The Wisconsin agency that oversees elections is objecting to an internal training handbook distributed by Mitt Romney’s campaign that appears to instruct volunteer poll observers in the state to conceal their ties to the GOP candidate when they show up at polling stations on Election Day, a state official tells NBC News.

"Our plan is to contact the Romney campaign and tell them there are issues" with the material, said Reid Magney, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, which supervises elections in the state and enforces state election laws.

Magney said some of the training material -- obtained by the liberal Democratic blog Think Progress and posted on its website on Wednesday is either incomplete or misleading. The directive to observers, not to mention their connections to the Romney campaign, also conflicts with official Wisconsin Government Accountability Board guidance to all poll observers,  publicly posted on the agency's website, instructing that they sign in and  identify "the name of the organization or candidate the observer represents," he said. 

“We stand by our training materials, but we are always happy to answer any questions that the Government Accountability Board may have,” Ryan Williams, a spokesman for the Romney campaign, said in an email to NBC News.

A campaign official also noted that the Romney campaign has tangled with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board's interpretation of election law on other matters. Just last week, the Romney campaign settled a lawsuit it filed against the board over military and overseas ballots, resulting in the state extending the deadline for those ballots to be returned. 

The Romney campaign document, which was specifically prepared for use in Wisconsin, gives detailed instructions to volunteer election observers, calling them "the first line of defense"  to insure a fair election and advising them to be on the lookout for voters who seek to cast ineligible ballots.

Under a section entitled "If you See Something, Say Something," it tells Romney campaign poll watchers to alert an official  Chief Election Inspector (CEI) at polling booths if they identify a potential voting irregularity. If the CEI does not "resolve it quickly," they should call "the Command Center," it says.

The training document  appears to instruct observers to hide their  connection to the Romney campaign from the election inspectors at polling booths. While the observers should introduce themselves to the inspectors, they should "sign in as a 'concerned citizen' and obtain a name tag," according to the document, which bears the official insignia of the Romney campaign and is entitled "Volunteer Observer Training."

The Think Progress blog also posted an audio recording it said it obtained from a Romney campaign training session in which Kristina Sesek, a lawyer for the Wisconsin Republican Party, states:  "We're going to have you sign in this election cycle as a 'concerned citizen.' We've just trying to alleviate some of the  animosity of being a Republican observer up front."

A senior Romney campaign official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said the directive advising that campaign poll watchers sign in as "concerned citizens" was inserted at the urging of the Wisconsin Republican Party because of recent incidents in which GOP poll watchers faced intimidation or threats at polling stations. The official said the directive was specific to Wisconsin and has not been repeated in Romney campaign  training material for poll watchers in other states.

But the official defended the language in the Wisconsin campaign document,  saying that signing in as a "concerned citizen" conforms to the "spirit" of Wisconsin law because the training material also instructs them not to interfere or communicate with voters seeking to cast their ballots.

The Romney campaign training handbook states that "we do not and will not tolerate any voter intimidation or suppression" and "No person should interfere with any indvidual's right to legally cast a ballot."

"There is nothing to prevent a concerned citizen from signing in as a concerned citizen," said the senior campaign official. "They're not talking to voters, they're not challenging somebody." The apparent conflict between the Romney campaign document and the official Wisconsin Government Accountability Board instructions to poll watchers to identify their campaign ties is a "distinction without a difference," the campaign official added.

Board spokesman Magney acknowledged the campaign document probably can’t be challenged as a legal matter. The official state guidance -- which explicitly states that poll watchers identify what campaign they are working for -- was issued under an emergency rule issued by the board in 2010. That rule has since expired and the board, swamped with other issues because of this year's Wisconsin recall votes, hasn't had the opportunity to officially renew it. "It fell through the cracks," Magney said.

But he noted board's website states that it has directed local officials to "continue applying the  emergency rules" governing poll observers from 2010. Therefore, as far as the board is concerned, the directive that poll watchers identify themselves is still in effect, he said. He said this could be an issue in case there are post-election problems or disputes about challenges made by the poll watchers.

Magney said there were other problems with the training handbook, including its definition of ineligible voters--  whose ballots could be questioned -- as a "person who has been convicted of treason, a felony or bribery." Magney noted that under Wisconsin law, convicted felons who have served their sentences can have their civil rights restored and are eligible to vote.

The Romney campaign handbook also lists "The ONLY Acceptable Forms of 'Proof of Residency'" for voters -- and then mentions a number of items, such as current and valid drivers’ licenses, photo identification cards from employers, real estate tax bills and college IDs. But Magney said the list is incomplete, failing to mention other forms of proof, including any communication from a government  agency, such as student loan documents or vehicle registration cards.

In defending the accuracy of the document, the Romney campaign official pointed to other pages of the training document. For example, the official said, on a later page, under a section titled "Cause for Challenge," the handbook instructs poll watchers that they may challenge  a voter if they have knowledge that he or she "is a felon who has not been restored his/her civil rights." And on another page, it states poll watchers looking to check the proof of residency of a voter can accept a "check or other document issued by a unit of government."

More from Open Channel:

 

 

• Super PACs, nonprofits helped Romney narrow Obama fundraising edge
• N.C. neighbors aghast to learn drinking water contaminated for years
• In Mali, land of 'gangster jihadists,' ransoms help fuel the movement
• Plane truth: Millions spent on rarely used Gary, Ind., airport
• Feds investigate phony letters telling Fla. voters they're not eligible to vote
• 'Cash register justice'; private probation services face legal counterattack
• Sunni radicals target Shiites to fan sectarian flames in Pakistan
• Unstoppable hackers take out bank websites with next-gen 'botnets'
• Ex-CIA agent pleads guilty to leaking identity of covert operative

 

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Super PACs and nonprofits unleashed by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision have spent more than $840 million on the 2012 election, with the overwhelming majority favoring Republicans, particularly GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

An estimated $577 million, or roughly 69 percent, was spent by conservative groups, compared with $237 million spent by liberal groups, or about 28 percent, with the remainder expended by other organizations.

Of all outside spending in the 2012 election, more than $450 million was dedicated to the presidential election with more than $350 million spent helping Romney and about $100 million spent to help President Barack Obama.

The spending helped close the gap on Obama’s considerable fundraising advantage over Romney. As Election Day approaches, Romney and Obama are neck-and-neck in national polls.

The totals are from a joint analysis of Federal Election Commission data by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public Integrity. The analysis covers the period from Jan. 1, 2011, through Oct. 28, 2012, and does not include independent spending by the political party committees.

The final tally will be higher as spending continues to accelerate before Election Day.

Obama's campaign raised more than $632 million in the 2012 election, 62 percent more than Romney's $389 million. Even when including money raised by the Democratic and Republican National Committees, Obama still has an edge of more than $166 million: $924 million for the president’s re-election team vs. $758 million for Romney and the GOP.

The president’s campaign committee was bankrolled to a great degree by money from grassroots supporters, while Romney relied more heavily on larger donors. Individuals who gave $200 or less accounted for 34 percent of Obama’s war chest. Meanwhile, such small-dollar donors were responsible for only 18 percent of the Romney campaign’s haul.

The deluge of outside spending was made possible by the 2010 Citizens United decision and a lower court ruling that allowed individuals, labor unions and corporations to give money to outside spending groups — mostly nonprofits and super PACs — to buy advertising attacking or supporting candidates.

Super PACs were generally backed by super donors. Billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his family, for example, gave $54 million to Republican super PACs as of mid-October, far more than any other donor this election cycle.

Nonprofit “social welfare” groups and trade associations can raise just as much money, but are not required to report their donors. The lack of transparency sparked legislation to require disclosure, but it was defeated.

Nonprofits were responsible for more than $245 million, or about 30 percent, of the $840 million in total outside spending. That’s about $100 million more than they spent in 2010.

Spending surge helps Romney
During the week of Sept. 30, about $16.5 million was spent by outside groups benefiting Romney, mostly on ads attacking Obama. Three weeks later, the seven-day total jumped to more than $55 million, according to FEC filings.

Outside spending benefiting Obama over the same period never exceeded $14 million, records show.

The GOP candidate, facing the Obama fundraising juggernaut, needed the help of outside groups to keep pace.

The Obama campaign aired nearly three times as many ads as the Romney campaign between late April and late October, according to a recent study by the Wesleyan Media Project.

Wesleyan found that the 460,500 ads aired by the Obama campaign in the presidential election was more than the Romney campaign, the RNC and seven other Republican-aligned outside spending groups combined — including the top GOP super PACs Restore Our Future and American Crossroads and conservative nonprofits Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity.

Super PACs in the 2012 election raised about $660 million.

Restore Our Future alone accounted for about $1 out of every $5 of all super PAC donations received. The pro-Romney group raised more than $130 million, much of which was spent decimating Romney’s rivals during the GOP primaries.

The Obama-backing Priorities USA Action, by contrast, raised $64 million.

In 2010, during their first year of existence, all super PACs combined raised just $85 million.

The top 149 individual super PAC donors — each of whom has contributed at least $500,000 — are responsible for $290 million of funds raised.

And 858 individuals who contributed at least $50,000 to super PACs accounted for nearly 60 percent of all money the groups collected in the 2012 election. The median household income in 2011, by way of comparison, was $50,054, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Donations from large, publicly traded corporations have been relatively rare, but in the waning weeks of the campaign, oil and gas giant Chevron wrote a $2.5 million check to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC backing Republican candidates that is closely associated with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

The emergence of super PACs has been heralded by some, such as Republican lawyer Brad Smith, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who co-founded the conservative Center for Competitive Politics.

“(Super PACs) have helped to level the playing field between Romney and Obama, whereas otherwise Obama’s spending advantage would have been substantial,” said Smith. “And in some cases they have raised issues that concern voters that the candidates have chosen to avoid.”

Others disagree.

“When elected officials rely on the most-wealthy of wealthy Americans, it means the voices of everyday people lose out,” said Nick Nyhart, president of the advocacy group Public Campaign, which favors publicly financed elections.

Unlike traditional political action committees, super PACs have no contribution limits and the funds they raise can't be directly donated to candidates. Instead, the money they raise has primarily been used to fund attack ads.

Prior to Citizens United, groups that wanted to expressly advocate for or against a candidate were limited to receiving no more than $5,000 per donor per calendar year.

Donations shrouded in secrecy
As important as super PACs were in the 2012 election, the loosening of political spending rules for non-disclosing, nonprofit organizations was also a key development following the Citizens United decision.

GOP-aligned nonprofits have outspent their Democratic counterparts by a ratio of more than 8 to 1.

Notably, this figure represents a conservative tally of nonprofits’ political spending.

Federal law requires spending to be reported only if a group's advertisements encourage viewers to vote for or against a candidate, or if they mention a candidate shortly before a political convention or election.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the author of the Court's Citizens United 5-4 opinion, made a point of saying that disclosure was a key part of the court’s rationale. Disclosure would allow citizens to monitor the new political activity.

"This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages," he wrote.

But the tax-exempt groups — some of which clearly exist for no other reason than to elect favored candidates — are spared by Internal Revenue Service and FEC rules from having to publicly reveal their donors.

Crossroads GPS, co-founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove, claims in press releases to have spent more than $120 million since January 2011, of which only $57 million has been reported to the FEC. At least $12 million has been spent attacking Obama, according to FEC records.

Voters watching its ads have no idea where the money is coming from. Nor do they know who is funding the work of liberal organizations doing the same thing, albeit with a lot less money.

Patriot Majority has reported spending $6.5 million on ads, more than half of which has opposed Rep. Dean Heller, the Republican who is running for U.S. Senate in Nevada.

Not all secret money is coming from nonprofits. Throughout the election season, mystery corporations have popped up, spending huge sums.

Specialty Group Inc. of Knoxville, Tenn., wrote seven checks totaling $5.2 million to pro-Tea Party super PAC FreedomWorks for America in early October. The corporation was created on Sept. 26. The name and address listed on incorporation records are those of a Knoxville, Tenn., area attorney. His published phone line has been disconnected.

The source of the funds, as of this writing, is unknown.

Meanwhile, more than $10 million in funds given to super PACs, which disclose donors regularly, have come from nonprofits, showing that even the groups required to be transparent about their funding sources can still shield the names of donors.

Going negative

The explosion in outside spending has coarsened the political debate, flooding the airwaves in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and other battleground states with negative, often inaccurate ads.

Roughly 80 percent of all spending by both conservative groups and liberal groups has been negative, FEC records indicate.

Fully 100 percent of the nearly $57 million Priorities USA Action reported spending has been on negative ads.

The group, which coined the slogan “If Mitt Romney wins, the middle class loses,” linked Romney to the death of a woman who lost her battle with cancer.

Another of the super PAC’s most memorable ads featured a worker describing how building the stage on which officials announced the plant’s closure, after it was bought by Bain Capital, was like building his “own coffin” and made him “sick.”

Eighty-eight percent of Restore Our Future's spending went toward negative ads, as did 95 percent of American Crossroads' expenditures.

Many of these ads have criticized Obama’s handling of the economy, arguing that the country “can’t afford” four more years of Obama’s policies. One spot features a small-business owner saying, “We can’t create more jobs until Obama loses his.”

Others ads have featured disillusioned Obama supporters from 2008 expressing disappointment with the president.

The winners in the post-Citizens United campaign finance regime won’t be known for certain until after Election Day. But Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an assistant professor of law at Stetson University's law school who previously worked as an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice, said it won’t be the voters.

“I fear that we have lost elections on a human scale with post-Citizens United spending by super PACs” and non-disclosing groups, she said. “The losers here are voters who get carpet bombed with political ads full of half-truths and distortions.”

Researchers Robert Maguire of the Center for Responsive Politics and Alexandra Duszak of the Center for Public Integrity contributed to this report. 

This story is a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Responsive Politics. For up-to-date news on outside spending in the 2012 election, follow our Source2012 Tumblr and the hashtag #Source2012 on Twitter.

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WAKE FOREST, N.C. -- A Wake Forest community is in an uproar after learning the state of North Carolina knew a resident’s water had been contaminated with toxic chemicals and failed to alert other residents for more than six years.

“It makes me feel horrible,” homeowner Michele Hamilton said of unknowingly giving the toxic water to her kids. “They’re the most important things to me.”

The EPA called families in the community this past summer, saying their water is contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical called trichloroethylene, or TCE, and to not drink, bathe or cook with the water.

“I remember where we were when we got the phone call - we were on vacation this summer with our family,” Hamilton said.

Neighbors Monica Stonefield and Frances Cuda got the same call.

“Of course we were frightened and scared,” Stonefield said.

“I was very nervous,” Cuda said. “I think anybody would be.”

Within days of the calls to homeowners, the EPA set up an emergency command post and placed safe water on their doorsteps regularly. The EPA installed water filters in the homes with contamination levels above the EPA’s safety standard. And the EPA called a community meeting to explain what neighbors had been drinking.

Gerald LeBlanc, the head of N.C. State University’s Department of Environmental and molecular toxicology, said TCE is a chemical that cleaning industries have used for years to remove grease. It is cheap, highly effective – and very toxic.

“Based upon animal studies, we know that it has the ability to do harm,” LeBlanc said.

LeBlanc said TCE “has been known to cause cancer” specifically leukemia, breast cancer, lung cancer, and there are symptoms associated with TCE exposure that are like Parkinson’s disease.

Cuda said she has Parkinson’s disease. She also said she has gotten cysts, including “a lot of them in this left breast.”

Doctors have not confirmed it, but Cuda believes the development of many large cysts in her left breast and having Parkinson’s disease is due to TCE.

Cuda said a neighbor died from breast cancer. “And you know, she was a lovely person,” Cuda said. “She was in her 50s.”

The problem dates back to 10 years ago, where circuit boards were cleaned with the toxin inside a shed on Stony Hill Road in Wake Forest. The TCE exited the building through a pipe and poured straight onto the ground. About three years later, the chemical showed up in a well at the house next door.

At the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Charlotte Jesneck’s division took the case.

“It looked to be that the contamination was confined to that well,” Jesneck said.

So in 2005, DENR moved on.

Through a Freedom of Information Act, NBC-17 obtained 800 pages from DENR’s files. Inside those pages, NBC-17 found dozens of red flags, including a two-page summary sent from DENR staff to senior managers in 2008 saying, “There are other wells along Stony Hill Road that should be sampled to check their status.”

Also in 2008 was a DENR letter, where the department admitted “the extent of the contamination has not been defined.”

Larry Kusan is an engineer and resident living near the contamination. In 2008, he learned about the contamination that happened in 2005 and was concerned about the potential for the contamination to spread.

“I wanted to make sure that my family wasn’t in trouble,” Kusan said in an interview. “Our home is about a mile away from that location.”

Kusan said he was “shocked” by what he found.

He wrote DENR and the governor’s office, saying, “The area is slated for significant expansion.”

He noted, “It is the cost to human health that is of greatest concern.”

He then demanded the situation be addressed, or said, “It will result in harm to some residents, current and future.”

DENR admits those warning sat in their files for years because they were focused on “bigger issues.”

Kusan called that a “missed opportunity.”

While the contamination problem brewed underground the area became a popular residential community with several new housing developments.

One resident, Stonefield, said, “We moved here to make a better life for our family.”

Asked if DENR ever notified them of concerns, Stonefield said, “Never.”

Cuda, too, couldn’t remember any official notices about the problem.

Environmental engineer Jim Halley said it is reasonable to assume TCE will spread. TCE sinks because it is heavier than water and when it sinks into the groundwater it spreads through the water table and into nearby wells.

“And that’s when we really start seeing problems with groundwater and drinking water contamination,” Halley said.

DENR’s Jesneck, asked about TCE sinking and spreading, said, “There were higher risk sites on the radar at that time,” and they hoped it wouldn’t spread.

The first time many neighbors learned of the contamination was this past June when DENR sent some neighbors a letter asking if they would like to have their wells sampled.

“That’s not good enough,” Frank Cuda said. “You bring someone up in uniform, in a vehicle that you know represents them who says, ‘Excuse me. There is an emergency. I need to test your water.’”

DENR called in the EPA for help.

More from News-17: Cleaning up toxic mess will cost taxpayers

By late August, the EPA had sampled about 100 wells. They found the TCE contamination had spread from the source nearly 500 acres and contaminated the wells of 21 families in the area.

Mark Stonefield’s well tested positive for dangerous levels of TCE contamination.

“I’m furious,” homeowner Stonefield said. “I’m very upset about it.  That’s the biggest problem I’ve had with this whole situation is the state knew about it in 2005. We bought this land in 2007 and built a house on it in 2008 and our kids have been drinking the water for over 4 years now and no one notified us there was even the possibility that the water could be contaminated.”

Jesneck said, “We have a finite number of resources.”

NBC-17 pointed out that it does not require any money to call residents and alert them about potential contamination in the area.

“If we had all the resources in the world, it would be a fantastic thing to do,” Jesneck said. “But given the resources we are given, we have to work on the highest risk known problems first.”

Jesneck added, “We had sites where people actually had detections in their water supply wells or living on contaminated soils. Those are higher priorities than people living near a contaminated site.”

But in the Wake Forest community, that answer is not good enough.

“I don’t care about funding,” said Cuda. “All I care about is that someone starts doing their job in the world!”

Cuda pointed out that he drank the water daily for years.

“That’s a lot of poison to put in your body for all those years,” he said.

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Adama Diarra / Reuters file

Militiaman from the Ansar Dine Islamic group, who said they come from Niger and Mauritania, ride on a vehicle at Kidal in northeastern Mali in this June 16 file photograph.

TIMBUKTU, Mali -- A military helicopter arced through the dusty yellow haze and dropped onto the sand a few kilometers from Timbuktu on April 24, settling inside a ring of Islamists armed with AK-47s and anti-aircraft guns.

A general from neighboring Burkina Faso and a Swiss government aid worker emerged and joined an Islamist leader sheltering in a tent; they exchanged pleasantries over roasted goat and cans of fruit juice. About an hour later, after the Swiss official and Islamist leader had spent five minutes alone in the helicopter, a pickup truck arrived carrying Beatrice Stockly, a Swiss missionary who had been kidnapped nine days earlier.

