to cancel Department of Energy's Superconducting Super Collider project, which had already lost a 1992 vote in the House of Representatives as its cost estimates ballooned from $4.4 billion to $12 billion. In June 1993, POGO publicized a Department of Energy Inspector General report it had received in draft form from a whistleblower. The Inspector General investigated $500,000 in questionable expenses over three years, including $12,000 for Christmas parties, $25,000 for catered lunches, and $21,000 for the purchase and maintenance of office plants. The report also concluded that there was inadequate documentation for $203 million in project spending, or 40% of the money spent up to that point. Area 51 hazardous waste investigation POGO reported that in 1995 it was contacted by a woman who claimed her husband had died as the result of being exposed to toxic waste while working at Area 51. At the time, the U.S. government denied the existence of the Area 51, but POGO turned to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley to sue the government on behalf of the woman and six former Area 51 workers for illnesses and death as a result of toxic waste exposure at Area 51. POGO executive director Danielle Brian said that, during the litigation, the organization obtained an unclassified Area 51 security manual, which POGO gave to Turley and the plaintiffs so they could prove Area 51 existed. The Air Force then retroactively classified the manual, "threatened to prosecute anyone who had it in their possession, and demanded access to all of POGO's files to determine what other 'classified' information POGO possessed," Brian wrote in a signed legal declaration. The court ruled that the plaintiffs' case could not be proved because it could not confirm the existence of Area 51, however Area 51 was thereafter required to comply with environmental laws. In 2013, the government confirmed that Area 51 exists. Unpaid oil royalties investigation POGO released a series of reports from 1995 to 1997 that said the U.S. federal government was owed billions of dollars in unpaid oil royalties from companies that drilled oil from public lands. The reports claimed that the Department of the Interior's Mineral Management Service had a "sweetheart" relationship with oil companies that prevented the agency from going after the industry for moneys due. Federal Contractor Misconduct Database In 2002, POGO launched the Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, a website that compiles instances of