Government Corruption News Articles

Excerpts of key news articles on

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The Defense Department's accounting practices are in such disarray that defense officials can't track how much equipment the military owns, where it all is or exactly how they spend defense dollars every year. The report by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities called the Pentagon's financial-management practices an embarrassment. "Today, if the Defense Department were a private business it would be involved in a major scandal," said Kwai Chan, a former top official with the Government Accountability Office and the report's author. The nonpartisan group, made up of more than 600 current and retired business executives from U.S. companies, thinks that federal spending priorities are undermining national security. A report this year from the White House's Office of Management and Budget found that 20 out of 23 defense programs that auditors looked at...didn't use strong financial-management practices. In reports to Congress in recent years, the GAO found $100 million that could be collected annually from defense contractors who underpaid federal taxes. The federal government had collected less than 1 percent of that. $1.2 billion in Army supplies shipped to Iraq [also] couldn't be accounted for. As a result, military units ended up short on "tires, tank tracks, helicopter spare parts, radio batteries and other basic items." The Defense Department's Office of the Inspector General has pronounced the department "un-auditable."

Note: The article failed to mention Rumsfeld's own admission "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," as reported on CBS. The CBS article goes on to state that "[the Pentagon's] own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends." See this highly underreported article at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the number of insiders alleging wrongdoing in government...has surged, as have reprisals against them. That's the message from this week's congressional hearing on protections for national security whistle-blowers. "The system is broken," says Rep. Christopher Shays (R) of Connecticut, who chaired the House Government Affairs subcommittee hearing. Government scientists and even analysts at the scholarly Congressional Research Service...report efforts to control their contact with the press and public. If whistle-blowers and others "do not see an option for dissent within the system, then the system is in bad shape," says Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA, spoke out about efforts by the NASA press office to screen his speeches and limit his contact with the press. When lawmakers on the House panel asked what other issues they should heed, watchdog groups cited the case of Louis Fisher, a senior analyst at Congressional Research Service. "The CRS has been severely compromised," says William Weaver, a political scientist at the University of Texas in El Paso and a founder of the National Security Whistle-blowers Coalition. Says Fisher himself: "For the last 33 years my job was to defend legislative prerogative and constitutional government, and suddenly that's a bad thing to do."

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Maryland did not violate the First Amendment rights of two Baltimore Sun reporters by prohibiting state employees from talking to them, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled yesterday. In November 2004, the governor's press office issued a directive instructing every employee of the state's executive branch not to speak to David Nitkin, a political reporter at The Sun, or Michael Olesker, a columnist who has since left the paper. "Do not return calls or comply with any requests," the directive said. The reason for the ban, it explained, was that the two reporters "are failing to objectively report on any issue dealing with" the governor's administration. In a radio appearance, Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, said the ban was "meant to have a chilling effect" on the reporters.

They were loyal conservatives and Bush appointees. They fought a quiet battle to rein in the president's power in the war on terror. And they paid a price for it. James Comey...resigned as deputy attorney general in the summer of 2005. Comey's farewell speech...contained...an unusual passage. Comey thanked "people who came to my office, or my home, or called my cell phone late at night, to quietly tell me when I was about to make a mistake; they were the people committed to getting it right....Some of them did pay a price for their commitment to right, but they wouldn't have it any other way." These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, [they] fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men. They did not see the struggle in terms of black and white but in shades of gray -- as painfully close calls with unavoidable pitfalls. They worried deeply about whether their principles might put Americans at home and abroad at risk. Their story...is a quietly dramatic profile in courage.

Note: If you want to understand the complexities involved behind the scenes at the top levels of US politics, I most highly recommend reading this entire article. It is five webpages in length.

The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq. KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. Officials of the corps said that they had solicited bids and that KBR was the lone responder. A spokesman for the corps, Clayton Church, said that the centers could be at unused military sites or temporary structures and that each one would hold up to 5,000 people. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jamie Zuieback...added that she could not provide additional information about the company's statement that the contract was also meant to support the rapid development of new programs.

Note: For lots more on disturbing potential uses for these detention centers, click here. And for a revealing 2002 Los Angeles Times articled title "Camps for Citizens,"click here.

Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was "solidly" behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion's legality and despite the absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to the war published today. A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme. Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours". Mr Bush added: "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]". The revelation that Mr Blair had supported the US president's plans to go to war with Iraq even in the absence of a second UN resolution contrasts with the assurances the prime minister gave parliament shortly after. On February 25 2003 - three weeks after his trip to Washington - Mr Blair told the Commons that the government was giving "Saddam one further, final chance to disarm voluntarily". Downing Street did not deny the existence of the memo last night.

Note: Why was this initially hardly mentioned in the US media? For lots more, see our War Information Center.

Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected. Researchers have long known that political decisions are strongly influenced by unconscious emotional reactions, a fact routinely exploited by campaign consultants and advertisers. But the new research suggests that for partisans, political thinking is often predominantly emotional. It is possible to override these biases, Dr. Westen said, "but you have to engage in ruthless self reflection, to say, 'All right, I know what I want to believe, but I have to be honest.' " He added, "It speaks to the character of the discourse that this quality is rarely talked about in politics."

Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, including five who served Republican presidents, said Wednesday that the Bush administration needed to act more aggressively to limit the emission of greenhouse gases linked to climate change. Speaking on a panel that also included the current agency chief, Stephen L. Johnson, they generally agreed that the need to address global warming was growing urgent and that the continuing debate over what percentage of the problem was caused by human activities was a waste of time. The blunt opinions of [the current EPA chief's] Republican predecessors served as a sharp reminder that since Mr. Bush took office in 2001, neither the president nor the Republican-led Congress has proposed any comprehensive plan to limit carbon emissions from vehicles, utilities and other sources, a problem that Mr. Bush's own Department of Energy predicts will grow worse.

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that...our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat...I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated. If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them. If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marine Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy...I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy. Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to "protect us."

A former FBI translator failed Monday to persuade the Supreme Court to revive her lawsuit alleging she was fired for reporting possible wrongdoing by other linguists involved in counterterrorism investigations. Edmonds...argued that a trial court judge was wrong to accept the Justice Department's claim that allowing her lawsuit to go forward would threaten "state secrets," or national security. Edmonds' firing was controversial among some lawmakers in Congress, especially after the Justice Department's inspector general found that the FBI had not taken her complaints seriously enough and had fired her for lodging complaints about the translation unit.

Note: The article fails to mention Edmonds' allegations of the criminal involvement in 9/11-related matters of top government officials. For more on this, see http://www.wanttoknow.info/sibeledmonds To sign Congressman Weldon's petition for open testimony on the Able Danger program, click here.

The federal government has moved hundreds of thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina into hotel rooms at a cost of about $11 million a night, a strategy local officials and some members of Congress criticize as incoherent and wasteful. The number of people in hotels has grown by 60 percent in the past two weeks as some shelters closed, reaching nearly 600,000 as of Tuesday. The reliance on hotels has been necessary, housing advocates say, because [FEMA] has had problems installing mobile homes and travel trailers for evacuees and has been slow to place victims in apartments that real estate executives say are available throughout the southeast. Critics point out that hotel rooms, at an average cost of $59 a night, are significantly more expensive than apartments and are not suitable for months-long stays. Even conservative housing experts have criticized the Bush administration's handling of the temporary housing response. "I am baffled," said Ronald D. Utt, a former...Reagan administration aide who is now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. "This is not incompetence. This is willful."

Note: Do you ever wonder if the current administration might be trying to bankrupt our country? For more excellent information on the hurricanes: http://www.WantToKnow.info/050927hurricanecoverupcorruption

In another gesture symbolizing the continued confusion of the federal response, the man President Bush immediately named to succeed “Brownie,” proves to have been the same FEMA official who, two-and-a-half years ago, suggested that Americans stock up on duct tape to protect against a biological or chemical terrorist attack. David Paulison, then the government's Fire Administrator, joined with the then-head of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, on February 10th, 2003, to say that duct tape and plastic sheeting should be part of any home's "survival kit" in preparation for a terrorist attack. That set off a run on duct tape at stores, and widespread criticism of the administration. It might have been the first time after 9/11 that a large number of Americans wondered if the government really knew what it was talking about when it came to disaster preparedness. And the man behind that politically explosive proposal, has just been named to succeed the man who had been the face of the politically explosive response to Hurricane Katrina.