"I don't know what they talked about, but soon after the Islamist left the helicopter, the hostage arrived," said a witness who was on the helicopter that whisked Stockly, who arrived wearing a veil, to freedom.

"The first thing that she did was remove the veil and eat a bar of Swiss chocolate."

Such exchanges -- usually secret -- lie at the heart of a multimillion dollar kidnap and ransom industry in West Africa's dry north. Governments, including the Swiss, deny paying ransoms, but deals are done, according to U.S. officials and Swiss government reports. Alongside networks smuggling everything from cigarettes to guns, people and drugs, they form a lucrative criminal economy that has helped drive this year's implosion in Mali, a state that has lost control of an area in its north bigger than France.

Flush with cash, al-Qaida-linked gunmen -- dubbed "gangster-jihadists" by French parliamentarians -- are now key players in a web of Islamists and criminal networks recruiting hundreds of locals, including children, and a trickle of foreign fighters. Among the shifting alliances, al-Qaida's North Africa wing, known as AQIM, has forged links with Malian Tuareg Islamists, and MUJWA, a group that splintered off from AQIM but still operates loosely with it. 

Islamic rule
The Islamists, who advocate a political ideology based on Islam, are trying to impose a strict form of Shariah law. At least three suspected criminals have been stoned to death or executed by firing squad in Mali while several others have had hands and feet amputated.

Almahamoud, a man from Ansongo who was accused -- wrongly, he says -- of stealing cattle, suffered an amputation in August. "They cut off my hand to make an example of me," he said. "They will continue mutilating people to impose their authority. I don't know how I will live with just one hand."

Traditional, moderate Islamic customs have been crushed. Music is banned, women cover themselves with veils and residents are flogged for smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol. Ancient religious shrines central to the Sufi Islam practiced by many Malians have been smashed because they are deemed illegal by the hardliners.

The Islamists say they have been helped by the criminal economy -- including payments from the West.

"It is the Western countries that are financing terrorism and jihad through their ransom payments," said Oumar Ould Hamaha, who said he spoke on behalf of MUJWA. Referring to the various Islamist groups, he added: "We are separate but we all have the same aim, to fight for Islam."

For the region and the West, the challenge is to wrest back control of a vast desert area that, for now, is a safe haven for extremists and criminals. The stakes are high. With large airplane runways in Gao, Timbuktu, Kidal and Tessalit under Islamist control, Mali's north threatens to become a free-for-all for traffickers and terrorists.

"Their common interest is the lack of a state," said a former senior Malian intelligence official when asked to explain the relationships between AQIM, which has moved from peripheral to powerful force in the region, and other Islamist groups and criminal networks. "Fundamentally that is what links these people."

Ransom millions
The Sahara's modern-day ransom industry has its roots in February 2003, when a group of 32 European tourists were snatched in Algeria by the Salafist Group of Preaching and Combat, known as the GSPC. Some of the hostages were rescued by Algerian security forces, but the rest were freed after $5 million was paid by at least one European government, according to Stephen Ellis, an expert on organized crime and professor at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands, who has followed the Islamist group over the past decade.

"It set a precedent," said Ellis. The GSPC later declared allegiance to al-Qaida, changed its name to AQIM and turned its southern wing into a money-making operation. "They were back in business with that first round of payments," Ellis said.

In the years that followed, more than 20 other Westerners were kidnapped across the Sahel-Sahara band. Leaked cables from 2008 and 2009 from the U.S. Embassy in Mali's capital, Bamako, record sources telling diplomats that AQIM had offered to pay as much as $100,000 for captured Westerners, so long as they were not American, in the hope of extracting even higher ransoms. The gangster-jihadists knew Washington did not pay ransoms -- but that other countries did.

Western and regional security officials say kidnapping subsequently earned AQIM tens of millions of dollars, although no figures have ever been confirmed. Switzerland has come closest to indicating the sums involved, though still officially denying it has paid any ransoms.

A Swiss government report in 2010 confirmed the country had spent 5.5 million Swiss francs ($5.9 million) the previous year to free two hostages held in Mali. A separate parliamentary statement revealed that about 2 million francs went on paying Swiss staff involved in the operation. A spokesman for the department of external affairs declined to say where the rest of the money had gone.
"There is no hostage that has been released without a ransom. You have to be realistic," a senior West African official who has direct knowledge of hostage negotiations told Reuters. "The West has financed AQIM by paying ransoms for hostages."

The money has allowed the group to buy food, fuel, weapons and favor among local populations in remote zones of Mali's north. Fees have risen, too -- AQIM is currently demanding 90 million euros ($117 million) for the release of four French workers seized from a uranium mine in Niger in late 2010.

In Mali's north, residents have little doubt they are seeing the results of ransom payments. In August, rank-and-file members of MUJWA in the town of Gao were given large wads of cash soon after an Italian and two Spanish hostages were freed, according to two residents, both of whom had friends or contacts within the organization. One resident said the minimum payment was about $300.

Joe Penney / Reuters file

Children studying the Koran are seen at Al Firdauss Islamic school in the Malian capital of Bamako on Sept. 22.

Djibril Yalga, who repairs mobile and satellite telephones on a dusty street corner in Gao, said business was booming under Islamist rule and fighters with cash were ready to spend it to keep locals happy.

"Lots of people -- mostly gunmen -- come to charge their phones," he said, as Islamists perched nearby on pick-up trucks mounted with machineguns. "They pay well and seldom try and bargain. They let me keep the change."

Following the money
When a coup in March removed President Amadou Toumani Toure, it revealed a deep rot in a country once seen as a model of democracy for the region. Bamako had tried to run Mali's north through alliances with a local elite involved in criminality -- rather than by tackling long-standing issues -- and that accelerated the collapse as a power vacuum persisted.

AQIM's Sahara wing, led by two Algerians, Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Abou Zeid, has extended its influence partly through loose alliances. Its partners include Ansar Dine, a group of Tuareg-led rebels seeking to impose Shariah, and the Arab-dominated MUJWA, say both local and Western officials.

Money from criminal enterprises has enabled the Islamists to outgun rival rebel groups. "(The Islamists) can afford to pay people but we cannot," said Mohamed Attaher, a senior official with MNLA, a rebel group that kicked off an uprising in January but in June was pushed out of areas it had controlled by MUJWA.

The United Nations has evidence that Islamists enlisting children in Mali's north are paying their families a one-off fee of about $600 for each new young fighter, plus monthly payments of about $400, according to Ivan Simonovic, the U.N.'s assistant secretary-general for Human Rights.

Reuters journalists travelling in Islamist-held zones saw a handful of children in the ranks of the armed groups, some working as drivers while others, clad in khaki boubous (flowing robes) and black headbands, showed off how quickly they could take apart and reassemble their AK-47s. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch estimates hundreds of children, some as young as 12, have been recruited into the Islamists' ranks.

"There are young fighters -- our doors are open to everyone," said Ould Hamaha, the MUJWA spokesman. "If they are very young we will be able to train them. It is not a problem."

The drug connection
As well as ransoms, drug money is funding the rebels and terrorists. The Sahara has become a transit point not just for hashish but also for some of the Latin American cocaine and Afghan heroin destined for Europe. For those who know the desert, such as Mohamed, a young Arab-Tuareg from Timbuktu, the trade has been a bonanza.

Having ferried subsidized fuel from Algeria to sell at a profit in Mali's north, he was approached to switch to a more lucrative alternative: becoming a driver on cocaine runs.

Mohamed said loads of cocaine would be dropped in the desert and he would collect $3,000 per trip to ferry drugs to a given location. After several successful deliveries, he sometimes even got to keep the car.

Joe Penney / Reuters file

Cocaine seized by Guinea-Bissau's judicial police in the capital Bissau on March 21 is displayed for journalists.

"With this money I was able to organize three wedding ceremonies -- how could I have done this with the other job?" he said, speaking to Reuters in Timbuktu. "As for the security -- if you smuggle fuel and are arrested you face a fine and lose your product. With drugs, as we say in the trade, ‘Someone else takes care of that.'"

Mohamed, who had shifted between smugglers and rebel groups, was referring to the common suspicions of complicity between some traffickers and civilian and military authorities in the north.

Similar accounts were repeated by others in the north, where new buildings, expensive cars and other ostentation hint at the money being made from drugs. In Gao, the biggest town in Mali's north, multistory Mediterranean-style villas surrounded by high, whitewashed walls and ornate gates have popped up amid the grinding poverty.

Ben Essayouti, secretary general of Timbuktu's branch of the Malian Human Rights League and a teacher, said: "People came in from the desert with suitcases full of cash. Sometimes the bank opened on holidays just for them."

Links between drug smugglers and Islamists, and the way in which funds are generated for AQIM, are more nuanced than in the ransom business. Hilary Renner, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State, said of AQIM's role in the drugs trade: "They do not control the means of production but they do provide 'protection' and permissions for traffickers moving product through areas they control."

Traffickers arrested in Mauritania last year told authorities there that a convoy of hashish would have to pay $50,000 to pass through AQIM-controlled territory, according to a Western law enforcement official in the region.

But few people in Gao or Timbuktu now differentiate between criminals and jihadists. Essayouti said he had witnessed how the two cooperate. "When AQIM came into Timbuktu, we saw that they were together. The drug traffickers and AQIM look after each other."
Bamako-based diplomats and local residents in Gao say ties between traffickers and Islamists are even stronger in that town; they cited names of businessmen and local politicians allegedly connected to the drugs trade and now seen as cooperating with MUJWA. Ould Hamaha, who said he spoke for MUJWA, said the group had no links with drug traffickers.

The West’s dilemma
Reflecting frustrations with the ransoms that help finance terrorist groups, David Cohen, U.S. undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, toured Europe in October to try and forge a common position on dealing with kidnappings. For many observers, however, the damage has already been done.

Regional and Western nations scrambling to resolve Mali's crisis are caught between mounting a hurried, and potentially ill-prepared, military operation, and the danger of giving the Islamists and their allies time to dig in.

As diplomats prepare a U.N. resolution to back military intervention, there is also talk of negotiations. The task is complicated by the array of allied players - Islamists, traffickers and some opportunistic youth - who, for now, see no advantage in bowing to Mali government control.

"It makes it more difficult as it is not clear how you have to approach them," said Pierre Lapaque, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime for West Africa.

To persuade groups to distance themselves from terrorism and organized crime, unsavory bargains may have to be made.
"In the short term, if the Malian government wants to win back the north, it will have to strike deals with some of these groups," said Wolfram Lacher, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "The difficult question is how you stop ... their positions being strengthened."

More from Open Channel:

 

• Feds investigate phony letters telling Fla. voters they're not eligible to vote
• 'Cash register justice'; private probation services face legal counterattack
• Sunni radicals target Shiites to fan sectarian flames in Pakistan
• Unstoppable hackers take out bank websites with next-gen 'botnets'
• Ex-CIA agent pleads guilty to leaking identity of covert operative
• 'Hurricane tort king' wires another $1 million to pro-Obama Super PAC
• Tracking secretive opponent of Montana campaign finance laws
• To fight obesity, WHO agency partners with soft drink, snack makers
• Child sex abuse survivor on release of Boy Scout files: This 'empowers us'
• US nonprofit 'names and shames' businesses to put bite into Iran sanctions

 

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Just north of the Indiana Toll Road, off Cline Avenue, sits the Gary/Chicago International Airport.

Its name sounds substantial. Its annual budget is in the millions of dollars. And Chicagoans -- along with citizens of Gary -- spend millions in tax dollars every year to help keep it in business.

But in spite of an annual operating budget of more than $3 million -- plus tens of millions more being spent on a runway expansion and other capital projects -- the GCIA terminal sits mostly empty. The front entrance is usually locked; the parking lot is nearly vacant, and the skies are -- for the most part -- empty.

That’s because GCIA has only one passenger flight -- Allegiant Airlines Flight 650. It flies nonstop from Sanford, Fla., to Gary, where passengers unload and new passengers board. Allegiant changes the flight number to 651, and the plane takes off and heads back to Sanford.

It’s time on the ground in Gary: Usually less than one hour.

Once the flight is gone, the terminal is shut down and locked up for several days. The Allegiant flight only comes to Gary twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays. That’s it.

It’s one of the many curiosities of The Little Airport that Could. 

While the airport gets substantial funding from the City of Gary, the State of Indiana and the federal government, it gets additional millions of dollars every year from the City of Chicago -- more than $3.6 million dollars since the beginning of 2011 alone, financial documents reveal. Since 1995, Chicago has sent a total of more than $26 million to help operate the Gary airport.

It all comes from an agreement signed by the cities of Chicago and Gary in 1995, which proposed "the development, enhancement, and operation of existing airports and development of any new Regional Airport serving the Bi-State Region."

The agreement is commonly referred to as "The Compact," and the two mayors who signed it -- Richard M. Daley of Chicago and Thomas Barnes of Gary -- originally saw it as a fairly straightforward three-year deal. But it continued, and throughout the years it has often been used as a pawn in the political fights for a third airport in Chicago to counter the proposals to build such an airport in Chicago’s 10th Ward, or -- more recently -- in far-south-suburban Peotone.

"The Compact" was also floated as a possible solution to the closing of Meigs, even before Daley ordered his bulldozers out to dig up Meigs’ runways in the middle of the night in March of 2003.

Now -- 17 years later -- "The Compact" still exists, and the money still flows in from Chicago.

More investigative reporting from NBCChicago

Part of "The Compact" requires Chicago to send monthly checks to the Gary Airport from ticket fees paid by passengers arriving and departing at O’Hare and Midway Airports. Those fees alone amounted to $2.4 million paid to Gary in the past year and a half. This "Passenger Facility Charge" -- or PFC money -- is earmarked for capital projects like Gary’s 1900-foot runway extension, currently under construction, and the relocation of railroad tracks, which must be moved to provide sufficient clearance for larger planes to land on the newly-extended runway.

But on top of the passenger fees, Chicago taxpayers also send money to GCIA, every year, to help with the daily operation of the airport. In the past year and a half, that’s amounted to more than $1.1 million from Chicago taxpayers, over and above the $2.4 million from the ticket fees.

And Gary taxpayers pay millions more, each year, as well.

To date, there hasn’t been much to show for all that money. GCIA has seen commercial service come and go in past years -- notably PanAm, Southeast, and Hooters Air. There have been long periods where no passenger planes landed there. Even Allegiant, with its one flight twice a week, is technically not a commercial flight, but a travel service which operates charter flights to smaller-traffic airports. It just started flying in to Gary last February.

The flight itself appears to be a success, with low-cost tickets and easy online booking that regularly attracts a full load of passengers. But the question remains: Is all this tax money worth it, for just two passenger flights a week?

Karen Freeman-Wilson is Gary’s newly-elected, Harvard-educated mayor, and she has often cited GCIA as one of her top priorities for Gary’s struggling future. She is happy to see the nearly-full passenger loads on the Allegiant flight.

"I think it’s indicative of the demand that is pent up for the Gary airport," she said.

But she acknowledges that -- to date at least -- far less business has been generated than the money that is pumped in.

Also on NBCChicago.com: Butter bust of Obama takes to Chicago streets

"I think a lot has to do with the marketing effort," she said. "I think it’s important to be able to market Gary as a destination -- to market its proximity not just to Chicago but to downtown Chicago."

And once the runway expansion is complete, Freeman-Wilson sees things taking off.

"Ultimately I think there’s an opportunity for commercial and cargo service here," she said.

But the runway expansion has been a difficult and expensive process, primarily because of unforeseen difficulties in moving the railroad tracks, as well as dealing with construction waste and even oil dumped in the runway’s path.

In an effort to see what happens during a typical day at the terminal, NBC Chicago went to the Gary/Chicago International Airport on a Wednesday. There was not an Allegiant flight scheduled for that day, but the thought was that maybe the terminal would be open for other operations.

That was not the case. The front doors were locked and the place was deserted.

So NBC Chicago returned, unannounced, at noon on a Thursday, when Allegiant does fly in. This time the front door was unlocked, but inside the airport was still virtually empty, with the lights turned off, the ticket counter dark and the baggage carousel silent and still.

A plaque on the wall noted that the terminal was renovated a decade ago. It still looks good as new.

The only people there were a security guard and approximately 15 TSA agents. Their supervisor said they are routinely borrowed from other airports -- South Bend and Chicago -- to come to GCIA twice a week to handle the Allegiant flight.

Finally, about an hour and a half before Allegiant’s scheduled arrival, the airport suddenly sprung to life. Crowds of couples and families snaked along the previously-deserted rope lines in front of the ticket counter. Others removed their shoes and loaded up grey plastic bins to go through security. And when the Allegiant flight arrived at about 2:50 p.m., more passengers streamed out into the terminal and outside to waiting cars. The terminal was truly bustling.

But after another hour, the approximately 140 passengers booked for Sanford were boarded, and the plane took off, not to return for three days.

Then the TSA agents packed up. The ticket counter closed down. And it was lights out until Sunday.

Statement from Chicago's Department of Aviation:
The City of Chicago continues to support the Compact as Gary Airport serves as a reliever airport in the regional Chicago airport system.   The City recognizes that these are times of tight budgets and has reduced the annual contribution to the Chicago Gary Regional Airport Authority.

Takeoffs/Landings for area airports from Jan. 1 - Aug. 1, 2012:
Unit 5 looked at the daily air traffic -- including every takeoff and landing of passenger, private, and corporate aircraft -- at Gary/Chicago International Airport, and compared its traffic to that at other comparable airports in the Chicago/Northwest Indiana area.  In our survey of various time periods covering 2012, we found that Gary (GYY) had less daily traffic than Waukegan Regional Airport (UGN), Dupage Airport in West Chicago (DPA), Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling (PWK), and Chicago Rockford Airport in Rockford (RFD). 

In this chart, every takeoff or landing is counted separately.  For example, if a plane lands at an airport, and then takes off two hours later, it would count twice on this chart. 

One significant exception was August 2012, when GCIA served as the staging area for aircraft used in the Chicago Air and Water Show.

The FBI and U.S. Postal Service inspectors are investigating bogus official-looking letters sent to voters in at least 28 Florida counties questioning their citizenship and their eligibility to vote,  NBC News has learned.

David Couvertier, a spokesman for the FBI in Tampa, said his office opened up an investigation into the possible attempt at voter intimidation on Wednesday after receiving reports that eligible voters throughout the state have received the letters. 

"We're taking it as a serious situation," he said. "We're looking at everything from civil rights violations to election fraud -- to everything in between."

Chris Cate, a spokesman for the Florida Secretary of State's Office, told NBC News, "We believe these  letters appear to meet the standard of voter intimidation." Between 50 and 100 such letters have been reported to state officials so far, "and those are only the ones we know about. We're encouraging people to come forward."

The fake letters, which first started showing up last Friday, have been sent under the names of real Florida county election supervisors -- with some correct contact information -- informing the voters that the supervisors have received "information" about their citizenship status, "bringing into doubt your eligibility as a registered voter."

The letters also say the voter must fill out a Voter Eligibility Form in the next 15 days -- and failure to do so will result "in the removal of your name from the voter registration rolls and you will no longer be eligible to vote."

"A non-registered voter who casts a vote in the state of Florida may be subject to arrest, imprisonment, and/or other criminal sanctions," the letters state.

Slideshow: Swing state voters sound off

Robert Wallis / Panos Pictures

In the key battleground state of Florida, divergent opinions separate voters with just over two weeks until the election.

Launch slideshow

Some of the letters have been received by "longtime, staunch voters who have been exercising their right to vote" for years, Couvertier said. While those people are likely to vote anyway, "Our concern is someone who might not be secure and then questions whether they should vote."

It's not clear who sent the letters, which were machine postmarked in Seattle. Couvertier said the FBI in Tampa is working with its Seattle office to track down the perpetrator.

