Government Corruption News Articles

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The White House ... said it was "puzzled" by a former spokesman's memoir in which he accuses the Bush administration of being mired in propaganda and political spin and at times playing loose with the truth. In excerpts from [his recently released book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception], Scott McClellan writes on the war in Iraq that Bush "and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war." McClellan's former White House colleagues had harsh reactions to McClellan's book. Fox News contributor and former White House adviser Karl Rove said on that network Tuesday that the excerpts from the book he's read sound more like they were written by a "left-wing blogger" than his former colleague. Another former Bush aide-turned-critic says the reaction to McClellan's book by his former colleagues has a familiar ring to it. "They're saying some of the exact same things about McClellan they said about me," Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, told CNN. Clarke left government in 2003. The following year, he accused President Bush of ignoring warnings about the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and of using the attacks to push for war with Iraq. Early in the book ... McClellan wrote that he believes he told untruths on Bush's behalf in the case of CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked to the media. "I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood," he wrote.

Norman Finkelstein, the controversial Jewish American academic and fierce critic of Israel, has been deported from the country and banned from the Jewish state for 10 years, it emerged yesterday. Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor who has accused Israel of using the genocidal Nazi campaign against Jews to justify its actions against the Palestinians, was detained by the Israeli security service, Shin Bet, when he landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport on Friday. Shin Bet interrogated him for around 24 hours. "I did my best to provide absolutely candid and comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me," [he said.] "I have nothing to hide. Apart from my political views, and the supporting scholarship, there isn't much more to say for myself: alas, no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organisations." Finkelstein is one of several scholars rejected by Israel in the increasingly bitter divide in academic circles, between those who support and those who criticise its treatment of Palestinians. Finkelstein was also refused tenure last year at Chicago's DePaul University. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said the deportation of Finkelstein was an assault on free speech. "The decision to prevent someone from voicing their opinions by arresting and deporting them is typical of a totalitarian regime," said the association's lawyer, Oded Peler. "A democratic state, where freedom of expression is the highest principle, does not shut out criticism or ideas just because they are uncomfortable for its authorities to hear. It confronts those ideas in public debate."

On a cloudless spring day, the NYPD helicopter soars over the city, its sights set on the Statue of Liberty. A dramatic close-up of Lady Liberty's frozen gaze fills one of three flat-screen computer monitors mounted on a console. Hundreds of sightseers below are oblivious to the fact that a helicopter is peering down on them from a mile and a half away. "They don't even know we're here," said crew chief John Diaz, speaking into a headset over the din of the aircraft's engine. The helicopter's unmarked paint job belies what's inside: an arsenal of sophisticated surveillance and tracking equipment powerful enough to read license plates — or scan pedestrians' faces — from high above the nation's largest metropolis. "It looks like just another helicopter in the sky," said Assistant Police Chief Charles Kammerdener, who oversees the department's aviation unit. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said that no other U.S. law enforcement agency "has anything that comes close" to the surveillance chopper, which was designed by engineers at Bell Helicopter and computer technicians based on NYPD specifications. The $10 million helicopter is just part of the department's efforts to adopt cutting-edge technology for its [surveillance] operations. The NYPD also plans to spend tens of millions of dollars strengthening security in the lower Manhattan business district with a network of closed-circuit television cameras and license-plate readers posted at bridges, tunnels and other entry points. Civil rights advocates are skeptical about the push for more surveillance, arguing it reflects the NYPD's evolution into ad hoc spy agency.

Note: For many important reports on disturbing threats to privacy, click here.

During the rush of post-9/11 patriotism, few stories were more compelling than the life and death of Pat Tillman, the ... professional football player turned soldier. And, according to those closest to Tillman, few have been as illustrative of how the government has tried to manipulate public opinion about the war. Four years - and seven investigations - after her son's death in Afghanistan in a friendly fire incident, Mary Tillman remains frustrated that the people responsible for covering up the circumstances of his demise have not been held accountable. No one has been severely disciplined. [Mary Tillman is] touring the country to promote her book, Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman, with the goal of telling the story of her son's life and of her journey through the military bureaucracy in the aftermath of his death. Since he enlisted, Pat Tillman's story has been clutched by opposing sides of the war's political divide. He left a $3.6 million contract offer from the Arizona Cardinals on the table to enlist in the military and fight al Qaeda in June 2002. On April 22, 2004, Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. Two weeks later, just before his nationally televised memorial service, the Pentagon awarded him the Silver Star. He died, the military said, while charging up a hill toward the enemy. But that wasn't the real story; Tillman was killed by his own men. The military knew that within hours but waited five weeks before revealing it. Years later, Mary Tillman is still looking for answers.

