Government Corruption News Articles

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In a blow against government secrecy, a federal judge ruled [on March 15] that the tens of thousands of "national security letters" the FBI sends each year demanding customer records from phone companies, banks and others, are unconstitutional because they forbid recipients from revealing that the letters exist. A gag order that makes it a crime to disclose one has received such a letter "restrains ... speech about government conduct" with little opportunity for judicial review, said U.S. District Judge Susan Illston of San Francisco. She directed the FBI to stop issuing national security letters that contain gag orders, but put her ruling on hold during an expected government appeal. Attorney Matt Zimmerman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the suit in May 2011 on behalf of an unnamed telecommunications company, said [that] the gag orders "have truncated the public debate on these controversial surveillance tools." The USA Patriot Act, passed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, authorized the FBI to issue national security letters on its own for information that it considers relevant to an investigation of international terrorism or spying. Virtually all of the letters include a permanent gag order. In 2008, a federal appeals court in New York found the gag orders constitutionally defective. Congress amended the law in 2006 to allow recipients to challenge national security letters on constitutional grounds, but left the government with near-total power over the gag orders, Illston said.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on illegal activities of intelligence agencies, click here.

The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the "dirty wars" in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country's descent into full-scale civil war. Colonel James Steele was a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran when he was nominated by Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a Sunni insurgency. After the Pentagon lifted a ban on Shia militias joining the security forces, the Special Police Commando (SPC) membership was increasingly drawn from ... Shia groups such as the Badr brigades. A second special adviser, retired Colonel James H Coffman, worked alongside Steele in detention centres that were set up with millions of dollars of US funding. Coffman reported directly to General David Petraeus, sent to Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train the new Iraqi security forces. Steele, who was in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and returned to the country in 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld. The allegations, made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary ["James Steele: America's Mystery Man in Iraq"], implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on war crimes committed by the US and UK in their post-9/11 wars of aggression, click here.

A pilot who wrote a conspiracy theory book about 9/11 is dead after he shot his two teenage children and family dog before turning the gun on himself. Relatives and friends of Phillip Marshall were stunned by the violent crime which took place in Calaveras County on [Feb. 2]. The tragedy came as a shock for those living in the small town. The former airline pilot's controversial conspiracy book The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror was released last year. While he was writing it, Marshall believed that his life was in danger because of the allegations involved. According to [the] Santa Barbara View, during the editing and pre-marketing process of Marshall’s book, he expressed some degree of paranoia because the nonfiction work accused the George W. Bush administration of being in cahoots with the Saudi intelligence community in training the hijackers who died in the planes used in the attacks. Amazon says about Philip Marshall: 'A veteran airline captain and former government "special activities" contract pilot, he has authored three books on "Top Secret America," a group presently conducting business as the United States Intelligence Community. Marshall has studied and written [about] covert government special activities and the revolving door of Wall Street tricksters, media moguls, and their well funded politicians. He is the leading aviation expert on the September 11th attack.'

Note: Does something smell fishy here? Don't miss the even more revealing article written in a local newspaper at this link which questions whether Marshall might have been killed because of his 9/11 conspiracy views.

The federal government is ... going after Wall Street's biggest credit rating firm for its role in pumping up the housing bubble. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit [on Feb. 4] against Standard & Poor's Corp. The suit accuses the company's analysts of issuing glowing reviews on troubled mortgage securities whose subsequent failure helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The action marks the first federal crackdown against a major credit rater, and it signals an untested legal tack after limited success in holding the nation's banks accountable for the part they played in the crisis. The government selected Los Angeles as the venue to file the lawsuit in part because it was one of the regions hardest hit when the bottom fell out of the housing market. Hundreds of thousands of California residents lost their homes to foreclosure, and others saw their wealth evaporate as properties plummeted in value. In addition to the Justice Department, several state attorneys general are investigating the ratings agency. States such as California and New York are expected to pursue their own investigations and legal action, people familiar with the matter said. The federal action does not involve any criminal allegations. Critics have complained that the government has yet to send any senior bankers or Wall Street executives to jail for potential illegal behavior that led to the crisis. But civil actions typically require a much lower burden of proof.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the criminal practices of the financial industry, click here.