Cate said a "significant majority have gone to Republican voters, but not exclusively. We've got Democrats who received the letters, we've got independents. We're telling everybody to be on the lookout."

Michael Isikoff is NBC News national investigative correspondent.

More from Open Channel:

Pakistan Shiite Muslims offer prayers during a funeral for community members killed in an ambush in the northern town of Gilgit on Feb. 29.

GILGIT, Pakistan -- About 20 men dressed as Pakistani soldiers boarded a bus bound for a Muslim festival outside this mountain town and checked the identification cards of the passengers. They singled out 19 Shiites, drew weapons and slaughtered them, most with a bullet to the head.

The shooters weren't soldiers. They were a hit squad linked to the Sunni Muslim extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, or LeJ. They had trekked in along a high Himalayan pass that hot August morning to waylay a convoy of pilgrims.

Here and across Pakistan, violent Sunni radicals are on the march against the nation's Shiite minority.

With a few hundred hard-core cadres, the highly secretive LeJ aims to trigger sectarian violence that would pave the way for a Sunni theocracy in U.S.-allied Pakistan, say Pakistan police and intelligence officials. Its immediate goal, they say, is to stoke the intense Sunni-Shiite violence that has pushed countries like Iraq close to civil war.

More than 300 Shiites have been killed in Pakistan so far this year in sectarian conflict, according to human rights groups. The campaign is gathering pace in rural as well as urban areas such as Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city. The Shiites are a big target, accounting for up to 20 percent of this nation of 180 million.

In January, LeJ claimed responsibility for a homemade bomb that exploded in a crowd of Shiites in Punjab province, killing 18 and wounding 30. LeJ's reach extends beyond Pakistan: Late last year, LeJ claimed responsibility for bombings in Afghanistan that killed 59 people, the worst sectarian attacks since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.

"No doubt - (LeJ) are the most dangerous group," said Chaudhry Aslam, a top counterterrorism police commando based in Karachi, whose house was blown up by the LeJ. "We will fight them until the last drop of blood."

For an outlawed group accused of fomenting such mayhem, the leader of LeJ is surprisingly easy to find.

Mian Khursheed / Reuters file

Malik Ishaq, leader of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, speaks during an interview with Reuters at his home in Rahim Yar Khan in southern Punjab province, on Oct. 9.

Malik Ishaq spent 14 years in jail in connection with dozens of murder and terrorism cases. He was released after the charges could not be proved - partly because of witness intimidation, officials say - and showered with rose petals by hundreds of supporters when he left prison in July 2011.

Although Ishaq is one of Pakistan's most feared militants, he enjoys the protection of followers clutching AK-47 assault rifles in the narrow lane outside his home. There, in the town of Rahim Yar Khan in southern Punjab province, Reuters visited him for an interview.

"The state should declare Shiites as non-Muslims on the basis of their beliefs," said Ishaq, calling them the "greatest infidels on Earth." Young supporters with shoulder-length hair in imitation of the Prophet Mohammad hung on every word.

Following the trail
To assess the LeJ threat, Reuters followed the group's trail across Pakistan -- from Ishaq's compound, to Gilgit in the foothills of the Himalayas, recruiting grounds in central Punjab and the backstreets of Karachi on the Arabian Sea coast.

In interviews, police, intelligence officials, clerics and LeJ members described a group that has grown more robust and appears to be operating across a much wider area in Pakistan than just a few years ago. But it had a head start.

The LeJ once enjoyed the open support of the powerful spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI used such groups as military proxies in India and Afghanistan and to counter Shiite militant groups.

Since being outlawed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, LeJ has worked with Sunni radical groups al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban in several high-profile strikes. Among them were assaults in 2009 on Pakistan's military headquarters and on Sri Lanka's visiting cricket team. Washington says LeJ was involved in the killing of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in 2002.

Now it is gathering strength anew. The risks are heightened by Pakistan's long-standing role as a battlefield in a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, which have been competing for influence in Asia and the Middle East since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

That competition has heated up since the United States toppled secularist dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq and left the country under the control of an Iranian-influenced Shiite government. Intelligence officials say the LeJ is drawing financial support from Saudi donors and other Sunni sources.

"Unfortunately, the state for strategic reasons turned a blind eye to the LeJ for a long time," said a retired army general. "Now we have a situation where it has become Pakistan's Frankenstein."

Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who is in charge of internal security, told Reuters that "we always take action" against the LeJ when the group is suspected of murder or terrorism. "We track people and arrest them."

When asked why those arrested are often freed, he said: "Look, my job is to arrest people, not to let them go. We all know who lets them off the hook and why," he said, referring to local politicians and elements of the military who turn a blind eye to their activities or even support them in some cases.

Sacred calling
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, whose name means Soldiers of Jhangvi (after its founder, Haq Maulana Nawab Jhangvi), isn't the only lethal militant group that once enjoyed patronage from the spy agency.

One is Lashkar-e-Taiba (Soldiers of the Pure), which fights against Indian control in disputed Kashmir. It is blamed for several deadly attacks on Indian soil, including the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, and an audacious raid on India's parliament in December 2001 with another Kashmiri militant group, Jaishi-e-Mohammad (Army of Mohammad). That raid brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

Another is the Pakistani Taliban. Its attack this month on 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Swat was only the most recent in a long list of strikes on civilian and military targets, mainly in the unruly tribal area along the Afghan border.

What makes LeJ particularly dangerous, however, is that the group is based in Pakistan's Punjab heartland. And it is not just attacking targets in Pakistan's neighbors, but has also targeted the state, including the 2009 attack on Pakistan's military headquarters.

LeJ was established as an offshoot of another anti-Shiite organization called Sipah-e-Sahaba (Soldiers of Mohammad's Companions).

LeJ believes it has a sacred calling -- to protect the legacy of the companions of the Prophet Mohammad - and it sees Shi'ites as the main threat.

Mahmood Baber, educated in a madrassa, was drawn by LeJ's call to holy war against Shiite infidels. His 16-year career in the movement ended in October, when he and other LeJ members were arrested.

Handcuffed and with a cloth thrown over his head at a Karachi police station, Baber described for Reuters the "great satisfaction" he felt killing 14 Shiite "terrorists" over the years. His voice choked with emotion when he said that for 1,400 years Shiites had insulted the companions of the Prophet.

"Get rid of Shiites. That is our goal. May God help us," he said, before intelligence agents led him away for a fresh round of interrogation.

The schism between Sunnis and Shiites developed after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 when his followers could not agree on a successor. Sunnis recognize the first four caliphs as his rightful successors; the Shiites believe the prophet named his son-in-law, Ali. Emotions over the issue have boiled through modern times and even pushed some countries, including Iraq five years ago, to the brink of civil war.

Demonizing Iran
The LeJ's leader, Ishaq, lives in a house whose gate bears a sign inviting residents of the town to debate whether Shiites are infidels.

These days Ishaq calls himself a leader of Sipah-e-Sahaba, the LeJ parent group. Pakistani officials say he still runs, or at least inspires, LeJ. Ishaq denies any wrongdoing, repeatedly saying: "I've been acquitted." He has indeed been acquitted 34 times on charges of culpable homicide and terrorism.

He does not hide his feelings about Shiites, his voice growing strident as he opened a plastic folder filled with printouts from what he describes as Shi'ite Internet sites.

One contained a photo of a pig, an animal considered by Muslims to be dirty, and is accompanied by an insult to Sunnis. Another alleges the Prophet Mohammad's wife committed adultery -- all proof, he says, that Shiites are blasphemous, and deserve punishment.

"Whoever insults the companions of the Holy Prophet should be given a death sentence," Ishaq declares.

Ishaq and other hardline Sunnis believe that Iran is trying to foment revolution in Pakistan to turn it into a Shi'ite state, though no evidence for that is offered.

The Saudi connection
In the Punjab town of Jhang, LeJ's birthplace, SSP leader Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi describes what he says are Tehran's grand designs. Iranian consular offices and cultural centers, he alleges, are actually a front for its intelligence agencies.

"If Iranian interference continues it will destroy this country," said Ludhianvi in an interview in his home. The state provides him with armed guards, fearful any harm done to him could trigger sectarian bloodletting.

The Iranian embassy in Islamabad, asked for a response to that allegation, issued a statement denouncing sectarian violence.

"What is happening today in the name of sectarianism has nothing to do with Muslims and their ideologies," it said.

Ludhianvi insisted he was just a politician. "I would like to tell you that I am not a murderer, I am not a killer, I am not a terrorist. We are a political party."

After a meal of chicken, curry and spinach, Ludhianvi and his aides stood up to warmly welcome a visitor: Saudi Arabia-based cleric Malik Abdul Haq al-Meqqi.

A Pakistani cleric knowledgeable about Sunni groups described Meqqi as a middleman between Saudi donors and intelligence agencies and the LeJ, the SSP and other groups.

"Of course, Saudi Arabia supports these groups. They want to keep Iranian influence in check in Pakistan, so they pay," the Pakistani cleric said. His account squared with that of a Pakistani intelligence agent, who said jailed militants had confessed that LeJ received Saudi funding.

Saudi cleric Meqqi denied that, and SSP leader Ludhianvi concurred: "We have not taken a penny from the Saudi government," he told Reuters.

Saudi Arabia's alleged financing of Sunni militant groups has been a sore point in Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned in a December 2009 classified diplomatic cable that charities and donors in Saudi Arabia were the "most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." In the cable, released by Wikileaks, Clinton said it was "an ongoing challenge" to persuade Saudi officials to treat such activity as a strategic priority. She said the groups funded included al-Qaida, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The Saudi embassy in Islamabad and officials in Saudi Arabia were unavailable for comment.

Shiite revenge
Some Shia groups do look to Iran's clerical establishment for spiritual leadership, but insist they have no aims beyond protecting members from Sunni attacks.

In the offices of a Shiite organization in Karachi, images of the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini are featured on a wall clock. There, a Pakistani Shiite woman named Shafqat Batool described what happened to her son, a judge, when he left for work on August 30.

Minutes after Sayid Zulfiqar stepped out of the family home in Quetta, she said, witnesses told the family three men on a motorcycle opened fire with Kalashnikov rifles. One of the assailants then grabbed a weapon from Zulfiqar's bleeding driver and pumped more bullets into her son.

It prompted Zulfiqar's family to move to Karachi. "We are not safe anywhere in the country," his mother said. "People are horrified, people can't sleep."

The fear is palpable in Quetta, the mountainous provincial capital of southwestern Baluchistan. LeJ has unleashed an escalating campaign there of suicide bombings and assassinations against ethnic Hazaras - Persian-speaking Shiites who mostly emigrated from Afghanistan and are a small minority of the Shiite population in Pakistan.

At least 100 Hazaras have been killed this year, according to Human Rights Watch, leaving some 500,000 Hazaras fearful of venturing out of their enclaves.

"We are under siege; we can't move anywhere," said Khaliq Hazara, chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party. "Hazaras are being killed and there is nobody to take any action.

In Quetta and Karachi, Shiite leaders say they are urging young men to exercise restraint and buy weapons only for self-defense.

"We are controlling our youth and stopping them from reacting," said Syed Sadiq Raza Taqvi, a Karachi cleric, seated beside a calendar with images of Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

But with each killing, the temptation to take revenge grows.

Shiite extremists have not adopted the kind of attacks favored by LeJ. But they have hunted down members of the SSP.

One such case was an attack survived by Sohaib Nadeem, 27, son of an SSP member. Men he described as "Shiite terrorists backed by Iran" opened fire on the Nadeem family in their car. Nadeem survived nine gunshot wounds but his father and brothers were killed. "The Shiites are our enemies," Nadeem said.

Confederation of militants
When the Taliban and al-Qaida want to reach targets outside their strongholds on the Afghan border, they turn to LeJ to provide intelligence, safe houses or young volunteers eager for martyrdom, police and intelligence officials said.

"Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is the detonator of terrorism in Pakistan," said Karachi Police Superintendent Raja Umer Khattab, who has interrogated more than 100 members. "The Taliban needs Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Al Qaeda needs Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. They are involved in most terrorism cases."

The massacre of Shiite bus passengers outside Gilgit has had a profound impact on this mountaineering hub in the Himalayan foothills. Never before had Sunni extremists asked for identification to single out Shiites and then kill them on such a large scale.

Akhtar Soomro / Reuters

Police officers Jumma Gul, center, Khan Bahadur, right, and Gul Zaman, stand at the spot where bus passengers were gunned down in the Harban Nala area of Pakistan on Feb. 28.

Sunnis and Shiites, who had lived in harmony for decades, now cope with sectarian no-go zones.

"Sunnis can't go to some areas and Shiites can't go to others," lamented Gilgit shopkeeper Muneer Hussain Shah, a Shiite whose brother was killed in a grenade attack.

When violence erupts, text messages circulate rallying one sect or the other. Shops and schools close. Authorities have banned motorcycles to stop drive-by shootings.

Law enforcement itself is a victim of sectarianism in Gilgit, said police chief Usman Zakria. Shi'ite officers are reluctant to investigate crimes committed by Shi'ites, and the same is true of Sunnis.

"They are in disarray," said Zakria. "None of this has happened before."

Additional reporting by Imtiaz Shah in Karachi, Mehreen Zahra-Malik in Islamabad and Matthew Green in Quetta. 

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Hannah Rappleye / Special to NBC News

Kathleen Hucks, 57, center, shown with her daughter Nicole, 23, and husband James, 64, outside the family's mobile home in Augusta, Ga., filed suit last week against a for-profit probation company alleging it violated her constitutional right to due process.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Kathleen Hucks was walking her dogs down the dirt road that leads out of Mim’s Rentals, a small trailer park in rural Augusta, Ga., when a police officer in a cruiser stopped her on Labor Day weekend.

The officer asked the slight 57-year-old for identification and ran her name through the system. Nothing came up for Richmond County, where she lives. Then the officer ran one more search. 

“He says, ‘Ma'am I have to place you under arrest -- Columbia County’s got a hold on you for violation of probation,’” Hucks remembered.

When her husband, 64-year-old James Hucks, saw his wife getting arrested even though she was no longer on probation, he thought there had been an error. “I said, ‘Look here, don’t y’all realize this case is dead?’”

It was no mistake. A warrant for Hucks’ arrest had been issued in 2010, long after she completed a 24-month probation term arising from a 2006 conviction for drunken driving, possession of marijuana and driving with a suspended license. The reason: She hadn’t paid all the fees she owed to the for-profit company that supervised her probation.

Even though the company’s ability to collect the debt had expired when her probation did, she was arrested. Hucks spent 20 days in jail before a judge freed her.

Last week, Hucks filed suit against Sentinel Offender Services alleging that the Irvine, Calif.,-based company violated her civil rights. The outcome has implications beyond the case of one woman in Augusta because it claims that the Georgia law that allows for a for-profit company to act in a judicial capacity violates the due process clause of the state Constitution.

Hucks’ case is the latest of several lawsuits filed in Georgia and elsewhere challenging private probation companies, which operate in about 20 states.

Supporters of the industry say the system saves counties money by providing a service: collecting court fines without burdening taxpayers. But critics allege the private probation companies routinely violate the civil rights of the probationers under their watch and have, in essence, created a modern-day debtor’s prison.

“They say private industry can do things cheaper than government,” said John “Jack” Long, an attorney representing Hucks. “Maybe that’s true with some things. But the judicial system is not supposed to be cash-register justice." 

How it works
In 2000, Georgia passed a law transferring state probation services to the counties and opening the door for local courts to contract with private companies for misdemeanor probation services. Bobby Whitworth, the former head of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, was imprisoned on public corruption charges for taking payments to help pass to the legislation. Nevertheless, the practice of privatizing probation services spread across the state. 

Thirty-five companies are now registered to provide misdemeanor probation services to local Georgia courts. The counties contract for the services but pay nothing-- costs are covered by the monthly supervision fees paid by the probationers. 

In most cases, the system works like this: A person is issued a summons for a relatively minor crime, such as speeding, driving with a suspended license or public intoxication. Upon conviction, those who can pay the fine at once usually are done with the Georgia justice system. But in Richmond County, where Census data show nearly a quarter of its population of about 200,000 live in poverty, and others, many cannot pay in full.

 Those who can’t are put on private probation. For an additional monthly fee of between $25 and $45, they can pay the fine over the duration of their probation term.

Probationers may also find themselves responsible for additional costs, such as a one-time “start-up” fee of $15, a daily fee of $7 to $12 for electronic monitoring, a $25 photo fee required for DUI convictions, among others. 

Adding to the cost, defendants in Georgia must pay $50 to the court to apply for a public defender, though the judge can waive the fee if a defendant is unable to pay. 

Under Georgia law, an indigent person cannot be jailed for inability to pay a fine, unless the refusal is willful. But critics say neither courts nor probation companies make an effort to determine ability to pay. Instead, they say, companies routinely use the threat of jail against probationers for failing to pay not only court fines, but the private fees generated by what is known as “offender-funded supervision.”

 The probation industry’s practices are increasingly landing it in court.

Acting on a class-action suit filed in 2010, a judge recently took control of the municipal court of Harpersville, Ala., after finding the probation company and the court operated what he called “a judicially-sanctioned extortion racket.”

Long and fellow Augusta attorney John Bell also have a lawsuit pending against Sentinel pending in federal appeals court in the case of Hills McGee, a 53-year-old disabled veteran who lives off benefits of $271 a month. In October 2008, McGee, who lives in Richmond County, pleaded no contest to public intoxication and obstruction of a police officer. He was fined $270 in addition to the monthly supervision fees charged by Sentinel.

In January 2009, McGee’s court fines were converted to 41 hours of community service because he could not afford to pay. McGee says he completed his community service. But weeks later his probation was revoked for not paying an additional $186 in fees to the probation company. He spent two weeks in jail.

Founded in 1993, Sentinel Offender Services provides not only supervision, but also electronic monitoring, drug testing and other public safety functions across the country. The company claims to be the largest offender management service in the state of Georgia, collecting more than $30 million the more than 100 courts it served in 2009, according to company documents obtained through a public records request. Its operations in Georgia account for approximately 65 percent of its overall business, it said. 

Sentinel did not respond to repeated requests for comment from NBC News. In 2009 Sentinel officials told the Augusta Chronicle that ‘mistakes happen’ but that the company does not threaten those who cannot afford to pay their fines. They also said that they regularly convert fees to community service.  

Georgia’s County and Municipal Probation Advisory Council, which oversees both public and private probation in the state, did not respond to requests for comment. 

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Facing budget crunches, local courts have been under increased pressure to produce revenue. But since 2000, revenues from Richmond County State Court fines have dropped by more than a third, to about $4.6 million in 2011 from just under $7.2 million in 2000, according to State Court numbers. 

While misdemeanor crime has remained steady, the revenue decline may partly be the result of more fines being converted to community service, according to the court clerk. But court officials could not provide data to support that assertion. 

Sentinel’s contract with the county specifies that all payments made by probationers be split 50-50 between the company and the court. However, because the private probation companies are exempt from the Georgia public records law, it is impossible to know how much profit Sentinel has made while collecting those fines. 

‘How about $500?’
On a recent Friday afternoon in Richmond County’s State Court, retired Superior Court Senior Judge Albert M. Pickett presided over about two dozen misdemeanor cases. (Richmond County pays retired judges to sit in when state court judges are away or unavailable). Cases before him included minor shoplifting, traffic violations and drug possession and DUI. At about 3 p.m., nearly 30 people sat with their hands and feet shackled, waiting for their cases to be called. All but two were black. 

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Many were brought to the judge for a revocation hearing, held to determine whether or not they would have to go to jail for violating probation conditions. Others were new cases. 

The revocation hearings turn the courtroom into a kind of market, where the judge and defendants haggle for freedom. One after the other, Judge Pickett asked each probationer how much money they could pay to avoid jail. 

“You got six hundred and eighty dollars looking at you right here,” Judge Pickett told one defendant who, like most others in court that day, had been arrested for not reporting to a probation officer or paying fines. “Or you got a year, three months and 26 days” in jail, he said. 

