Government Corruption News Articles

Excerpts of key news articles on

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

An interview that I conducted in 2020 with Brad Edwards, a lawyer for Epstein's victims, has always haunted me. It's about a conversation Edwards had with Epstein's bodyguard of five years, Igor Zinoviev, who warned him to back off because of Epstein's shadowy connections to the U.S. government. "[Zinoviev said] ‘You don't know who you're messing with and you need to be really careful. You are on Jeffrey's radar and somebody that Jeffrey pays a lot of attention to, which is not good, you don't want to be on Jeffrey's radar,'" Edwards told me for Broken: Jeffrey Epstein, the podcast series I hosted and reported. "And I said, ‘Well, give me some examples. I mean, who am I messing with?'" Edwards recalled. "And that's when he looked across the table and whispered three letters, ‘C-I-A.'" One of Zinoviev's first assignments during Epstein's brief 2008 detention – just 13 months of overnights at the Palm Beach County jail with so-called work release – was to visit CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. There, he says, he attended classes for a week as the only private citizen in the room. At the end, the director or assistant director – Zinoviev couldn't remember – handed him a book with a handwritten note inside. He was told not to read it and to deliver it directly to Epstein in jail. Edwards later wrote about this encounter in his own book, Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein's usefulness to high-ranking officials might also explain why a Freedom of Information Act request of his calendar by The Wall Street Journal revealed multiple meetings with former CIA director Bill Burns when he was Deputy Secretary of State.

Note: This piece was published on Tara Palmeri's Substack. Palmeri is an investigative journalist and former ABC News White House correspondent. US attorney Alexander Acosta was once told Epstein "belonged to intelligence, and to leave it alone." Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.

A long-suppressed oversight report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) concluded that the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which claimed Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump, had been manipulated under the direction of then-CIA Director John Brennan. The HPSCI report revealed that Brennan created a special Fusion Cell, excluded independent reviewers, and used a tightly controlled team of hand-picked CIA analysts to reverse what the underlying intelligence actually said. According to a CIA whistleblower who co-authored the ICA, Brennan put the team "under duress" to reach a conclusion that Putin supported Trump. The evidence did not show that the Russians favored Trump. According to someone close to the report, the raw intelligence showed that Russian officials saw Hillary Clinton as "more stable and more manageable" – and thus preferable to Trump. But Brennan's hand-picked team reversed that. Meanwhile, those responsible have faced no consequences. There was a time when if you abused your power in office, whether or not it rose to the level of a crime, you were exiled from D.C. Instead, Comey gets a teaching job in ethics, and Clapper and Brennan get TV contracts. The picture is less incomplete and, finally, clear. The Intelligence Community did not merely misread Russian intentions. It reversed its own analysts. It misled Congress.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation.

In women's prisons across Texas, tear gas–which includes agents such as pepper spray–has become the go-to response for minor infractions. Guards deploy it at close range in enclosed spaces, against policy, against humanity. They gas entire housing units to punish one person's "noncompliance." What they don't tell you is how this chemical weapon–which is banned in warfare ... affects women's bodies differently than men's. Studies have found that women experience more serious reactions to tear gas exposure, particularly impacting reproductive health. In 2021, a study on the effects of tear gas on reproductive health found that nearly 900 people reported abnormal menstrual changes after exposure to tear gas. Other studies have linked tear gas exposure to miscarriage and fetal harm. Criminal justice advocates have decried the growing use of tear gas and pepper spray in prisons, saying that they should only be used as a last resort when there's a serious threat to safety. But I've seen guards deploy it for cursing, for walking too slowly, for asking too many questions. It's not about safety; it's about control, about breaking our spirits through chemical warfare. The solution isn't better ventilation or more careful deployment, though both would help. The solution is recognizing that the use of chemical weapons against the incarcerated–many of whom are trauma survivors–is inherently sadistic and unnecessary. Tear gas is even used in Texas juvenile facilities.

Note: This article was written by Kwaneta Harris, an incarcerated journalist from Detroit. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and non-lethal weapons.

