"The Labor Department worked for more than a year to maintain secrecy for studies that were critical of working conditions in Central America," reports the Associated Press. The department hired a contractor to study the likely effect of the Central America Free Trade Agreement, now before Congress. But the contractor, the International Labor Rights Fund, concluded that "labor laws on the books in Central America are not sufficient to deter employers from violations." The Labor Department ordered the report removed from the contractor's website, sequestered paper copies and forbade discussions of it with outsiders. The department also launched "a pre-emptive campaign to undercut the study's conclusions," disseminating talking points that called the report "unsubstantiated" and filled with "biased attacks, not the facts." The department and "an independent evaluator" concluded that the contractor "failed to meet the academic rigor expected."

George W. Bush's Tuesday night national address reflected "a purposeful strategy based on extensive study of public opinion about how to maintain support for a costly and problem-plagued military mission," the Washington Post's Peter Baker and Dan Balz write. The White House consulted the work of Duke University political scientists Peter D. Feaver and Christopher F. Gelpi, who study public opinion during wartime. "The most important single factor in determining public support for a war is the perception that the mission will succeed," Gelpi told the Post. Feaver recently joined the National Security Council, as "special adviser for strategic planning and institutional reform." He questions "the widespread view that public opinion turned sour on the Vietnam War because of mounting casualties that were beamed into living rooms every night. Instead, Bush advisers have concluded that public opinion shifted after opinion leaders signaled that they no longer believed the United States could win," the Post writes.