One after the other, defendants stood at the podium and figured how much money they could scrounge up. “I could pay a little something,” one man said. “Two, three hundred dollars.” 

“Two or three hundred?” the judge asked. “How about $500?”

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Judge Pickett asked a man who had been charged in October with possession of marijuana why he didn’t work out a payment plan with the probation company. “Why didn’t he say at that time, ‘I can’t afford this, I can’t pay these fines. Isn’t there some way I can work it out?’ They would have said, ‘You bet.’ But instead he just vanished.” 

The judge gestured with his hand, mimicking a bird in flight. “Just gone.” 

Those unfamiliar with Georgia law may find it surprising that defendants face probation or are jailed for traffic violations that would, in other states, simply require the payment of fines. It’s the only state in the country where traffic infractions are considered criminal charges, though legislators are now considering changing the law for low-level offenses. 

“If you or I go to court and we have a speeding ticket, if we have any sense we’ll show up at court with a pocket full of cash,” said John Bell, who with Long represents Kathleen Hucks. “We’ll pay it and we’ll never have to be on probation.” 

“They aren’t putting you on probation because they’re checking to make sure you’re working or staying home at night so you’re not gonna get in trouble,” he added. “They’re just trying to get money out of you.” 

For her part, Kathleen Hucks and her family said that her initial sentence and probation term for driving under the influence was fair. “I believe I was treated right on that,” Hucks said. “I shouldn’t have been drinking and driving.”

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They said they did their best to comply with the terms, when they could -- paying fines and reporting to her probation officer when they had money for gas. But Hucks had outstanding fines when her probation ended. According to the law, the court and company’s ability to pursue the fees should have run out too.

 But years after her term ended, Sentinel continued to demand payments. Hucks has paid more than $2,000 in fees and fines since 2010.

Moreover, a recent public records request filed by Huck’s attorney indicates the Columbia County Board of Commissioners has not approved a contract with Sentinel since before April 2006, in violation of state laws governing private probation that require government contracts to be renewed annually. Yet the company continued to enforce probation sentences, like the one that for years followed Kathleen Hucks.

“I feel like sometimes they make their own rules instead of really abiding by the law itself,” her husband, James, said. “And they figure, ‘These people are nobody. We can treat them the way we want to. What can they do? They don’t have any money.’”

Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan-Seville are frequent NBC News contributors. The reporting for this story was supported through a grant from the nonprofit Open Society Institute, which says its mission is to "build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens."

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Have some critical online banking transactions to do? You might want to plan them for a Monday or Friday.  A group of malicious hackers is having its way with online banks lately, seemingly knocking sites offline at will.  The latest victims are HSBC and Ally Bank, but virtually every major bank has been targeted by the group since the attacks began five weeks ago. 

The attacks seem straight out of a movie plot: An anonymous note is posted online -- usually on a Monday or early Tuesday -- declaring that week's victims. The targets then are besieged at some point during that Tuesday through Thursday stretch. On Friday, the group seems to rest.

"Do you want attacks to be stopped? Stop the insults," the group declared in last week's warning message. "Insults" refers to the now infamous "Innocence of Muslims" online video that was initially blamed for last month’s mob attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.   

The bank attacks are remarkable because they seem unstoppable, even with advance warning. Just how bad are banks suffering at the hands of attackers? Rodney Joffe, senior technologist at Internet infrastructure provider Neustar, said the best some banks can do to prepare is to have a sincere-sounding apology at the ready, backed up with a plan B that points customers to an alternative method of communication such as a call center.

"There is in fact no way to defend against it properly," said Joffe, who has helped banks try to recover from the attacks.  "We can mitigate the attacks to some extent, but it is very difficult to keep systems up…This is one of our worst nightmares."

The criminals identify themselves in their warnings as the "al-Qassam Cyber Fighters," purportedly part of Hamas' al Qassam military wing. Bank security folks apparently have received a break this week, as a note posted by hackers claiming to represent al Qassam said they would take a break "during the next days" to mark a Muslim holiday.

The basic attack is nothing new:  It’s a denial of service attack designed to make the banking websites unavailable. Bank sites are flooded with bogus Internet traffic so they are overwhelmed, and can only give the equivalent of a busy signal to customers.  But these attacks are very different, experts say, because of the sheer amount of bogus traffic that's generated.

With online banking services broken, consumers flood banks with phone calls, creating headaches for customers and banks alike.

"It's customer service nightmare for banks. They just aren't set up for this," Joffe said.  

But the biggest nightmare, he said, is that banks don't "defeat" the attacks with countermeasures. The criminals simply stop and turn their attention on another target, leaving bank security officials wondering when they might be victimized again. Capital One, for example, has suffered at least two separate service disruptions.

As provider of backup content delivery for many of the world's largest websites, Akamai Technology handles denial of service attacks every day, and it has dealt with the current wave of attacks.   Mike Smith, director of Akamai’s incident response team, says the attacks succeed through a simple matter of arithmetic.

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Banks buy, at most, an Internet pipe that can handle 20 gigabits-per-second of Web traffic, he said. The attackers are generating about 50 gigabits-per-second, making any tool that could filter out bad requests inadequate.

"It's fairly brute force, rather than laser scalpel," he said. 

Banks could consider tripling the bandwidth they buy, he explained, but that would be a huge waste of money during non-attack time s... and the criminals might just increase their bogus traffic anyway.  "It's all an arms race," he said.

How are criminals able to marshal such enormous traffic resources?  They are employing a new kind of electronic army, experts said. Until now, most denial of service attacks involved large "botnets" -- armies of compromised desktop computers -- that could number 100,000 or more.  These were clumsy, hard to coordinate and often limited by bandwidth purchased by home users. In this attack, criminals are taking control over web servers that have access to much wider Internet traffic pipes -- computers that host popular website blogs, for example.  As a result, criminals can attack with refined armies of only 1,000 to 2,000 compromised servers, while still wielding a devastating cyberweapon against bank websites. 

Adding to the complexity for victims, such compromised servers are also harder to knock offline than home PCs in botnets, Joffe said, because they are often intertwined with legitimate businesses that are reluctant to voluntarily go offline to clean them up.

"It's not a new kind from a technical prospective, it's just able to generate overwhelming volumes of traffic that are indeed quite noteworthy," said Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer at CrowdStrike, a startup focused on cyberespionage defense.

With a smaller, more powerful botnet, "attacker economics" favor the criminals, Smith said. It's easier for them to replace servers that are cleaned up, and it's much easier for them to stop and start attacks.

"They have much more command and control over the nodes," Smith said.

It's unusual for attackers to announce their targets ahead of time, but Smith said their reason for doing so is fairly obvious.

"What they are trying to do is amplify the bad public relations efforts element for banks," he said. 

Banks turn out to be a juicy target for denial of service attacks because their systems are easily turned against each other, Smith said.  Thanks to numerous fraud-checking tools, every request made at a bank site generates multiple responses from bank servers  –  log files, IP-checking tools, device-ID verification tools, etc. --  amplifying the effect of every bogus request.  In fact, while banks have beefed up fraud checks, they have done little to protect against denial of service attacks through the years, Smith said.

"Criminals have never wanted the sites to go down, because they need to sites to be up to commit fraud against the bank," he said. 

But even filters that find and deflect bogus website traffic wouldn't help much against these determined and sizable attacks, he said. 

"Most enforcement mechanisms don't have the capacity to deal with this much traffic," Smith said.

Given the remarkable scope of the attack, there has been much speculation by U.S. government officials -- openly and on background --  that the attacks could only be directed by a state-sponsored group, and represent an aggressive act of cyberwar perpetrated by agents of the Iranian government.  Both Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have openly blamed the attacks on Iran, with Panetta calling the incident a "pre 9/11 moment." Several intelligence officials have told NBC News that they believe Iran is behind the attacks.

Smith, however, says it's important not dismiss the possibility that old-fashioned online fraudsters are using the protests over the "Innocence of Muslims" film  as a cover to simply steal money from banks. As evidence, he points to a warning issued by the FBI on Sept. 17, which indicated that some banks had already been hit by denial of service attacks to help perpetrate wire fraud -- with thefts as high as $400,000. The website attacks serve as a diversion, and when consumers flood customer service phone banks, criminals who've stolen bank logins have an easier time slipping fraud through bank systems, the alert said.  In also predicts precisely the kinds of attacks banks are suffering through now.

"In some of the incidents, before and after unauthorized transactions occurred, the bank or credit union suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against their public  website(s) and/or Internet Banking URL," the warning said. (PDF)  "The DDoS attacks were likely used as a distraction for bank personnel to prevent them from immediately identifying a fraudulent transaction, which in most cases is necessary to stop the wire transfer."

Smith said that same denial of service distraction technique was successfully employed by another group last year, making fraud -- and not geopolitics -- a likely motivator for the attacks.

"Maybe the intelligence world knows some things we don't know, but we haven't seen them prove it other than some public officials making statements," he said.  "But when you look at Al Qassam, until last month they were suicide bombers and restaurant shooter ... associated with physicals attacks, and overnight they acquired the capability to take banks offline? That I don't believe."

Robert Windrem, a senior investigative producer for NBC News, said there is "some level of disagreement" between  law enforcement and intelligence officials about the real source of the attacks.

"The disparity in certainty (that Iran is behind the attacks) is due to the way law enforcement and intelligence look at the same incident," he said. "Law enforcement deals with forensics, and the intelligence agencies deal with intelligence. Intelligence is looking at it from the source, whereas law enforcement is looking at it from the effect side."

Experts agree on this point: With cybercrime, pinpointing a source can be nearly impossible. Smart criminals cover their tracks with numerous layers of compromised computers, across several state and international boundaries. The painstaking work of obtaining legal documents necessary to perform forensics on compromised computers, track bogus traffic, then examine the source of that traffic can take months. Meanwhile, attackers come and go within minutes. 

But the good news for banks is this: Website disruption, while a serious nuisance for bill payers, is hardly the end of the world. Backup systems, such as phone service in-person teller service, remain in place. Consumers are inconvenienced, but that's the extent of the disruptions so far.

"Ultimately, there is a very low impact on a bank," Smith said.  "It's more perception than anything. … Websites are a cheaper way to do customer care, but they do have a manual fallback that's unaffected."

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Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, left, and his attorney John Hundley, leave federal court in Alexandria, Va., on Jan. 23.

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, accused of leaking sensitive classified information to reporters, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to  revealing the identity of a covert operative. 

Kiriakou, who initially pleaded not guilty to five federal charges, pleaded guilty to a single count at a hearing at U.S. District Court in Virginia. Under a plea bargain, he is expected to serve 30 months in prison when he is formally sentenced on Jan. 25. Prosecutors, in return, agreed to ask that the Bureau of Prisons let him serve his time at a minimum security camp in Pennsylvania.

Kiriakou, 48, was accused of furnishing classified secrets to a New York Times reporter -- and lying to the government -- about another CIA officer's role in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, the former high-ranking al-Qaida leader who was waterboarded more than 80 times after his capture.

CIA Director David Petraeus called Kiriakou's guilty plea "an important victory for our agency, for our intelligence community and for our country" in a statement to CIA employees on Tuesday.

"Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy," he said.

The guilty plea closes one of six prosecutions the Obama administration has pursued in an aggressive campaign against alleged leakers of classified information. It also means that some journalists who were questioned about the case will not have to testify at a trial.

His guilty plea came after he lost a key pre-trial ruling. Kiriakou's lawyers had argued unsuccessfully that prosecutors should have to prove that he intended to harm the United States through his alleged leaks.

But U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled last week that such a high standard should not apply to Kiriakou, a government employee with top-secret security clearances who knew well the dangers of disclosing classified information.

When he was indicted in April, Kiriakou was charged with one count of disclosing classified information identifying a covert agent, three counts of illegally disclosing national defense information and one count of making false statements. He had faced up to 45 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

Kiriakou, who wrote a book detailing his CIA career, had tried to argue after the charges were filed that he was a victim of vindictive prosecution by government officials who believed he portrayed the CIA negatively, but the judge rejected those arguments as well.

NBC News Pentagon Producer Courntey Kube and the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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AP

Steve Mostyn, 41, a Houston-based personal injury attorney, said he was inspired by President Barack Obama's performance in the Oct. 16 debate to donate another $1 million to a Democratic Super PAC run by former White House aides.

A wealthy Texas trial lawyer -- known as the king of hurricane torts -- wired $1 million to the main Super PAC backing President Barack Obama late last week, solidifying his standing as one of the chief bankrollers of Democratic causes in this year’s election.

With his latest seven figure donation, Houston personal injury lawyer Steve Mostyn -- an ardent foe of tort reform -- has now contributed $3 million to Priorities USA Action, a Super PAC run by two former White House aides. His latest contribution -- in addition to another $500,000  given by his wife to an allied group -- underscores the heavy reliance of Democratic Super PACs on a small number of mega donors. (Super PACs are allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions and individuals.)  

Mostyn told NBC News that he agreed to wire the additional $1 million last week after watching the second debate at Hofstra University on Long Island and getting energized by the president’s more forceful performance than during the first debate.

“I needed to see some fight,” he said of the president’s performance. He also said he expects the Super PAC to use his cash to help fund more attack ads hammering Republican rival Mitt Romney over his Bain Capital past, portraying him as a heartless executive who destroys jobs rather than creates them. Although Priorities USA Action ads (and Obama campaign ads) hit that theme hard over the summer, now is when “you’re speaking to low-information voters,” Mostyn said.

New campaign finance reports filed over the weekend show the Obama Super PAC is in relatively good shape to send the message. The group reported that it collected $15.2 million in September – outraising Restore Our Future, the main pro-Romney Super PAC, for the second month in a row. (This figure predates Mostyn’s latest cash infusion.)

While GOP Super PACs have still outraised and so far outspent their Democratic counterparts, the combined total of $31.4 million raised by Priorities USA and its two allies (Majority PAC and House Majority PAC) shows they are now fully armed to compete against an expected pro-GOP ad blitz in the last two weeks.

But while the Obama campaign has touted its reliance on small donors, the most striking feature of the latest Democratic Super PAC numbers is the outsized role played by just a handful of super-rich mega donors in funding the group.

Of the $52 million that Priorities USA Action has raised for the entire election cycle, $19 million (or nearly 40) percent came from just six individuals. Besides Mostyn, these include: Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of Dreamworks Animation, who has given $3 million;  Fred Eychaner, a Chicago based media mogul whose print empire includes the Chicago Reader, who has given $3.5 million;  James  Simons, the hedge fund billionaire founder of Renaissance Technologies, who has given $3.5 million;  Irwin Jacobs, a San Diego billionaire and the founder and former CEO of Qualcomm ($2 million); and  Jon Stryker, a philanthropist and gay rights activist ($2 million.) Other big donations to Priorities USA Action last month included $1 million from director Steven Spielberg, $1 million from famed trial lawyer David Boies (who argued for Al Gore in the 2000 Florida recount case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court) and $300,000 from Sam Walton, the chairman of Walmart.   

The mega donor phenomenon is hardly unique to the Democrats, of course. These donations still pale next to the $40 million that Las Vegas gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson has funneled this cycle into GOP Super PACs, including $10 million to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future. And the Romney Super PAC reported that Bob Perry, the publicity shy Texas homebuilder best known for helping fund the Swift Boat ads against John Kerry in 2004, gave another $2 million last month, bringing his total donations to $9 million. That means that Perry and Adelson alone have accounted for nearly 20 percent of the Restore Our Future’s total $111 million haul. 

Twinned with Perry’s cash, the Mostyn donations to Priorities USA Action gives the presidential contest the flavor of a Texas grudge match. The two men have been among the major funders of the years-long fight in Texas over tort reform. Perry (whose home-building company has been hit with massive multimillion-dollar lawsuits brought by trial lawyers) has helped bankroll Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a pro-business group that has fought to rein in lawsuits.  Mostyn, who has specialized in mass class-action lawsuits brought by hurricane victims, has been a major financier of the opposition.

A past president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, Mostyn has also been a somewhat controversial figure in state legal circles. He’s known as “Hurricane Mostyn” due to the class-action lawsuit he brought against the Texas Wind Insurance Association (TWIA) on behalf of the victims of  Hurricane Ike, which devastated the Texas coast in 2008. The lawsuit, alleging the mishandling of insurance claims, led to a $189 million settlement -- $86 million of which reportedly went in fees to his law firm. That, in turn, triggered an increase in premium payments by the TWIA and calls by Republicans in the state Legislature to curb what were called the association’s “out-of-control legal expenses.”

Like most big donors, Mostyn tells NBC News that his main concern is good government, not any special benefits he might receive from the White House (such as his private meeting with the president last spring at the W Hotel after he gave his first $2 million to Priorities USA Action.) He said he shares the general liberal distaste for Super PACs, but given the vast amounts flowing into the GOP Super PACs, he was persuaded to contribute to Priorities USA Action by Paul Begala and Bill Burton during a meeting aboard his yacht last spring: “You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight,” he said.

Michael Isikoff is a national investigative correspondent for NBC News.

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By Paul Abowd
The Center for Public Integrity

Voters haven’t had a clue who is behind American Tradition Partnership — the Colorado group pushing to rewrite Montana’s campaign finance laws — and that’s just the way the secretive nonprofit wants it.

A 2010 fundraising pitch to its donors promised that “no politician, no bureaucrat, and no radical environmentalist will ever know you helped,” and “the only thing we plan on reporting is our success to contributors like you.”

“Montana has very strict limits on contributions to candidates,” reads the document, obtained by The Center for Public Integrity. “but there is no limit to how much you give to this program.”

As for the state’s ban on corporate money in elections?

“Corporate contributions are completely legal,” the pitch assures potential funders. “This is one of the rare programs you will find where that’s the case.”

“You can get some traction with that pitch,” says Dennis Unsworth, who led the state’s investigation of the group in 2010 that unearthed the document. “If you can offer to influence the elections outside the law, that’s a great calling card.”

For three election cycles, ATP has plastered the state with mailers attacking "radical environmental groups" and moderate Republicans.

While ATP’s funders are still mostly a mystery, the Center for Public Integrity has identified what records indicate is the secretive organization’s founding donor — an anti-union owner of Colorado’s largest furniture chain — and discovered a long list of affiliations with national tea party groups funded by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers.

This election, ATP has vowed to keep Attorney General Steve Bullock out of the governor’s mansion. In October, voters received a brazen multi-page newspaper-style flier placing the Democratic candidate in a photo lineup with three registered sex offenders.

But the group hit the national spotlight thanks to three landmark court battles with Bullock and the state of Montana.

The U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision invalidated a federal ban on corporate spending similar to what 24 states had on their books, but Montana held fast to its law. ATP sued to overturn it, losing to Bullock in the state’s high court. But in June, the nonprofit prevailed on appeal to the nation’s highest court.

ATP is pushing past its Citizens United challenge with two more suits to eliminate Montana’s low contribution limits and disclosure rules, setting up a potential challenge to contribution limits nationwide.

Tea party ties
One of ATP’s founders is former Montana Congressman Ron Marlenee, who served from 1977 until the state dropped from two House seats to one in 1992. Marlenee used his D.C. Rolodex to raise money for the fledgling pro-energy group, which registered in Colorado in 2008.

Marlenee rallied a tea party crowd in Bozeman in 2010, appearing on stage with a half-burned American flag, which he said he wrestled away from a “liberal Marxist” protester.

ATP has joined tea party lobbying efforts, signing at least two letters to Congress in the last year urging an end to tax credits for renewable resource industries. The letters were signed by Koch-funded groups including Americans for Prosperity and tea party boosters FreedomWorks, Club for Growth and Art Pope’s John Locke Foundation.

In its 2008 application for tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization, ATP listed its “primary donor” as Jacob Jabs, Colorado’s largest furniture retailer and a donor to Republican candidates and causes. Jabs pledged a $300,000 contribution to get ATP on its feet, according to IRS records obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

Jabs, through a spokesman, on Monday said he did not make a donation and has "never heard of" ATP or the group's previous incarnation.