Airport body scanners that produce graphic images of travelers' bodies will be removed from checkpoints by June, the Transportation Security Administration says, ending what critics called "virtual strip searches." Passengers will continue to pass through machines that display a generic outline of the human body, raising fewer privacy concerns. The TSA move came after Rapiscan, the manufacturer of the 174 so-called "backscatter" machines, acknowledged it could not meet a congressional-ordered deadline to install privacy software on the machines. "It is big news," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It removes the concern that people are being viewed naked by the TSA screener." Currently, the TSA uses the 174 backscatter machines in 30 airports, and has another 76 units in storage. It uses millimeter wave machines in 170 airports. The decision to remove the backscatter machine will make moot, at least temporarily, travelers' concerns about the health effects of the machines. Backscatter machines use X-rays, while millimeter wave machines use radio waves. The TSA has long maintained both machines are safe, but recently signed an agreement with the National Academy of Sciences to study the scanners. The study will continue even though the machines are being pulled, the TSA said, because they could be reintroduced in the future.

Note: Each of those machines cost $175,000. Someone sure made a lot of money on these machines which had a very short lifespan.

Why is Guantánamo so hard to close? Because it's been an integral part of American politics and policy for over a century. Gitmo's "legal black hole" opened in 1903 with a peculiar lease that affirmed Cuba's total sovereignty over Guantánamo Bay, but gave the US "complete jurisdiction and control", creat[ing] a space where neither nation's laws clearly applied. Gitmo's generations of detainees have been inextricable, if often invisible, parts of America's deepest conflicts: over immigration, public health, human rights, and national security. The Guantánamo Public Memory Project involves historians, archivists, activists, military personnel, and over a dozen universities in raising public awareness of Gitmo's long history and foster dialogue on the future of this place, its people, and its policies. Gitmo will be with us for years to come. The lease with Cuba is perpetual. Today, even as 166 men remain detained, the base is readying itself for its next opening. Facilities to house 25,000 potential refugees were recently completed. Our responsibility is to remember Guantánamo: to learn from its past, listen to the stories of all of its people, and always keep it in our sights.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on civil liberties, click here.

A jury has ordered an $85m compensation payout by the American military contractor Kellogg Brown and Root ... after finding it guilty of negligence for illnesses suffered by a dozen soldiers who guarded an oilfield water plant during the Iraq war. KBR was ordered to pay $6.2m to each of the soldiers in punitive damages and $850,000 in non-economic damages. During the Iraq war KBR was the engineering and construction arm of Halliburton, the biggest US contractor during the conflict. KBR split from Halliburton in April 2007. The US lawsuit was the first concerning American soldiers' exposure to a toxin at a water plant in southern Iraq. The soldiers have said they suffer from respiratory ailments after their exposure to sodium dichromate and fear that a carcinogen it contains – hexavalent chromium – could cause cancer later in life. The contractor's defence ultimately rested on the fact that it informed the US army of the risks of exposure to sodium dichromate. KBR was tasked with reconstructing the decrepit, scavenged plant just after the March 2003 invasion while troops from the US national guard defended the area. Bags of unguarded sodium dichromate – a corrosive substance used to keep pipes at the water plant free of rust – were ripped open, allowing the substance to spread across the plant and into the air. When KBR was still part of Halliburton it won a large share of Pentagon contracts to build and manage US military bases in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Its former chief executive, Dick Cheney, was US vice-president.