In Silicon Valley, AI tech giants are in a bidding war, competing to hire the best and brightest computer programmers. But a different hiring spree is underway in D.C. AI firms are on an influence-peddling spree, hiring hundreds of former government officials and retaining former members of Congress as consultants and lobbyists. The latest disclosure filings show over 500 entities lobbying on AI policy–from federal rules designed to preempt state and local safety regulations to water and energy-intensive data centers and integration into government contracting and certifications. Lawmakers are increasingly making the jump from serving constituents as elected officials to working directly as influence peddlers for AI interests. Former Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., a former lobbyist appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill the seat of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, left Congress last year and returned to her former profession. She is now working as a consultant to OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT. Former Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., recently registered for the first time as a lobbyist. Among his initial clients is Lazarus AI, which sells AI products to the Defense Department. The expanding reach of artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping hundreds of professions, weapons of war, and the ways we connect with one another. What's clear is that the AI firms set to benefit most from these changes are taking control of the policymaking apparatus to write the laws and regulations during the transition.

Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and Big Tech.

Beginning in 2004, the CIA established a vast network of at least 885 websites, ranging from Johnny Carson and Star Wars fan pages to online message boards about Rastafari. Spanning 29 languages and targeting at least 36 countries directly, these websites were aimed not only at adversaries such as China, Venezuela, and Russia, but also at allied nations ... showing that the United States treats its friends much like its foes. These websites served as cover for informants, offering some level of plausible deniability if casually examined. Few of these pages provided any unique content and simply rehosted news and blogs from elsewhere. Informants in enemy nations, such as Venezuela, used sites like Noticias-Caracas and El Correo De Noticias to communicate with Langley, while Russian moles used My Online Game Source and TodaysNewsAndWeather-Ru.com, and other similar platforms. In 2010, USAID–a CIA front organization–secretly created the Cuban social media app, Zunzuneo. While the 885 fake websites were not established to influence public opinion, today, the U.S. government sponsors thousands of journalists worldwide for precisely this purpose. The Trump administration's decision to pause funding to USAID inadvertently exposed a network of more than 6,200 reporters working at nearly 1,000 news outlets or journalism organizations who were all quietly paid to promote pro-U.S. messaging in their countries. Facebook has hired dozens of former CIA officials to run its most sensitive operations. As the platform's senior misinformation manager, [Aaron Berman] ultimately has the final say over what content is promoted and what is demoted or deleted from Facebook. Until 2019, Berman was a high-ranking CIA officer, responsible for writing the president's daily security brief.

Note: Dozens of former CIA agents hold top jobs at Google. Learn more about the CIA's longstanding propaganda network in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation.

In California, the law explicitly protects the privacy of power customers, prohibiting public utilities from disclosing precise "smart" meter data in most cases. Despite this, Sacramento's power company and law enforcement agencies have been running an illegal mass surveillance scheme for years, using our power meters as home-mounted spies. For a decade, the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD) has been searching through all of its customers' energy data, and passed on more than 33,000 tips about supposedly "high" usage households to police. Ostensibly looking for homes that were growing illegal amounts of cannabis, SMUD analysts have admitted that such "high" power usage could come from houses using air conditioning or heat pumps or just being large. And the threshold of so-called "suspicion" has steadily dropped, from 7,000 kWh per month in 2014 to just 2,800 kWh a month in 2023. This scheme has targeted Asian customers. SMUD analysts deemed one home suspicious because it was "4k [kWh], Asian," and another suspicious because "multiple Asians have reported there." Sacramento police sent accusatory letters in English and Chinese, but no other language, to residents who used above-average amounts of electricity. Last week, we filed our main brief explaining how this surveillance program violates the law and why it must be stopped. This type of dragnet surveillance ... is inherently unreasonable.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

Newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation described as "full raw" surveillance video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein's prison cell the night before he was found dead. The video was released last week as part of the Trump administration's commitment to fully investigate Epstein's 2019 death but instead has raised new questions about how the footage was edited and assembled. WIRED previously reported that the video had been stitched together in Adobe Premiere Pro from two video files, contradicting the Justice Department's claim that it was "raw" footage. Now, further analysis shows that one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release. It's unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed. The footage was released at a moment of political tension. Trump allies had spent months speculating about the disclosure of explosive new evidence about Epstein's death. But last week, the DOJ and FBI issued a memo stating that no "incriminating ‘client list'" exists and reaffirmed the government's long-standing conclusion that Epstein–whom the US government accused of committing conspiracy to sex traffic minors and sex trafficking minors–died by suicide.