Note: For a former Marine general's account of what war is really all about, click here.

Faced with an unfriendly Congress, the Bush administration has found another, quieter way to make it more difficult for consumers to sue businesses over faulty products. It's rewriting the bureaucratic rulebook. Lawsuit limits have been included in 51 rules proposed or adopted since 2005 by agency bureaucrats governing just about everything Americans use: drugs, cars, railroads, medical devices and food. Decried by consumer advocates and embraced by industry, the agencies' use of the government's rule-making authority represents the administration's final act in a long-standing drive to shield companies from lawsuits. Of the 51 regulations, 41 came from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA. Underlying this bureaucratic version of lawsuit reform is the concept of federal preemption. Rooted in the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal preemption refers to circumstances in which federal law and regulation trump state law, in this instance state laws that govern when one person may be held liable for another's injury. An expansive interpretation of preemption leaves little room for consumers to sue, and that is what the national trial lawyers group, the American Association for Justice, says is taking place. Jon Haber, AAJ's chief executive officer, says the agencies are engaging in "a brazen end run around Congress, the Constitution and the states in an effort to let negligent corporations off the hook and knowingly put consumers at risk."

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The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees. Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department's Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who worked as the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats ... that their office was understaffed and its warnings and recommendations ignored. Brennan also alleges the State Department prevented a congressional aide visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, office members were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers' workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "evisceration" of Iraq's top anti-corruption office, he said. The State Department's policies "not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. The U.S. embassy "effort against corruption — including its new centerpiece, the now-defunct Office of Accountability and Transparency — was little more than 'window dressing,'" he added. Mattil, who worked with Brennan, made similar allegations. Specifically, he said the U.S. "remained silent in the face of an unrelenting campaign" by senior Iraqi officials to subvert Baghdad's Commission on Public Integrity.

Note: For many powerful exposures of government corruption from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.

Windows cleaned by raindrops, white sofas immune to red wine spills, tiles protected from limescale buildup -- new products created from minute substances called nanoparticles are making such domestic dreams come true. Based on tiny particles 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair, ... nanoparticles are showing up in everything from fabric coatings to socks to plush teddy bears. But some scientists are concerned that these seemingly magical materials are hitting the market before their effects on human health and the environment have been sufficiently studied. The few scientific reports available suggest that nanoparticles can pose a threat to human health and to the environment. For example, fish swimming in water containing modest amounts of fullerenes, soccer-ball-shaped nanoparticles made out of 60 carbon atoms, showed a large increase in brain damage. These are the same types of fullerenes being used in various skin products. From the skin, they can travel through the lymphatic duct system to lymph nodes and eventually end up in organs such as the liver, kidney and spleen. When inhaled, nanoparticles will go deeper into the lungs than larger particles and reach more sensitive parts. Because of that, scientists are particularly concerned about nanoparticles being used in spray products. "We have research showing that as a material shrinks in size, it becomes more harmful to the lungs. Nanoparticles tend to be more inflammatory to the lung, and it seems as if the lung has to work harder to get rid of them," said Andrew Maynard, chief science adviser at the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies in Washington.

Note: For a treasure trove of health reports from major media, click here.

The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court -- one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing -- has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously. The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it. The Bush administration has been seeking to expand its ability to gather intelligence without prior court approval. The [Justice] department ... reported a sharp rise in the use of national security letters by the FBI -- from 9,254 in 2005 to 12,583 in 2006, the latest data available. The letters seek customer information from banks, Internet providers and phone companies. They have caused a stir because consumers do not have a right to know that their information is being disclosed and the letters are issued without court oversight. Civil liberties groups say the new data reveal a disturbing consequence of the government's post-Sept. 11 expanded surveillance capabilities. "The number of Americans being investigated dwarfs any legitimate number of actual terrorism prosecutions, and that is extremely troubling," said Lisa Graves, deputy director of the Center for National Security Studies, a Washington-based civil liberties group.