"He did not commit to the funds indicated by Athena Dalton in the filing so clearly he did not give them funds," wrote Charlie Shaulis, director of communications for American Furniture Warehouse, Jabs' company, in an email to I-News Network in Colorado.

Dalton wrote a letter to the IRS asking the agency to speed up the process for awarding it nonprofit status. The letter states that the approval was needed quickly, otherwise Jabs would not make a contribution. The agency gave it the thumbs up four days later.

The amount of the gift would be double Jabs’ total federal campaign contributions since 1997, which have gone exclusively to Republican candidates and party organizations, according to FEC records. 

Jabs also poured money into a failed “right to work” ballot initiative in Colorado, becoming a television spokesman for the 2008 anti-union effort.

ATP shares resources and a D.C. mailing address with an affiliated 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit called the American Tradition Institute, which works in tandem with a network of Koch-funded think tanks  to oppose wind energy and dispute the reality of climate change. It has launched lawsuits against state mandates for renewable energy usage and targeted climate scientists in academia.

The libertarian Koch brothers, Charles and David, have become better known in recent years with the rise of the tea party. They are principal owners of Koch Industries Inc., the second-largest privately owned company in the U.S., with major investments in the energy industry. 

ATI has accepted donations from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a free-market think tank underwritten by Exxon Mobil and Koch foundation money, according to a report by the Institute for Southern Studies.

Its director of litigation Chris Horner is also a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that has taken a half-million dollars from Koch foundations since 1998, according to the report.

‘We won’t be shut up, or shut down’
In 2008, American Tradition Partnership flooded the state with mailers attacking ten state legislators, but reported only $12,000 in spending for the entire election.

An investigation by the state’s Commission on Political Practices concluded that the group had broken state law requiring outside spending groups to register as political action committees and disclose all donors and spending.

Commissioner Unsworth concluded in October 2010 that ATP had registered a “sham organization” called the Coalition for Energy and Environment and vastly under-reported its activity. The PAC’s reported spending, said the state, would have barely covered the cost of postage for the raft of glossy, full-color mailers ATP sent out.

ATP filed forms with the IRS the same year, reporting more than $600,000 in spending.

ATP maintains that its spending on mailers, most targeting moderate Republicans running for state legislative seats, is “educational” and therefore falls outside the state’s definition of “express advocacy” that would require it to disclose its funders and its spending on the mailers.

ATP did not face penalties and did not disband. Instead, it changed its name from Western Tradition Partnership and sued to strike down Montana’s disclosure laws.

The case is set for trial in March 2013.

“We won’t be shut up or shut down,” ATP said in a press release in June.

ATP’s years-long court battles have pushed the group into the public spotlight, threatening the secrecy of its donors. The group has vigorously resisted discovery proceedings in court, missing several deadlines to produce evidence requested by the state.

Lawyers in Bullock’s office filed a motion to compel ATP to present evidence, including bank records, or drop their lawsuit. It has not complied. According to a court filing, ATP’s lawyer Jim Brown emailed the state’s lawyers in late August, explaining, “I have a difficult client."

Nonetheless, the state has won access to bank records for the organization. If a judge makes them public, they could offer voters a glimpse at the group’s funders.

‘I was the screen’
The group rarely communicates with the press and it hires unknowing lawyers to sign campaign finance reports and its 2008 nonprofit incorporation documents in Colorado.

Scott Shires has been sued and fined for his election activities, but the Colorado political consultant says his reputation really took a hit after he signed ATP’s forms. When Montana released the results of its 2010 investigation, Shires’ name began showing up in the press, and he says he cut ties to the organization.

“The operatives writing these stupid ads and mailings don’t want to be identified,” said Shires. “I was the screen that allowed them to hide — plausible deniability is something a lot of these groups are interested in.”

Shires listed himself as “President” of ATP when he signed the group’s request for exempt status with the IRS in 2008.

He is widely known for registering hundreds of political committees in Colorado, mostly Republican groups. The work involves some risk. He pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns for a client in 2008, a misdemeanor charge. He was also caught up in a scandal that linked former U.S. Rep. and 2008 Senate candidate Bob Schaffer with the beneficiary of a questionable congressional earmark.

As of May 2012, an IRS filing still listed Shires as the group’s president, and he remains one of the few names publicly associated with the group.

ATP Executive Director Donald Ferguson did not return numerous calls for comment.

‘Not really sure who is in charge’
The left-leaning Montana Conservation Voters claims ATP was unfazed by the 2010 investigation and is “right back to doing the same thing,” according to the group’s board member Ben Graybill, who filed the original complaint.

This year, ATP has registered a PAC in the state. It sent mailers prior to the June primary election, but has reported zero spending to the state.

Its filings are signed by Montana attorney Chris Gallus, who was “surprised” to receive a call from the Center regarding ATP. He claims no leadership role in the organization, and said he’s “not really sure who is in charge.”

Gallus said he has not been contacted by ATP since being hired to sign their PAC reports, and does not anticipate filing any spending reports on their behalf. “Until that changes, my involvement is the same as the date I signed their forms.”

The organization sent out a questionnaire to candidates in early October, asking about their stance on land development and environmental regulations in resource-rich Montana.

“Will you oppose legislation which would categorically limit development of any specific energy resource?” reads one. “Will you oppose legislation that would rescind, reduce or shorten the tax holiday on oil & gas wells?” reads another.

Candidates who don’t respond, or don’t respond with answers favorable to ATP’s interests, are often targeted by a direct mail campaign similar to those launched at Bullock.

Its adversary, the Montana conservation group, endorses candidates for the state legislature who align with its mission to “protect clean water, public health, and our incredible outdoor heritage.” Its mid-October mailers praise Bullock for leading “the fight against corporate control of our elections.”

Unlike ATP, the group reports its direct and independent spending to the state and lists its donors.

“They’re scofflaws,” said Theresa Keaveny, executive director of the Montana conservation group.

Keaveny says ATP is not only in violation of Montana law, but also IRS rules for 501c(4) groups, which dictate ATP must not spend a majority of its funds on political activity.

According to its 2008 application for exempt status, obtained by the Center, ATP promised not to “spend any money attempting to influence” elections. It also promised not to “directly or indirectly participate or intervene on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate for public office.”

It would, however spend “70 percent” of its time and resources to “educate citizens” about “land and resource development issues.”

Jabs did not return a request to comment for this story.

Governor’s race a toss up

Bullock, a Democrat, is running against Republican Rick Hill. It’s expected to be a close race despite Montana’s majority-Republican voting population.

“We want citizens deciding elections, not corporations,” said Bullock in an October debate during which he touted his record as a campaign finance crusader.

While outside spending groups, including the Republican and Democratic governors associations, have swarmed the state with ads, the two candidates have had to abide by Montana’s low contribution limits — for most of the campaign.

In October, ATP made national news when a federal judge agreed with the organization and its high-profile campaign finance lawyer, James Bopp, and struck down contribution limits on individuals, PACs, and parties — including the $630 cap on individual giving to Bullock and Hill.

"The political establishment can no longer tell citizens to shut up because they've reached their speech limit," said ATP Montana Director Doug Lair in a press release.

Montana joined the ranks of 12 other states with no limits on contributions to candidates, but only temporarily. A week later, a federal appeals court stayed the lower court decision pending a full appeal, putting the state’s contribution limits back in force.

Bullock’s opponent took advantage of the six-day free-for-all between the ruling and the stay, accepting a $500,000 contribution from the state’s Republican Party. The gift dwarfed Montana’s $22,600 limit on party giving to candidates.

‘Who’s saying these crazy things’
A month before the vote, Montana residents woke up to a fake newspaper on their doorstep called “The Montana Statesman.”

The publication calls itself “the largest and most trusted news source” but is actually a series of ATP-funded attacks on Bullock. It leads with a giant headline that reads “Bullock Admits Failure.”

The “news” story claims that the attorney general has let “1 in 4 sex offenders go unregistered.” It includes four photos: three registered sex offenders and Bullock.

The group can continue to raise money on the promise that “no politician, no bureaucrat, and no radical environmentalist will ever know you helped make this program possible,” as its 2010 briefing to donors reads. “You can just sit back on election night and see what a difference you’ve made.”

Unsworth says his 2010 investigation did not stop ATP, and outside spending that has already flooded the state, is sure to intensify, particularly in light of the Citizens United decision. He calls the advertising a “mess of trash that lays at the feet of the public,” paid for by “funny money with no legal constraints.”

“We don’t know who’s saying these crazy things,” he added, “so the public has to suffer and our political system suffers as a result.”

The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories on this topic go to http://www.publicintegrity.org/politics/consider-source.

Update (Oct . 22, 7:00 p.m. ET): This story was updated to reflect that Jabs, through a spokesman, denied making a contribution to ATP.

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Updated at 8:23 a.m. ET: A man who was ordered last week to turn over all his weapons in a domestic dispute opened fire Sunday at his estranged wife's workplace near Milwaukee, killing three women and injuring four others, authorities said. He then apparently shot himself to death, police said.

The suspect was identified as Radcliffe Franklin Haughton, 45, of Brown Deer, Wis., said Brookfield Police Chief Daniel Tushaus, who said Haughton was found dead in the building, a 9,000-square-foot, two-story salon and day spa across the street from a busy mall.  Police had not identified the dead on Sunday evening.

Police told reporters they were expecting an armed encounter with Haughton, who was ultimately found in a locked area in the salon. It took several hours to find him because their search was slowed by concern there may have been an explosive device. Police said it turned out to be a propane tank and they didn't know who brought it into the building.

Milwaukee County court records show that Haughton's wife, Zina Daniel Haughton, filed for a restraining order on Oct. 8.

Police said there had been a previous incident at the nail salon, and that Haughton had slashed his wife's tires.

A hearing was held on Thursday and Haughton was ordered to deliver his firearms to the sheriff and to have no contact for four years with the complainant or the residence. The complainant isn't identified in the court record, and the court records don't indicate whether he surrendered any firearms. 

Wisconsin court records

Court record online showing the restraining order against the suspect in the shooting.

Other records indicate that Haughton was also charged with disorderly conduct in January 2011, a charge that was dismissed in June 2011 when a witness failed to appear in court.

Police said the shootings began at 11:09 a.m. (12:09 p.m. ET) at the Azana Day Spa, across Moorland Road from Brookfield Square mall in Brookfield, about 10 miles west of Milwaukee. The mall was closed as SWAT team members scoured the area for Haughton.

Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in Milwaukee, where the victims, aged 22, 30, 32 and 40, were taken for treatment, said the survivors were women who had been shot. Two were undergoing treatment in the emergency room for non-life-threatening conditions, and the two others underwent surgery. Their conditions weren't reported.

The hospital said it had resumed normal operations after having been locked down while Haughton was still believed to be at large.

Zina Haughton has a state license as a cosmetology manager. Two workers at the salon said Zina Haughton was estranged from her husband.

Records suggest that Haughton had endured several years of financial problems, with a civil judgment for $19,000 in 2006 and a state tax lien for $5,000 in 2009. His home has been listed as for sale by owner. His former job, from 2003 to 2007, is listed in public records as general manager of a former Land Rover dealership in the Glendale area of Milwaukee County.

Auto advertisements and business records list a man named Radcliffe Haughton as sales manager at an auto dealership in Milwaukee. Calls to the dealership weren't returned.

Watch continuing coverage on Today's TMJ4

Suspect's father aghast
Haughton's father, also named Radcliffe, was shocked and dismayed upon learning that his son was the suspect.

"Oh, my God," the elder Haughton told WTMJ in a telephone interview from his home in Florida. "The Haughton family apologizes, and we are sorry."

"This is not a reflection of the Haughton family," he said, adding: "One member of the Haughton family has done something terrible. This is not the Haughtons' way. This is not the way we live. This is not how I raised my son up."

Haughton told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he spoke to his son just last week, telling him he could stay with him in Florida if he needed to.

"I told him, 'Whatever you do, don't do anything stupid,'" the elder Haughton said.

Bing Maps

People run screaming from spa
At the scene of the shootings, an eyewitness, Jenny Remshak, told WTMJ that she was parked nearby when she saw a woman "crawling out of the building, and she rolled over to the cops, and they picked her up and took her right away in the ambulance."

A few minutes later, "about 10 people come running out of the building, screaming," Remshak said.

"Everybody was just grabbing their hearts and covering their mouths and watching in fear," she said.

It was the second mass shooting in the Milwaukee area in just 2½ months. A gunman opened fire at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee on Aug. 5, killing six people and wounding at least three others, before being shot to death.

Three people were killed and a fourth was injured last week when a gunman stormed a hair salon in Casselberry, Fla. The gunman then killed himself.

NBC's Isolde Raftery contributed to this report.

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Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

Coca-Cola, Nestle and Unilever, all manufacturers of the type of food and soft drink products that nutrition experts say help cause obesity, are contributing to the Pan American Health Organization's effort to combat the epidemic in Mexico. But are they undercutting the organization's efforts?

GENEVA, Switzerland -- As the world's foremost health agency, the World Health Organization bills itself as an impartial advocate working on behalf of 194 member nations.

Its mission as the public health arm of the United Nations ranges from stanching communicable diseases such as malaria and AIDS to battling what the U.N. considers the latest "global epidemic": chronic ailments such as diabetes and heart disease caused primarily by unhealthy diets.

But to fight those diseases in Mexico, the nation with the world's highest rate of obese and overweight adults, a Reuters investigation found that WHO's regional office has turned to the very companies whose sugary drinks and salty foods are linked to many of the maladies it's trying to prevent.

The office, the Pan American Health Organization, not only is relying on the food and beverage industry for advice on how to fight obesity. For the first time in its 110-year history, it has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in money from the industry.

Accepting industry funding goes against WHO's worldwide policies. Its Geneva headquarters and five other regional offices have been prohibited from accepting money from the food and soda industries, among others. "If such conflicts of interest were perceived to exist, or actually existed, this would jeopardize WHO's ability to set globally recognized and respected standards and guidelines," said spokesman Gregory Härtl.

But the Pan American office -- known as PAHO, based in Washington and founded 46 years before it was affiliated with WHO in 1948 -- had different standards allowing the business donations.

Even so, not until this February did PAHO begin taking industry money, Reuters found: $50,000 from Coca-Cola, the world's largest beverage company; $150,000 from Nestle, the world's largest food company; and $150,000 from Unilever, a British-Dutch food conglomerate whose brands include Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Popsicles.

The recent infusion of corporate cash is the most pointed example to date of how WHO is approaching its battle against chronic disease. Increasingly, it is relying on what it calls "partnerships" with industry, opting to enter into alliances with food and beverage companies rather than maintain strict neutrality. The strategy differs dramatically from WHO's approach to interacting with the tobacco industry - companies with which it is unwilling to partner.

The decision appears to stem in part from necessity.

Despite being tasked a year ago by the U.N. to direct the attack on what both groups now call a "global epidemic," WHO has cut its own funding for chronic disease programs by 20 percent since 2010 -- an even bigger decline than for the agency as a whole. These diseases cause 63 percent of premature deaths worldwide, but the WHO department that leads the effort to fight them receives 6 percent of the agency's budget.

The industry's cash donations, which have not been previously reported, were described by Irene Klinger, a senior adviser for partnerships in PAHO, as "a new way of doing business." She compared the closer cooperation with that of a couple who needs to discuss marital problems. She said PAHO spends about $30 million a year to fight chronic diseases. But amid WHO's budget cuts, Klinger said, the organization needed industry "money to make this happen."

Mexicans drink far more Coke than citizens of any other nation. But even as Coca-Cola denies that soda causes obesity, it says it is committed to solving the health crisis. The Atlanta-based company has placed a top official on the steering board for WHO's Pan American Forum for Action on Non-Communicable Diseases, a group that helps determine how WHO fights obesity in Mexico.

Klinger and other WHO officials who work with industry say they are careful to maintain control of policymaking. But on its website, the Pan American Forum touts the benefits of membership as helping businesses "avoid regulation" and "influence regulatory environments."

"WHO is getting hijacked," said Boyd Swinburn, an Australian professor and longtime member of WHO's nutrition advisory committees. "They're cash-strapped, and they're bringing the private sector in. That's very dangerous."

Coke sees the situation differently.

"It's about the convergence of the interests," said Jorge Casimiro, Coca-Cola's director of international government relations and public affairs. "What we're trying to say is we're ready to take action. We're companies who want to do this. We're ready to go."

Ties to industry
As part of its investigation into the influence of Big Food on WHO, Reuters reviewed thousands of pages of records, and interviewed more than a hundred experts and officials from industry, academia, health groups, trade groups, medical journals and national governments. Among those interviewed: more than 20 former and current WHO officials and leading advisers to the agency.

Although WHO wields no official regulatory authority, the agency relies on member nations to embrace its recommendations -- something that happens quite often in developing nations. "The standards and policies adopted by WHO basically become the laws and regulations and policies in many of these countries," said Daniel Spiegel, a former U.S. ambassador to U.N. programs in Geneva who now lobbies on behalf of the food and alcohol industries.

Reuters found that even when WHO takes special care to avoid entanglements with industry, the wall meant to protect WHO's impartiality is far from impermeable.

A small group at WHO headquarters here is helping a panel of nutrition experts draft new guidelines for sugar, salt and fat in the diet. Little known to the public, the guidelines are of intense concern to potentially affected companies, and they're particularly relevant to developing nations such as Mexico.

The Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group was hand-picked by WHO staff members, who say they took the agency's strictest steps yet to avoid the industry conflicts of some advisers in the past.

"My main message is we're really taking this conflict of interest extremely seriously, as well as the solidity of the science, and we're trying to really change this perception," said Francesco Branca, director of the work.

Reuters found at least two of the 15 advisers had direct financial ties to the food industry. Murray Skeaff, a New Zealand professor, received research money from Unilever, the conglomerate with $60 billion sales last year. He could not be reached for comment. Esté Vorster, a South African professor, advised a sugar association and took travel and "after hours" money to judge a contest for Nestle. Vorster said she does not participate in discussing the sugar guideline.

A third, Nahla Hwalla, is a professor and dean of a food-sciences college at the American University of Beirut. The college is receiving $750,000 over three years from Nestle; $450,000 of that money goes to fund the work of a doctoral student whom Hwalla is supervising. Hwalla said the Nestle funding was disclosed to WHO. WHO will not comment on financial disclosures by members of its advisory group.

In addition, three members of the group -- Ibrahim Elmadfa of the University of Vienna, Anna Lartey of the University of Ghana, and Vorster -- are current, future or past leaders of a professional society, the International Union of Nutritional Sciences. The society solicits hundreds of thousands of dollars in industry funding for conferences.

Sponsors of next year's conference include Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft, Nestle and Unilever. A letter to sponsors from Angel Gil, a Spanish professor and conference president, says sponsors would "enjoy prime exposure and direct marketing opportunities with the key players and decision makers in the field."

The conference organizers advising WHO say they do not regard the ties as a conflict of interest because they don't pocket any of the money personally.

But the conference they lead has so many ties to industry that WHO itself will no longer help organize or donate money to it as it has done in the past, according to Chizuru Nishida, coordinator of the WHO nutrition policy and scientific advice unit.

Influence in Mexico
The industry's influence in Mexico is exemplified in the Mexican delegations to a group called Codex. The group works with WHO on food labeling and trade policies, and its guidelines serve as a reference for governments around the world.

At a meeting of the group's nutrition committee last November in Germany, the five-member Mexican delegation included officials from Coca-Cola and Kellogg -- but no one from the Mexican government. Many other nations also invited company representatives; a Coke official was part of the U.S. delegation. But all delegations except Mexico's were led by government officials.

Coca-Cola is a major player in Mexican politics, and dominates the soda market there. Vicente Fox, the nation's president from 2000 to 2006, was the president of Coca-Cola Mexico before entering politics.

