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 British lawmaker forcefully denied allegations in a Senate hearing yesterday that he received rights to purchase millions of barrels of Iraqi oil at a discount from Saddam Hussein's government, and he delivered a fiery attack on three decades of U.S. policy toward Iraq. George Galloway, a formidable debater recently ousted from the British Labor Party after attacking Prime Minister Tony Blair for supporting the war in Iraq, used his appearance before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations as a forum to challenge the veracity of the Bush administration's case for going to war. He also unleashed a personal attack against panel Chairman Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), calling his investigation the "mother of all smoke screens" designed to "divert attention from the crimes that you supported" by endorsing President Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

Important Note: Mr. Galloway's statement was not posted on the website of the Senate Committee tasked with posting these matters. Whereas testimony of all other panel members is provided, for Mr. Galloway, the website states "Mr. Galloway did not submit a written statement." Mr. Galloway did submit a statement, and it has been posted many places on the Internet, and published widely in articles like that above. See the relevant Senate Committee webpage at:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=232

More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says. More than half of the biologists and other researchers who responded to the survey said they knew of cases in which commercial interests, including timber, grazing, development and energy companies, had applied political pressure to reverse scientific conclusions deemed harmful to their business.

Note: If the above link fails, click here.

Testifying before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July 2003 about the rebuilding of Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the story of Jumana Michael Hanna, an Iraqi woman...with a tale of her horrific torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime. Hanna's tale - more than two years of imprisonment that included being subjected to electric shocks, repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted - was unusual in that she was willing to name the Iraqi police officials who participated in her torture, "information that is helping us to root out Baathist policemen who routinely tortured and killed prisoners," Wolfowitz said. But Hanna's story, which 10 days before Wolfowitz's testimony had been the subject of a front-page article in the Washington Post, appears to have unraveled. Esquire magazine, in this month's issue, published a lengthy article, by a writer who was hired to help Hanna produce a memoir, saying that her account had all but fallen apart.

One winter night in 1965, eyewitnesses saw a fireball streak over North America, bank, turn and appear to crash in western Pennsylvania. Then swarms of military personnel combed the area and a tarp-covered flatbed truck rumbled out of the woods. Now a former White House chief of staff and an international investigative journalist want to know what the Pentagon knows, calling on it to release classified files about that and other incidents involving unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. Ex-Clinton aide John Podesta...was one of numerous political and media heavyweights on hand in Washington, D.C., to announce a new group to gain access to secret government records about UFOs. The Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFI) is pressing the Air Force for documents involving Project Moon Dust and Operation Blue Fly, clandestine operations reported to have existed decades ago to investigate UFOs and retrieve objects of unknown origins. Backed by the Sci-Fi channel, the CFI hopes to reduce the scientific ridicule factor in this country when the topic is UFOs.

U.S. intelligence officials had several warnings that terrorists might attack the United States on its home soil -- even using airplanes as weapons -- well before the September 11, 2001 attacks, two congressional committees said in a report. In 1998, U.S. intelligence had information that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosives-laden airplane into the World Trade Center, according to a joint inquiry of the House and Senate intelligence committees. However, the Federal Aviation Administration found the plot "highly unlikely given the state of that foreign country's aviation program," and believed a flight originating outside the United States would be detected before it reached its target inside the country, the report said. "The FBI's New York office took no action on the information," it said. Another alert came just a month before the attacks, the report said, when the CIA sent a message to the FAA warning of a possible hijacking "or an act of sabotage against a commercial airliner." The information was linked to a group of Pakistanis based in South America. That warning did not mention using an airliner as a weapon and, the report said, "there was apparently little, if any, effort by intelligence community analysts to produce any strategic assessments of terrorists using aircraft as weapons."

Note: For many unanswered questions about the official account of 9/11 asked by highly-respected professors and officials, click here and here.

Emergency operations officials in Allegheny County and Pittsburgh hadn't trained for what happened Sept. 11. "Never in our wildest dreams did it ever come to the table that they would be using passenger aircraft as missiles," said Bob Full, chief of emergency operations for Allegheny County. It is clear from 911 tapes that local officials had less than 15 minutes' warning that the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 was in Pittsburgh airspace before the plane crashed at 10:06 a.m. in Somerset County, killing all 44 people aboard. Full learned about the errant plane at 9:53 a.m. That's when he got a call alerting him that the control tower at Pittsburgh International Airport had been evacuated. Thirteen minutes earlier, he had talked to an airport official who had no indication of any threat. Between those two conversations, the Pittsburgh tower had received a call from the Cleveland air traffic control tower, saying a plane was heading toward Pittsburgh and refusing to communicate with controllers. The FAA ordered the Pittsburgh control tower evacuated at 9:49 a.m.

