too much to hope that that will happen."

A statement emailed to msnbc.com by an Interpol spokeswoman on Jan. 11 said there were 26,051 valid red notices at that time, including 7,678 issued in 2011.

It listed three ways people "can challenge a red notice and/or the national arrest warrant upon which the request was submitted":

• argue their case before the national authorities of the requesting country;
• contact the Commission for the Control of Interpol's Files; 
• or request their country to take the case itself and protest against the red notice.

The statement added that the "issuance of a red notice is not a judicial decision." "Each Interpol member country decides for itself what legal value to give red notice within their borders," it said.

"Interpol's role is not to question allegations against an individual, nor to gather evidence, so a red notice is issued based on a presumption that the information provided by the police is accurate and relevant," the statement added.

Follow msnbc.com's Ian Johnston on Twitter.

By Robert Windrem
NBC News

With the successful Predator attack on al-Qaida operative Aslam Awan inside Pakistan, al-Qaida has lost, in the words of a senior U.S. official last night, "a senior external operations planner who was working on attacks against the West. His death reduces al-Qaida's thinning bench of another operative devoted to plotting the death of innocent civilians."

Awan is believed to have been somewhat close to Ayman al Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida since shortly after Osama Bbn Laden's death on May 1. Although U.S. officials would not place a number on Awan's rank within al-Qaida, he was believed to have been involved in planning attacks, putting him in the high command.

But what of Zawahiri? The U.S. pursuit of him remains a high priority. (And his killing or capture would be regarded as a political coup for the Obama administration in a campaign year.) The U.S. has targeted Zawahiri five times by his own count, going back to the days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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A U.S. counterterrorism official tells NBC News that there's limited information on the status of U.S. planning against Zawahiri. "It's certainly not impossible" for an attack on Zawahiri to be attempted. "But he has clearly hung very low since May, with fundamentally no communications," said the official.

Evan Kohlmann, MSNBC analyst and counterterrorism consultant, reports that since bin Laden's death, al-Qaida's media arm has released eight recordings of al-Zawahiri, not all of which can be easily dated. At least one and possibly two of them were probably recorded prior to bin Laden being killed, then released after his death. The most recent one came out on December 1. In that video, Zawahiri boasted that al-Qaida had seized aid worker Warren Weinstein, a 70-year-old American, in Lahore last August. There's been no proof of life regarding Weinstein since then.

Those recordings are often hand-carried through a network of couriers to ensure Zawahiri's security.

From the archives: Bin Laden dead: Who will lead al-Qaeda?

Eight poker players who say they were victims of a cheating scheme on the popular Ultimate Bet website are suing a Canadian company and unnamed individuals, alleging they violated U.S. laws aimed at combatting organized crime, defrauded players and negligently offered crooked card games.

The lawsuit, filed last Friday in U.S. District Court in California, alleges that the defendants — 6356095 Canada Inc., formerly known as Excapsa Software Inc., and up to 10 Jane or John Does — violated the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, committed fraud and exhibited negligence by enabling the theft of at least $20 million from high-stakes poker players who gambled on the Ultimate Bet website.

It seeks compensation of at least $1.73 million and far more in punitive damages on behalf of the plaintiffs: Daniel Ashman, Brad Booth, Thomas Koral, Greg Lavery, Dave Lizmi, Daniel Smith, Joseph Sanders and Dustin Woolf.

Possibly more important in unraveling the longstanding mystery of the largest known case of online poker cheating, the lawsuit seeks documentation that Ultimate Bet's shadowy parent companies and regulators with the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC) have never made public.

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The KGC, the regulatory agency of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake in southern Ontario, announced in September 2008 that its investigation found that a single individual — former World Series of Poker champ Russ Hamilton  — was behind the cheating case. But many players believe that it was the result of a broader conspiracy.

Among them is Haley Hintze, a former writer and editor of PokerNews and now a poker blogger who is working on a book on the cheating scheme due out by summer. In it, she told msnbc.com on Thursday, she will identify at least three others who directly participated in the theft and attempts to cover it up.

Representatives of Excapsa Software could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit. A spokesman for the KGC had no comment on the lawsuit or whether it would respond to any subpoenas.

Ultimate Bet acknowledged that $20 million was stolen from players at the site between 2003 and 2008 through the use of a "backdoor" in the gaming software that allowed the cheater or cheaters to see opponents hole cards in high stakes tournaments. The operators of Ultimate Bet refunded most or all of that money.

