Government Corruption News Stories

Excerpts of Key Government Corruption News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

According to the American Psychological Association, "Misinformation is false or inaccurate information – getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead – intentionally misstating the facts." What we've seen over the past several years is our government purveying disinformation – deliberately misleading the public. When our government peddles disinformation, it undermines the public trust. That's why only 22 percent of Americans say they trust the government. Hillary Clinton's campaign made and paid for the Russian collusion hoax, which asserted that Donald Trump had "worked with the Russians to try to rig the 2016 election," to quote then-House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). Clinton and her campaign ... were working behind the scenes with government agents – including the FBI and elected Democrats – to spread disinformation. Several operatives within the FBI were promoting the hoax and giving it the appearance of fact, which allowed the media to cover the issue ad infinitum. One FBI agent, Kevin Clinesmith, even lied to the FISA Court so the government could continue monitoring the phone calls of U.S. citizens. The hoax cost taxpayers millions of dollars, first with the Mueller Report and then the Durham Report. Yet no collusion was found, just disinformation. Retired Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ... [asserted] the natural origin of the COVID-19 virus. Several years later, there is a widespread assumption that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Virility Institute in China. Fauci did not want people to believe the lab-leak theory, perhaps because he and others had worked with and provided federal funds to that laboratory.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

After government officials like former White House advisers Rob Flaherty and Andy Slavitt repeatedly harangued platforms such as Facebook to censor Americans who contested the government's narrative on COVID-19 vaccines, Missouri and Louisiana sued. They claimed that the practice violates the First Amendment. Following years of litigation, the Supreme Court threw cold water on their efforts, ruling in Murthy v. Missouri that states and the individual plaintiffs lacked standing to sue the government for its actions. The government often disguised its censorship requests by coordinating with ostensibly "private" civil society groups to pressure tech companies to remove or shadow ban targeted content. According to the U.S. House Weaponization Committee's November 2023 interim report, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency requested that the now-defunct Stanford Internet Observatory create a public-private partnership to counter election "misinformation" in 2020. This consortium of government and private entities took the form of the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). EIP's "private" civil society partners then forwarded the flagged content to Big Tech platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter. These "private" groups ... receive millions of taxpayer dollars from the National Science Foundation, the State Department and the U.S Department of Justice. Legislation like the COLLUDE Act would ... clarify that Section 230 does not apply when platforms censor legal speech "as a result of a communication" from a "governmental entity" or from an non-profit "acting at the request or behest of a governmental entity."

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

Razish [is] a fake village built by the US army to train its soldiers for urban warfare. It is one of a dozen pretend settlements scattered across "the Box" (as in sandbox) – a vast landscape of unforgiving desert at the Fort Irwin National Training Center (NTC), the largest such training facility in the world. Covering more than 1,200 square miles, it is a place where soldiers come to practise liberating the citizens of the imaginary oil-rich nation Atropia from occupation by the evil authoritarian state of Donovia. Fake landmines dot the valleys, fake police stations are staffed by fake police, and fake villages populated by citizens of fake nation states are invaded daily by the US military – wielding very real artillery. It operates a fake cable news channel, on which officers are subjected to aggressive TV interviews, trained to win the media war as well as the physical one. Recently, it even introduced internal social media networks, called Tweeter and Fakebook, where mock civilians spread fake news about the battles – social media being the latest weapon in the arsenal of modern war. Razish may still have a Middle Eastern look, but the actors hawking chunks of plastic meat and veg in the street market speak not English or Arabic, but Russian. This military role-playing industry has ballooned since the early 2000s, now comprising a network of 256 companies across the US, receiving more than $250m a year in government contracts. The actors are often recent refugees, having fled one real-world conflict only to enter another, simulated one.

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

A court in the United States has found multinational fruit company Chiquita Brands International liable for financing a Colombian paramilitary group. The group, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), was designated by the US as a terrorist organisation at the time. Following a civil case brought by eight Colombian families whose relatives were killed by the AUC, Chiquita has been ordered to pay $38.3m (Ł30m) in damages to the families. The AUC engaged in widespread human rights abuses in Colombia, including murdering people it suspected of links with left-wing rebels. The victims ranged from trade unionists to banana workers. The case was brought by the families after Chiquita pleaded guilty in 2007 to making payments to the AUC. During the 2007 trial, it was revealed that Chiquita had made payments amounting to more than $1.7m to the AUC in the six years from 1997 to 2004. The banana giant said that it began making the payments after the leader of the AUC at the time, Carlos Castaño, implied that staff and property belonging to Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia could be harmed if the money was not forthcoming. The AUC claimed to have been created to defend landowners from ... left-wing rebels, the paramilitary group more often acted as a death squad for drug traffickers. At its height, it had an estimated 30,000 members who engaged in intimidation, drug trafficking, extortion, forced displacement and killings.

Note: Read more about Chiquita's payments to this Colombian paramilitary group. Chiquita succeeded the United Fruit Company, which once owned most of the land in Guatemala and had close ties with the CIA. When Guatemala's democratically elected president aimed to nationalize land, US covert operations installed a military dictator, returning the land to United Fruit. This led to a bloody 40-year civil war and a series of repressive military regimes, armed with CIA-funded weapons.