DAVID MUIR, ABC NEWS: This is the actual levee that runs along the canal on the eastern side of the city. You can see the massive breach here and...what the water did to the Lower Ninth Ward. It completely destroyed neighborhoods. JOE EDWARDS, JR., 9TH WARD RESIDENT: I heard something go "boom"!!! MUIR: Joe Edwards rushed to get himself and as many neighbors as possible into his truck. They drove to this bridge, where they've been living ever since. Was it solely the water that broke the levee, or was it the force of this barge? Joe Edwards says neither. People...in this neighborhood...actually think the city did it, blowing up the levee to save richer neighborhoods like the French Quarter. MUIR: So you're convinced... EDWARDS: I know this happened! MUIR: They broke the levee on purpose? EDWARDS: They blew it.

President Bush on Thursday renewed the national emergency he declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In a letter to Congress, Bush said the nation is still under the terrorist threat that led him to declare a national emergency three days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The president's declaration allows for the mobilization of reserve military forces and other steps. By law, a national emergency declaration automatically expires on the anniversary date of its declaration unless the president renews it. Bush's action will renew the declaration for another year.

Two Navy helicopter pilots and their crews returned from New Orleans on Aug. 30 expecting to be greeted as lifesavers after ferrying more than 100 hurricane victims to safety. Instead, their superiors chided the pilots...at a meeting the next morning for rescuing civilians when their assignment that day had been to deliver food and water to military installations along the Gulf Coast. While refueling at a Coast Guard landing pad in early evening, Lieutenant Udkow said, he called Pensacola and received permission to continue rescues that evening. According to the pilots and other military officials, they rescued 110 people. The next morning, though, the two crews were called to a meeting with Commander Holdener, who said he told them that while helping civilians was laudable, the lengthy rescue effort was an unacceptable diversion from their main mission of delivering supplies.

Preparing scenarios for action on US soil a shift for Pentagon. The US military has devised its first-ever war plans for guarding against and responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, envisioning 15 potential crisis scenarios and anticipating several simultaneous strikes around the country, according to officers who drafted the plans. The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement. Defense officials continue to emphasize that they intend for the troops to play a supporting role in homeland emergencies, bolstering police, firefighters, and other civilian response groups. But the new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.

John Riggs spent 39 years in the Army, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery during the Vietnam War and working his way up to become a three-star general. Last year, Riggs was told by senior Army officials that he would be retired at a reduced rank, losing one of his stars because of infractions considered so minor that they were not placed in his official record. He was given 24 hours to leave the Army. A senior officer's loss of a star is a punishment seldom used, and then usually for the most serious offenses, such as dereliction of duty or command failures. So what cost Riggs his star? His Pentagon superiors said he allowed outside contractors to perform work they were not supposed to do. Some of the general's supporters believe the motivation behind his demotion was politics. Riggs was blunt and outspoken on a number of issues and publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan and needed more troops.

Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and mid-2004, the nation’s prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported Sunday. While the crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released. In 2004, one in every 138 U.S. residents was in prison or jail. 61 percent of prison and jail inmates were of racial or ethnic minorities, the government said. An estimated 12.6 percent of all black men in their late 20s were in jails or prisons, as were 3.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.7 percent of white men in that age group, the report said.

No 'True' Al Qaeda Sleeper Agents Have Been Found in U.S. A secret FBI report obtained by ABC News concludes that while there is no doubt al Qaeda wants to hit the United States, its capability to do so is unclear. The 32-page assessment says flatly, "To date, we have not identified any true 'sleeper' agents in the US," seemingly contradicting the "sleeper cell" description prosecutors assigned to seven men in Lackawanna, N.Y., in 2002. It also differs from testimony given by FBI Director Robert Mueller, who warned in the past that several sleeper cells were probably in place.

Mr. Arkin, in the online supplement to his book (codenames.org/documents.html ), says the contingency plan, called JCS Conplan 0300-97, calls for "special-mission units in extra-legal missions to combat terrorism in the United States" based on top-secret orders that are managed by the military's Joint Staff. Mr. Arkin provided The New York Times with briefing slides prepared by the Northern Command, detailing the plan and outlining the military's preparations for the inauguration. Three senior Defense Department and Bush administration officials confirmed the existence of the plan and mission, but disputed Mr. Arkin's characterization of the mission as "extra-legal."

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.