Government Corruption News Articles

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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.

A secretive group of elite power brokers is meeting in the US state of Virginia for closed-door discussions over four days. The Bilderberg Meetings have 131 participants from 21 countries in Europe and North America, the group said in a press release. A couple of top advisers to President Donald Trump are to attend the forum, 30 miles (48km) from the White House. The shadowy group is a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists. This year's group includes Mr Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, his National Security Adviser HR McMaster and Peter Thiel, the billionaire Paypal creator who has been a vocal supporter of the president. The forum - at a Westfields Marriott hotel in Chantilly - is also being attended by Trump critic Eric Schmidt, head of Google's parent company. "There is no desired outcome, no minutes are taken and no report is written," the group's rules state. "Furthermore, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued." Other guests include Dutch King Willem-Alexander; David Rubenstein, head of private equity juggernaut the Carlyle Group; and former CIA director John Brennan. Several journalists are joining this year's forum, including London Evening Standard editor George Osborne. A full list of participants is here. Some critics have accused the group - which has met every year since 1954 - of plotting to impose a one-world government.

Note: An article in the U.K.'s Guardian mentions that Chantilly, VA, is the headquarters to the highly secretive National Reconnaissance Office, which has a budget of $10.3 billion. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the Bilderberg Group and other secret societies.

The story of Cambridge Analytica is one of the most profoundly unsettling of our time. SCL/Cambridge Analytica [is] effectively part of the ... defence establishment. This is not just a story about social psychology and data analytics. It has to be understood in terms of a military contractor using military strategies on a civilian population. David Miller, a professor of sociology ... and an authority in psyops and propaganda, says it is “an extraordinary scandal that this should be anywhere near a democracy.” David, [an] ex-Cambridge Analytica employee, [was] working at the firm when it introduced mass data-harvesting to its psychological warfare techniques. “It brought psychology, propaganda and technology together in this powerful new way,” David [said]. Facebook was the source of the psychological insights that enabled Cambridge Analytica to target individuals. The company ... bought consumer datasets – on everything from magazine subscriptions to airline travel – and uniquely it appended these with the psych data to voter files. “The goal is to capture every single aspect of every voter’s information environment,” said David. “And the personality data enabled Cambridge Analytica to craft individual messages.” Cambridge Analytica could target people high in neuroticism, for example, with images of immigrants “swamping” the country. Brexit came down to ... just over 1% of registered voters. It’s not a stretch to believe that ... the global 1% found a way to influence this crucial 1% of British voters.

Note: Another Guardian article recently exposed how billionaire Robert Mercer used new technology to build a corporate empire capable of swinging elections. The above article further details how mass media is being combined with Big Data to produce powerful new forms of mind control.

"It's the world's biggest funder of terrorism. Saudi Arabia funnels our petrodollars, our very own money, to fund the terrorists that seek to destroy our people." So said Donald Trump, private citizen. But then President Trump made Saudi Arabia his very first foreign destination. Trump rode in a golf cart with King Salman, did a traditional sword dance and speechified about America's great friendship with "the Magnificent Kingdom." What changed Trump's mind? Apparently, $110 billion. That's how much the Saudis announced Saturday that they'll spend to buy advanced American weaponry - one of the biggest arms deals in history. This weapons deal, the president said, is all about U.S. jobs. Yet how many Americans want to work to arm the country that, as Citizen Trump said, "blew up the World Trade Center"? Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. The 9/11 Commission report found that Saudi society "was a place where al Qaeda raised money directly from individuals and through charities," and that it was likely that "charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to al Qaeda." Massive amounts of funding still go from Saudi Arabia to extremist groups. The main force behind the weekend's arms deal is King Salman's son, Mohammed bin Salman. This young prince is leading Saudi's war in Yemen, where Saudi attacks on civilians have been flagrant enough to make the United Nations warn of war crimes.

