Government Corruption News Articles

Excerpts of key news articles on

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The United States...is spending $5.6 billion a month fighting this war in Iraq. Now we have the hurricanes to pay for. One way our government pays for a lot of things is by borrowing from countries like China. Another way...is by cutting spending for things like Medicare prescriptions, highway construction, farm payments, AMTRAK, National Public Radio and loans to graduate students. We ought to start saving on our bloated military establishment. We have more than 10,000 nuclear weapons -- enough to destroy all of mankind. We're spending $200 million a year on bullets alone. We had a great commander in WWII, Dwight Eisenhower. He became President and on leaving the White House in 1961, he said this: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Well, Ike was right. That's just what’s happened.

Note: See the text of Eisenhower's farewell speech on the Yale University website. To view a video of the original speech, click here.

Four years after the nation's deadliest terror attack, evidence is accumulating that a super-secret Pentagon intelligence unit identified the organizer of the Sept. 11 hijackings, Mohamed Atta, as an Al Qaeda operative months before he entered the U.S. Had the FBI been alerted to what the Pentagon purportedly knew in early 2000, Atta's name could have been put on a list that would have tagged him as someone to be watched the moment he stepped off a plane in Newark, N.J., in June of that year. Physical and electronic surveillance of Atta, who lived openly in Florida for more than a year, and who acquired a driver's license and even an FAA pilot's license in his true name, might well have made it possible for the FBI to expose the Sept. 11 plot before the fact. Anthony Shaffer, a civilian Pentagon employee, says he was asked in the summer of 2000 by a Navy captain, Scott Phillpott, to arrange a meeting between the FBI and representatives of the Pentagon intelligence program, code-named Able/Danger. But he said the meeting was canceled after Pentagon lawyers concluded that information on suspected Al Qaeda operatives with ties to the U.S. might violate Pentagon prohibitions on retaining information on "U.S. persons," a term that includes U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens. Asked by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, at a hearing last week whether Atta...was a "U.S. person," a senior Pentagon official answered, "No, he was not."

Note: If the above link fails, click here.

President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage. In a notice to Congress, Bush said the hurricane had caused "a national emergency" that permits him to take such action. Bush's action came as the federal government moved to provide billions of dollars in aid. The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities.

Faced with a record-high national gasoline price of $3.07 per gallon, a senior Republican senator said on Tuesday it was time for lawmakers to take another look at imposing stricter mileage standards on mini-vans and other vehicles. Most Republicans and the White House oppose significantly higher mileage requirements because of the potential impact on U.S. automakers and passenger safety. On Tuesday, the U.S. government reported that the average U.S. weekly retail gasoline price rocketed to $3.07 cents per gallon, up nearly 46 cents from last week, because of Katrina's damage to refineries and pipelines. In June, the Senate voted to reject a Democratic amendment to the energy bill to require better mileage for new gas-guzzling sport utility and other vehicles. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin had proposed that the standards be revised to boost the fuel economy of passenger cars to 40 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2016, and sport utility vehicles to 27.5 mpg. The proposal was defeated.

Note: Why did no major media pick up on this crucial story from one of the most watched news services in the world? Why, with all of the talk about getting off of our dependence on oil, wouldn't lawmakers want our cars to get better car mileage? For possible answers, click here.

It started during British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign last month, when details leaked about a top-secret memo, written in July 2002 -- eight months before the Iraq war. In the memo, British officials just back from Washington reported that prewar "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" to invade Iraq. Just last week, both President George W. Bush and Blair vigorously denied that war was inevitable. “No, the facts were not being fixed, in any shape or form at all,” said Blair at a White House news conference with the president on June 7. But now, war critics have come up with seven more memos, verified by NBC News. Current and former diplomats tell NBC News they understood from the beginning the Bush policy to be that Saddam had to be removed -- one way or the other. The only question was when and how.

Declassified US government documents show that a man suspected of involvement in the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane worked for the CIA. Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born Venezuelan and anti-Castro dissident, was an agent and informer. The papers also reveal that an FBI informer "all but admitted" that Mr Posada was one of those behind the 1976 bombing that killed 73 people. Mr Posada, who denies any involvement, is said to be seeking asylum in the US. His lawyer says his client, thought to be in hiding in the Miami area, deserves US protection because of his long years of service to the country. The documents, released by George Washington University's National Security Archive, show that Mr Posada, now in his 70s, was on the CIA payroll from the 1960s until mid-1976. Mr Posada once boasted of being responsible for a series of bomb attacks on Havana tourist spots in the 1990s.

Note: Why did the U.S. media fail to pick up this astounding story?