But the suit alleges that the company “substantially underestimated” the losses by failing to consider money that wasn’t wagered when the cheaters realized their opponent had them beat.

Read 2008 story about the case: Poker site cheating plot a high-stakes whodunit

“The key to the massive success of the cheating players is not simply that they were able to profit by bluffing when their opponent was weak or betting when they had the best hand, but that they were able to fold and not play … whenever their hand was strong (but) not the best,” it argues. “Thus every time a player had a flush, the cheater would fold a lower flush or straight; every time a player had a full house, the cheaters would fold a flush.”

“There are significant doubts about the methodology of the refunds given to players,” said Alan Engle, a partner in the Meador & Engle law firm in Anaheim Hills, Calif., who filed the suit. “That’s always been a closed process and there are inherent difficulties in calculating the amount of the theft.”

Engle said the early part of the case will probably focus on jurisdictional issues, but he said he is confident that he can prevail on any challenges because Ultimate Bet focused its marketing on U.S. bettors.

“Anyone victimized by someone in a foreign nation over the Internet is in no way required to bring a case in a foreign nation,” he said.

Excapsa Software, now known as 6356095 Canada Inc., is currently in the midst of liquidation proceedings in Canada.

Sheldon Krakower, who is handling the corporate dismemberment for XMT Liquidations of Montreal, said he would soon seek guidance from the Ontario court overseeing the case before responding to the lawsuit.

“We will be filing our seventh report to the Ontario court specifically addressing this matter imminently,” he told msnbc.com on Thursday. “… We need direction from the court on that.”

In a report to Excapsa shareholders in May 2011, Krakower indicated that $7 million U.S. had recently been released to shareholders, and that $4.2 million was being held in escrow until the end of the year. It is not clear whether that money remains in escrow.

Ultimate Bet, which merged with another online gaming site, Absolute Poker, in 2008 to form the Cereus Poker network, was among a handful of online Poker sites that had their U.S. operations shut down in April of last year when the U.S. Justice Department indicted them on charges of violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, money laundering and other charges. The feds also froze bank accounts holding the bankrolls of U.S. players, many of whom have yet to be repaid.

Mitt Romney's service on the board of Marriott International has come under scrutiny in a story published Thursday by 100Reporters, a new investigative reporting group.

Business reporter Lucy Komisar reports:

Mitt Romney, who makes his hands-on business experience a talking point in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, was a member of the board of directors and audit committee of a global company when it paid millions of dollars to settle charges of extracting kickbacks that cheated clients.

As a board member, Romney held oversight responsibilities at a time when Marriott was repeatedly accused of obtaining secret rebates that enriched Marriott, at the expense of hotel owners who had contracted with Marriott to run the hotels on their behalf. A series of owners also accused Marriott of falsifying financial statements to owners to conceal the arrangements—charges that Marriott had denied.

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Should a director bear responsibility for actions by a company's management?

Here's how Komisar deals with that question, along with background on ties between Romney and the Marriott family:

To be sure, Romney’s was only one voice of ten on the board. What he may have said privately at board meetings or to Marriott executives about the secret rebates and the risk to shareholders and the company is not known. What is known is that during his tenure the company continued a practice that had come under severe reprimand by the courts, and there is no record that Romney ever denounced or criticized the practice.

In addition, the company failed to disclose the mounting disputes to the Securities and Exchange Commission despite the risk they represented to the company’s stock price, and did so only after they culminated in public lawsuits.

With law and business degrees from Harvard University, Romney was well-schooled in understanding the legal and business risks to the company from theses charges. Romney was one of the designated “independent,” members of the Marriott board, which meant that neither he nor his family were to have financial ties to the company. Indeed, no Romney had been an employee of Marriott or the company’s auditor.

On personal and political levels, however, bonds between the Romney and Marriott families run deep. The company founder J. Willard Marriott was close to Romney's father George. Both families are important in the Mormon Church. Romney was named Willard (the W. in his name), in Marriott's honor.

In 1994 the Marriott family gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Romney's campaign for the U.S. Senate. In 2008, CEO J. Willard "Bill" Marriott, the founder's son, was national finance co-chair of Romney’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Bill Marriott has so far donated $500,000 to Romney’s current campaign through the pro-Romney "super PAC," Restore Our Future, while his brother, Richard Marriott, has given the same.

The Romney campaign did not respond to questions about his service at Marriott.

