Government Corruption News Articles

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Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries. The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups. Some inmates are outraged. Two of them, a Christian and an Orthodox Jew, in a federal prison camp in upstate New York, filed a class-action lawsuit last month claiming the bureau’s actions violate their rights to the free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.” “It’s swatting a fly with a sledgehammer,” said Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian group. “There’s no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism.” A chaplain who has worked more than 15 years in the prison system, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is a bureau employee, said: “At some of the penitentiaries, guys have been studying and reading for 20 years, and now they are told that this material doesn’t meet some kind of criteria. It doesn’t make sense to them."

Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime. "The medical evidence did not match up with the ... scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators. The doctors ... said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away. The medical examiners' suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Among other information contained in the documents: Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments. The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions. No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene, no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers. With questions lingering about how high in the Bush administration the deception reached, Congress is preparing for yet another hearing next week.

A congressional task force called Thursday for a speedy resolution to a southwest Florida election dispute that questions the accuracy of ATM-style voting machines. Democrat Christine Jennings claims that touch-screen voting machines in Sarasota County failed to register up to 18,000 votes. Republican Vern Buchanan was declared the winner by 369 votes after two recounts and a state audit found no problems. GAO investigators will gather information on Sarasota County's voting systems, analyze the 18,000 so-called ''undervotes,'' review tests and audits done after the election and determine if more tests are needed. Jennings said Thursday the she was pleased even though the approach brings her no closer to gaining access to hardware and software that the machines' maker, Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software Inc., says is a trade secret.

Note: The software in electronic voting machines is considered proprietary information, kept secret from Congress, the courts and even the President. Yet any computer programmer will tell you that this software can be manipulated. To join in demanding transparency in our elections process, contact your political representatives by clicking here. For more reliable information on this issue vital to democracy, click here.

In a case that critics say demonstrates a U.S. double standard on terrorism, a federal judge has dismissed all charges against Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative who has been accused of masterminding a 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane that killed 73 people and a series of 1997 bombings in Havana. Posada, 79, is expected to return soon to his home in Miami as a hero of that city's anti-Castro right wing, despite U.S. government documents made public recently that have tied him to terrorist acts. [In 1959, Posada] began a long association with the CIA, receiving training in sabotage and explosives at the U.S. School of the Americas for the 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He also was involved in a 1965 attempt to overthrow the Guatemalan government. On Oct. 6, 1976, a Cubana jet was blown up in midair after leaving Barbados for Havana. CIA documents released in 2005 indicate that the agency had prior knowledge of the plot, and a recently declassified FBI document placed Posada at two meetings where the bombing was planned. "The CIA taught us everything," Posada said in a 1998 interview with the New York Times. "They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage." In 1997, Posada was linked to a series of bombings of hotels, restaurants and night clubs in Havana. In August 2003 ... the Miami bureau of the FBI made the unexpected decision to close its terrorism case on Posada. Subsequently, according to FBI officials, five boxes of evidence were removed from the bureau's evidence room and destroyed.

Note: Why is the U.S. government releasing a suspected terrorist who has stacks of evidence against him? And why is the CIA training terrorists? Read this article and click here for some possible answers.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men ... and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. These words from the Declaration of Independence are instructive. Because not only whenever any form of government, but whenever any government official becomes destructive of the founding purposes, that official or those officials must be held accountable. Because I believe the vice president's conduct of office has been destructive to the founding purposes of our nation ... I have introduced House Resolution 333, Articles of Impeachment Relating to Vice President Richard B. Cheney. It became obvious to me that this vice president, who was a driving force for taking the United States into a war against Iraq under false pretenses, is once again rattling the sabers of war against Iran with the same intent to drive America into another war, again based on false pretenses. Preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the vice president was fully informed that no legitimate evidence existed of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the vice president actively and systematically sought to deceive the citizens and the Congress ... about an alleged threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The vice president pressured the intelligence community to change their findings to enable the deception of the citizens and the Congress of the United States.

Note: To sign a petition in support of impeachment, click here.