The federal judge overseeing the prosecution of admitted al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui has blocked an attempt by the Justice Department's inspector general to release a report on FBI missteps prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a ruling unsealed yesterday. Without explanation, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema denied the request by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, who completed the report last July but since has been unable to get permission to provide an unclassified version of the document to the public. The report, titled "A Review of the FBI's Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the September 11 Attacks," provides an in-depth examination of three episodes considered potential missed opportunities to detect the Sept. 11 plot, including Moussaoui's arrest in August 2001.

Note: Moussaoui is one of only two people ever to be charged with direct involvement in 9/11. For more key info on Moussaoui, click here. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Aug. 27, 2001, an FBI agent was trying to make sure that Moussaoui did "not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center." Why have we not heard more about all this?

When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized that the controls could not be more aggressive because the cost to industry already far exceeded the public health payoff. What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion. That analysis estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA did, but top agency officials ordered the finding stripped from public documents.

The US passport is about to go electronic, with a tiny microchip embedded in its cover. The chip is the latest outpost in the battle to outwit tamperers. But it's also one that worries privacy advocates. The RFID (radio frequency identification) chip in each passport will contain the same personal data as now appear on the inside pages - name, date of birth, place of birth, issuing office - and a digitized version of the photo. But the 64K chip will be read remotely. And there's the rub. The scenario, privacy advocates say, could be as simple as you standing in line with your passport as someone walks by innocuously carrying a briefcase. Inside that case, a microchip reader could be skimming data from your passport to be used for identity theft. Or maybe authorities or terrorists want to see who's gathered in a crowd and surreptitiously survey your ID and track you. Why not choose a contact chip, where there would be no possibility of skimming, asks Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project. "There was another way to go, which was to put an electronic strip in the passport that would require contact." The State Department says it's just following international standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), under the umbrella of the United Nations. The ICAO specified the RFID ... at the behest of the United States. All countries that are part of the US visa-waiver program must use the new passports by Oct. 26, 2005. Mr. Steinhardt ... says the US pushed through the standards against the reservations of the Europeans. "Bush says at the G8 meeting, 'We have to adhere to the global standard,' as though we had nothing to do with it," he says in exasperation.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For more on the risk of RFID chips, click here.

Indonesian specialist Fred Burks ... is making a noisy exit from government service after 18 years of interpreting for top U.S. officials, including President Bush and former president Bill Clinton. Burks resigned last month in protest against what he sees as excessive government secrecy, and since then has been treating anybody who will listen with insider stories about private meetings he attended. Burks interpreted for Bush at an Oval Office meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri in September 2001, eight days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He says Bush displayed such a detailed grasp of Indonesian issues at the meeting that he came away thinking the president must have been fed information through a hidden earpiece. Burks says he is free to talk about his work as a contract interpreter for senior government officials because he was never required to sign a secrecy agreement. That changed last month when the State Department insisted he agree to a new contract that included a pledge never to disclose "any information" that he learned in the course of his government interpreting work to unauthorized outsiders. He refused. "It was ridiculous," said Burks, who learned Indonesian while teaching in Borneo in 1981 and living with an Indonesian family. "In theory, it meant I couldn't even tell my family where I was traveling if that information had not already been made public." He says he also has never had a security clearance. Burks's fluency in Indonesian and Mandarin Chinese made him a valued asset for the State Department.

Note: If the above link fails to function, click here. Mr. Burks agrees that some level of secrecy is necessary, but that current levels are far beyond tolerable. For brief descriptions of some of the fascinating meetings at which Mr. Burks was present, click here. For lots more on secrecy and an insider's perspective, click here.

The Justice Department appears to be hiding behind national security fears in an attempt to dodge a wrongful dismissal suit. Former FBI linguist Sibel Edmonds claims she was fired in retaliation for blowing the whistle on security breaches she says hampered translation of documents and communications related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She filed suit to get her job back, but recently a federal judge tossed out her case, not on its merits but on the grounds that hearing her claims might expose government secrets and damage national security. That keeps under wraps the inspector general's report that investigated Edmonds' allegations. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, a Bush appointee, said he couldn't explain himself further because the explanation itself might expose sensitive secrets. He did say that he'd accepted Attorney General John Ashcroft's explanation that the suit could "expose intelligence-gathering methods and disrupt diplomatic relations with foreign governments." The Boston Globe reported that Ashcroft ordered material in the case retroactively classified. Edmonds must feel a bit like Alice at the tea party, where justice is not being served, and where a secret is a secret but why it's a secret or who says it's a secret is a secret, and we can't tell you why because it's a secret.

Note: Sibel Edmonds just recently self-published a book exposing major intelligence cover-ups around 9/11. To see this highly rated book in which she breaks the government gag order placed on her, click here. For lots more verifiable news on this courageous woman, click here.