Note: Why on Earth would they have evacuated the control tower from which they could best monitor what was going on with errant Flight 93? Could it be someone didn't want traffic control to see what was really going on? For lots more, click here and here.

European and American doctors added new reports today to earlier descriptions of patients with an AIDS-like disease but no detectable evidence of infection with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. American health officials appealed to doctors today to report any similar cases to the Federal Centers for Disease Control. Dr. James Curran, an AIDS expert at the [CDC] in Atlanta, said here it was not clear whether the known cases represent a new syndrome or a variety of rare medical problems that pose no threat to the nation's health. The plea resulted from a ... meeting at which Dr. Jeffrey Laurence of Cornell University Medical Center in New York City described five such cases that are due to be reported soon in the Lancet, a British medical journal. At the C.D.C., Dr. Thomas J. Spira has collected reports of six patients over the last 3 years. Dr. Spira saw no pattern among them. The reports from Dr. Laurence and Dr. Curran were greeted by a parade of scientists who reported more than a dozen similar cases. By the time the [meeting] ended, Dr. Curran said he learned of more cases in a few minutes today than he had in the last three years. Reports of additional cases from doctors in Edinburgh and the Hague followed, [along with] criticism at the Centers for Disease Control for not having reported the six cases it knew about and for not issuing an earlier plea to doctors to report additional ones.

Note: Watch a C-SPAN video discussing this matter. For more on this, see this webpage and this one. And more resources can be found on this website. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.

Ronald McRae, a former investigative reporter [tells of] the military's forays into parapsychology, the quasi-science that studies the interaction of mind and matter. According to McRae, who is skeptical of psychic claims, the Department of Defense has spent $6 million annually in recent years to research such phenomena as extrasensory perception (E.S.P.) and mental telepathy. The Pentagon denies any interest in parapsychology. But in an interview with the New York Times, retired Lieut. General Daniel O. Graham, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, indicated that the military had unquestionably been involved in psychic research. While he considered McRae's $6 million budget figure an exaggeration, he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if the intelligence community were following this. They would be remiss if they didn't." Back in December 1980, Military Review, a journal of the U.S. Army, carried a cover story titled "The New Mental Battlefield" [in which] Lieut. Colonel John B. Alexander wrote that "there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated." He ... urged the U.S. to step up its research in the field. "I know the Government's involved," says Physicist Russell Targ. "I did the work," he contends. He maintains that there was a "multimillion-dollar" project, part of which focused on "remote viewing" experiments. On a visit to the U.S.S.R. in October, Targ found that the Soviets had replicated some of the experiments he and his colleagues had reported in scientific journals. Says Targ: "In the Soviet Union, psychic research is taken seriously at the highest levels."

Note: For those interested in the military's use of "psyops" (psychological operations), you can view all 170 pages of the official U.S. Army psyops manual from April 2005, available here. Remote viewing has been used extensively in the military, intelligence, and police communities. For an excellent 50-minute video covering this most fascinating topic, click here.

Dr. Walter Bernard Coffey of San Francisco was again asking the State of New York's Department of Social Welfare permission to open a cancer research laboratory and clinic at Huntington, L. I. His cohorts surrounded him. Opposed were Dr. John Augustus Hartwell, president of the New York Academy of Medicine, spokesman for organized Medicine, and his cohorts. The simple question was: Should the State authorize the cancer clinic? But in the train of that simple question came a most extraordinary range of considerations—the nature and cause of cancer; the nature and authenticity of the Coffey-Humber cancer treatment; medical ethics, human nature, public policy, money, fame, and even national politics. Dr. Coffey ... is chief surgeon of Southern Pacific Co. He has 600 doctors working under him. They care for 70,000 railroad men and their families. Dr. John Augustus Hartwell, 61, president of the New York Academy of Medicine ... and most of his associates want Drs. Coffey & Humber and their cancer extract kept away from New York. They fear that the hope of a Coffey-Humber cancer cure will persuade the cancerous to abandon the orthodox treatment of surgery, X-rays and radium. Very quickly after a sufferer gets a Coffey-Humber injection, his pain quiets, and in 71% of the cases disappears. In most of the cases who do not die (Drs. Coffey & Humber will treat only the moribund, cases rejected as hopeless by at least two reputable doctors), the cancer becomes necrotic, ceases to smell, and sloughs off leaving a clean hole. That undeniably happens. Why that happens is debatable.