Note: For many reports from major media sources that question the reality of the "terror" threat, click here.

The Justice Department's newly declassified torture memo outlined the broad legal authority its lawyers gave to the Bush White House on matters of torture and presidential authority during times of war. The March 14, 2003 memorandum ... provided legal "guidance" for military interrogations of "alien unlawful combatants," and concluded that the president's authority during wartime took precedence over the individual rights of enemies captured in the field. The memo ... determined that amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which in part protect rights of individuals charged with crimes, do not apply equally to enemy combatants. "The Fifth Amendment due process clause does not apply to the president's conduct of a war," the memo noted. It also asserted, "The detention of enemy combatants can in no sense be deemed 'punishment' for purposes of the Eighth Amendment," which prohibits "cruel and unusual" forms of punishment. The memo was drafted by John Yoo, who was at the time the deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Former aides to John Ashcroft say the then-attorney general privately dubbed Yoo "Dr. Yes" for being so closely aligned with lawyers at the White House. The memo also provided an argument in defense of government interrogators who used harsh tactics in their line of work. The memo also laid out a defense against the authority of the U.N. Convention Against Torture, or CAT. Jack Goldsmith who headed OLC from October 2003 to July 2004, and worked at the Pentagon before coming to the department ... described the problems he had reviewing and standing by Yoo's work. "My first [reaction] was disbelief that programs of this importance could be supported by legal opinions that were this flawed."

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Months before New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned, a lawyer for a GOP political operative contacted the FBI, alleging that Spitzer had hired prostitutes while in Florida. A letter, dated Nov. 19, said Roger Stone, who lives in Miami Beach, learned the information from “a social contact in an adult-themed club.” Stone, known for shutting down the 2000 presidential election re-count in Miami-Dade County, is a longtime nemesis of Spitzer. His lawyer wrote the letter after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he said the FBI did not specify why he was contacted. “Mr. Stone respectfully declines to meet with you at this time,” the letter stated, before going on to offer “certain information” about Spitzer. “The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services. It is Mr. Stone’s understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some pre-arranged transfer,” it said. “It is also my client’s understanding from the same source that Gov. Spitzer did not remove his mid-calf-length black socks during the sex act. Perhaps you can use this detail to corroborate Mr. Stone’s information,” the letter said. It was signed by attorney Paul Rolf Jensen. Another of Stone’s lawyers, Robert Buschel, said the letter’s release is an attempt to set the record straight. “The conspiracy enthusiasts on the Internet are going wild over Roger Stone’s role in the fall of Eliot Spitzer. We felt it was important to lay out for the public exactly what Mr. Stone did tell the government,” Buschel said.

Note: Roger Stone, the "longtime nemesis of Spitzer", is also a notorious Republican "dirty trickster" since the Nixon era.

The Justice Department used some of its most intrusive tactics against Eliot Spitzer, examining his financial records, eavesdropping on his phone calls and tailing him during its criminal investigation of the Emperor’s Club prostitution ring. The scale and intensity of the investigation of Mr. Spitzer, then the governor of New York, seemed ... to be a departure for the Justice Department, which aggressively investigates allegations of wrongdoing by public officials, but almost never investigates people who pay prostitutes for sex. A review of recent federal cases shows that federal prosecutors go sparingly after owners and operators of prostitution enterprises, and usually only when millions of dollars are involved or there are aggravating circumstances, like human trafficking or child exploitation. The focus on Mr. Spitzer was so intense that the F.B.I. used surveillance teams to follow both him and the prostitute in Washington in February. Stakeouts and surveillance are labor-intensive and often involve teams of a dozen or more agents and non-agent specialists. An affidavit filed in the prostitution case did not identify Mr. Spitzer by name, only as Client 9, but it provided far more detail, some of it unusually explicit, about Client 9’s encounter with the prostitute than about any of the nine other clients identified by number in the document. Several current and former federal prosecutors and prominent defense lawyers who reviewed the document said the inclusion of such salacious details about Mr. Spitzer’s encounter with the prostitute went far beyond what was necessary to provide probable cause for the arrests and for searches, the purpose of the affidavit. The government has not accused Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat, of any wrongdoing.