Note: Read more on the Saudi role in Sept. 11. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

A couple in the town of Mesquite, [Texas] have spent the past several years trying to learn how and why their son died after being arrested by local police. [Kathy Dyer was told that her son] Graham had been out of his mind on LSD and had bitten one of the officers while they were taking him into custody, [and that] he’d seriously injured himself inside the police cruiser as they drove to the jail. After the funeral, his parents noticed items in the hospital records that didn’t match the police account the night he was arrested. So they asked police department for records. They were denied. Under state law, police agencies aren’t required to turn over records from investigations that don’t result in a conviction. Because Graham is dead, there would be no conviction. Graham’s parents did finally get ... videos [of the arrest]. They showed clear discrepancies between how her son died and how local police claim he died. He was Tasered repeatedly, including in the testicles, and put in a restraint chair. Even after Graham showed signs of distress, police waited more than two hours to call an ambulance. Before they had obtained the video, the Dyers had filed a complaint in federal court. It was quickly dismissed for being too vague. After the videos, a federal ... judge allowed the lawsuit to go forward. This problem isn’t limited to Texas. Law enforcement agencies know that federal courts require specificity in these types of lawsuits. So there’s a strong incentive to be as stingy with information as possible.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in police departments and in the judicial system.

In 1953, the then-Director of Central Intelligence officially approved project MKUltra. Originally intended to make sure the United States government kept up with presumed Soviet advances in mind-control technology ... MKUltra has gone down in history as a significant example of government abuse of human rights. The intent of the project was to study “the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior,” according to ... official testimony. Under MKUltra, the CIA gave itself the authority to [experiment on] unwitting test subjects, like drug-addicted prisoners, marginalized sex workers and terminal cancer patients. “The covert testing programs resulted in massive abridgements of the rights of American citizens, sometimes with tragic consequences,” concluded a Senate hearing in 1975-76. MKUltra wasn’t one project, as the US Supreme Court wrote in a 1985 decision. It was 162 different secret projects that were indirectly financed by the CIA, but were “contracted out to various universities ... and similar institutions.” In all, at least 80 institutions and 185 researchers participated, but many didn’t know they were dealing with the CIA. Many of MKUltra’s records were destroyed. But 8,000 pages of records - mostly financial documents that were mistakenly not destroyed in 1973 - were found in 1977. Nobody ever answered for MKUltra. Two lawsuits related to the program reached the Supreme Court, [writes Melissa Blevins for Today I Found Out], “but both protected the government over citizen’s rights.”

Note: Unfortunately, MK-ULTRA is far from the only program to have used humans as guinea pigs in attempts to create more powerful mind control technologies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing mind control news articles from reliable major media sources.

Concerns about the world’s most widely used herbicide are taking a new twist. Researchers looking at exposure to the herbicide known as glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup-branded herbicides, said they tested and tracked 69 expectant mothers and found that the presence of glyphosate levels in their bodily fluids correlated with unfavorable birth outcomes. Glyphosate ... has become the subject of hot debate over the last few years because of research that links the herbicide to types of cancer and other health ailments. Monsanto is being sued by hundreds of people who claim they or their loved ones developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma because of exposure to glyphosate-based Roundup. Documents discovered in the course of the litigation indicate the company may have manipulated scientific research to hide evidence of harm. The team that presented their report Wednesday ... collected the data over two years, from 2015-2016, and found that higher glyphosate levels in women correlated with significantly shorter pregnancies and with lower adjusted birth weights. [Paul Winchester, who led the study], said he was surprised to see such a high percentage of women tested showing glyphosate in their urine. He was sharply critical of the U.S. government, which routinely skips testing for glyphosate residues in food.

Note: Major lawsuits are building over Monsanto's lies to regulators and the public on the dangers of glyphosate. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health.