Note: To read how permission for the innovative cancer clinic was eventually refused, click here. If you want to understand how politics and big money prevented the legitimate study of promising cancer cures back in the 1930s, this article is a highly revealing "must read."

The overpowering earthquake and tsunami that ripped through northern Japan in March 2011 took so much from Tatsuo Niitsuma, a commercial fisherman in this coastal city in Fukushima Prefecture. Now, nearly nine years after the disaster, Mr. Niitsuma, 77, is at risk of losing his entire livelihood, too, as the government considers releasing tainted water from a nuclear power plant destroyed by the tsunami’s waves. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet and the Tokyo Electric Power Company — the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where a triple meltdown led to the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl — must decide what to do with more than one million tons of contaminated water stored in about 1,000 giant tanks on the plant site. On Monday, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry proposed gradually releasing the water into the ocean or allowing it to evaporate. For years, the power company, known as Tepco, said that treatment of the water ... was making it safe to release. But it is actually more radioactive than the authorities have previously publicized. Officials say that it will be treated again, and that it will then be safe for release. Regardless of government assurances, if the water is discharged into the sea, it will most likely destroy the livelihoods of hundreds of fishermen like Mr. Niitsuma. Consumers are already worried about the safety of Fukushima seafood, and dumping the water would compound the fears.

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

Law enforcement groups, including the FBI, have been monitoring opponents of a natural gas infrastructure project in Oregon and circulated intelligence to an email list that included a Republican-aligned anti-environmental PR operative, emails obtained by the Guardian show. The South Western Oregon Joint Task Force (SWOJTF) and its members were monitoring opponents of the Jordan Cove energy project, a proposal ... to build the first-ever liquefied natural gas export terminal on the US west coast, as well as a new 232-mile pipeline that would carry fracked natural gas to the port of Coos Bay. Jordan Cove opponents have raised concerns about the project’s significant environmental impacts. An email distribution list associated with the taskforce included addressees in the FBI, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Justice (DoJ), the National Forest Service (NFS), Oregon state police (OSP), and various Oregon municipal police and sheriffs departments. But some of its recipients are outside any government agency, most notably Mark Pfeifle, the CEO of the political consultancy Off The Record Strategies. Pfeifle was previously a Bush administration PR adviser. Pfeifle previously described his work with law enforcement at Standing Rock during a 2017 presentation to oil, gas and banking executives. “A lot of things that we were doing were being done to put a marker down for the protesters. And, ‘OK, if you’re going to go protest somewhere? There’s going to be consequences from it.’”

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

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to weaken rules that for the past quarter-century have given communities a voice in deciding how much pollution may legally be released by nearby power plants and factories. The changes would eliminate the ability of individuals or community advocates to appeal against E.P.A.-issued pollution permits before a panel of agency judges. However, the industrial permit-holders could still appeal to the panel, known as the Environmental Appeals Board, to allow them to increase their pollution. The proposed change is the latest in the Trump administration’s long-running effort to roll back environmental regulations and reduce regulatory burdens on industry, including the June announcement of a new E.P.A. rule that would weaken regulations on planet-warming greenhouse pollution from power plant smokestacks, the expected late-summer announcement of a similar plan to weaken rules on vehicle tailpipe pollution, and a 2018 proposal to open much of the United States coastline to oil drilling. Environmental law experts said the proposed rule change would not only grant industry a broader role in influencing the E.P.A. to issue more lenient pollution permits, but could disproportionately harm poor and minority communities, which are statistically more likely to be located near polluting sites. The proposed change to the Environmental Appeals Board process could be made public as soon as the coming week.