Dubai Ports World, the firm at the center of the controversy, announced today that it would give up its bid to manage U.S. ports, agreeing to transfer the contracts to a “U.S. entity." Yet while one Dubai company may be giving up on U.S. ports, another one shows no signs of...giving up a contract with the Navy to provide shore services for vessels in the Middle East. The firm, Inchcape Shipping Services (ISS)...was sold to a Dubai government investment vehicle for $285 million. Why is a Dubai shipping services company doing business with the Pentagon when handing over U.S. port operations to the emirate would supposedly compromise national security? ISS “will be responsible for providing all the logistics requirements of U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships in ports throughout the [Middle East] region.” The release also notes that ISS may be asked to provide services for U.S. military training exercises and “contingency operations inland.” ISS’s partner for those services? None other than KBR, the division of Halliburton -- Vice President Dick Cheney’s old firm -- that has won billions of dollars in contracts for the Iraq war and reconstruction. Ironically, Halliburton's name has come up as a possible candidate to be the "U.S. entity" to take over the U.S. ports management from Dubai Ports World.

The Minnesota Commerce Department on Thursday announced plans to fine a gas station chain $140,000 for repeatedly selling gas below the state's legal minimum price. The fine against Midwest Oil of Minnesota is twice as large as any imposed on a company since 2001, when the state established a formula based on wholesale prices, fees and taxes to determine a daily floor for gas prices. The price law was intended to prevent large oil companies from driving smaller competitors out of business, but some critics argue it fails to protect consumers. According to the Commerce Department, the Midwest-owned stations in Anoka, Oakdale and Albert Lea sold gas below the minimum price on 293 days in 2005. Kevin Murphy, deputy commissioner of the department, called the violations "willful, continuing, and egregious and warrant a substantial penalty."

The government is withholding more information than ever from the public and expanding ways of shrouding data. Last year, federal agencies spent a record $148 creating and storing new secrets for each $1 spent declassifying old secrets, a coalition of watchdog groups reported Saturday. In the late 1990s, the ratio was $15-$17 a year to $1, according to the secrecy report card by OpenTheGovernment.org. Overall, the government spent $7.2 billion in 2004 stamping 15.6 million documents "top secret," "secret" or "confidential." That almost doubled the 8.6 million new documents classified as recently as 2001. Last year, the number of pages declassified declined for the fourth straight year to 28.4 million. In 2001, 100 million pages were declassified; the record was 204 million pages in 1997. These figures cover 41 federal agencies, excluding the CIA, whose classification totals are secret. The report also noted the growing use of secret searches, court secrecy, closed meetings by government advisory groups and patents kept from public view. J. William Leonard, director of the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office,...said, "the great lesson of 9-11 is that improper hoarding of information can cost lives and harm national security."

The U.S. government secretly hired hundreds of private companies during the 1940s and '50s to process huge volumes of nuclear weapons material, leaving a legacy of poisoned workers and contaminated communities that lingers to this day. From mom-and-pop machine shops to big-name chemical firms, private manufacturing facilities across the nation were quietly converted to the risky business of handling tons of uranium, thorium, polonium, beryllium and other radioactive and toxic substances. Few of the contractors were prepared for the hazards of their government-sponsored missions. Thousands of workers were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, often hundreds of times stronger than the limits of the time. Dozens of communities were contaminated, their air, ground and water fouled by toxic and radioactive waste. The risks were kept hidden. In some cases, they have remained so. The full story of the secret contracting effort has never been told. Many of the companies that were involved have been forgotten, the impact of their operations unexamined for half a century. Yet their history carries profound implications for the thousands of people they employed, as well as for the thousands who lived — and still live — near the factories.

Note: For key reports from major media sources on government secrecy, click here.

An epic throw-down happened Thursday on Capitol Hill. The topic: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency created in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis. The Trump administration's acting director, Mick Mulvaney ... believes the bureau's powers are excessive. Sen. Elizabeth Warren ... led the creation of the bureau to protect consumers from abuses by everything from big banks to student loan providers to fly-by-night loan sharks. Mulvaney ... calls the bureau Warren's "baby." But Democrats say that over the past five months, he has done a terrible job of taking care of it. Back when he was a Republican congressman, Mulvaney sponsored legislation that would have abolished the bureau. Since its creation, the bureau has returned a total of $12 billion to consumers by clawing back money from companies that cheated them. Thursday's hearing was part of Mulvaney's mandated semiannual report to Congress on the activities of the CFPB. In a hearing ... New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney said the bureau used to bring several enforcement actions a month against financial companies. She pressed Mulvaney: "So let me ask you how many enforcement actions has the bureau initiated since you took over?" Mulvaney: "We have initiated none since I've been there." Mulvaney ... is asking lawmakers to put the bureau's budget under the control of Congress. The bureau ... is funded by the Federal Reserve instead of by Congress, a move designed to shield it from political influence.