The reporter, Lucy Komisar, is an experienced investigative journalist focusing on corporate corruption.

Read her full story at 100r.org.

By Justine Sharrock, Laurie Udesky and Stuart Silverstein
FairWarning.org

Less than four years after a California train disaster spurred passage of major safety legislation, railroad companies are pushing hard to relax the law’s chief provision.

They have won over key Republicans, and extracted a major concession from the Obama administration, in their bid to scale back and delay a system to prevent crashes such as the head-on collision that caused 25 deaths and 135 injuries in Chatsworth, Calif.

The Rail Safety Improvement Act, passed in late 2008 soon after the Chatsworth disaster, mandated the $13 billion project and stuck railroad companies with nearly all of the cost. The law calls for installation of a technology known as Positive Train Control, or PTC, that automatically puts the brakes on trains about to collide or derail.

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Railroads are required to install PTC by the end of 2015 on an estimated 70,000 miles of track used by trains carrying passengers or extremely hazardous materials such as chlorine.

The technology’s champions include the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent advisory and investigative agency. It has advocated PTC for more than two decades to prevent accidents resulting from human error, the main cause of rail crashes.

Investigators with the agency have identified 21 train wrecks since late 2001 that, they say, would have been averted by PTC. In all, the accidents caused 53 deaths and nearly 1,000 injuries.

 “PTC can prevent these human errors from causing collisions, hazmat releases, passengers killed and injured, and train crews being killed,” said Steven Ditmeyer, a former rail industry executive and federal official who now teaches in Michigan State University’s railway management program.

Serious train crashes, he said, “are very rare events, but they still occur.”

PTC supporters such as Paul Hedlund, a lawyer for many families of Chatsworth victims, say they are appalled by efforts to relax the mandate. It’s a “scary step backwards,” Hedlund said, calling existing protections “horribly archaic.”

Since 2008, he added, “We haven’t had another crash of the magnitude of Chatsworth that would be affected by this but we are going to.”

But the railroad industry and its allies, arguing that the project is unaffordable, have put up stiff resistance. They also maintain that the technology still needs to be refined, even though Amtrak already operates a similar system from Boston to Washington, D.C.

PTC critics have argued for delaying the installation deadline by three years, exempting as much as 20 percent of the track and allowing railroads to use other safety systems that might be cheaper, but also less effective.

The industry is bolstered by a political climate that is hostile to federal dictates, a factor behind the executive order President Obama issued early last year to streamline regulations. They have extra leverage because federal agencies are divided on the merits of the PTC mandate.

PTC opponents also are drawing ammunition from a 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO assessment didn’t address PTC’s effectiveness but said technological hurdles could delay completion of the project beyond the 2015 deadline.

“What you hear from all the railroad companies is that everyone supports PTC in theory, but the realities of how difficult it is financially and technologically to install [mean] it can’t happen by 2015,” said Matt Ginsberg, director of operations for the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association, which includes contractors that work on PTC installation.

The industry’s strategy, he added, is that “instead of an outright repeal, they will slowly chip away at it, making small little tweaks that will make a big change overall in the effect of the rule.”

Leading the resistance are the Association of American Railroads, which represents freight haulers and Amtrak, along with the American Public Transportation Association, which represents commuter rail systems. They have called PTC the biggest federal mandate the industry has faced in more than a century, and say they anticipated that the government would step up its financial support.

To deliver their message on PTC and other issues, railroad interests spend heavily on lobbying. According to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the railroad industry poured $73.4 million into lobbying in 2009 and 2010, and another $8.75 million in the first quarter of 2011.

The industry also has retained dozens of lobbyists, including the firm of former Senate powerhouses John Breaux, D-La., and Trent Lott, R.-Miss.

Meanwhile, as political currents have shifted and PTC has fallen out of the spotlight, the technology has fewer forceful advocates.

Former U.S. Rep. James L. Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who led the push for PTC in the House and who argued for it since the 1990s, was voted out of office in 2010, when Republicans took control of the lower chamber.

The Democrat who perhaps was most pivotal in getting the rail safety act through Congress and signed into law was Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. Days after the Chatsworth crash in September 2008, she said the failure to install PTC would amount to “criminal negligence.”

Today, she still favors PTC but no longer is a leader on the issue and is not a member of the panel with jurisdiction over railroads, the Commerce Committee.  Feinstein’s office quoted the senator as saying that she has urged colleagues to maintain the current deadline.