The Occupy movement received vindication from an unlikely source tonight, as a senior executive at the Bank of England credited it with stirring a “reformation of finance”. Andrew Haldane, executive director of financial stability, said Occupy protesters had been “both loud and persuasive”, and had attracted public support because “they are right”. “Some have suggested … that Occupy’s voice has been loud but vague, long on problems, short on solutions. Others have argued that the fault-lines in the global financial system, which chasmed during the crisis, are essentially unaltered, that reform has failed,” Mr Haldane said. “I wish to argue that both are wrong – that Occupy’s voice has been both loud and persuasive and that policymakers have listened and are acting in ways which will close those fault-lines. In fact, I want to argue that we are in the early stages of a reformation of finance, a reformation which Occupy has helped stir.” Speaking at an Occupy Economics event in central London, Mr Haldane said that Occupy had been “successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one very simple reason: they are right.” He added that protesters ... “touched a moral nerve in pointing to growing inequities in the allocation of wealth”. Mr Haldane ended with a direct appeal to activists to continue putting pressure on governments and regulators. He said: “You have put the arguments. You have helped win the debate. And policymakers, like me, will need your continuing support in delivering that radical change.”

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.

Today, as the world pauses to remember the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States, it is also important to remember the inexplicable things that happened – and didn’t happen – that tragic day. After all, 9/11 is solely responsible for diminishing hard-fought US civil rights, as well as triggering wars around the world. Here are 11 well documented mysteries of 9/11 that warrant an investigation into the two hours that changed the course of world history. 1. Why did the Bush administration allow numerous Saudi nationals, and, more importantly, the family of Osama bin Laden to leave the United States in the days following the events of 9/11? 2. How can we explain the huge increase in trading on airline stocks in the days before 9/11? 3. Why was there no disciplinary action taken against the individuals who were responsible for protecting America from attack? 4. Why was the Bush administration so adamantly opposed to conducting any sort of investigation into the events of 9/11? 5. Vanishing Act: WTC 7 6. Why was the US Air Force missing in action? 7. Why were President George W. Bush and his Vice President, Dick Cheney permitted to provide testimony to the 9/11 Commission on the condition that they present it in private and together? 8. No sign of crashed planes at the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 9. Pentagon videos missing in action. 10. Black Boxes missing in action. 11. Hijackers ... alive and well?

Note: For many more questions raised about the official account of 9/11 by highly credible people, click here and here.

"The zombies are coming!" the Homeland Security Department says. Tongue firmly in cheek, the government urged citizens ... to prepare for a zombie apocalypse, part of a public health campaign to encourage better preparation for genuine disasters and emergencies. The theory: If you're prepared for a zombie attack, the same preparations will help during a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake or terrorist attack. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year first launched a zombie apocalypse social media campaign for the same purposes. Emergency planners were encouraged to use the threat of zombies - the flesh-hungry, walking dead - to encourage citizens to prepare for disasters. A few of the government's suggestions tracked closely with some of the 33 rules for dealing with zombies popularized in the 2009 movie "Zombieland," which included "always carry a change of underwear" and "when in doubt, know your way out."

Note: Very high strangeness...

The push and pull over what is on the record is one of journalism’s perennial battles. But those negotiations typically took place case by case, free from the red pens of press minders. Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations. Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all mid-level aides ... at the White House - almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail. From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position. Those officials who dare to speak out of school, but fearful of making the slightest off-message remark, shroud even the most innocuous and anodyne quotations in anonymity by insisting they be referred to as a “top Democrat” or a “Republican strategist.” It is a double-edged sword for journalists, who are getting the on-the-record quotes they have long asked for, but losing much of the spontaneity and authenticity in their interviews. Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them. Those who did speak on the record said the restrictions seem only to be growing.

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

If you've ever been in a did-that-really-just-happen scenario, you might have wished you had a recorder running -- particularly when it comes to run-ins with the law. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey just released an app that allows Android phone users to record and store their interactions with police to "hold police accountable." The app, cleverly called "Police Tape," also includes legal information about citizens' rights during encounters with law enforcement. What sets this apart from being just a video camera with a send button is that you can also record in "stealth mode." The app disappears from the screen once the recording starts, "to prevent any attempt by police to squelch the recording," according to the ACLU of New Jersey site. Users can send the recording to the organization through the app for backup storage and analysis. Though there is no federal law preventing recording police in public, some states have different statutes covering such activity. Earlier, the New York American Civil Liberties Union released its Stop and Frisk Watch application. The New York ACLU promotes that app as a way for bystanders and designated event observers to record incidents. That's probably a better idea than whipping out your phone when a cop asks for your license, particularly if you are in an emotionally charged or intense setting. That's probably not going to be received well.