Coke points to its contributions to public health. "Close to 26 million Mexicans benefit from the more than 4,000 sporting events we promote each year," said Rosalyn Kennedy, senior communications manager for Coca-Cola. In an email, she said Coke also signed the National Agreement to Prevent Obesity with the Mexican government. As part of the agreement, companies promise to reduce salt, sugar and fat and promote exercise and drinking water.

Swinburn, who directs the WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention in Melbourne, remains skeptical of the industry's motives. He said food and beverage companies exert a huge influence on policies that affect the health of millions.

"Industry is buzzing all around," he said. "Even in things like nutrition guidelines, they're usually in the room at the policymaking table or buzzing around it and putting all sort of pressure on, bringing their huge conflicts of interest and their huge resources to it - and we're wondering why we don't get much public interest policy coming out."

In May 2011, an expert group impaneled by PAHO, WHO's regional office for the Americas, wrote perhaps the world's toughest plan to restrict junk-food marketing to children. The panel, including four Mexicans, recommended new government policies "in a time frame of no more than 18 months" -- that is, by November 2012.

To date, Mexico has yet to act on the findings. PAHO has yet to even formally present its report to the Mexican government, according to Alejandro Calvillo, a member of the expert panel and director of El Poder del Consumidor, or Consumer Power, a nonprofit group focused on obesity in Mexico.

Why not? Calvillo said public health officials with PAHO in Mexico "do not want to have any kind of conflict with the industry."

The view wasn't disputed by Enrique Jacoby, PAHO's regional adviser on healthy eating. "We have an opportunity to do more than we did in the past with Mexico, I'll put it that way," Jacoby said.

"We cannot act on our own," Jacoby said, "but in reality we can have a huge influence on Mexico insofar as the secretary of health in Mexico says, 'PAHO, come over and help us do this,' because we are the international health agency."

Some WHO officials and health advocates say the agency is doing the best it can -- with industry help -- to reduce chronic disease. The World Health Assembly in May set a target for a 25 percent reduction in global deaths from these illnesses by 2025.

"To do that, you have to reduce salt, reduce sugar, reduce fats; that's not going to happen without regulation and taxation," said Judith Watt, interim director of an alliance of global diabetes, heart, cancer and lung disease groups, which receive some industry funding.

WHO has repeatedly advocated for voluntary action over stronger, regulatory measures. And the major food makers have, in some cases, responded.

For instance, Coca-Cola now offers more than 800 no- or low-calorie drinks; the Mexican bakery giant Grupo Bimbo is cutting sodium in its leading bread and rolls; and Nestle and General Mills just announced further cuts by 2015 in the sugar and salt in Cheerios and other cereals. Further, these companies are promising to limit advertising aimed at children under 12.

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WHO published global guidelines for controlling junk-food marketing to children in 2010. It suggested "industry-led self-regulation" as an alternative to legal requirements.

Corinna Hawkes, a British food policy expert and lead author of a seminal 2004 WHO report on marketing of food to children, said self-regulation alone continues to fall short, in Mexico and elsewhere. She was part of the panel PAHO convened last year to recommend what it called "concrete" policies.

Their report advocated restricting all forms of junk-food marketing that appeals to children under the age of 16. That included TV, radio, signs, cartoons, toy giveaways and event sponsorships, a Coke mainstay in Mexico. Further, it said governments should raise taxes on products high in sugar, fat and salt and on the advertising of these products -- policies anathema not only to fast-food and soda companies but to many in advertising and media.

Since then, Hawkes said, neither WHO, PAHO nor the Mexican government has done much.

In a speech last year in Mexico City, Margaret Chan, WHO director-general since 2007, talked about "the seductive marketing of foods and beverages that are cheap, convenient, tasty, filling, and very bad for health." But Chan didn't mention the solution being proposed by WHO's expert committee. She declined interview requests for this story.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón also championed a five-step anti-obesity program focused on exercise and healthy eating. He, too, didn't mention limiting marketing to children.

Calderón had appeared with Coca-Cola chief executive Muhtar Kent at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. Kent said Coke would invest another $1 billion a year to grow the Mexican market. Calderón praised the plan for adding jobs.

Coke has plans to double its sales in Mexico within a decade.

‘Recipe for disaster’
Mexican Coke is made with real cane sugar instead of corn syrup. And Mexicans love it.

So much so, they drink an average of 45 gallons of Coca-Cola products a year. That's almost eight times more than the world average and 70 percent more than Americans, who are the second biggest soda drinkers in the world.

"A recipe for disaster," said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

Body measurements bear him out: Mexico now has the fattest adult population in the world, surpassing the United States in the latest surveys measuring body mass index, excluding some small South Seas Islands.

Studies show 69.5 percent of Mexicans 15 and older were overweight or obese in 2006 compared with 69.2 percent of similarly aged Americans in 2010. And Mexico's problem continues to grow while the situation in the United States has leveled out, health officials say.

A new survey is expected to show Mexico's obesity rates climbing about 2 percent since 2006, according to Simón Barquera, a professor of nutrition and researcher in the National Institute of Public Health.

"This is as high as you could get," Barquera said.

In its one significant government response, Mexico in 2010 began removing sugary drinks from elementary schools. But school children still lack water fountains, and soda marketing pervades the places they gather. The national government has rejected proposals to tax sugary drinks.

Nestle funds diabetes group
The food industry's influence is by no means limited to Geneva or Mexico. A Reuters investigation earlier this year revealed how food and beverage companies now dominate policymaking in Washington and in cities and states across America.

In Washington, the companies doubled their lobbying expenditures to $175 million during the first three years of the Obama administration, Reuters found, and defeated "soda tax" proposals in 24 states. As part of the National School Lunch Program, Congress even declared pizza a vegetable.

Food and beverage companies also are donating money to global nonprofit groups fighting the very diseases that their products have helped to create -- health advocacy organizations that are allowed to work with officials at WHO headquarters in ways that industry groups cannot.

In a precedent-setting move earlier this year, Nestle agreed to give 480,000 euros ($630,000) to the International Diabetes Federation over three years. The amount of the donation, provided to Reuters by Nestle, has not been previously reported. The federation previously took money from insulin makers but not food companies.

"We want to be part of the solution," said Robin Tickle, Nestle's head of corporate media relations. "We have various forms of partnerships with organizations all over the world at global, regional or local level. Some of these involve donations, others do not."

Ten of the largest multinational companies have joined forces in a nonprofit group in Geneva called the International Food and Beverage Alliance. The companies, with combined sales last year of $397 billion, are promising voluntary actions to reduce salt, sugar and fat. Their group, created four years ago, is trying to gain a status of "official relations" with WHO, which would give it additional access to agency meetings and shared work plans.

The global sugar industry, with U.S. government backing, reacted strongly against a WHO expert panel's report in 2003 to recommend limiting sugar to 10 percent of dietary calories. Since then, the report has not been mentioned in WHO's plans to fight chronic disease, and some of its most aggressive staff members have left the organization.

"Many of us have been complaining to Margaret Chan about why there are so few staff on this even if it is two-thirds of the mortality in the world," said Pekka Puska, WHO's director of non-communicable disease until 2003 and currently director general of Finland's National Institute for Health and Welfare.

"You can speculate why," Puska said. "The more you do non-communicable diseases, the more you run into commercial problems of marketed products like Coca-Cola."

Giants including Coke and Unilever take exception to such characterizations. "It's about working together," said Anne Heughan, external affairs director for Unilever. She said all such efforts to battle obesity and other diseases need "to be led by the government. They need to set the direction ... But obviously we are a part of that."

Focus on salt
The soda industry still disputes whether sugar causes obesity and its cavalcade of health problems. The underlying cause of obesity is consuming too many calories and burning too few. The industry argues that a calorie from soda is no different from a calorie from any other source.

Many health experts compare that argument to the longtime denial by tobacco makers that cigarettes cause cancer. Cause and effect has not yet been biologically established for soda and obesity. But sodas are the leading single source of calories in the American and Mexican diets. And they are "empty" calories -- devoid of nutritional value.

There is no such dispute over the harms of excess salt -- nor is the industry lobby as focused. Companies that add salt to food have agreed it can cause hypertension.

Accordingly, salt remains a target of WHO disease policies even as sugar has fallen off the table. The industry-funded Pan American group is focusing on salt reduction. An outline of policy options by WHO in March listed salt 28 times and sugar only once.

Spending cuts
Since the industry's business alliance formed in Geneva in 2008, WHO has cut its annual spending for the branch dealing with chronic disease. Its budget went from $325 million for 2008-09 to $241 million for 2012-13; in the same period, the office's staff shrank from 182 to 131.

Chan's 2012-13 budget reflects more of the austerity that forced the agency to cut 250 staff members agency-wide last year. The budget, emphasizing "efficiencies" and "partnerships," is 12 percent smaller overall -- but 20 percent smaller in the chronic disease office than the previous spending plan.

WHO's entire budget is about half of what Coca-Cola spends on marketing alone. Although WHO spends about $2 billion a year and employs 8,000 people to fight disease, the vast majority of that money is earmarked by donors for projects related to communicable diseases such as malaria. That leaves relative crumbs for the diet-related illnesses that WHO says are the world's leading killers.

"Sixty-three percent of the deaths, and 5 (to) 8 percent of our budget," said Douglas Bettcher, acting director of the chronic diseases office. In an interview here, Bettcher described the handful of people at policy levels: "We've got one person on diabetes, two on cancer, one on cardiovascular disease, and we're recruiting one for chronic respiratory disease," he said.

That alone doesn't represent the entirety of WHO's effort. Bettcher said many other WHO employees are working on the risk factors of chronic disease (including smoking) around the world. Among them: about 200 technical officers. He said he remains positive about the potential to make progress.

"I'm optimistic we're well on our way to scaling up our efforts," Bettcher said.

Some of WHO's own employees, however, acknowledge the difficulties.

"Money has been cut back," Nishida said. "Today it seems like the only people that have money are industry."

Derek Yach, a former WHO assistant-director-general for chronic disease programs, said "WHO is really pushed into a corner" by its budget woes. Yach said he was driven out of WHO in 2005 after proposing to limit sugar consumption. Not long after, he made a dramatic career move that underscores just how ineffective he believes WHO has become.

After stints at Yale and the Rockefeller Foundation, Yach accepted a job as a vice president at PepsiCo. His reasoning: He said he thought he stood a better chance of improving public health by working for the sugary soft drink maker than by working for the world's leading health organization.

Shared interests
Under Chan, WHO has employed "partnership advisers" to seek closer relationships with food and beverage companies. One of them, Janet Voûte, left the health agency in 2010 to become a vice president at Nestle, which is based in Vevey, Switzerland -- two train stops from Geneva.

Nestle, Voûte said, agrees with everything WHO is doing and stands ready to help WHO and improve its own products. "I personally do not see any major conflict of interest," she said. "I see much more convergence of interests."

When WHO held a conference for health ministers last year in Moscow - which Voûte had helped to organize -- one session was chaired by Casimiro, the top Coca-Cola official. He said he was invited by WHO to chair it.

Speakers came from PepsiCo, Nestle and the World Federation of Advertisers. They called for voluntary action and offered their resources and influence.

When Chan spoke, praising them, an activist stood up and asked Chan about whether the relationship posed a conflict of interest for WHO.

Chan responded in her sometimes ebullient fashion.

She sang the opening lines of a show tune from the musical The King and I: "Getting to Know You."

Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva.

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Courtesy of John Mark Buckland

John Mark Buckland, 42, of Huntington, W. Va., said he was sexually abused by a Boy Scout leader at Travis Air Force Base when he was 12 years old in 1982. The Boy Scouts' secret file documenting that abuse will be made public under a court order on Thursday, along with more than 14,500 pages of previously confidential documents detailing accusations of child sex abuse within the organization.

Updated at 2:35 pm ET to reflect release of the report:
John Buckland was 12 years old when an assistant Scoutmaster sexually abused him on an Air Force base in California. He has been waiting years for the day when a secret Boy Scouts file documenting that abuse three decades ago would be made public.

That day came Thursday, when more than 14,500 pages of previously confidential documents created by the Boy Scouts of America detailing accusations of child sex abuse within the organization were released under an Oregon Supreme Court order.

“It unveils all the secrecy, or at least a good portion of it, and the secrecy is the biggest demon there is when it comes to things like this, because it’s by being hidden that it basically just eats people away like a cancer,” Buckland, 42, of Huntington, W. Va., told NBC News.

“I think the release of the files will be instrumental as far as victims are concerned in being able to see that the dialogue is out there, and what I’m hoping to see is that there will be some really good self discovery of other people who haven’t come forward, people who will get a chance to see the files and actually being able to start processing it and getting their experience out in the open. But as long as the files were hidden that would never happen," he added.

The court ordered the Boy Scouts to release the “ineligible volunteer” files from 1965 to 1985 that chronicle suspected or confirmed instances of child sex abuse. Media organizations had sued for the release of the files, part of a 2010 case in which a jury decided that the Scouts were negligent in allowing a former assistant Scoutmaster to associate with the organization's youth after he admitted molesting 17 boys in 1983.

Lawyers for victims of the abuse say that the files, which they have dubbed the “perversion files,” represent reports of Scouts allegedly abused by more than 1,200 different Scoutmasters and other adult volunteers. The files, which includes Buckland’s abuser, were released Thursday on www.kellyclarkattorney.com.

A report by the Boy Scouts in September said that 829 of the files from Jan. 1, 1965, to June 30, 1984, involved suspicions or confirmations of inappropriate sexual behavior with 1,622 youth. The report was done for the organization by Dr. Janet Warren, a professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia.

At the time, the Boy Scouts said in a letter that they would review their files created from 1965 to the present “and ensure that all good-faith suspicion of abuse has been reported to law enforcement.” They also said that there “have been instances where people misused their positions in Scouting to abuse children, and in certain cases, our response to these incidents and our efforts to protect youth were plainly insufficient, inappropriate, or wrong.”

Boy Scouts admit response to sex abuse was 'insufficient' 

On Thursday morning, the organization also noted: “Where those involved in Scouting failed to protect, or worse, inflicted harm on children, we extend our deepest and sincere apologies to victims and their families.”

“While it is difficult to understand or explain individuals’ actions from many decades ago, today Scouting is a leader among youth-serving organizations in preventing child abuse,” the statement added.

In an interview with NBC DFW, National President Wayne Perry said: "I would ask parents to look at the programs we have and then judge us versus, maybe not the past, but judge where we are today and certainly judge us against any other youth service organization in the world and they will see that your kids are very, very safe."

Buckland said his life spiraled downward after Air Force officials came to his parents’ house on Travis Air Force Base in Vacaville, Calif., with photos depicting his abuse by a Scout leader. He dropped out of high school, got into drugs, attempted suicide twice, had many failed romantic relationships and eventually ended up in prison for two robberies that he confessed to doing.

His abuser was court-martialed and sentenced to hard labor, Buckland said, but it took him decades to figure out the source of what was troubling him since he, like the Boy Scouts, had buried the abuse. He said his life turned around when he got his dream job as a firefighter and then landed a two-year post in Iraq in 2009, where, while online, he came across stories similar to his own.

“That was the first time that I understood the dynamics of what was going on inside of me that flawed my decision-making, that flawed my emotions, that flawed everything and really propelled me in that direction,” he said. “The light bulb goes off and that’s decades later.”

For Buckland, the Boy Scouts’ apologies are insincere and forced. He said they never contacted him since he was abused in 1982 to see if he was okay.

“These files had to be ripped from their hands,” he said, noting that the lawyers who fought the 2010 case, Kelly Clark and Paul Mones, had “taken us from being a piece of paper to being a person that was offended, and that’s a huge difference.”

“This whole thing empowers us,” he said. “We’ve been powerless up to now. We’ve been at the whims of a multibillion-dollar organization that … has all the money to keep us under a desk in a box. And for now, they can’t do it anymore.”

John Makely / NBC News

Mark Wallace, right, talks with United Against Nuclear Iran Executive Director David Ibsen in the group's New York City offices.

Editor’s note: This story contains a graphic image that some readers may find disturbing.

Perched high above midtown Manhattan, behind security-locked doors in an unmarked office, a half-dozen 20-somethings sit at computers, looking for ways to inflict hardship on the Iranian government and the people it rules. The “war room,” as its occupants call it, is a mere 20 blocks from Iran’s Mission to the United Nations and even closer to the hotel where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stays during his visits to New York.

But this is not a U.S. government intelligence facility brimming with incoming feeds of classified data. The offices belong to the private nonprofit group United Against Nuclear Iran, and the computers contain a wealth of (mostly) open source economic data culled from Iranian and other sources. 

UANI, as it calls itself, has one mission: to wage “economic warfare against the Islamic Republic of Iran ...The regime must be forced to choose between having a nuclear weapon or a functioning economy."

That’s not to say the group doesn’t have roots in government. It is headed by Mark Wallace, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and former heads of the CIA, the counterterrorism office of the National Security Council and the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, sit on its advisory board.

John Makely / NBC News

UANI printed up T-shirts for a recent protest against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Part of what UANI does is psychological warfare, though it’s the smallest part. The group pays for a billboard high above Times Square that takes shots at Ahmadinejad and placed a blow-up Ahmadinejad punching-bag doll outside the Hotel Warwick when he stayed there recently while in town to address the United Nations. It also lobbies effectively, working with friendly congressmen to get sanctions strengthened.

Using 'name and shame' tactics
Mostly, it uses “reputational risk” to achieve its aims, trying to shame U.S. and international companies to end business dealings with the Islamic Republic or Iranian businesses, particularly those with Revolutionary Guard ties, even if those dealings aren't clearly in violation of economic sanctions against Iran. If those efforts don’t succeed, Wallace isn’t averse to using a bigger hammer: If you work with Iran, he is fond of saying, you shouldn’t get contracts from the U.S. government.

While the group’s impact is difficult to quantify vs. the overall impact of economic sanctions against Iran by the U.S., European Union and the United Nations, Wallace’s private network has contributed to some significant successes. Those include persuading an international money exchange to ban Iran and forcing Ahmadinejad out of his preferred New York hotels in September when he visited to deliver his final speech at the U.N. General Assembly as Iran’s president. 

U.S. officials welcome the private group’s efforts, telling NBC News that UANI’s “name and shame” campaigns complement the government’s efforts to enforce the sanctions, which are limited to pursuing civil or criminal cases when companies are found to be in violation.

The public shaming is a familiar strategy -- with a twist. Activists demonstrated and demanded U.S. pension funds and university endowments divest stock in South African companies during the dying days of apartheid in the 1980s and ‘90s. The AFL-CIO and Harry Wu, a Chinese labor activist, exposed U.S. companies that used Chinese prison labor in the 1990s. And Chinese companies doing business in Sudan were accused in the early 2000s of aiding genocide in Darfur.

But UANI’s mission is more comprehensive and it’s led by a high-profile political figure, not a celebrity or anonymous activist. In addition to serving as U.S. ambassador, Wallace worked in the presidential campaign of Republican Sen. John McCain in 2008, working as vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s debate coach.  

It’s also riskier and could backfire. Iran is not without the capability of striking back.

But Wallace feels comfortable that he’s on the side of right and believes he has a unique opportunity to affect history by forcing Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, which Tehran insists are intended to meet its energy needs, not build nuclear weapons. In his view, that begins with “crashing the currency.”

“You have all the elements that are there with the currency,” he said. “We measure everything we do. I challenge you to find a better mechanism of judging the impact of economic hardship that we're placing on the elites.”

UANI has a modest budget -- less than $700,000 in 2010, according to federal records – that it says it raises only from U.S. donors.  It declines to identify them, citing security concerns.

But it claims some big results.

'Stealth sanctions' have big impact
The biggest was its lobbying of SWIFT, a Belgian-based international financial clearinghouse, to expel Iran, then pressuring the U.S. Congress to demand that SWIFT ban Iranian financial transactions from its worldwide network. Without SWIFT codes, international financial transactions become difficult, if not impossible, to complete.  Since SWIFT expelled Iran on March 15, the value of the Iranian currency, the rial, has dropped precipitously. 