Note: Internal US Bureau of Prison (BOP) documents suggest a possible cover-up, while a 60 Minutes 2020 investigation uncovered compelling evidence that challenges the official suicide ruling in Jeffrey Epstein's death–including suspicious neck fractures, missing surveillance footage, and a series of unexplained security failures. Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.

The daughter of a New Jersey police chief claims he repeatedly raped her for more than a decade as part of a "ritualistic" cult allegedly involving their neighbours, according to a shocking lawsuit she filed. Courtney Tamagny's allegations against Leonia Police Chief Scott Tamagny, his neighbour Kevin Slevin and others have starkly divided the small Bergen County borough. The 20-year-old claims her father and Mr Slevin heinously abused her in their home, alongside "ritualistic" worshippers in the woods near their house. "[Courtney was brought] into the woods in Rockland County New York, and there was what appeared to be other middle-aged men present with masks on their faces," the lawsuit claimed. "She recalls there being fire and animals being burned, and they would chant. She was sexually assaulted in those woods by defendant Slevin, defendant father, and some of the other men present," it further claimed. The alleged abuse began in 2009 when Ms Tamagny was around four years old, with the lawsuit claiming it continued until 2020, when she was 15. Both of Ms Tamagny's sisters were also allegedly subjected to abuse, according to the lawsuit, with their father allegedly using drugs to sedate them before assaulting them when their mother was either away or asleep. The mother, Jeanne Tamagny, joined Ms Tamagny as a plaintiff on the lawsuit and is in the process of divorcing her husband.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and sexual abuse scandals.

The United States Department of Justice this week released nearly 11 hours of what it described as "full raw" surveillance footage from a camera positioned near Jeffrey Epstein's prison cell the night before he was found dead. The release was intended to address conspiracy theories about Epstein's apparent suicide in federal custody. But instead of putting those suspicions to rest, it may fuel them further. Metadata embedded in the video ... shows that rather than being a direct export from the prison's surveillance system, the footage was modified. Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley whose research focuses on digital forensics and misinformation, reviewed the metadata at WIRED's request. Farid is a recognized expert in the analysis of digital images. He has testified in numerous court cases involving digital evidence. "If a lawyer brought me this file and asked if it was suitable for court, I'd say no. Go back to the source. Do it right," Farid says. "Do a direct export from the original system–no monkey business." The footage confirms that from the time Epstein was locked in his cell at approximately 8 pm on August 9, 2019. However, the recording includes a notable gap: Approximately one minute of footage is missing, from 11:58:58 pm to 12:00:00 am. The video resumes immediately afterward. It looks suspicious–but not as suspicious as the DOJ refusing to answer basic questions about it.

Note: Followup reporting by Wired indicated that almost 3 minutes were cut before this footage was released. Internal US Bureau of Prison (BOP) documents suggest a possible cover-up, while a 60 Minutes 2020 investigation uncovered compelling evidence that challenges the official suicide ruling in Jeffrey Epstein's death–including suspicious neck fractures, missing surveillance footage, and a series of unexplained security failures. Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.