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

Tensions have been mounting at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C., where liberal activists from the group CODEPINK have occupied the building for the past month. On Thursday morning, things finally came to a head when law enforcement personnel entered the embassy to arrest and remove the activists. In a press release, CODEPINK said that their activists were charged with "interference with certain protective functions." Activists have been occupying the embassy since April 10. The four-story building has been vacant since the beginning of this year, when President Donald Trump recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela, instead of the current Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. CODEPINK denounced the arrests and slammed the Guaido government. “This struggle is far from over. We will continue to fight to stop this embassy from being handed over by the Guaidó supporters,” said CODEPINK Codirector Medea Benjamin. The activists believe that giving the Guaido government control over the embassy could endanger the American Embassy in Venezuela. The State Department withdrew all of its remaining personnel from Venezuela in March. On April 30, Guaido led an effort to oust Maduro, but the uprising failed after the country’s military sided with Maduro instead of the opposition.

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

The headline in the New York Times reads: “Sanders and Warren Meet and Agree: They Both Are Probably Running.” At first, the story ... reads like standard election news. Dig deeper, though, and you find signs of negative media campaigns already beginning in earnest. Over the past few weeks, multiple outlets have published negative pieces about Warren in particular, deploying coverage gimmicks used to disparage candidates early in presidential campaigns before. The gist of the new Times piece is that the Warren and Sanders, if they do run, “will not enjoy an easy path to the nomination.” We’re 23 months away from Election Day. It’s beyond premature to be fretting about electability questions. Common phrases used to camouflage invented narratives include “whispers abound,” “questions linger” and today’s golden oldie from the Times, “concerns” (as in, the prospect of Warren and Sanders running has “stirred concerns”). The papers are all citing each other’s negative stories as evidence for Warren’s problems. Warren is the rare prospective presidential candidate with actual knowledge of how Wall Street works who is not a billionaire, a private equity chief or a bank lawyer. As for Sanders, the Times, which has a history of less-than-friendly history with this candidate, is also engaging in the invented-narrative game already. The national press [is] already inventing frivolous reasons to toss people with good ideas out of the race.

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

The Department of Homeland Security is gathering intelligence from paid undercover informants inside the migrant caravan that is now reaching the California-Mexico border as well as monitoring the text messages of migrants, according to two DHS officials. The 4,000 migrants, mainly from Honduras, have used WhatsApp text message groups as a way to organize and communicate along their journey to the California border, and DHS personnel have joined those groups to gather that information. The intelligence gathering techniques are combined with reports from DHS personnel working in Mexico. Paying informants, placing officers in the region or monitoring the communications of non-U.S. citizens is not illegal, said John Cohen, former acting undersecretary of intelligence for DHS, but it does raise some concerns about the allocation of resources. "Those resources have to come from some place. They are not being devoted to thwarting terrorist threats, mass shootings, mailed fentanyl coming into the country or cyberattacks," said Cohen. Cohen said the caravan presents a logistical and humanitarian issue, but because the vast majority of its members want to present themselves legally to claim asylum, it is not wise to devote a significant amount of intelligence resources to it. "I find it hard to believe that the highest risk facing this nation comes from this caravan," Cohen said.

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

Authorities in Saudi Arabia have released the brother of a billionaire prince who was in detention for 11 months. Saudi Prince Khaled bin Talal is believed to have been in detention since January. The prince is the brother of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal - one of a group of royal family members and businessmen who were held in the lavish Ritz Carlton in Riyadh last year as part of an anti-corruption purge. Alwaleed, who Forbes estimated had a personal fortune of $17 billion, was released almost three months later. The group paid over $100 billion in settlements for what Saudi authorities said were corruption charges. But critics outside Saudi Arabia said the wave of arrests were part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's efforts to silence potential opposition to his leadership. Khaled's release comes as Saudi Arabia faces increased scrutiny from Western powers over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month. Khashoggi, 59, a royal court insider-turned-critic, was killed after entering the consulate on October 2 to obtain paperwork for his upcoming marriage. Saudi officials have presented shifting stories about Khashoggi's fate, initially denying any knowledge of his death, then arguing that a group of rogue operators, many of whom belong to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's inner circle, was responsible for his killing.

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

This summer, Saudi Arabia promised the Trump administration $100 million for American efforts to stabilize areas in Syria. That money landed in American accounts on Tuesday, the same day that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, for discussions with the kingdom’s leaders about the fate of a missing Saudi dissident. The timing of the money’s arrival raised eyebrows even among some of the bureaucrats whose programs will benefit from the influx of cash. “The timing of this is no coincidence,” said an American official involved in Syria policy who spoke on condition of anonymity. The disappearance of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, has battered the image of Saudi Arabia and of its powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a key player in many of the Trump administration’s ambitions for the Middle East. Turkish officials say that Mr. Khashoggi was slain inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by Saudi agents on Oct. 2 while he was trying to secure a document he needed to get married. Saudi leaders have denied harming Mr. Khashoggi, but have not provided a credible explanation of what happened to him. Mr. Trump threatened “severe punishment” if it was confirmed that Saudi Arabia killed Mr. Khashoggi. But after speaking with King Salman of Saudi Arabia on Monday, he suggested that “rogue killers” could have been responsible and dispatched Mr. Pompeo to Riyadh to see the Saudi king.