Note: A point left out by this report in the New York Times, which so prominently broke the Spitzer revelations, is that the names of the other "Clients" were never released. Could this be because the investigation and leaks to the media were politically motivated?

The FBI has increasingly used administrative orders to obtain the personal records of U.S. citizens rather than foreigners implicated in terrorism or counterintelligence investigations, and at least once it relied on such orders to obtain records that a special intelligence-gathering court had deemed protected by the First Amendment, according to two government audits released yesterday. The episode was outlined in a Justice Department report that concluded the FBI had abused its intelligence-gathering privileges by issuing inadequately documented "national security letters" from 2003 to 2006. The report makes it clear that the abuses persisted in 2006 and disclosed that 60 percent of the nearly 50,000 security letters issued that year by the FBI targeted Americans. Because U.S. citizens enjoy constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, judicial warrants are ordinarily required for government surveillance. But national security letters are approved only by FBI officials and are not subject to judicial approval; they routinely demand certain types of personal data, such as telephone, e-mail and financial records, while barring the recipient from disclosing that the information was requested or supplied. "The fact that these are being used against U.S. citizens, and being used so aggressively, should call into question the claim that these powers are about terrorists and not just about collecting information on all kinds of people," said Jameel Jaffer, national security director at the American Civil Liberties Union. "They're basically using national security letters to evade legal requirements that would be enforced if there were judicial oversight."

Note: For many key reports from major media sources on increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.

Last week, it was a $200 billion cash-for-bond swap for the banks. This week, it was a $200 billion bond-for-bond swap for the big investment houses. If they keep this up, pretty soon you'll be able to walk into any Federal Reserve bank and hock that diamond brooch you inherited from Aunt Mildred. Forget all that nonsense about the Bernanke Fed being too timid or behind the curve. In the face of what is turning into the most serious financial market crisis since the Great Depression, the Fed has been more aggressive and more creative in using its limitless balance sheet -- in effect, its ability to print money -- than at any time in history. We can argue till the cows come home about whether this is a bailout for Wall Street. It is -- but only to the extent that it is also a bailout for all of us, meant to prevent a financial and economic meltdown that drags everyone down with it. In broad strokes, we're going through a massive "de-leveraging" of the economy, wringing out trillions of dollars of debt that had artificially driven up the price of real estate and financial assets, and, more generally, allowed Americans to live beyond their means. Fed officials warn that this de-leveraging is nowhere near finished. It's anyone's guess how long this credit crunch will last, but the chances are that we'll have several more market meltdowns and Fed rescues before it's over, probably in the fall. Until then, the dollar will continue to get hammered and stocks will continue their fitful decline. And if the last two financially induced recessions are any guide, it will be well into 2009 before the economy hits bottom, followed by a couple of years of slow growth and "jobless" recovery.

Note: The title of this article is quite revealing. A bailout for the big banks is considered to be a bailout for everyone. If you believe this, we most highly encourage you to read our powerful two-page summary of the banking cover-up available here.

The Bush administration allowed CIA interrogators to use tactics that were "quite distressing, uncomfortable, even frightening," as long as they did not cause enough severe and lasting pain to constitute illegal torture, a senior Justice Department official said last week. In testimony before a House subcommittee, Steven G. Bradbury, the acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, spelled out how the administration regulated the CIA's use of rough tactics and offered new details of how [waterboarding] was used to compel disclosures by prisoners. Bradbury indicated that no water entered the lungs of the three prisoners who were subjected to the practice, lending credence to previous accounts that the noses and mouths of CIA captives were covered in cloth or cellophane. Cellophane could pose a serious asphyxiation risk, torture experts said. Bradbury's unusually frank testimony ... stunned many civil liberties advocates and outside legal scholars who have long criticized the Bush administration's secretive and aggressive interrogation policies. Martin S. Lederman, a former Office of Legal Counsel official who teaches law at Georgetown University, called Bradbury's testimony "chilling." Lederman said that "to say that this is not severe physical suffering -- is not torture -- is absurd. And to invoke the defense that what the Spanish Inquisition did was worse and that we use a more benign, non-torture form of waterboarding . . . is obscene." Bradbury wrote two secret memos in 2005 that authorized waterboarding, head-slapping and other harsh tactics by the CIA. As a result of that and other issues, Senate Democrats have repeatedly blocked Bradbury's nomination to head the legal counsel's office permanently.