Across the country, armed federal immigration officers have increasingly hidden their identities while carrying out immigration raids, arresting protesters and roughing up prominent Democratic critics. Mike German, a former FBI agent, said officers' widespread use of masks was unprecedented in US law enforcement and a sign of a rapidly eroding democracy. "Masking symbolizes the drift of law enforcement away from democratic controls," he said. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has insisted masks are necessary to protect officers' privacy, arguing, without providing evidence, that there has been an uptick in violence against agents. "It is absolutely shocking and frightening to see masked agents, who are also poorly identified in the way they are dressed, using force in public without clearly identifying themselves," [said German]. "Our country is known for having democratic control over law enforcement. When it's hard to tell who a masked individual is working for, it's hard to accept that that is a legitimate use of authority. The recent shootings of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, by a suspect who allegedly impersonated an officer, highlights the danger of police not looking like police. Federal agents wearing masks and casual clothing significantly increases this risk of any citizen dressing up in a way that fools the public into believing they are law enforcement so they can engage in illegal activity."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.

From facial recognition to predictive analytics to the rise of increasingly convincing deepfakes and other synthetic video, new technologies are emerging faster than agencies, lawmakers, or watchdog groups can keep up. Take New Orleans, where, for the past two years, police officers have quietly received real-time alerts from a private network of AI-equipped cameras, flagging the whereabouts of people on wanted lists. In 2022, City Council members attempted to put guardrails on the use of facial recognition. But those guidelines assume it's the police doing the searching. New Orleans police have hundreds of cameras, but the alerts in question came from a separate system: a network of 200 cameras equipped with facial recognition and installed by residents and businesses on private property, feeding video to a nonprofit called Project NOLA. Police officers who downloaded the group's app then received notifications when someone on a wanted list was detected on the camera network, along with a location. That has civil liberties groups and defense attorneys in Louisiana frustrated. "When you make this a private entity, all those guardrails that are supposed to be in place for law enforcement and prosecution are no longer there, and we don't have the tools to ... hold people accountable," Danny Engelberg, New Orleans' chief public defender, [said]. Another way departments can skirt facial recognition rules is to use AI analysis that doesn't technically rely on faces.

Note: Learn about all the high-tech tools police use to surveil protestors. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and police corruption.

Jeffrey Epstein, the registered sex offender, met with many powerful people in finance and business during his career, but the financier invested with only a few of them. One of those people was Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire. In 2015 and 2016, Mr. Epstein put $40 million into two funds managed by Valar Ventures, a New York firm that was co-founded by Mr. Thiel. Today that investment is worth nearly $170 million. The investment in Valar, which specializes in providing start-up capital to financial services tech companies, is the largest asset still held by Mr. Epstein's estate. There's a good chance much of the windfall will not go to any of the roughly 200 victims whom the disgraced financier abused when they were teenagers or young women. Those victims have already received monetary settlements from the estate, which required them to sign broad releases that gave up the right to bring future claims against it or individuals associated with it. The money is more likely to be distributed to one of Mr. Epstein's former girlfriends and two of his long-term advisers, who have been named the beneficiaries of his estate. Just one major federal civil lawsuit remains pending against the executors of the estate, a potential class action filed on behalf victims who haven't yet settled with the estate. In the past, victims have received settlements ranging from $500,000 to $2 million.

Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.

Hundreds of emails and internal documents reviewed by WIRED reveal top lobbyists and representatives of America's agricultural industry led a persistent and often covert campaign to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations for nearly a decade, while relying on corporate spies to infiltrate meetings and functionally serve as an informant for the FBI. The documents ... detail a secretive and long-running collaboration between the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD)–whose scope today includes Palestinian rights activists and the recent wave of arson targeting Teslas–and the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA), a nonprofit trade group representing the interests of US farmers, ranchers, veterinarians, and others across America's food supply chain. The AAA has been supplying federal agents with intelligence on the activities of animal rights groups ... with records of emails and meetings reflecting the industry's broader mission to convince authorities that activists are the preeminent "bioterrorism" threat to the United States. Spies working for the AAA during its collaboration with the FBI went undercover at activism meetings, obtaining photographs, audio recordings, and other strategic material. The records further show that state authorities have cited protests as a reason to conceal information about disease outbreaks at factory farms from the public.

Note: Read more about how animal rights activists are being targeted as terrorists. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in factory farming and in the intelligence community.

