Charles “Chuck” Lewis (founder of the 2014 Pullitzer Prize-winning US Center for Public Integrity) in the Prologue to his book “935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity" (2014): “As as a professional truth-seeker, I have always been skeptical of statements by those in power, preferring to ignore the official versions of events in my quest for the (sometimes ugly) underlying realities… Our report found that in the two years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials made at least 935 false statements about the national security threat posed by Iraq. The carefully orchestrated campaign of untruths about Iraq’s alleged threat to U.S. national security from its WMDs or links to al Qaeda (also specious) galvanized public opinion and led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses. Their shameless manipulations and misrepresentations… were a crucial element in the tragedy of that dubious war of choice, and therefore deserving of investigation and analysis in their own right” (Charles “Chuck” Lewis, “935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity", 2014; Bill Buzenberg, “Finding the truth in 935 lies about war with Iraq”, Center for Public Integrity, 20 June 2014: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/06/20/14975/finding-truth-935-lies-about-war-iraq ).
Charles “Chuck” Lewis (founder of the 2014 Pullitzer Prize-winning US Center for Public Integrity) in an excerpt from his book “935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity" (2014): “We named our new group the Center for Public Integrity. Although this title sounded a little odd and somewhat pretentious, we had a definite rationale in mind. It seemed to us that on some level, all investigative reporting focuses on affronts to public integrity—violations of the way things ought to be. So our name was intended to emphasize not just the process but the ultimate purpose of investigative journalism: to hold those in power accountable and to inform the public about significant distortions of the truth” (Charles Lewis, “25 years, countless investigations and 935 lies”, Center for Public Integrity, 20 June 2008: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/06/20/14948/25-years-countless-investigations-and-935-lies ).