A list that had University of Colorado officials so nervous they launched an internal investigation to find the leaker is out — mostly.

The Colorado Independent released its report on last spring’s search for a new CU president on Tuesday.

The reporting alleges that more experienced and better known Colorado candidates were passed over to hire Mark Kennedy, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota who was the president of the University of North Dakota.

The Independent’s Susan Greene received leaked documents about the confidential list of candidates, and last week some members of the board called for an investigation into the leak, which Colorado Politics was first to report.

RELATED: Q&A with Mark Kennedy | Leading CU toward the ‘fourth industrial revolution’

Greene ran most of the names, but made a deal to leave out some names in exchange for the university authenticating the list, she reported.

The story says there were 160 applicants, and 11 candidates who were interviewed in person, including Kennedy.

Among candidates who did not make the cut to the in-person interviews were Republican gubernatorial candidate and former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, former Davita CEO Kent Thiry, and two prominent Democratic politicians, former Gov. Bill Ritter and former Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne.

Other than Kennedy, the candidates who were interviewed, according to the Independent, were:

• Walter Copan, President Trump’s appointee as director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, 
• Barbara Damron, a Republican former head of New Mexico’s higher education department,
• Debasish Dutta, who was the chancellor of Rutgers University when he applied,
• former CoBank president Robert Engel, 
• Kerry Healy, the president of Babson College in Massachusetts,
• Darrell Kirch, former president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges,
• Joseph Swedish, former CEO at Anthem, 
• Michael Young, the president of Texas A&M University, and
• the president of a large Southern university who asked not to be named.

Heather Wilson, then-secretary of the Air Force, was the 11th candidate, but she withdrew from contention to take a job at the University of Texas-El Paso, the Independent reported. 

You can read the Independent’s full report by clicking here.

RELATED: At 80, CU’s Bruce Benson is too busy ‘running stuff’ to slow down for critics

Colorado Politics has asked CU officials for reaction on Greene’s story and none had an immediate comment. (This story will be updated if we hear back.)

Critics, Democrats and liberals have asserted the process was skewed to favor a conservative candidate to replace the retiring Bruce Benson, who was a conservative leader and sole finalist for the job in 2008 to replace another politically minded administrator, former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown, also a Republican.