Obama's Document Debate and MERS' Murky Mortgages — ProPublica

Obama's Document Debate and MERS' Murky Mortgages

April 24, 2009, 10:40 a.m. EDT

Here are our editors' picks from today's roundup of investigative stories around the Web. Was there a story we missed? Please keep sending us your picks or include them in the comments section below.

The Washington Postputs us in the room -- Rahm Emanuel's office it turns out -- where deliberations about releasing the interrogation memos took place. Among the revelations: President Barack Obama staged an actual debate, appointing spokespeople for both sides, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates was willing to support the release in exchange for a promise not to prosecute CIA operatives.

Also, a confidential computer registry for trading mortgages owned by some of the nation's largest lenders has been cropping up on foreclosure dockets across the country, the New York Times reports. Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, which holds 60 million mortgages, has been used by lenders to avoid filing paperwork and paying more than $1 billion in fees. MERS' president defended the company, telling the Times that it has imposed order on the sprawling mortgage industry and helped reduce fraud.

Follow ProPublica

Most Read

Latest Stories from ProPublica

North Dakota’s Likely Next Governor Brushes Off Conflict Concerns, Says His Oil and Gas Ties Would Benefit the State

Election Skeptics Are Running Some County Election Boards in Georgia. A New Rule Could Allow Them to Exclude Decisive Votes.

ProPublica Expands Audience Team

Inside the State Department’s Weapons Pipeline to Israel

Republish This Story for Free

Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:

You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:

Current site Current page