Note: Other states now have this app, which you can read about at this link and this one.

The National Archives is refusing to release 1,171 classified CIA documents related to the assassination [of President John F. Kennedy] in time for the [50th] anniversary as it had promised. In 2010, deputy archivist Michael Kurtz announced that the secret records would be declassified by November 22, 2013. But the National Archives has since [retracted] that promise in a letter to Jim Lesar of the Assassination Archives and Research Center, who requested the release. [This] frustrates Lesar, whose nonprofit is devoted to collecting and disseminating information about political assassinations. "In 1992, Congress unanimously passed legislation that was designed to get all of the JFK assassination-related records released," he said. "There was supposed to be only a very few records whose release could be postponed for periods of time including up until the year 2017, but basically everything was supposed to be released well before then." Of course, the CIA and National Archives won't say exactly what is contained in the documents, not even the number of pages. "The National Archives does not have a page count, but it appears that there are at least several thousand pages that are still being withheld, and they appear to be on some very important subjects." The CIA and National Archives' intransigence certainly doesn't help deflate the bubble of speculation about what really happened at the Grassy Knoll. It's been 49 years. Most of the people involved are dead. What's to hide, unless the government is shown in an embarrassing or criminal light?

Note: See our excellent information center filled with reliable verifiable information on the John Kennedy assassination at this link. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the John Kennedy assassination, click here.

Rep. Darrell Issa [contends] that the Department of Justice in Washington and perhaps the Obama White House were aware of the flawed tactics in the ATF’s Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation in Arizona that allowed more than 2,000 firearms to “walk” into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. A month before the operation was stopped, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Terry was killed in a December 2010 shootout and two Fast and Furious weapons were discovered at the crime scene between the Mexican border and Tucson. Scores of more weapons have been found at violent crimes in Mexico. Issa contends [that] wiretap documents, signed by top Justice officials in support of Fast and Furious, are proof that administration officials knew the tactics were flawed and should have stopped the operation long before the agent and others were killed. “The tactics of Fast and Furious were known,” he said. “They were known and are contained in these wiretaps.” Issa said he obtained the materials from “a furious group of whistle-blowers” who are angry with the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. for not providing more material to Issa’s investigation into Fast and Furious. The whistle-blowers, he told Holder at the hearing, “are tired of your stonewalling.”

Note: For a seven-minute CNBC video with more revealing information on this, click here. For more on Fast and Furious, click here.

The Kuala Lumpur Tribunal's indictment of President George W. Bush and his deputies for war crimes sets a new precedent. The [tribunal] ruled in the second week of May that George W. Bush, former President of the United States, and six members of his administration were guilty of war crimes. The tribunal, after recording eyewitness accounts of torture victims in a trial that lasted five days, pronounced that Bush, his Vice-President, Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five senior officials who had sought to provide legal cover for the [invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq] were guilty of “war crimes”. The American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in the death of more than a million people.. Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, observed that [only] leaders from countries that opposed the interests of the West were held accountable to international criminal law. He pointed out that the ICC's Special Court on Sierra Leone had been financed by the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands. Companies from these countries have big interests in the diamond trade. With Taylor now out of the scene, Western companies are back in the lucrative diamond trade. Falk ... observed that the U.S., more than any other country in the world, “holds itself self-righteously aloof from accountability on the main ground that any judicial process might be tainted by political motivations”. The U.S. has signed with over 100 countries agreements that prohibit the handing over of any U.S. citizen to the ICC.

Note: For an insightful analysis of the cooptation of the ICC by imperial powers, click here.

Fourteen months after the accident [at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant], a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic. The public’s fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe ... as frequent quakes continue to rattle the region. The jury-rigged cooling system for the pool has already malfunctioned several times, including a 24-hour failure in April. Had the outages continued, they would have left the rods at risk of dangerous overheating. “The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute and one of the experts raising concerns. “Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment.” The worst-case situations for Reactor No. 4 would be for the pool to run dry if there is another problem with the cooling system and the rods catch fire, releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material, or for fission to restart if the metal panels that separate the rods are knocked over in a quake. That would be especially bad because the pool, unlike reactors, lacks containment vessels to hold in radioactive materials.