Note: In 2016, Wells Fargo paid a $100 million fine to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after getting caught ripping off millions of customers. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the financial industry.

President Trump’s allegations that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone and his assertions that the bureaucracy is leaking secrets to discredit him are the latest signs of a White House preoccupation with a “deep state” working to thwart the Trump presidency. “A deep state [is] part of government or people outside of government that are literally controlling the direction of the country no matter who’s actually in charge, and probably engaging in murder and other corrupt practices,” [former National Security Council official Loren DeJonge] Schulman said. The deep state is a phrase often heard in countries where there is a history of military coups. Pakistan is Exhibit A: The deep state is often invoked in serious discussions about the role of the Pakistani military and its intelligence service. Wide swaths of the population see the unseen hand of the security services behind major political events and all kinds of everyday happenings, such as random traffic stops. The views are not without basis. “The deep state concept emerges in places where the army and the security apparatus creates boundaries within which the civilian political people are allowed to operate,” said Peter Feaver, a specialist in civil-military issues. “If they transgress those boundaries, then the deep state interferes to reorder things, often using military force. There are milder forms of it in healthier democracies,” Mr. Feaver said.

Note: A 2014 Boston Globe article suggests that US policy in the national security realm is made by "concealed institutions" rather than by elected officials. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the intelligence community.

This spring, President Obama and Republican leaders in Congress want to use an outdated process used to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement more than 20 years ago — a rule called “fast track” — to force ... passage of the giant Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, trade deal. A fast-tracked TPP would lock in a rigged set of economic rules, lasting potentially forever, before most Americans — let alone some members of Congress — have had a chance to understand it thoroughly. It would be a grave mistake for Congress to authorize fast-tracking this giant trade deal. We now know that NAFTA [has] contributed to the huge U.S. trade deficits. We now import about $500 billion more in goods and services each year than we export. Following NAFTA with the Trans-Pacific Partnership is like turning a bad television show into a terrible movie. As for the problems with the TPP? What's been leaked about its proposals reveals, for example, that the pharmaceutical industry would get stronger patent protections, delaying cheaper generic versions of drugs. The deal also gives global corporations an international tribunal of private attorneys, outside any nation's legal system, that can order compensation for lost expected profits resulting from a nation's regulations, including our own. These extraordinary rights for corporations put governments on the defensive over legitimate public health or environmental rules.

Note: The above article was co-authored by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, and current president of the AFL-CIO Richard Trumka. For more, see this article, or watch the two minute video Robert Reich made to educate the public about the dangers of the TPP.

The prime minister says a public inquiry into the state's involvement in the assassination of solicitor Pat Finucane would not produce a fuller picture "of what happened and what went wrong" than the review he commissioned from Sir Desmond de Silva QC. But by publishing on Thursday the review containing hundreds of secret and confidential documents, Mr Cameron seems unwittingly to have strengthened the campaign by the Finucane family and others for a public inquiry. The scale of collusion is quite shocking: · 85% of intelligence that the [Ulster Defence Association] used to target people for murder originated from army and police sources · 270 separate instances of security force leaks to the UDA between January 1987 and September 1989 · Agents working for MI5, [Royal Ulster Constabulary] Special Branch and Military Intelligence were participating in criminality, presumably including murder. · Neither a proper legal framework nor even guidelines to control the criminality of what are known as these "participating agents". · The Northern Ireland Office was "not overly enthusiastic" about attempts by senior RUC and MI5 officers to introduce guidelines "despite representations at the highest levels." · This issue was also considered extensively at cabinet level and ministers were clearly aware that the agents were being run without guidelines. The director general of the MI5 raised it with the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1988. All this was a "wilful and abject failure by successive Governments" to run agents lawfully.