Undercover officers in the New York police department infiltrated small groups of Black Lives Matter activists and gained access to their text messages, according to newly released NYPD documents obtained by the Guardian. The records, produced in response to a freedom of information lawsuit ... provide the most detailed picture yet of the sweeping scope of NYPD surveillance during mass protests over the death of Eric Garner in 2014 and 2015. Lawyers said the new documents raised questions about NYPD compliance with city rules. The documents, mostly emails between undercover officers and other NYPD officials, follow other disclosures that the NYPD regularly filmed Black Lives Matter activists and sent undercover personnel to protests. In one email, an official notes that an undercover officer is embedded within a group of seven protesters on their way to Grand Central Station. This intimate access appears to have helped police pass as trusted organizers and extract information about demonstrations. In other emails, officers share the locations of individual protesters at particular times. Throughout the emails, the NYPD’s undercover sources provide little indication of any unlawful activity. “The documents uniformly show no crime occurring, but NYPD had undercovers inside the protests for months on end as if they were al-Qaida,” said David Thompson, an attorney of Stecklow & Thompson, who helped sue for the records.

Note: It was reported in 2015 that the Department of Homeland Security monitored the Black Lives Matter movement closely enough to produce "minute-by-minute reports on protesters’ movements". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.

The United States launched more airstrikes in Yemen this month than during all of last year. In Syria, it has airlifted local forces to front-line positions and has been accused of killing civilians in airstrikes. In Iraq, American troops and aircraft are central in supporting an urban offensive in Mosul. Indications are mounting that the United States military is deepening its involvement in a string of complex wars in the Middle East that lack clear endgames. Officials say that what is happening is a shift in military decision-making that began under President Barack Obama. Robert Malley, a former senior official in the Obama administration and now vice president for policy at the International Crisis Group, said the uptick in military involvement ... did not appear to have been accompanied by increased planning for the day after potential military victories. The lack of diplomacy and planning for the future in places like Yemen and Syria could render victories there by the United States and its allies unsustainable. Others fear that greater military involvement could drag the United States into murky wars and that increased civilian deaths could feed anti-Americanism and jihadist propaganda. Some insist that this has already happened. “Daesh is happy about the American attacks against civilians to prove its slogans that the Americans want to kill Muslims everywhere and not only the Islamic State’s gunmen,” a resident of the Syrian city of Raqqa wrote via WhatsApp, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

Note: There is no doubt that U.S. drone killings in the Middle East have created many terrorists. If your innocent mother or sister were killed by a foreign drone, do you think you might develop feelings against that country? Learn how even U.S. generals have said the U.S. has backed terrorists in this well researched essay on the origins of ISIS. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.

The reputation of Roundup, whose active ingredient is the world’s most widely used weed killer, took a hit on Tuesday when a federal court unsealed documents raising questions about its safety and the research practices of its manufacturer, the chemical giant Monsanto. Monsanto’s internal emails and email traffic between the company and federal regulators ... suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The files were unsealed by Judge Vince Chhabria, who is presiding over litigation brought by people who claim to have developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a result of exposure to glyphosate. The litigation was touched off by a determination made nearly two years ago by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen. Court records show that Monsanto was tipped off to the determination by a deputy division director at the E.P.A., Jess Rowland, months beforehand. That led the company to prepare a public relations assault on the finding well in advance of its publication. Last year, a review by The New York Times showed how the [chemical] industry can manipulate academic research or misstate findings.

Note: The negative health impacts of Monsanto's Roundup are well known. Major lawsuits are beginning to unfold over Monsanto's lies to regulators and the public on the dangers of glyphosate. Yet the EPA continues to use industry studies to declare Roundup safe while ignoring independent scientists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health.

WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange’s revelation last week of the CIA’s arsenal of hacking tools had a misplaced tone of surprise. Some scary initial stories argued that the CIA could crack Signal and WhatsApp phone encryption, not to mention your toaster and television. But ... the hardest question here is whether the CIA and other government agencies have a responsibility to disclose to software vendors the holes they discover in computer code, so they can be fixed quickly. This may sound like a no-brainer. The problem is that there’s a global market for “zero-day” exploits (ones that are unknown on the day they’re used). U.S. intelligence agencies buy some of these exploits; so do other countries’ spy services, criminal gangs and the software vendors themselves. A recent report by the Rand Corp. [calculated that] there are about two dozen companies selling or renting exploits to the United States and its allies, with many of these contractors making between $1 million and $2.5 million annually. More than 200 zero-day exploits studied by Rand went undetected for an average of 6.9 years. Given this evidence, Rand argued, “some may conclude that stockpiling zero-days may be a reasonable option” to combat potential adversaries. But let’s be honest: The real shocker in the WikiLeaks scoop is the demonstration ... that the U.S. government can’t keep secrets. It makes little sense for the CIA to argue against disclosing its cyber-tricks to computer companies if this valuable information is going to get leaked ... anyway.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