Note: For extensive coverage from reliable sources on corruption in the nuclear power industry, click here.

Demonstrators in Montreal have continued to defy an emergency law passed by the provincial government in Quebec to restrict protests by students against planned tuition fee hikes. On Wednesday, more than 500 Montrealers were arrested – more than during the entire October 1970 crisis when martial law was declared in the city in response to actions by Quebec nationalists. The total number of those arrested in the current protests has now exceeded 2,500. The protest ... was declared illegal before it began, because organizers had not provided police with an itinerary, as required by a controversial new emergency law. Helicopters and riot police are an increasingly common sight on the streets of Montreal as a province-wide student strike passed the 100-day mark, but popular support only seems to be growing as the government attempts to clamp down on the strike. Small red squares, the symbol of the strike historically worn by Montreal students supporting free tuition, are everywhere in the city – cloth pinned to people's lapels and daubed onto signs and walls. Families and older residents are increasingly common sights at protests as well, demonstrating against Bill 78, which places restrictions on protests of more than 50 people. The bill imposes fines of $125,000 a day on student unions that defy its provisions, and student leaders shown to support unplanned protests can be fined up to a maximum of $5,000.

Note: For lots more on this important, yet underreported news, do a search on "Montreal protests."

An environmental activist who disrupted an oil and gas auction for land near Utah's national parks did so in protest, bringing attention to parcels that shouldn't have been for sale, his lawyers argued Thursday. Tim DeChristopher's conviction in the case should be overturned because his move was a form of civil disobedience intended to protect the environment from an auction he believed to be illegal, Ron Yengich said in federal appeals court. Yengich said that many of the 113 parcels up for sale were suspended from future bidding by the federal government because of attention drawn by DeChristopher's actions. DeChristopher is asking the court to overturn his conviction. He is now serving two years in a federal prison in California after a conviction last summer in Salt Lake City. DeChristopher contended during trial that the Bush administration rushed the auction without properly reviewing the parcels. Many of the parcels up for auction were later suspended soon after by President Barack Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in 2009. His lawyers say he was singled out for prosecution because of his honesty, and that the government never took action against bidders at other auctions who failed to pay or bounced checks for their parcels. DeChristopher is considered a folk hero in the environmental community for sabotaging the auction. He says he plans to continue a life of social activism after prison.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on government corruption, click here.

Cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana were allowed to pass security checkpoints at LAX in a bribery scheme that led to the arrests of two former and two current Transportation Security Administration employees, according to authorities. The screeners were accused of allowing large amounts of cocaine and other drugs to pass through X-ray machines at security checkpoints in exchange for payments of up to $2,400, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The indictment cites five incidents in which the employees allowed suitcases filled with drugs to pass X-ray machines at security checkpoints. The scheme occurred over a six-month period last year, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. One drug courier is already in custody in connection with the case, according to authorities. Another courier suspect is expected to surrender Thursday. If convicted, all four [TSA] employees face a minimum of 10 years in federal prison.

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Jailed for unpaid debts? It happened to breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay. She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it. But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs. Debt collectors have become so aggressive in some parts of Illinois that they commonly use taxpayer-financed courts, sheriff's deputies and county jails to squeeze poor people who fall behind on small payments of $25 or $50 a month, according to supporters of the proposed legislative reforms. Lawmakers in Springfield are pushing to make it harder to jail poor people who miss court dates or are found in contempt of court as they struggle with unpaid debts — an aggressive practice that got worse, some say, during the recession. Lindsay, a teaching assistant from Herrin in southern Illinois, ended up paying more than $600 because legal fees had been added to the original amount. "I paid it in full so they couldn't do it to me again," Lindsay said. The Illinois bill would require court appearance notices to be served to a debtor's home, rather than merely mailed. It would require arrest warrants to expire after a year, and it would return most bail money to the debtor, rather than allow it to be used to pay off the debt.

Note: For more on this, click here.

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.