Note: Patrick Finucane (1949 – 12 February 1989) was a Belfast solicitor killed by UDA loyalist paramilitaries. Two public investigations concluded that elements of the British security forces colluded in Finucane's murder and there have been high-profile calls for a public inquiry. A review, led by Desmond Lorenz de Silva, released a report in December 2012 acknowledging that the case entailed "a wilful and abject failure by successive Governments"; however, Finucane's family called the De Silva report a "sham."

As leak enthusiasts go, few resemble Julian Assange less than Daniel Domscheit-Berg. The wide-eyed and softspoken German left WikiLeaks in September to start his own leak-focused organization known as OpenLeaks. Like its parent organization, OpenLeaks will solicit secret documents from leakers in government and business. But instead of publishing the leaks on its site — a strategy that has made WikiLeaks the target of cyber- and legal attacks since it began posting a quarter-million secret cables from the U.S. State Department last month — OpenLeaks will function as a secure tip box that passes leaked files on to whatever media outlet or NGO the leaker chooses. OpenLeaks is just one of a bumper crop of WikiLeaks-inspired sites popping up across the globe, borrowing various pieces of the original site's model of anonymous submissions and online publishing. That's good news for WikiLeaks, too, as Assange himself said in an interview last month. "The supply of leaks is very large," he said. "It's helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It's protective to us." In the long term, Domscheit-Berg argues, WikiLeaks' greatest impact may not be any particular document release but the entire movement of second-generation sites like OpenLeaks that it has spawned.

Disturbing new questions have been raised about the role of doctors and other medical professionals in helping the Central Intelligence Agency subject terrorism suspects to harsh treatment, abuse and torture. The Red Cross previously documented, from interviews with "high-value" prisoners, that medical personnel helped facilitate abuses in the C.I.A.'s "enhanced interrogation program" during the Bush administration. Now Physicians for Human Rights has suggested that the medical professionals may also have violated national and international laws setting limits on what research can be performed on humans. The group's report focused particularly on a few issues where medical personnel played an important role – determining how far a harsh interrogation could go, providing legal cover against prosecution and designing future interrogation procedures. In the case of waterboarding, a technique in which prisoners are brought to the edge of drowning, health professionals were required to monitor the practice and keep detailed medical records. Their findings led to several changes, including a switch to saline solution as the near-drowning agent instead of water, ostensibly to protect the health of detainees who ingest large volumes of liquid but also, the group says, to allow repeated use of waterboarding on the same subject.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the unlawful actions of US intelligence and military forces in the "global war on terror," click here.

Marcy Kaptur of Ohio is the longest-serving Democratic congresswoman in U.S. history. Her district, stretching along the shore of Lake Erie from west of Cleveland to Toledo, faces an epidemic of home foreclosures and 11.5 percent unemployment. Now, she is recommending a radical foreclosure solution from the floor of the U.S. Congress: "So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave." She criticizes the bailout's failure to protect homeowners facing foreclosure. These mortgages were made, then bundled into securities and sold and resold repeatedly, by the very Wall Street banks that are now benefiting from [a government bailout]. The banks foreclosing on families very often can't locate the actual loan note that binds the homeowner to the bad loan. "Produce the note," Kaptur recommends [to] those facing foreclosure demands of the banks. "[P]ossession is nine-tenths of the law," Rep. Kaptur [said]. "Therefore, stay in your property. Get proper legal representation ... [if] Wall Street cannot produce the deed nor the mortgage audit trail ... you should stay in your home. It is your castle. It's more than a piece of property. ... If you look at the bad paper, if you look at where there's trouble, 95 to 98 percent of the paper really has moved to five institutions: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wachovia, Citigroup and HSBC. They have this country held by the neck."

Note: Why is it that with the trillions of dollars given by the U.S. government to prop up banks who used shady loan practices, so few homeowners facing foreclosure have received any assistance? For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

A leading U.S. Senate Democrat accused the Bush administration on Tuesday of a "cover-up" aimed at stopping the Environmental Protection Agency from tackling greenhouse emissions. "This cover-up is being directed from the White House and the office of the vice president," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. At issue is a preliminary finding by the EPA last December that "greenhouse gases may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public welfare," according to Jason Burnett, the agency's former associate deputy administrator who appeared at a news conference with Boxer. Such a finding would be an early step toward government regulation aimed at protecting public health. Boxer said that unless EPA documents were released, it was likely that within the next two weeks her committee would try to subpoena the material. Burnett, who resigned on June 9, told Boxer's committee the White House tried pressuring him to retract an e-mail [in] which he detailed the finding. Burnett said he refused. Since then, the EPA finding has been left "in limbo." [Boxer] has been trying since last October to obtain related documents to show that planned congressional testimony on global warming by Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was censored by the Bush administration. Burnett told the congressional committee the administration's Council on Environmental Quality "and the office of the vice president were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony."