Two weeks into the Trump Administration, thousands of documents detailing animal welfare violations nationwide have been removed from the website of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has been posting them publicly for decades. These are the inspection records and annual reports for every commercial animal facility in the U.S. - including zoos, breeders, factory farms, and laboratories. These records have revealed many cases of abuse and mistreatment of animals, incidents that, if the reports had not been publicly posted, would likely have remained hidden. This action plunges journalists, animal welfare organizations, and the public at large into the dark about animal welfare at facilities across the country. The records document violations of the Animal Welfare Act, the federal law that regulates treatment of animals used for research and exhibition. Adam Roberts, CEO of Born Free USA, an animal advocacy nonprofit ... says the documents shed light on cruelty in “substandard roadside zoos, shameful animal circuses, puppy breeding factories and more.” From now on the documents will be accessible only via official requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIA requests can take months to process. That’s far too long, Roberts says. When Born Free receives welfare complaints from concerned citizens, he says the organization has always checked USDA records to see if any complaints had already been made involving the facility or animal in question.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the corporate world.

Trump Takes Aim At Dodd-Frank, Investor Protections Rule In Executive Action
February 3, 2017, NPR
http://www.npr.org/2017/02/03/513224023/trump-to-take-aim-at-dodd-frank-investor...

President Trump signed two directives on Friday, ordering a review of financial industry regulations known as Dodd-Frank and halting implementation of a rule that requires financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. Trump himself made his intentions clear. "Dodd-Frank is a disaster," Trump said. "We're going to be doing a big number on Dodd-Frank." These executive actions are the start of a Trump administration effort to reverse or revise financial regulations put in place by the Obama administration. [One] directive will instruct the Treasury secretary to meet with the agencies that oversee the law to identify possible changes. It isn't clear yet how long the review would take, but the official says every aspect of the law will be considered. A second directive would call on the Department of Labor to defer implementation of an Obama-era rule, known as the Fiduciary Rule, requiring financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients in retirement planning. The deadline for implementation was supposed to be April. Backers of the rule say it will prevent advisers from gouging customers by selling them inappropriate, high-fee products. This rule has been heavily lobbied. Dodd-Frank, passed in 2010, [was intended] to implement comprehensive safeguards to monitor and regulate financial institutions so their potential failures would not pose a risk to the entire economy.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the financial industry.

Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard met with President Bashar al-Assad during a secret, four-day trip to Syria, she told CNN's Jake Tapper Wednesday. "When the opportunity arose to meet with him, I did so because I felt that it's important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we've got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we can achieve peace," the Hawaiian congresswoman said. When asked ... whether she had reservations about meeting with Assad, who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians, Gabbard said there has to be a dialogue between the US and Syria. "My commitment is on ending this war that has caused so much suffering to the Syrian people, to these children, to these families, many of whom I met on this trip," Gabbard said. [As] a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committee, [Gabbard] recently introduced legislation that would prohibit sending federal funds to nations that support terrorist groups. "(The Syrians) asked me, 'Why are the United States and its allies supporting these terror groups which are destroying Syria, when it was al Qaeda that attacked the United States on 9/11, not Syria.' I didn't have an answer to them." The US government claims it does not fund these groups and only provides assistance to so-called moderate rebels. However, Gabbard said the Syrians she met with told her that there are no moderate rebels in the country.

Note: Don't miss the CNN interview with Gabbard which raises important questions. For more undeniable evidence on U.S. involvement in developing and supporting ISIS, see this excellent essay. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and terrorism.