The US, EU and other democracies are accepting flawed and unfair elections out of political expediency, Human Rights Watch says in its annual report. Allowing autocrats to pose as democrats without demanding they uphold civil and political rights risked undermining human rights worldwide, it warned. HRW said Pakistan, Thailand, Bahrain, Jordan, Nigeria, Kenya and Russia had been falsely claiming to be democratic. In the report, HRW said established democracies such as the US and members of the European Union were increasingly tolerating autocrats "claiming the mantle of democracy". "In 2007 too many governments ... acted as if simply holding a vote is enough to prove a nation 'democratic', and Washington, Brussels and European capitals played along. The Bush administration has spoken of its commitment to democracy abroad but often kept silent about the need for all governments to respect human rights." HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth said it had become too easy for autocrats to get away with mounting a sham democracy "because too many Western governments insist on elections and leave it at that. They don't press governments on the key human rights issues that make democracy function - a free press, peaceful assembly, and a functioning civil society that can really challenge power. It seems Washington and European governments will accept even the most dubious election so long as the 'victor' is a strategic or commercial ally," Mr Roth said.

For the last four years, two robot rovers operated from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge have been moving across the surface of Mars, taking photographs and collecting information. It's an epic event in the history of exploration, one of many for which JPL's 7,000 civilian scientists and engineers are responsible -- when they're not fending off the U.S. government's attempts to conduct an intimidating and probably illegal inquisition into the intimate details of their lives. The problem began -- as so many have -- in the security mania that gripped the Bush administration after 9/11. Presidential Directive No. 12, issued by the Department of Homeland Security, directed federal agencies to adopt a uniform badge that could be used by employees and contractors to gain access to government facilities. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin ... directed Caltech, which has a contract to run JPL for NASA, to make sure all of the lab's employees complied. The government demanded that the scientists, in order to get the badges, fill out questionnaires on their personal lives and waive the privacy of their financial, medical and psychiatric records. The government also wanted permission to gather information about them by interviewing third parties. Twenty-eight of JPL's senior scientists sued in federal court to stop the government and Caltech from forcing them to agree to the background checks as the price of keeping their jobs. They point out that Griffin is one of those who remain skeptical that human actions contribute to global warming, and that some of JPL's near-Earth science has played a critical role in establishing the empirical case to the contrary. They see the background checks as the first step toward establishing a system of intimidation that might be used to silence inconvenient science.

Note: For many disturbing reports on threats to our civil liberties, click here.

The Food and Drug Administration is set to announce as early as next week that meat and milk from cloned farm animals and their offspring can start making their way toward supermarket shelves. The decision would be a notable act of defiance against Congress, which last month passed appropriations legislation recommending that any such approval be delayed pending further studies. Moreover, the Senate version of the Farm bill ... contains stronger, binding language that would block FDA action on cloned food, probably for years. The FDA has hinted strongly in the past year that it is ready to lift its "voluntary moratorium" on the marketing of milk and meat from clones and their offspring, saying that the science led them to that decision. But public opinion has been negative on the issue, with some saying that not enough safety studies have been conducted and others concerned about the health of the clones, which are far more likely than ordinary farm animals to die early in life. A handful of U.S. companies have pushed for marketing approval. Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group, said she had read the entire 678-page draft risk assessment and found it to be "long on assumptions and short on data, and especially short on the data that are directly relevant to food consumption safety." Of particular concern, she said, was that even though the vast majority of clones die either before birth or soon after, those that survive are deemed normal. She said the FDA should withhold approval at least until it has a regulatory plan in place that will give it an ability to track food from clones and watch for human health impacts. Others have called for mandatory labeling so consumers can avoid products from clones. The FDA has said that lacking any safety concerns, it will not demand such labels. The Agriculture Department has also declared that meat from clones cannot be deemed organic.