Note: For key news reports on global warming from reliable sources, click here.

A federal panel of scientists [has concluded] that an estrogen-like compound in plastic could be posing some risk to the brain development of babies and children. Bisphenol A, or BPA, [a component of polycarbonate plastic,] is found in low levels in virtually every human body. The decision by the 12 advisors of the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction ... is the first official, government action related to the chemical. The scientists ranked their concerns about BPA, concluding they had "some concern" about neurological and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and children, but "minimal" or "negligible" concern about reproductive effects. The findings put the panel roughly in the middle -- between the chemical industry, which has long said there is no evidence of danger to humans, and the environmental activists and scientists who say it is probably harming people. Environmentalists lambasted the panel, saying it had minimized the risks and ignored important research. "Only the chemical industry agrees with the decision that BPA has little or no human health risks. That by itself should speak volumes about the corrupted process endorsed by the panel today," said Dr. Anila Jacob of the Environmental Working Group. The panel's preliminary report on BPA was drafted by a private consulting firm with financial ties to the chemical industry. The National Toxicology Program fired the company but ruled that the report was unbiased. The panel rejected several dozen animal studies that found reproductive effects. The decision to reject the studies has been controversial with toxicologists.

John Revelli vividly remembers the day the U.S. Supreme Court issued its infamous Kelo decision that allowed local governments to condemn private property under eminent domain, not only for public uses such as roads and schools, but also to accommodate private developers. "The Kelo decision," the former owner of Revelli Tires in Oakland [said,] "came out on June 23 of '05, and the deadline that the city put up against us to move out was July 1." The U.S. Constitution states, "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." The big bench wrongly ruled that "public use" could be whatever states want it to be -- including private developments designed to expand the tax base. The ruling allowed the City of New London, Conn., to seize the land under Susette Kelo's "little pink cottage" and hand it over to a private developer for a development featuring high-end waterfront homes. And Oakland went ahead with its plans to seize Revelli Tires [as well as] Autohouse -- a business owned and run by first-generation American Tony Fung -- in order to accommodate a private apartment project. Revelli and Fung lost their businesses and their property. As former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who dissented on Kelo, warned, "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory." No government should be able to take your land to give it to a corporation. When states and cities, in search of a richer tax base, can take your land and give it to a private developer -- they have license to trample on everyone's rights. And no one, except the very rich, is safe.

They might be called China’s renegade businessmen, small entrepreneurs who are experts at counterfeiting and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make a profit. But just how far out of the Chinese mainstream are they? Cutting corners or producing fake goods is not just a legacy of China’s initial rush toward the free market three decades ago but [is] still woven into the fabric of the nation’s thriving industrial economy. It is driven by entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of a weak legal system, lax regulations and a business culture where bribery and corruption are rampant. “This is cut-throat market capitalism,” said Wenran Jiang, a specialist in China who teaches at the University of Alberta. Since this country’s economic reforms began to take root in the 1980s, businesses have engineered countless ways to produce everything from fake car parts, cosmetics and brand name bags to counterfeit electrical cables and phony Viagra. Counterfeiting rings are broken nearly every week; nonetheless, the government seems to be waging a losing battle against the operations. Dozens of Chinese cities have risen to prominence over the last two decades by first specializing in fake goods, like Wenzhou, which was once known for selling counterfeit Procter & Gamble products, and Kaihua in Zhejiang province, which specialized in fake Philips light bulbs. For a time, people even derided the entire province of Henan as the capital of substandard or fake goods, like medicines that could make you miraculously grow taller.

Note: The fact that China recently sentenced to death the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration may show that China is trying to address the problem, yet corruption is rampant in the drug industries of China, the U.S., and most other countries.

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.