Organization’s Objective
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics opened its doors in 2003 based on the premise that we could effectively use the legal system to target unethical activity by congress and the administration. Conservative groups, such as Judicial Watch, successfully applied this tactic against the left since the 1990s, convincing much of the public that the Clinton Administration was unethical. Before CREW, no organization used the same sort of legal tactics to aggressively target unethical activity on the right. CREW changed that. Rather than publicizing the personal peccadilloes of government officials CREW concentrates on serious malfeasance.
In addition to Judicial Watch, there are a number of non-partisan groups that address the issue of government honesty. Unlike CREW these organizations focus principally on public education and lobbying to promote ethics in government. They do not use the legal system to target outrageous conduct as their conservative counterparts do. CREW fills that void. CREW’s goal is to shine a spotlight on those officials who sacrifice the public good to the interests of the privileged few.
Since its inception, CREW has launched over 100 legal actions targeting corrupt government officials. At any given time, CREW has dozens of actions pending.
• CREW sued the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) for its failure to respond to a FOIA request for records related to the administration’s efforts to manipulate the science regarding global warming.
• CREW filed complaints with the Senate and House ethics committees against Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Reps. Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Doc Hastings (R-WA) for violating congressional rules by, shortly before the November elections, pressuring later dismissed U.S. Attorneys to act on corruption investigations.
• In response to CREW’s October 2006 request for a DOJ Inspector General (IG) investigation, the IG issued a report finding that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should have taken some action when CREW sent the Bureau emails between former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) and a former page and that the FBI lied to the media claiming CREW’s failure to cooperate had stymied any investigation.
• CREW wrote the 2004 ethics complaint against Rep. DeLay that led to his admonishment by a unanimous House ethics committee.