Note: For lots more reliable information on how big business takes huge risks with the food we eat, click here.

This has been an important week in the torture debate in America. It has been the week of the President’s coming-out party. This week, a CIA agent, John Kiriakou, appeared, first on ABC News and then in an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, and explained just how the system works. When we want to torture someone (and it is torture he said; no one involved with these techniques would ever think anything different), we have to write it up. The team leader of the torture team proposes what torture techniques will be used and when. He sends it to the Deputy Chief of Operations at the CIA. And there it is reviewed by the hierarchy of the Company. Then the proposal is passed to the Justice Department to be reviewed, blessed, and it is passed to the National Security Council in the White House, to be reviewed and approved. The NSC is chaired, of course, by George W. Bush, whose personal authority is invoked for each and every instance of torture authorized. And, according to Kiriakou as well as others, Bush’s answer is never “no.” He has never found a case where he didn’t find torture was appropriate. Here’s a key piece of the Kiriakou statement: LAUER: "Was the White House involved in that decision?" KIRIAKOU: "Absolutely, this isn’t something done willy nilly. It’s not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department." He then goes into the process in considerable detail. Watch the video here. So now the process can be fully diagrammed, and the cast of characters is stunning. The torture system involves the operations division of the CIA on the implementation side. The Justice Department is right in the thick of it. And finally the White House. David Addington, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley—these are all names we can now link directly to the torture system. They decided who would be tortured and how.

Transcript: [Suzanne] MALVEAUX: A Texas mystery solved -- at least partially. We now know Houston police are going to start using unmanned drone aircraft. But the question remains, well, for what? Stephen Dean of CNN affiliate KPRC has got an exclusive look. STEPHEN DEAN, KPRC CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): HPD [Houston Police Dept.], the federal Department of Homeland Security and other invited guests all watching to see how this drone could be used for police work in and around Houston. We tracked that drone from News Chopper 2. And that drone was able to use a high-powered camera to track us. Those cameras can actually look into people's homes or even follow them in moving cars -- which raises all sorts of new questions. HPD quickly hustled together a news conference when it realized our cameras were there for the entire secret test. Executive Assistant Chief Martha Mantabo admits that could mean covert police action. But she says it's too early to tell what else HPD will do with the aircraft. We asked, are these drones headed for ticketing speeders from the sky? MONTALVO: I'm not ruling anything out. DEAN: Back at the secret test site, police helicopter pilots claimed the entire air space was restricted and even threatened our local 2 Investigates pilot with action from the FAA if we didn't leave. But we checked with FAA several times and there never was a flight restriction. That leaves some to wonder whether the police are now ready to use terrorism fears since 911 to push the envelope further into our private lives.

Note: To watch the video of secret police work in action, click here.

According to a former AT&T employee, the government has warrantless access to a great deal of Internet traffic should they care to take a peek. As information is traded between users it flows also into a locked, secret room on the sixth floor of AT&T's San Francisco offices and other rooms around the country -- where the U.S. government can sift through and find the information it wants, former AT&T employee Mark Klein alleged Wednesday at a press conference on Capitol Hill. "An exact copy of all Internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables -- e-mails, documents, pictures, Web browsing, voice-over-Internet phone conversations, everything -- was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room," he said. Klein ... said that as an AT&T technician overseeing Internet operations in San Francisco, he helped maintain optical splitters that diverted data en route to and from AT&T customers. One day he found that the splitters were hard-wired into a secret room on the sixth floor. Documents he obtained [from] AT&T showed that highly sophisticated data mining equipment was kept there. Conversations he had with other technicians and the AT&T documents led Klein to believe there are 15 to 20 such sites nationwide, including in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego and Atlanta, he said. Brian Reid, a former Stanford electrical engineering professor who appeared with Klein, said the NSA would logically collect phone and Internet data simultaneously because of the way fiber optic cables are intertwined. He said ... the system described by Klein suggests a "wholesale, dragnet surveillance." Of the major telecom companies, only Qwest is known to have rejected government requests for access to data. Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, appealing an insider trading conviction last month, said the government was seeking access to data even before Sept. 11.

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.