PTC systems include GPS and wireless communications technology and central control centers. They can monitor trains and stop them if they enter the wrong track or are about to run a red light.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board, one of the accidents that PTC would have prevented was the freight train-commuter train collision in Chatsworth. The NTSB investigation blamed the accident on an engineer on the commuter train who ran a red light while text-messaging on a cellphone. (Metrolink, the rail system that operates the Chatsworth commuter line, hopes to finish installing its PTC system by mid-2013.)

The NTSB said the January 2005 rail crash in Graniteville, S.C., that killed nine people and injured 554 also would have been prevented by PTC. The crash punctured a chlorine tank car, releasing a toxic, greenish cloud that led to the evacuation of about 5,400 residents.

However, the agency responsible for enforcing the deadline has expressed ambivalence about PTC. The Transportation Department’s Federal Railroad Administration concedes that PTC increases safety. But the agency says PTC would save only about four or five lives a year, not nearly enough to justify the  cost – though the agency analysis was completed in 2005, before the Chatsworth disaster.

PTC advocates say the agency’s analysis ignores the enormous business benefits that the technology could provide by, not only preventing accidents, but also by coordinating train traffic more efficiently and cutting shipping times.

Still, after the Transportation Department spelled out its rules for enforcing the PTC law, it was sued in November 2010 by the Association of American Railroads. The industry group accused the agency of issuing “a regulation that imposes a staggering and unjustified burden” that went beyond the intent of Congress.

Among other grievances, the industry said federal officials wrongly required railroads to put PTC on track that by 2015 will no longer be used to haul chlorine or other extremely hazardous materials.

The Transportation Department, to settle the litigation, offered to reduce the amount of track required to have PTC. The proposal, expected to be adopted in some form this spring, would remove 7,000 to 14,000 miles of track from the mandate, a cut of about 10 percent to 20 percent.

In an Aug. 23 announcement, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood characterized the move as being in line with the Obama administration’s initiative to streamline regulation.

NTSB officials, however, say the proposal also could have a pernicious effect. They say it could crimp regulators’ flexibility to require PTC on troublesome track not specifically designated by the statute.

For instance, regulators can insist on PTC when they are concerned about the safety of track where freight trains haul, say, ethanol – a dangerous material, but not one of the extreme hazards specified in the law. But the head of the NTSB, Deborah Hersman, said her agency is concerned that the “ability to identify other high-risk corridors will be hampered” because, under the proposed change, the railroads no longer would have to provide the government with as much risk data.

Separately, House Republicans have advocated relaxing the PTC requirements. One of the leaders is U.S. Rep. John Mica of Florida, chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Mica is one of the biggest recipients of railroad industry campaign contributions, with $182,298 since 2008.

He is working on a long-term surface transportation authorization bill that is regarded as a likely legislative vehicle for key breaks sought by the railroads. Lawmakers are expected to resume working in earnest on the authorization bill by the beginning of February.

Mica has voiced support for extending the PTC deadline by three years and allowing trains to use so-called non-technological safety systems. 

Such systems, unlike PTC, can’t automatically counter human error, which the Transportation Department says causes 40 percent of train accidents. Mica has described his goal as to “protect against overly-burdensome regulations and red tape.”  

Another vocal critic of PTC is U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the railroads subcommittee.

According to The Center for Responsive Politics, railroads were the top-contributing industry to his 2008 and 2010 election campaigns. Shuster has received $165,800 in campaign contributions from railroad interests since 2008.

He has criticized the PTC mandate ever since it was adopted. At a March hearing,  Shuster advocated extending the deadline beyond 2015 and reducing the amount of track covered, while calling the existing requirements “regulatory overreach.”

Talk of accommodating the industry, however, infuriates union leaders. “It’s hard for me to believe that anyone can go to Congress and say with a straight face that seven years after the bill passed is ‘not enough time for us to do this,’’’ said James Stem, legislative director of the United Transportation Union.  “But that’s what’s going on.”

It’s also distressing to crash victims such as Frank Kohler.

Kohler was one of those injured in the Chatsworth disaster.  He woke up after the collision lying on the ground with his head split open; he suffered a brain injury that, Kohler says, causes him to get confused and has ended his 36-year career as an emergency responder and registered nurse.

If PTC has been in place three years ago, Kohler said, he would have arrived home safely. Kohler added, “I would still have my professional life intact and I would be a productive member of society.”  

FairWarning is a nonprofit, online investigative news organization focused on public health and safety issues.