The Trump administration is putting a gag on the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its 2,000 scientists, with an order that forbids the public sharing of information and scientific papers produced by the USDA's main research arm. "Starting immediately and until further notice, the Agricultural Research Service will not release any public-facing documents," Sharon Drumm, chief of staff at ARS, wrote in a department-wide email. "This includes but is not limited to news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds and social media content," Drumm wrote. The Department of Agriculture gag comes at the same time as an administration-imposed media blackout at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Department of Agriculture is not in the vortex of environmental controversy, although ... its research does include genetically modified foods - subject to a nationwide labeling battle - as well as the impact of pesticides.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption and climate change.

The announcement by the Justice Department’s inspector general that his office will look into FBI Director James B. Comey’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s emails reopens painful questions about the 2016 election, but it is also welcome news. The investigation will address allegations that Comey violated established Justice Department and FBI policies and procedures in his July 5, 2016, public announcement concerning the Hillary Clinton email investigation. And it will explore allegations that Comey’s Oct. 28 and Nov. 6 letters to Congress, which jolted the presidential election ... were improper. In addition to looking into the actions of the FBI director regarding the email investigation, the probe will look into whether the FBI’s deputy director should have recused himself from the investigation because of his wife’s political involvement; whether a high-ranking Justice Department official or others improperly disclosed non-public information to both the Clinton and Trump campaigns; and whether the timing of the FBI’s election eve Freedom of Information Act disclosures relating to Bill Clinton’s 2001 pardon of Marc Rich was based on inappropriate considerations. This investigation has bipartisan support. It was requested by the chairman and ranking members of multiple congressional oversight committees. Federal inspectors general, who do not leave with the change of administrations ... are the only political appointees whom the law requires be selected “without regard to political affiliation and solely on the basis of integrity.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about intelligence agency corruption and the manipulation of public perception.

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who investigated Donald Trump’s alleged Kremlin links, was so worried by what he was discovering that at the end he was working without pay. Mr Steele also decided to pass on information to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that such material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Mr Trump, who had hired his services, but was a matter of national security. However, say security sources, Mr Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump. A colleague of Mr Steele in Washington, Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who runs the firm Fusion GPS, felt the same way. Fusion GPS had been hired by Republican opponents of Mr Trump in September 2015. In June 2016 Mr Steele came on the team. In July, Mr Trump won the Republican nomination and the Democrats became new employers of Mr Steele and Fusion GPS. By September ... Mr Steele [had] compiled a set of his memos into one document and passed it to his contacts at the FBI. But there seemed to be little progress in a proper inquiry into Mr Trump. The Bureau, instead, seemed to be devoting their resources in the pursuit of Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions. The New York office, in particular, appeared to be on a crusade against Ms Clinton.

Note: For an important viewpoint on the real complexities going on with recent reporting on Trump links to Russia, CIA involvement in Syria, and media manipulations, don't miss this provocative article by Glenn Greenwald and this interview he gave to Fox News. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about intelligence agency corruption and the manipulation of public perception.

Harvard professors and filmmakers Peter Galison and Robb Moss have been collaborating for a decade. They co-directed Secrecy, a 2008 feature documentary about the moral, political, and technological controversies surrounding national security secrecy. Their new film, Containment ... grew first out of work Peter was doing (in print) on “the strange new lands that are at once our wild, biodiverse landscapes, and at the same time some of our most radiologically contaminated,” they told us. “The two of us were utterly taken aback by the ambition of the Department of Energy to mark one of these sites against digging — for a period of 10,000 years.” When Congress [authorized] the nuclear repository near Carlsbad New Mexico - the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) - it was to be regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency which did what it always does: it ascertained how long the materials would remain toxic. Since the half-life of plutonium was 24,000 years, the Department of Energy had to envision how to protect people from accidentally intruding into the site ... for some 400 generations. So ... the Department of Energy [called on futurists] to explore why people might dig into the waste in the year 6,000 AD or 11,000 AD. And here, in this story, what a possibility! We had the American government itself ... commissioning a science-fiction-infused sketch of a future — in order to open a nuclear waste repository.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing nuclear power news articles from reliable major media sources.