Note: There is much more than meets the eye on this Khashoggi case. Read this fascinating article for a taste. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the manipulation of public perception.

The Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro. One of the Venezuelan military commanders involved in the secret talks ... is on the American government’s own sanctions list of corrupt officials in Venezuela. He and other members of the Venezuelan security apparatus have been accused by Washington of a wide range of serious crimes, including torturing critics, jailing hundreds of political prisoners, wounding thousands of civilians, trafficking drugs and collaborating with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States. In a series of covert meetings ... the military officers told the American government that they represented a few hundred members of the armed forces who had soured on Mr. Maduro’s authoritarianism. The officers asked the United States to supply them with encrypted radios, citing the need to communicate securely, as they developed a plan to install a transitional government. American officials did not provide material support, and the plans unraveled after a recent crackdown that led to the arrest of dozens of the plotters. On Feb. 1, Rex W. Tillerson ... delivered a speech in which he said the United States had not “advocated for regime change or removal of President Maduro.” Yet, responding to a question afterward, Mr. Tillerson raised the potential for a military coup.

Note: The US has a long history of supporting coups and human rights abuses in Latin America. The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas, graduated more than 500 human rights abusers. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

The White House on Thursday announced ambitious plans to create the U.S. Space Force as a sixth, separate military warfighting service by 2020. Military leaders and experts have questioned the wisdom of launching an expensive, bureaucratic new service branch. Vice President Mike Pence announced the new force during a Pentagon speech, fleshing out an idea that President Donald Trump has extolled in recent months as he vowed to ensure American dominance in space. Pence described space as a domain that was once peaceful and uncontested but has now become crowded and adversarial. The last time the U.S. created a new uniformed military service was in 1947. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has endorsed steps to reorganize the military's space-warfighting forces and create a new command, but he previously opposed launching an expensive new service. The military's role in space has been under scrutiny because the United States is increasingly reliant on orbiting satellites that are difficult to protect. U.S. intelligence agencies reported earlier this year that Russia and China were pursuing "nondestructive and destructive" anti-satellite weapons for use during a future war. And there are growing worries about cyberattacks that could target satellite technology. Much of the military's current space power is wielded by the Air Force Space Command, which ... has about 38,000 personnel and operates 185 military satellite systems, including the Global Positioning System and communications and weather satellites.

Note: In 1974, the founder of modern rocket science Wernher Von Braun told his spokesperson Dr. Carol Rosin that "first the Russians are going to be considered the enemy. Then terrorists would be identified. The next enemy was asteroids – against asteroids we are going to build space-based weapons. Then ... the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens, and all of it is a lie."

Like many African governments, the regime of [Emmerson] Mnangagwa’s predecessor, Robert Mugabe, was notoriously thin-skinned about social media criticism. Indeed, only two weeks before Mr. Mugabe was deposed in a coup last November, his government had arrested a young American woman working in Zimbabwe for allegedly tweeting that the country was being run by a “sick and selfish man.” For now, the temperature seems to have changed. But if Zimbabwe’s webspace has changed since the days of Mugabe, it also contrasts with many other African countries. Across the continent ... governments have increasingly targeted social media as a way to bring unruly dissenters to heel. In Tanzania, for instance, a recently introduced law slaps a registration fee of about $900 on bloggers and online forums. A 2016 law in Rwanda makes it illegal to use a digital device to cause “annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety,” and Egypt’s government recently announced a law allowing it to block any social media users with more than 5,000 followers if they disseminate “fake news.” In Zimbabwe, the new government has attempted to show its openness to social media as a way of visibly distancing itself from the autocratic regime of Mugabe, whose iron grip on dissent resulted in broad sanctions against the country that sent Zimbabwe’s economy tanking. Mnangagwa has verified his Twitter account, opened a Facebook page, and set up a “broadcast list” on WhatsApp to send messages to his supporters.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption and civil liberties 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.