A Chicago FBI agent who has complained to the media and Congress that the bureau bungled terrorism investigations had been targeted for firing by supervisors who vowed to "take him out," according to a memo written by a former high-ranking official in the FBI's disciplinary office. The FBI opened an internal investigation against Agent Robert G. Wright Jr. in 2003 just days after his appearance at a news conference and on a national television news program, according to the memo obtained by the Tribune. The top two agents in the FBI's disciplinary office at the time, Robert J. Jordan and J.P. "Jody" Weis, ordered an investigation into Wright for insubordination and had already made up their minds to have him fired, according to the memo. The memo, written by John Roberts when he was third in command of the Office of Professional Responsibility, questioned how often supervisors misused the disciplinary process to silence employees critical of the FBI. His lawyer, Stephen Kohn, said the memo's point is clear. "The FBI uses its Office of Professional Responsibility to retaliate against whistleblowers," Kohn said. The memo, written while Roberts still worked as unit chief for the office, was heavily censored by the bureau before it was turned over to the Judiciary Committee. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Wright has held two national news conferences and has given several television news interviews in which he accused the FBI of mishandling terrorism investigations during the 1990s into fundraising by militant Islamic groups such as Hamas.

Note: For key reports from major media sources on the realities behind the surface activities of powerful intelligence agencies, click here.

A Montreal woman who underwent intense electroshock treatment in a program funded by the CIA 50 years ago has been awarded $100,000. Gail Kastner was given massive electroshock therapy to treat depression in 1953 at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. She was left out of a federal compensation package in 1994 because her treatment was deemed to have been less intense than that of other victims of the experiments. Her treatment was also found to have had fewer long-term effects. A Federal Court judge reversed that ruling, and awarded her the same amount Ottawa gave to 77 others as compensation for their treatment. Dr. Ewan Cameron, who was director of the Allan Memorial Institute, conducted experiments using electroshock and drug-induced sleep. The research was funded from 1950 to 1965 by the CIA and by the Canadian government.

Note: Did you know that 78 people received awards of $100,000 each for having been subjected to CIA and government-funded experiments in controlling the mind? There is much more to this story. Don't miss our very well documented two-page summary on this little-known topic: click here.

More than 240 [Russians died in the autumn of 1999] in a wave of bombings that destroyed three blocks of flats, two in Moscow and one in the town of Volgodonsk. The Russian authorities were swift to lay the blame at the door of Chechen separatists. But no supporting evidence has emerged. Two men from the Caucasus were convicted of involvement after a closed trial this year, but it was widely denounced as a charade. Instead a growing body of proof has surfaced that links the bombings ... to the FSB - the revamped KGB. Independent investigators, including several MPs, who have sought to look into the case have been intimidated, arrested or beaten. Analysts and investigators claim that President Vladimir Putin, who was FSB chief until August of that year and subsequently prime minister, must know the truth. Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "He would know not just what happened but who the suspects were. The truth will not damage him because it won't be told until after he is gone." The 1999 bombings proved to be Mr Putin's political making. He positioned himself as a strongman who would crush the Chechen rebels and restore order to the ailing country. Riding a wave of nationalist fervour, in eight months he went from being a virtual political unknown to winning the presidency by an easy margin.

Note: For an excellent overview of false-flag operations, click here.

In mid-August 2003, Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold, wrote a letter inviting 100 wealthy friends to a fund-raiser at his home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. He wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." A longtime Republican, he is a member of President Bush's "Rangers and Pioneers," an elite group of loyalists who have raised at least $100,000 each for the 2004 race. Through Diebold Election Systems, Mr. O'Dell's company is among the country's biggest suppliers of paperless, touch-screen voting machines.

Note: This Nov. 2003 article became pay for view only shortly after the 2004 elections. For lots more reliable, verifiable information on various aspects of the elections cover-up, see our Elections Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/electionsinformation.

American citizens working for al Qaeda overseas can legally be targeted and killed by the CIA under President Bush's rules for the war on terrorism. The authority to kill U.S. citizens is granted under a secret finding signed by the president after the Sept. 11 attacks. The CIA already has killed one American under this authority, although U.S. officials maintain he wasn't the target. On Nov. 3, a CIA-operated Predator drone fired a missile that destroyed a carload of suspected al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The target of the attack ... was the top al Qaeda operative in that country. But the CIA didn't know a U.S. citizen, Yemeni-American Kamal Derwish, was in the car. The Bush administration said the killing of an American in this fashion was legal. The Bush administration and al Qaeda together have defined the entire world as a battlefield — meaning the attack on ... Derwish was tantamount to an air strike in a combat zone. According to CBS Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen, this is legal because the President and his lawyers say so. "I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here. There are authorities that the president can give to officials," said Condoleezza Rice. Previously, the government's authority to kill a citizen outside of the judicial process has been generally restricted to when the American is directly threatening the lives of other Americans or their allies. The CIA declines comment on covert actions and the authorities it operates under. Scott L. Silliman, director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Securit [asks], "could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in Washington, D.C., under the same theory? The answer is yes, you could."