A web of truthiness, post-truths and half-truths is replacing a once-shared goal of knowing the actual truth. Ever since Eddie Bernays changed his occupation from “advertising man” to “public relations expert” a century ago, the distortion and manipulation of the truth through covert campaigns has been a mainstay of public life. We make light of it by calling it “spin” instead of covert information warfare, but covert warfare it is, and the prize is the capture of friends and enemies alike in webs of disinformation. Words - stories, narratives - have been weaponized and collateral damage is extensive. The Russians excelled in the use of stolen material ... to affect the recent campaign. They have done the same with neighbor countries to undermine clarity about their intentions and actions. There is a NATO group, for example, that does nothing but peruse Russian propaganda to understand it, but it was discovered that ... they unconsciously absorbed false material as if it was true, because that’s what the mind does, it treats data as data, even when it knows the data is a fiction. So the NATO group has to be debriefed in order to recalibrate their maps of the real to ... well, to the real. But who debriefs the debriefers? Who debriefs us? The inability to discriminate between plausible and crazy plus the impossibility of knowing what’s real in this perpetual fog of information warfare causes anxiety and fear, which people counter with narratives to comfort the afflicted soul. Then it’s called “truth.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the manipulation of public perception.

The Iraqi army, backed by US-led airstrikes, is trying to capture east Mosul at the same time as the Syrian army and its Shia paramilitary allies are fighting their way into east Aleppo. An estimated 300 civilians have been killed in Aleppo by government artillery and bombing in the last fortnight, and in Mosul there are reportedly some 600 civilian dead over a month. Despite these similarities, the reporting by the international media of these two sieges is radically different. In Mosul, civilian loss of life is blamed on Isis, with its indiscriminate use of mortars and suicide bombers, while the Iraqi army and their air support are largely given a free pass. Contrast this with Western media descriptions of the inhuman savagery of President Assad’s forces indiscriminately slaughtering civilians. One factor making the sieges of east Aleppo and east Mosul so similar, and different, from past sieges in the Middle East ... is that there are no independent foreign journalists present. They are not there for the very good reason that Isis imprisons and beheads foreigners while Jabhat al-Nusra, until recently the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, is only a shade less bloodthirsty. Unsurprisingly, foreign journalists covering developments in east Aleppo and rebel-held areas of Syria overwhelmingly do so from Lebanon or Turkey. But, strangely enough, the same media organisations continue to put their trust in the veracity of information coming out of areas under the control of these same potential kidnappers and hostage takers.

Note: Read more on the media bias in news coverage of these wars in this article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and the manipulation of public perception.

It was known as the “secret war,” but the covert campaign the Kennedy administration waged against Fidel Castro in the years after the Bay of Pigs rivaled open warfare in time, effort and money spent. It was a war waged largely by the Central Intelligence Agency from an informal command post at what was then the south campus of the University of Miami - home to JMWAVE, the code name for the biggest CIA station in the world outside Langley, Virginia. From there, upward of 400 full-time CIA officers toiled, plotting the covert campaign against Cuba, ranging from sabotage to assassination. Its chief from 1962 to 1965 ... was Ted Shackley. But Shackley was not the real commander of the covert war. That role fell to Robert F. Kennedy, the U.S. attorney general and brother of the president. By the fall of 1961, under intense prodding from Robert Kennedy, the U.S. policy had evolved into Operation Mongoose, the code name for a multiagency covert action plan designed to bring down Castro. The basic concept of the entire operation was to “bring about the revolt of the Cuban people ... and institute a new government,” [Mongoose operations chief Brig. Gen. Edward] Lansdale [said]. The budget of the Miami station has been estimated at $50 million annually during its peak years. In the most active period - roughly 1962 to 1964 - several thousand Cubans were on the payroll for a variety of tasks, ranging from sabotage and infiltration runs to Cuba to propaganda activities.

Note: A 1967 report declassified in 2003 describes some of the CIA's many plans to kill or embarrass Fidel Castro. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency news articles from reliable major media sources.

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.