In the spring of 2025, central Illinois was swallowed by a wall of dust so dense it erased the horizon. This was not a natural disaster. It was the consequence of decades of extractive farming practices. The National Weather Service confirmed that the dust came from exposed agricultural fields–land left vulnerable by chemical-dependent, high-till farming practices that destroy soil structure, eliminate ground cover, and kill the living organisms that bind soil together. Similar dust-related incidents have been reported across the Midwest. Scientists and soil experts warn that without major shifts in land management, these events will become more frequent, more deadly, and more widespread. This is not simply about the weather. This is about how we farm. It is about how much living topsoil we lose every year, estimated globally at over 24 billion tons. Nearly a century ago, our nation faced a similar reckoning. During the 1930s, the Dust Bowl decimated the Great Plains. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ... created the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), now the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and established a network of local soil and water conservation districts across every county in America. He planted trees .... across the Midwest, recognizing that roots hold soil. The current Administration's response is the exact opposite. The Trump government has fired at least 1,700 NRCS employees whose very jobs have been to protect the soil.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in the food system.

When Jeffrey Epstein purchased Little Saint James, the teardrop-shaped island southeast of St. Thomas, in the late 1990s ... he told U.S. Virgin Islands officials that he was seeking privacy. He also appears to have purchased impunity. Investigators accuse him of raping and sexually abusing girls as young as eleven at his island compound where he also hosted many A-list politicians, business leaders and celebrities. One 15-year-old, whom Epstein allegedly forced into sex acts, attempted to escape by swimming away from the island. She was caught and her passport was taken away. While Epstein was alive, Virgin Islands officials appear to have shielded him from scrutiny. After his death in 2019, other officials who aided Epstein began profiting from continued secrecy and a string of legal settlements ... that put hundreds of millions of dollars under the government's control. No one appears to have benefited more than Albert Bryan Jr., the governor of the territory. Bryan has tapped the Epstein settlement funds to pay for a variety of his domestic political agenda items. The proceeds were promised to assist victims of sexual assault, human trafficking, sexual misconduct, and child sexual abuse. In late April, Bryan ... announced the allocation of $22 million in retroactive wages to government workers. Bryan [also] applied the Epstein funds for vendor payments and sought to use the money for a variety of other earmarks, such as a $25 million makeover for the Justice Building on St. Croix.

Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.

Americans are becoming progressively sicker with chronic diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, immune disorders, and declining fertility. Six in 10 Americans suffer from at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more. The increase in incidence of chronic diseases to epidemic levels has occurred over the last 50 years in parallel with the dramatic increase in the production and use of human-made chemicals, most made from petroleum. These chemicals are used in household products, food, and food packaging. There is either no pre-market testing or limited, inappropriate testing for safety of chemicals such as artificial flavorings, dyes, emulsifiers, thickeners, preservatives, and other additives. Exposure is ubiquitous because chemicals that make their way into our food are frequently not identified, and thus cannot realistically be avoided. The result is that unavoidable toxic chemicals are contributing to chronic diseases. Critically, the FDA today does not require corporations to even inform them of many of the chemicals being added to our food, and corporations have been allowed to staff regulatory panels that determine whether the human-made chemicals they add to food and food packaging are safe. The FDA blatantly disregarded this abuse of federal conflict-of-interest standards, which resulted in thousands of untested chemicals being designated as "Generally Recognized As Safe" (GRAS).

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals and food system corruption.

Klaus Barbie, the notorious Nazi war criminal known as the "Butcher of Lyon," managed to escape justice for decades, living under a false identity in Bolivia until his arrest in 1983. Barbie worked for Western intelligence services and adopted the alias Klaus Altmann in South America. In Bolivia, he became the chief security adviser to Roberto Suárez, one of the world's most powerful drug traffickers. Barbie's success with Suárez brought him new clients, including dictator Luis GarcĂ­a Meza, who seized power in 1980 with the backing of cocaine barons. Barbie, hailed as the ideological architect of Bolivia's "Cocaine Coup," was awarded the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Bolivian army and granted immunity for his actions. He helped Meza set up death squads and served as Bolivia's de facto intelligence chief. New revelations stem from recently declassified CIA cables from 1974, which show that agency operatives suspected Barbie of involvement in the drug trade – including possible links to Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Barbie was reportedly recruited by the CIA. His role in aiding drug cartels was allegedly part of a broader U.S. effort to prevent leftist regimes from taking power in Bolivia – as had happened in Cuba – by bolstering military dictatorships. This cooperation is believed to have allowed Barbie to evade extradition to France for years. When he was finally captured, the U.S. formally apologized to France for helping him flee.