President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaida two days before Sept. 11 but did not have the chance before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, U.S. and foreign sources told NBC News. The document, a formal National Security Presidential Directive, amounted to a “game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the earth,” one of the sources told NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski. In many respects, the directive ... outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials did not believe that Bush had had the opportunity to closely review the document in the two days between its submission and the Sept. 11 attacks. But it had been submitted to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the officials said Bush knew about it and had been expected to sign it. The couching of the plans as a formal security directive is significant, Miklaszewski reported, because it indicates that the United States intended a full-scale assault on al-Qaida even if the Sept. 11 attacks had not occurred.

Note: Why was this kept secret? Why is it still being kept secret?

Global power-brokers have a penchant for siting their get-togethers in inaccessible places. Since Seattle 1999, Washington and Prague 2000, the calendar of global get-togethers has attracted lively anti-globalisation demonstrations. Davos this year had unusually tight security to try and keep protestors well away, leading to allegations of unnecessary heavy-handedness by the Swiss police. This weekend, it is the turn of Bilderberg, perhaps the most secretive (or as the organisers would prefer to claim, discrete) club for the global elite. It holds its weekend on Stenungsund, an island off the Swedish west coast. The group was created by Denis (now Lord) Healey, Joseph Retinger, David Rockefeller and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (a former SS officer) - the group aimed to [bring] together financiers, industrialists, politicians and opinion formers; the press have never been allowed access. There is a growing perception that globalisation is a process which is being managed for the benefit of a small proportion of the planet's residents and at terrible cost to many more. There is a perception of illegitimacy about unaccountable corporate power and governments elected on low turnout: sooner or later global power-brokers will have to recognise this crisis of legitimacy, and engage with protestors rather than run away from them.

Note: For lots more reliable news on powerful secret societies, click here. And for another balanced article on the powerful Bilderberg Group, click here.

The U.S. government has been covering up evidence of extraterrestrial visits for more than 50 years, an array of 20 retired Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence officers said Wednesday. They demanded Congress hold hearings on what they say is long-standing secret U.S. involvement with UFOs and extraterrestrials. Calling it the "greatest secret of the 20th century," the officials, who termed themselves "witnesses" of UFO-related events, described a series of military investigations they said they saw: crashes of alien spacecraft, bodies of alien beings, secret government documents, even James Bond-style "erasures" of people who knew too much. "The field is filled with hoaxes and scams," said Dr. Steven Greer, director of the Disclosure Project, which had gathered the witnesses. "But it doesn´t mean all of it is." The 20 witnesses, he said, were a fraction of the 400 people who are willing to testify under oath and under congressional immunity about a secretive portion of the government they say has gone out of control.

Note: For a CNN news video clip on this highly revealing event, click here. For lots more reliable, verifiable information suggesting a major UFO cover-up, click here.

We are coming into Tallahassee. A very expensive contract between Governor Jeb [Bush]'s division of elections and a private company named DBT...accidentally wiped off the voter rolls thousands of Democratic voters. [We're on the] 18th floor division of elections. We have come to ask Mr Clayton Roberts, the director, a few questions. "It says here in the contract that the verification is supposed to be done by DBT. That you paid them $4 million. It could look to others don't you think that you paid $4 million to purchase this election for the Republican party. 95% wrong on the felon list. Mr Roberts, could you answer the question regarding the contract?" Instead, Mr Roberts called out State troopers. The difficult questions are: Did Governor Jeb Bush, his Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and her Director of Elections, Clayton Roberts, know they had wrongly barred 22,000 black, Democrat voters before the elections? After the elections did they use their powers to prevent the count of 20,000 votes for the Democrats? CAMPAIGNER: "Were people taken out of polls and stopped from voting? Yes, I think that was not right." Altogether, it looks like this cost the Democrats about 22,000 votes in Florida, which George Bush won by only 537 votes. In all, Palm Beach voting machines misread 27,000 ballots. Jeb Bush's Secretary of State, Katharine Harris, stopped them counting these votes by hand.

Note: You can watch a video of this and much more fascinating information at the BBC link above. To read a brief summary of BBC reporter Greg Palast's coverage of the 2000 election results in Floriday, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/massmedia#palast. And why wasn't this incredibly vital information reported in any of the American media?

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.