Dan Yergin, the energy historian and author of  “The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World,” calls the SWIFT expulsion the “stealth sanctions.”

“Much of the international focus on sanctions has been on the oil side,” Yergin told NBC News. “But the SWIFT and other related banking restrictions have been the ‘stealth sanctions’ that are impacting on Iran’s ability to do business in the international economy.

“Less attention may have originally been paid to them, but they rank with the oil sanctions in terms of their effects on Iran. Overall, the … sanctions are imposing a much bigger cost on the Iranian economy than Tehran would have anticipated last winter and thus are creating a much bigger problem for the leadership.” 

Now, UANI and Wallace want to strike harder. Iran’s currency, the rial, is near collapse, by some estimates having lost 80 percent of its value in the last year and 15 percent in the last week as measured against the dollar and euro. One dollar now equals 36,000 rials at the unofficial rate.

Iran, which for months resisted the suggestion that the sanctions were effective, now acknowledges that inflation, much of it caused by sanctions and the SWIFT ban, is hurting the economy. 

In recent weeks, Wallace’s group publicly pressed European companies that it believed were supplying Iran with the special paper, inks and presses used to print Iranian currency to stop doing business with Tehran.  In a letter early this month to the German company Koenig & Bauer AG, which had provided the Central Bank of Iran with presses in the past, Wallace demanded to know if the company was still supplying Iran, then raised the possibility that continuing work with Iran could threaten its business with the U.S. government. 

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“UANI finds KBA’s apparent business in Iran particularly galling in light of its extensive contracts with the U.S. Department of Treasury and its role in U.S. banknote production,” Wallace wrote. “KBA has been the recipient of over $131 million in contracts from the U.S. Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing, in addition to $2.39 million awarded to KBA subsidiary KBA North America by the U.S. Department of Defense.

“UANI strongly believes that the only responsible action for KBA in light of the fact that the CBI is a sanction-designated entity under U.S. and EU law is for KBA to immediately and publicly reject CBI solicitations for KBA services.”

On Wednesday, KBA told NBC News that it had stopped supplying printing presses to Iran nine years ago.

But in a written response to Wallace dated Oct. 10, KBA acknowledged it had provided “spares and auxiliary equipment” to its “Iranian client” since then. KBA also said that early this year, it submitted a “conditional offer” to the Central Bank of Iran when it sought bids on a contract to for new banknote machines.

Ultimately, KBA decided to discontinue sales to Iran, not long before it received Wallace’s letter, it said.

The lack of such equipment could have the added benefit of making Iranian currency more susceptible to counterfeiting, perhaps by an enemy of Iran, Wallace said. That uncertainty about the rial would make it even less valuable on whatever open markets on which it was still exchanged.

KBA’s rapid response to Wallace is indicative of UANI’s growing clout in the international business community.

As a result of actions like these, “regime change” in Iran is now being discussed seriously in Washington policy circles. Wallace won’t say whether that is his specific goal, but acknowledges that virtually any alternative would be preferable to the current “theocratic regime.”

Beyond SWIFT, Wallace said UANI’s efforts have led to dozens of agreements from U.S.-based and other international companies agreeing to stop doing business with Iran. 

In some cases, trading partners have credited UANI in announcing their decisions to stop doing business with Iran. In others, they have not.

Targeting Iran's auto industry
Iran has the world’s 13^th largest auto manufacturing industry and the largest in the Middle East and Central Asia. The industry is a major employer and a prestige piece for the Iranians. Not every country’s president can boast that his limousine is built in a local factory. Ahmadinejad can.

Numerous European and Asian auto companies had supplied parts and “build kits” to Iran. But UANI lobbied the companies early this year and again “called them out,” as Wallace put it. He again cited the EU and U.N. sanctions and suggested that a publicity campaign would hurt U.S. sales of their cars.

Of the companies targeted in the campaign -- Hyundai, Fiat, Peugeot, Porsche and Renault – Wallace says only the latter continues to supply Iran.

A Renault spokeswoman, Raluca Barb, told NBC News on Thursday that the company's Iranian venture, Renault Pars, in which it owns a 51 percent interest, does not violate the sanctions.

“Renault respects the regulations,” she said. “The automotive business is not included in sanctions against Iran.”

The Hyundai Motor Co. said it decided to discontinue operations in Iran after being contacted by UANI. The other auto companies that are no longer doing business with Iran didn’t cite UANI’s campaign, but numerous Iranian press accounts have connected the pullout to the threatened publicity blitz.

The auto company withdrawals contributed to a 42 percent nosedive in Iranian auto production over the past six months, Agence France Press reported last week, citing industry ministry figures.

UANI also says it forced Caterpillar, the huge U.S.-based construction company, to stop supplying equipment to Iran. After a letter-writing campaign failed, UANI bought a billboard opposite the company’s headquarters in Peoria, Ill., showing a piece of earth-moving equipment alongside a photo of Ahmadinejad and the words, “Today’s work, tomorrow’s nuclear Iran.” As soon as the company halted the sales in February 2010, the billboard came down.

At the time, Caterpillar said it did not have extensive business dealings with Iran, and that it couldn’t control sales in the secondary market. But it did bar non-U.S. subsidiaries from accepting orders that it knew were destined from Iran.

The company did respond to requests from NBC News this week for comment.

Vahid Salemi / AP file

Two Iranian police officers look at the dangling body of Mohammed Bijeh, convicted of raping and murdering 16 children, after he was hanged from a construction crane in a public execution in Pakdasht, Iran, on March 16, 2005.

The most vivid of UANI’s efforts was its “cranes campaign.” After grisly images emerged showing of Iranians being hung by construction cranes, UANI tracked down all the crane manufacturers who had done business with Iran and asked them to divest.  For the most part, they did.

There are other less obvious successes,  like pressuring all 13 of the world’s major shipping registries, including those in Russia, South Korea, and Japan, to deny Iran access to their services. That, in turn, has prevented the regime and from insuring their tankers. UANI also quietly obtained pledges from Moldova, Mongolia and other nations to stop reflagging Iranian vessels.

Not all of its initiatives have worked, however. 

Its biggest campaign has been against MTN, the South African cell phone company that owns 49 per cent of Irancell, which controls the mobile market in Iran and has been accused of tracking Iranian dissidents. But MTN has refused to get out. 

Last week, Wallace excoriated MTN’s leadership in typical, no-holds-barred language. “It is widely known that MTN has carried out orders from the Iranian regime to shut off text messaging and Skype during times of political protest in Iran, and reportedly has a floor in its Tehran headquarters where Iranian military officials compile and access data to track, apprehend, torture, and murder regime opponents,” he wrote in a letter to the company that also went out as a press release.

“MTN has blood on its hands … We call for a global boycott of MTN's products and services and divestment from its stock, until it ends its reckless partnership,” he concluded.

'A liberating force for Iranians'
MTN did not immediately respond to Wallace’s most-recent broadside, but in a press release in February in reply to an earlier letter, it said its investment in Iran was “in compliance with applicable sanctions regulations and law” and that it viewed its non-controlling stake in Irancell as being in keeping with its core mission: “to speed up the progress of the emerging world by enriching the lives of the people within it.”

“Our success in widening access to mobile technology has been, and continues to be, a liberating force for Iranians, whatever their political allegiances,” it said. “Mobile technology has brought communities together, empowered individuals and helped raise living standards for millions in the developing world.  MTN is proud of this legacy.”

Swatch, the Swiss watch manufacturer, has also resisted UANI’s appeals, saying in a letter to Wallace that it “sells to consumers, not regimes.” Why would UANI, which is concerned with nuclear proliferation, care about watches?  Because, Wallace said, the high-end watches Swatch sells and other luxury items go to the “elites,” particularly officials of the Revolutionary Guards, and he wants them to feel the pain of sanctions, even if only on their wrists.

UANI’s allies in Congress give it high praise. 

“What I like,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Florida Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “is they are in the weeds. You name a sector in the Iranian economy and they have been inside it, putting a lot of pressure on them. We’ve worked with them, especially on embargo and sanctions legislation. So many of the bills had their genesis with them.”

The campaign also finds favor on the other side of the aisle.  

“Part of their approach involves putting pressure on corporations to end existing business relationships with Iran,” said Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y. “Along with their success on that front, UANI has used that experience to communicate effectively with members of Congress on how best to strengthen existing sanctions and ensure companies are complying with our laws.”

One major concern about the success of the sanctions is that the Iranians might lash out, having tired of seeing their nuclear scientists assassinated, their nuclear research sabotaged, their currency ravaged.

That may already be happening. U.S. officials ascribe continuing attacks on U.S. banks’ computer networks that began last month to Iran, perhaps in response to U.S. and EU sanctions on its banks. Israel claims Iran was behind the drone mission Hezbollah carried out over northern Israel this week, and Hezbollah acknowledged that the unmanned aircraft that was shot down was manufactured in Iran. And Tehran still has many other options for retaliation, experts say.  

“The main concern for the market is that the Iranian regime acts out in desperation, as the financial noose tightens,” said John Kilduff of Again Capital and a CNBC oil analyst. “If Iran attempts to make good on its threats to close the Strait of Hormuz or attempts some other attack, prices will spike higher, at least temporarily. If, however, there is regime change in Iran, resulting in a Western-friendly government, we could see the mother of all price breaks at the gasoline pump.”

'Punishing the innocent'

There are those who also characterize what Wallace and UANI are doing as harming the Iranian people rather than the government.

John Makely / NBC News

UANI Executive Director David Ibsen works in the "war room" of the organization's offices.

“It is profoundly immoral. It is punishing the innocent,” said Haroon Moghul, a fellow at both the New American Foundation and the Fordham Law School Center for Security, speaking of UANI’s campaign. 

“I'm no fan of Iranian government,” he continued. “I wish it would go away. But what do the people have to do with the government?  It is weakening the people of Iran. We are making harder for them to change their government. Sanctions empower criminal elements, make it harder to civil society to operate, make it harder for Iran to become a real democracy.”

Reacting to that kind of criticism, Wallace acknowledges that his and his colleagues are involved in “a proxy war,” but adds, “I'm comfortable fighting that war.”

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said it is aware of the efforts of UANI and Wallace, but says the group’s campaign is misguided.

“I think that the nature of this organization is known to all of us,” said the spokesman, Alireza Miryusefi. “They take actions based on the false presumption that my country is pursuing a nuclear weapon program. As we have emphasized on several occasions, Iran's program is fully peaceful and their presumption is totally wrong.”

Wallace, however, has no doubts that Iran is bent on becoming a nuclear military power, and remains convinced that the pressure that UANI is bringing to bear will ultimately succeed.  

“Our message is clear: You have to choose between doing business with our checkbook or their checkbook -- with the reality being we're the biggest checkbook in the world,” he said. “Notwithstanding the purported demise of the United States, we're still the biggest checkbook in the world.”

Richard Engel is chief foreign correspondent of NBC News; Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer.

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Outside groups are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on campaign advertisements to influence the coming elections—money that has long been hard to track.

This summer, the Federal Communications Commission ordered TV stations to pull back the curtain a bit, requiring them to publish online detailed records of political ad buys. Before, these records were only available by visiting stations in person, an issue ProPublica spotlighted in our Free The Files coverage. So far the new rule only covers the top 50 markets, and it's impossible to search these files by candidate or political group—meaning it’s impossible to get a full picture of the spending. 

We want to change that. That’s where you come in.

Use the Free the Files widget at right to help detail campaign ad filings in 33 swing markets. To participate, use the drop-down menu to pick a market, click on the “Give me a file!” bar, create a log-in or sign in via Facebook, then pick from a list of recent ad contracts. Fill in the blanks on the form, then click “Submit file,” and you’re done.

Every day, we’ll be pulling fresh files from the FCC website, and asking for your help extracting key data points that will help uncover outside spending in the final days of the campaign.

Every file you help free will be added to our page, so we’ll all be able to get a better picture of the outside groups’ spending.   

Read ProPublica’s reporting on “dark money” campaign ad spending

What do we expect to find in the FCC filings? A range of information – from identifying which outside groups are buying ads and where, to finding new groups that enter the fray late in the game, to details on who is behind opaque nonprofits that are playing a larger role in the election. That’s how ProPublica’s Justin Elliott found the players behind the Government Integrity Fund, a little-known nonprofit that has spent big money to unseat Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio. 

Get started

We have less than three weeks to go before the election. Log in now to help us start freeing the files!

You can keep track of our progress by joining our Facebook group – tell us what you’ve learned from the documents, get updates from our reporters, or ask questions about the documents.

You can also follow #FreetheFiles on Twitter.

ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

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Nueces County Sheriff

Mansour Arbabsiar is seen in a 2001 booking photo after he was charged for check fraud.

Updated at 2:30 p.m. ET: A Texas man pleaded guilty Wednesday to plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, acknowledging he agreed to hire what he thought was a drug dealer in Mexico last year for $1.5 million to carry out the attack with explosives at a Washington, D.C., restaurant.

Manssor Arbabsiar, 58, entered the plea to two conspiracy charges and a murder-for-hire count in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Judge John F. Keenan repeatedly asked Arbabsiar whether he intended to kill the ambassador. Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen who holds an Iranian passport, said he did.

"I take responsibility for my actions," Arbabsiar said.

Arbabsiar also admitted he agreed to help transfer more than $100,000 through a New York bank to help further the plot. 

When Arbabsiar's arrest was announced last year, President Barack Obama's administration accused the Iranian government of being behind the planned assassination of Ambassador Adel al Jubeir in Washington.

The press attache at Iran's mission to the United Nations then called the accusation "baseless."

"Mr. Arbabsiar’s plea today confirms what our investigation had already uncovered: that he plotted to murder the Saudi Ambassador with members of Iran’s elite Qods Force," said FBI Acting Assistant Director Mary Galligan. "The FBI remains ever vigilant toward acts of terror both here and abroad."

Authorities say Arbabsiar earlier admitted his role in a $1.5 million plot to kill the ambassador at a restaurant by setting off explosives. 

See the original story at NBCNewYork.com | More from NBCNewYork.com

Sentencing is scheduled Jan. 23. Arbabsiar faces up to 25 years in prison. A trial had been scheduled for January.

Arbabsiar, who lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, for more than a decade, said he went to Mexico last year to meet a man named Junior, "who turned out to be an FBI agent." He said that he and others had agreed to arrange the kidnapping of ambassador Al-Jubeir, but Junior said it would be easier to kill the ambassador.

Arbabsiar has been held without bail since he was arrested Sept. 29, 2011 at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was brought into court Wednesday in handcuffs. He spoke English and did not use a translator, despite saying he understood only about half of what he read in English. Bearded and bespectacled, he smiled several times during the proceeding, including in the direction of courtroom artists who were seated in the jury box when he entered court.

Defense lawyers say Arbabsiar suffers from bipolar disorder.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Kim said that if the government had proceeded to trial, it would have presented a jury with secretly recorded conversations between Arbabsiar and a confidential source, along with Arbabsiar's extensive post-arrest statement to authorities and emails and financial records.

Authorities have said they secretly recorded conversations between Arbabsiar and an informant with the Drug Enforcement Administration after Arbabsiar approached the informant in Mexico and asked his knowledge of explosives for a plot to blow up the Saudi embassy in Washington. They said Arbabsiar later offered $1.5 million for the death of the ambassador.

A second person, Gholam Shakuri, was charged in the plot but remains at large in Iran.

The Justice Department said Shakuri is an Iran-based member of Iran’s Qods Force, which is a special operations unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that is said to sponsor and promote terrorist activities abroad.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated: “As was originally charged, and as Arbabsiar has now admitted, he was the extended murderous hand of his co-conspirators, officials of the Iranian military based in Iran, who plotted to kill the Saudi Ambassador in the United States and were willing to kill as many bystanders as necessary to do so. Arbabsiar traveled to and from the United States, Mexico and Iran and was in telephone contact with his Iranian confederates while he brokered an audacious plot. The audacity of the plot should not cause doubt, but rather vigilance regarding others like Arbabsiar, who are enlisted as the violent emissaries of plotting foreign officials. This office will continue to pursue the co-conspirators in this plot and others in Iran or elsewhere who try to export murder. Thanks to the great work of the FBI, DEA and the prosecutors in this office, Mr. Arbabsiar must now answer for his conduct.”

Pete Williams is NBC News' justice correspondent. Jonathan Dienst is WNBC's chief investigative correspondent. Shimon Prokupecz is a WNBC investigative producer.    

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As Republican Mitt Romney works to unify the party faithful behind him, the number of lobbyists raising money to help him secure the White House has soared.

More than five-dozen lobbyist-bundlers have raised at least $14 million for Romney’s election efforts, according to reports submitted Monday. That includes 42 who raised nearly $9 million during the third quarter of 2012.

The third quarter marked the first period of pro-Romney fundraising activity for two-dozen lobbyists, according a review of Federal Election Commission documents by the Center for Public Integrity.

Among them, former Republican Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York, who raised $238,200; John Castellani, president and CEO of pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA, who raised $61,000; Brian P. Miller of oil and gas giant BP America, who raised $36,550; and Joseph Seidel of Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank.

Two lobbyists each collected more than $1 million for the election efforts of the former Massachusetts governor from July through September, records show. Bill Graves, the president and CEO of the American Trucking Association, and attorney David Beightol of D.C.-based firm Dutko Grayling both raised about $1.1 million.

To date, Graves has now raised more than $1.6 million — more than any of the other 62 lobbyists whose names have been disclosed in federal filings.

Romney, unlike President Barack Obama, has not voluntarily released a list of bundlers — elite political fundraisers who turn to relatives, friends and business associates to raise large sums and then deliver the funds in a “bundle” to the candidate. They are often given perks and special access — both on the campaign trail and once politicians are elected.

But thanks to a 2007 law passed in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal, all federal candidates are required to report information about the lobbyists who bundle money for their campaigns.

Obama, who, as president, has taken a tough stance against lobbyists in his rhetoric and policies, has not taken money from lobbyist-bundlers, according to records. He has voluntarily disclosed the names of everyone who has raised at least $50,000 for his re-election efforts.

According to his campaign’s most recent disclosure in July, nearly 650 bundlers had collected more than $143 million for Obama and the Democratic National Committee. The president is expected to release an updated list with his third-quarter bundlers later this week.

All of the GOP presidential nominee’s lobbyist-fundraising muscle has aided not only the Romney campaign but also the “Romney Victory Committee” — a joint fundraising organization that funnels cash to his campaign, the Republican National Committee and several other party entities.

Individuals can donate up to $75,800 to the Romney Victory Fund. The first $5,000 is directed to the Romney campaign while the next $30,800 goes to the RNC. The remaining funds are split between other participating party committees.

Romney has rejected calls from good-government groups such as the Center for Responsive Politics, the Sunlight Foundation, the League of Women Voters and the Campaign Legal Center to release additional information about his top fundraisers, unlike former GOP presidential candidates George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Romney’s fundraising network extends well beyond those lobbyists named in FEC filings. Earlier this year, USA Today released a list of more than 1,000 individuals that the newspaper identified as bundlers for Romney.

Even as Romney has denied requests for increased transparency, he plans to list the names of all bundlers who raise at least $200,000 in a commemorative book after Election Day. Top supporters are also being offered special access to weekly strategy sessions, VIP retreats and signature apparel, according to Politico.

Those who raise at least $200,000 between the primary and general election will be honored at the “Stars” level, according to documents obtained by Politico, while those who bundle at least $400,000 enjoy “Stripes” level status.

Some of Romney’s lobbyist-bundlers have blown past these thresholds.

In addition to Graves and Beightol, Dirk Van Dongen, the president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, and Patrick J. Durkin, Sr., of Barclays have each bundled more than $1 million. Van Dongen has raised roughly $1.2 million, including nearly $961,000 during the third quarter, and Durkin has collected about $1.1 million.

Sixteen other lobbyists have raised at least $200,000 for Romney, according to the Center analysis.