Note: Read our Substack on the dark truth behind the war on drugs. For more, explore our information on Operation Paperclip, where more than 1,500 Nazis were secretly embedded in the US scientific community and intelligence establishment.

Across the country, state legislatures and Congress are considering laws that would give chemical manufacturers ... liability shields that protect them from lawsuits, even when their products are linked to cancer, infertility or birth defects. Georgia's Legislature recently enacted House Bill 211, limiting liability for PFAS contamination – "forever chemicals" known to damage human health. Several other states are following suit. In Washington, D.C., the 2024 House Republican farm bill draft included language that would preempt local pesticide protections and deny legal recourse to those harmed by agrichemicals. Seventy-nine members of Congress recently wrote to the administration defending the agrochemical lobby, calling pesticides "essential tools" and warning against "politically motivated attacks on sound science." But science is not on their side. When Congress created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986, it removed civil liability from pharmaceutical companies. Today, we are watching the same shield being extended to the agrochemical industry except this time it affects every American who eats food, drinks water or breathes air. This is not a question of agricultural efficiency or feeding America. This is a political maneuver to protect profit, not people. And it comes just as science is revealing new links between chemical exposure and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, endocrine disruption, chronic illness and birth defects.

Note: Our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and water–and the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.

A former housing official who worked under President George H. W. Bush has made an astonishing claim that the U.S. government spent years funneling money into the creation of a secret underground "city" where the rich and powerful can shelter in the event of a "near-extinction event." Catherine Austin Fitts ... served as the assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Housing between 1989 and 1990. Fitts ... cited research by Michigan State University economist Mark Skidmore, who released a report in 2017 stating that he and a team of scholars had uncovered $21 trillion in "unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015." According to Fitts, who worked as an investment banker before joining Bush's administration, that money was used to fund the development of what she described as an "underground base, city infrastructure and transportation system" that has been kept hidden from the public. She [said] that she spent two years researching where the $21 trillion had gone, alleging that she uncovered evidence that there are 170 secret facilities in the U.S. alone, explaining that she and a team of investigators combed through "all the data and all the allegations on underground bases" in order to make a "guess" as to how many might exist. Additionally, Fitts alleged that several of these bases are located beneath oceans–not just underground.

Note: Read more about the groundbreaking work of Mark Skidmore and Catherine Austin Fitts. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and government waste.

On March 21, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that U.S. shell companies and their owners can once again conceal their identities – a move critics warn could weaken national security and spur illicit financial activity that puts the American public at risk. Treasury's initial beneficial ownership information (BOI) disclosure requirement for all companies with less than 20 employees garnered bipartisan support and Trump's approval during his first administration, but it was short-lived. Officially brought into force last January 2024, and then stymied by lawsuits, the requirement passed its final legal roadblock in February 2025 – only to be shelved a month later by the administration. Now, when a U.S. citizen sets up a shell company in the U.S., they do not have to disclose their identity or the identities of the company's "beneficial owners," or the individuals who profit from the company or control its activities. American beneficial owners of foreign shell companies that register in the U.S. have been granted the same anonymity. Under the latest limited regulation, only non-American owners will be required to register with the U.S. government. U.S. shell companies have been successfully used as cover for illegal arms sales for decades. Hints of a business's true breadth and depth only emerge when a trafficker is apprehended, such as the case of Pierre Falcone who used secret accounts in Arizona to hide his proceeds from arms trafficking to Angola.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.