Abramoff, once a top Washington lobbyist, pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges in 2006 and served 43 months before being released in late 2010. The scandal prompted Congress to pass a package of new ethics rules.

The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit, independent investigative news outlet. See more of its stories on this topic.

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Scientists hunting for a “silent killer” in the jungles of Nicaragua believe they have identified one reason that sugarcane workers are dying of kidney disease at an astounding rate, but they also are uncovering clues suggesting that other factors are contributing to the mysterious epidemic. 

According to Dr. Andrew Narva, director of the National Kidney Disease Education Program, cases of chronic kidney disease, or CKD, are extremely unusual among men in their 20s and 30s who don’t suffer from an associated medical condition, typically high blood pressure or diabetes.  

But those diseases are maladies of the developed world, not something that would trigger an epidemic striking down legions of adult men in the prime of their lives in rural Nicaragua and elsewhere.

Yet that’s just what’s happening. According to an analysis of World Health Organization data by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, kidney failure claimed the lives of 2,800 men a year from 2005 to 2009 in Central America. Most of those men were sugarcane workers doing manual labor in the hot and humid fields.  

With diabetes and hypertension ruled out, what could be to blame? 

Epidemiologists and other experts looking at the unexplained cluster of CKD in Nicaragua have several theories.   

Dr. Daniel R. Brooks, associate professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Health, has long believed that severe dehydration due to extreme heat stress has been wreaking havoc with the agricultural workers’ kidneys. 

But Brooks recently found early signs of kidney disease in adolescents in Nicaragua who had not been performing manual labor. This finding suggests that an environmental factor may be partly responsible for the epidemic. 

Brooks told Center for Public Integrity reporter Sasha Chavkin, who has played a leading role in publicizing the medical mystery, that “while dehydration and strenuous labor may be an important cause, it’s unlikely to be able to explain the epidemic on its own.” 

Dr. Richard Johnson, chief of the Division of Renal Diseases at the University of Colorado, who also is investigating the deaths, agrees that heat stress and severe dehydration likely play a role in triggering the disease. But he suspects that a form of rehydration peculiar to sugarcane workers also may contribute.   

Slideshow: Mysterious malady fells sugarcane workers

Estbean Felix / AP

Workers in Central American sugarcane fields are dying of chronic kidney disease at an astonishing rate and experts are unable to say why.

Launch slideshow

The workers frequently slice a stalk of cane, peel it and pop it in their mouths, where it produces a sweet sugary liquid. That, Johnson theorizes, may be causing a toxic effect to a particular region of the kidney.  Moreover, the effects of sucrose on the kidneys may be amplified because the cane workers are already severely dehydrated, said Johnson, who is conducting laboratory studies to test the theory.

A new investigation by the WHO and Sri Lanka’s health ministry of a similar outbreak of CKD there has uncovered yet another possible culprit. Tests of rice-paddy workers found higher-than-expected levels of arsenic and cadmium in their systems, raising the possibility that the heavy metals, which are used in fertilizers, could be infiltrating the food chain. The agencies’ final report is expected to be released later this month.

What is CKD?
The kidneys are responsible for a tremendous amount of metabolic activity.  They filter 3 to 4 ounces of blood plasma per minute, removing excess waste and water that is excreted from the body in the form of urine. 

Narva, the National Kidney Disease Education Program expert, said that chronic kidney disease is the result of repeated damage to the kidneys. 

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Mystery kidney disease decimates Central American sugarcane workers

Reporter's notebook: In Nicaraguan sugarcane community, workers stare death in the face

It is diagnosed on the basis of one of two criteria: a kidney that is filtering less than half the amount of blood than normal for three consecutive months or evidence of kidney damage independent of the filtration rate -- blood in the urine or a kidney biopsy that shows disease, for instance. 

In the U.S., Narva estimates only 10 to 15 percent of CKD cases are primary, meaning they are not secondary to high blood pressure or diabetes. 

Dr. Leslie Spry, who has been treating patients with kidney disease for over 30 years, said secondary CKD in which diabetes and hypertension are involved occurs as prolonged damage to the glomeruli, round structures in the bean-shaped kidney where the blood-filtering takes place. Symptoms in these patients often include fluid retention and swelling in the ankles. 

But the form of the disease affecting the cane workers in Central America is “almost universally asymptomatic,” meaning the afflicted often have no adverse side-effects until the disease is in the advanced stages, Spry explained. That means the disease can damage the organ for months and potentially years without the patient knowing, which is why kidney disease is often referred to as “the silent killer.” 

In these cases, tubules in the kidney become damaged, causing “interstitial nephritis” – or swelling in the space between the other structures in the organ, Spry said. Over time patients stop eating, lose weight and suffer complications such as pneumonia or other infections that can cause death. Also, potassium can eventually build up in the blood to such a high level that the heart stops, he said. That poison is responsible for the intense pain that accompanies the final stages of death by CKD. 

Depending on the severity of the kidney damage, “Death could occur in as little as one to two years, as we’ve seen in the past with lead exposures,” Spry said. 

Patients with kidney disease are categorized by stages, which are based on a measure called glomerular filtration rate (GFR), he said. If a patient reaches stage four, dialysis -- a treatment in which blood is filtered outside of the body – is required. Without treatment CKD will progress to end stage renal disease, at which point the kidneys either shut down completely or barely continue to function. At that point, a kidney transplant is required to avert death. 

In the case of the poor and uninsured sugarcane workers, treatment by dialysis and organ transplants are both too expensive and nearly impossible to obtain, making diagnosis of CKD tantamount to a death sentence.

Mike Gagné, a 32-year-old resident of Rochester, N.Y., can empathize with their plight, as he was fortunate to avoid their fate. 

Gagné was one of the 20 million Americans 20 and older afflicted by CKD, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. 

He said he began experiencing high fevers and fatigue in 2007. He also began losing weight, was anemic and had a chronic metallic taste in his mouth. 

He said he saw infectious disease specialists, rheumatologists and other physicians, but they were unable to provide a diagnosis, labeling his malady “a fever of unknown origin.” 

Then, seven to eight months after he noticed the symptoms, Gagné was told his kidneys were failing. In 2009, he was told he needed a transplant to survive. 

Gagné was fortunate in more ways than one. The disease was caught early enough that he was able to enter a donor screening program before dialysis was necessary. And in 2010, underwent a successful kidney transplant after an aunt volunteered to be a donor.   

He said he can only imagine what it would be like to suffer from the disease without recourse to treatment, let alone a cure.

“I don’t think people really know what it is and the impact it has on the person that’s dealing with it in terms of how much it impacts the body and your overall day to day life,” he said. 

More information on kidney disease is available from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the National Kidney Foundation.

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CHICHIGALPA, Nicaragua – A journey to the heart of Nicaragua’s sugarcane industry offers a glimpse into a world beyond desperation.  

Rather, it is a land of resignation.  

In Chichigalpa’s “La Isla” district, many men know they'll die before their time and many women know that fathers, husbands or brothers will slip away in horrible pain, the final insult inflicted by the mysterious epidemic of kidney disease that is battering their community. 

Thirty-two-year-old Maximiliano Lopez sat with me in his backyard, his dog chained to a tree, his feet firmly planted on the hard-packed soil. A well-built man who spent more than a decade as a cane cutter, he's now resigned to death.

This father of four matter-of-factly told me he would be dead in three years, four if he is lucky.  

But then again, folks here are reluctant to ask for more time on Earth when they know of the crippling pain that awaits them. 

 If our bodies are like a smooth-running city, then our kidneys are the town’s sewer treatment system, eliminating the nasty toxins and toxic substances we manufacture and ingest on a regular basis. 

 But for those suffering chronic kidney disease, or CKD, that system breaks down and poisons build up. Without proper dialysis -- a luxury to the vast majority in this part of the world -- the disease leaves its victims bed-ridden in agony. 

Sacorro Mendez-Flores, surrounded by her grandchildren, holds a family photo. The resident of Chichigalpa, Nicaragua, lost both her son and husband to chronic kidney disease.

 American medical researcher Dr. Nate Raines, here trying to determine the source of the CKD epidemic in this region, says victims endure 100 times the aches and pain associated with the flu. 

 “There's no cure,” he said. “… Until we know the cause, we can't implement the interventions we need to make to prevent these workers from dying.” 

 Sacorro Mendez-Flores, pictured above, just lost her son to CKD. In his final weeks of life, she says, he was in agony. 
“He said that everything hurt,” she says. “He felt like he was burning. He'd say, 'Mama, you don't feel what I feel.' It made me cry. I'd say, 'What can I do?'” 

In a ramshackle concrete-block home alongside an aging two-lane highway in Chichigalpa, another family is living through a similar horror.

In a bed placed in the family living room, 63-year-old "Juan" is near death.

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Mystery kidney disease decimates Central American sugarcane workers

Chronic kidney disease: 'Silent killer' may have multiple triggers

Slideshow: Mysterious malady fells sugarcane workers

Estbean Felix / AP

Workers in Central American sugarcane fields are dying of chronic kidney disease at an astonishing rate and experts are unable to say why.

Launch slideshow

His loved ones gather at his bedside -- some in tears, others unable to even look at his body -- as the family patriarch, who spent more than three decades in the sugarcane fields, writhes in unconscious pain, with no morphine to ease his suffering.

(Juan's family allowed us into their home if we would not reveal their last name. His wife’s fear: losing a $150 monthly pension should the sugar company find out she blames his work in the fields for his CKD.)

And the ugliest irony of all: If there is a direct link between the work in the sugarcane fields and CKD, then two of Juan's sons standing at his bedside may be witness to their own end.

They both followed their father into the sugarcane fields, says Juan’s 25-year-old son, Carlos, because "it's the only job in this area. There's no other way to make a living." 

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CHICHIGALPA, Nicaragua – You won’t see a road sign pointing to “La Isla de Viudas,” or “The Island of Widows,” as it’s not the community’s official name. It’s a nickname born from a horrific body count. 

In the past 10 years, it’s believed that hundreds, if not thousands, of residents of Chichigalpa — mostly male sugarcane workers — have died from chronic kidney disease, or CKD. That in a city of nearly 60,000, roughly the size of Ames, Iowa. 

The mysterious and hidden epidemic, first highlighted by the Center for Public Integrity, has claimed thousands more lives across Central America. In El Salvador and Nicaragua alone, the number of men dying from the excruciatingly painful disease has risen five-fold in the last two decades. High rates of CKD also have been found in rural villages in India and among the rice paddies of Sri Lanka.

Sacorro Mendez Flores, who lives in the “La Isla” district of Chichigalpa, remembers when her son first fell ill. Jorge Luis Silva didn’t look sick at first, but inside he was dying. His kidneys struggled to filter waste from his body, to no avail. Five months ago, Flores buried him. 

“The same thing happened to my husband,” she said. “They both died the same.”

Sacorro Mendez-Flores, surrounded by her grandchildren, holds a family photo. The resident of Chichigalpa, Nicaragua, lost both her son and husband to chronic kidney disease.

Researchers are searching for answers about why this disease is ravaging not only the bodies of its victims, but the communities they leave behind. 

The illness spreads
More than 20 million Americans aged 20 and older have chronic kidney disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In developed countries like the U.S., CKD often goes hand in hand with obesity, diabetes and hypertension. With treatment, including dialysis and kidney transplants, many with the disease survive. 

The CKD plaguing parts of Central America, however, is something scientists have never seen before.

“It affects people who don't have diabetes or hypertension, which are the usual risk factors for chronic kidney disease,” said Sasha Chavkin, a CPI reporter who has covered the mysterious epidemic for several years. “No one can figure out what it is that's making all these people sick.”

Slideshow: Mysterious malady fells sugarcane workers

Estbean Felix / AP

Workers in Central American sugarcane fields are dying of chronic kidney disease at an astonishing rate and experts are unable to say why.

Launch slideshow

“It comes at great social, economic and humanitarian cost,” said Dr. Daniel R. Brooks, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Health who is leading a research team looking for the cause of the epidemic. “These are working-age people who are being struck down, and whole communities are really hurt and devastated by this disease.” 

And with little or no access to the life-saving treatments available in the developed world, a CKD diagnosis is often tantamount to a death sentence. 

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In Nicaraguan sugarcane community, workers stare death in the face

Chronic kidney disease: 'Silent killer' may have multiple triggers

“Where we stand right now is that ultimately this disease is not treatable in this community,” said Nate Raines, a researcher with the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine Global Health program, which is collaborating with two organizations in Nicaragua on research independent from the Boston University group. “What we need to do is find the cause. That's the only way to really help the health situation.” 

Many in Chichigalpa believe that the root of the disease lies in chemicals sprayed in the sugarcane fields while men are working, or seeping into the water supply. A spokesperson from the sugar industry says the chemicals used are standard fertilizer and are not used to excess.  

Science, so far, points to a more complicated answer. 

'Markers' of kidney damage found
The research team from the Boston University has linked the disease in Central America to strenuous labor, dehydration and environmental conditions in which chemicals may play a role. That theory was supported by the group’s most recent study, which found “markers” of kidney damage in adolescents as young as 12 in affected communities. 

Thousands of miles away, research in Sri Lanka’s affected communities also indicates chemicals may play a key role in the illness devastating communities there.

As reported last month by the Center for Public Integrity, the country’s health ministry and World Health Organization announced in June that a years-long study had identified chemicals thought to be an essential cause of the disease: cadmium and arsenic. Both are heavy metals found in fertilizers and pesticides that can cause an array of health effects, including the type of kidney damage ravaging communities in Sri Lanka and Nicaragua.

While most of those tested had lower levels of the toxic elements than officially designated as dangerous by the United Nations, researchers believe that long-term exposure, likely through the food chain, may explain the high incidence of CDK. 

The findings, due to be officially released in October, represent a potential breakthrough in the research about CDK worldwide, including the epidemic in Nicaragua. 

Researchers in Central America have not pinpointed a chemical cause. But the new research on adolescents indicates the kidneys of those going into the fields may already be damaged, making the long days and repeated dehydration in the fields potentially deadly. 

Some experts also suggest that sugarcane workers may also unwittingly be harming themselves as they struggle to stay hydrated while cutting up to 11 tons of cane a day by hand.

For a refreshing pick-me-up, they occasionally slice a stalk of cane, peeling back its “bark” and sticking it in their mouths, where it produces a sweet sugary liquid. 

But investigators now wonder: Could that constant flow of sucrose, combined with 90-plus degree temperatures and severe daily dehydration, be a deadly cocktail that slowly brings on CKD? 

“We believe high amounts of sugar solutions may not cause much kidney damage,” said Dr. Richard Johnson, head of the division of renal disease and hypertension at the University of Colorado, Denver. “But under certain circumstances, such as dehydration, we’re concerned the sugar may actually be toxic in causing damage to the kidneys.”

The sugar link
Whether or not sugar consumption plays a direct role in causing the Central American form of CKD, activists say it is a thread that connects the disease to its northern cousin.

In the U.S., rampant sugar consumption – Americans eat an average of 22.2 teaspoons of sugar per day according to the American Heart Association—drives many of the diseases linked to CKD, including diabetes and hypertension. 

And with recent steep increases in the price and demand for sugar, more people are working longer hours in the sugarcane fields of Central America. In 2011, the U.S. imported 330,000 metric tons of raw sugar from Central America, or nearly one-quarter of total raw sugar imports that year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

“Not only is the production of sugar killing people, but the consumption of it is killing people,” said Jason Glaser of La Isla Foundation, a nonprofit group he founded to focus attention on the epidemic and fund research that he hopes will solve the mystery. “It's bad for you and it's bad for workers.” 

The sugar industry, however, rejects suggestions that it is causing the epidemic of CKD among workers at its mills and plantations.

“We are not responsible for it,” said Mario Amador, a spokesman for the sugarcane industry. “We’re working to find a solution.”

He also blames the workers themselves, saying they drink too much alcohol. “It’s part of our culture,” Amador said. “It’s part of the things we do in our country. Poor people do it a lot.” 

Amador also speculated that active volcanoes in the region could have contaminated the water supply. But he admits he does not know why so many have died from CKD.

No matter what the research finds, Central America is unlikely to curb its cane production anytime soon. The world market for sugar is strong, and the industry receives direct help from abroad. 

The International Finance Corp., the private-sector arm of the World Bank, has provided loans of more than $100 million to promote production and biofuel in Nicaragua in recent years. Though the loans went to two plantations whose workers have been heavily affected by kidney disease, they were approved without formal consideration of the disease because the IFC did not find a link between the cane fields and CKD, according to the Associated Press. 

After workers complained about the loans, the IFC helped to negotiate an $800,000 donation to sponsor the ongoing Boston University study, the Center for Public Integrity reported. The money was provided by Nicaragua Sugar Estates Limited, a major sugar producer in the west of the country, part of more than $4 million it has committed toward research and community development in recent years.

Waiting to die
But for many in Chichigalpa, the results of the research – whatever they may be – will come too late. 

Like most of the men in this community, Maximiliano Lopez, spent years in the fields cutting sugarcane. He began at 5 a.m., when the air was cool, and continued to work as the sun beat down, sometimes logging 14 hours a day. Then he was informed he had CKD.

Even after his diagnosis, which bans him from working in the fields or at the mill, the muscular 32-year-old said he used a friend’s identification to return to cutting cane. Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, he explained, and many workers continue to work the harvest after being diagnosed with kidney disease because it is the only work they can find. 

“A lot of people do it out of necessity,” Lopez said. “They have a big family and they're the head of the household, so even if they're sick, you have to find work to support your family.” 

But, as Lopez and other cane workers eventually discovered, short-term survival may mean leaving behind the families that they labored so mightily to support.

“I began working there to earn a living and instead I earned death,” he said. “I’m just waiting for the day to come.” 

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Charles Rex Arbogast / AP

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in 2011.

Federal prosecutors and FBI agents in Washington have launched a new criminal investigation of Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. involving alleged financial improprieties, including possible misuse of funds monitored by Congress, law enforcement sources tell NBC News.

The probe prompted lawyers for Jackson — who has been on a leave of absence from Congress since June for medical treatment — to meet with federal prosecutors this week in an attempt to persuade them not to bring charges against the congressman, sources said.

The sources said it was unclear whether Jackson, who has not been seen in his office for months, would be charged before the November election — a subject that was discussed between Jackson’s lawyers and the prosecutors this week. Jackson’s lawyers urged the prosecutors not to file charges before the election — but prosecutors refused to make any commitments, the sources familiar with the meeting said.

Either way, the new investigation could ratchet up pressure for Jackson to step aside. Despite his illness — which his office has said involves his treatment for bipolar disorder — Jackson is running for re-election, seeking a 10th term. His lawyers did not return email and phone call request for comment.

Frank Watkins, Jackson’s congressional spokesman, says he has not reached out Jackson and has not spoken to him about the investigation, and that the first he heard of the investigation was when he was contacted by the Chicago Sun Times, which first reported the story. He said he believes Jackson is still in DC.

View NBCChicago.com's complete coverage of Jackson investigation

The sources, confirming the  account in the Sun-Times, said the new probe is being run out of the U.S. attorney's office in Washington DC. They said it is unrelated to previous allegations that Jackson was part of a scheme to persuade ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich  to name him to the Illinois Senate seat of Barack Obama in exchange for $1 million in campaign contributions from a top fundraiser.

The sources did not specify the financial irregularities being investigated. But the Sun-Times said the case involves misuse of funds or an account monitored by Congress.  It comes weeks after a report that Jackson and his wife, Chicago alderwoman Sandi Jackson, put their Washington DC home on the market for $2.5 million. A campaign spokesman said at first the home was put on the market to pay for medical bills, but the Jackson later took it off the market. 

Jackson, the son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson Sr., stopped working June 10, his staffers revealed two weeks later. He first obtained treatment at a facility in Arizona before transferring to the famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where doctors said he had "depression and gastrointestinal issues."

He left the Mayo Clinic and went back to Washington, D.C. in early September but has not returned to work. 

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