Real estate companies are making an explicit appeal to wartime patriotism, leading with the conflict as a selling point and a reason to invest. In late June, a company called My Israel Home hosted an expo at a Los Angeles synagogue catering to a specific clientele: Jewish Americans looking to buy a new home in Israel – or on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Similar real estate fairs have popped up across North America this year ... and several have faced protests as the war on Gaza has brought the issue of Israeli settlements and Palestinian sovereignty to the fore. On websites largely tailored for Jewish American buyers looking to move to Israel, prospective homeowners can browse properties that include listings for homes in settlement communities, which offer the typical trappings of suburban life. Around a dozen real estate firms have participated in real estate fairs organized by My Israel Home across North America this year. Six of these firms are actively marketing at least two dozen separate properties for sale located within eight different West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, according to their online listings. Other real estate firms commonly list dozens of West Bank properties on their sites. West Bank settlements have long drawn criticism from the international community, which regards the settlements as illegal, in violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions. Criticism of settlements have only intensified in recent months amid a spike in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied territory.

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

Project Gunrunner [was] a nationwide initiative launched in Laredo, Texas, in 2005, which sought to reduce the smuggling of firearms across the U.S. southern border. But while the primary tactic of Gunrunner was the interdiction of buyers and sellers who were violating the laws, [ATF] agents in Phoenix had other plans. They wanted to see where the guns went if they were allowed to cross the border – to follow the small fish until they caught bigger ones. Agents named their operation "Fast and Furious," after the popular movie about car racing. Between September 2009 and December 2010, a joint task force comprised of federal officials from ATF, FBI, DEA, and ICE, working under the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona, let over two thousand guns "walk" to Mexico. The murder that made the flawed operation public and political in the United States was of an American citizen on US soil: the killing of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Though the investigators could not identify the specific gun that fired the bullet, two AK-47 style WASR-10 rifles were recovered at the scene. Both were traced to ... one of the straw purchasers the agents were monitoring under the Fast and Furious operation. ATF agents who shared their experiences during interviews conducted by a congressional committee admitted they knew that the only way they would learn the whereabouts of the guns they let go would be when Mexican law enforcement recovered them at crime scenes.

Note: Read more about the thousands of illegal guns American officials allowed into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

During his final three years at the US Food and Drug Administration the physician scientist Doran Fink's work focused on reviewing covid-19 vaccines. But a decade after joining the agency Fink had accepted a job with Moderna, the covid vaccine manufacturer. As he left for the private sector, the FDA's ethics programme staff emailed him guidelines on post-employment restrictions, "tailored to your situation." The email, obtained by The BMJ under a freedom of information request, explained that, although US law prohibits a variety of types of lobbying contact, "they do not prohibit the former employee from other activities, including working ‘behind the scenes.'" The legal ability to work "behind the scenes" is enshrined in federal regulations and highlights a "critical, critical loophole" in US revolving door policy. Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the organisation Public Citizen, told The BMJ that the rules forbid various forms of direct lobbying contact but permit lobbying activity that is indirect. "So, people will leave government service and can immediately start doing influence peddling and lobbying," Holman explained. "They can even run a lobbying campaign, as long as they don't actually pick up the telephone and make the contact with their former officials." A majority of former FDA reviewers take up jobs in industry. Since 2000 every FDA commissioner, the agency's highest position, has gone on to work for industry.

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

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence submitted its 6,700-page "torture report" about the CIA to the White House in April 2014. More than 10 years later, the full report remains secret after a federal appellate court dismissed a lawsuit I filed in the hopes of forcing its release. The document "includes comprehensive and excruciating detail" about the CIA's "program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques," the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chaired the Senate intelligence committee at the time, wrote in a 2014 summary. "The full report details how the CIA lied to the public, the Congress, the president, and to itself about the information produced by the torture program," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. So far, efforts to obtain the torture report using the federal Freedom of Information Act have been unsuccessful. In late 2016, despite the CIA director's objections, former President Barack Obama placed a copy in his presidential papers. But that copy is not subject to FOIA until 2029 – 12 years after Obama left office. The CIA and a handful of federal agencies also have copies of the torture report, although the Trump administration returned several of these to the Senate intelligence committee vaults in 2017. The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations all fought strenuously against FOIA requests for these agencies' copies.

Note: The above was written by media law attorney Shawn Musgrave. No one been charged in connection with the unethical CIA torture program. Many of the architects and enablers of the program are now in powerful and esteemed positions in academia, high levels of government, the federal judiciary, and more. For more, read the "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture" and check out our summary on US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

In the early days of America's war on terror, U.S. authorities detained Ahmed Rabbani thinking he was someone else. They soon realized their mistake. Rabbani ... was never charged with a crime. Rabbani's lawyer says he ... was taken by Pakistani authorities who misidentified him and handed him over to U.S. intelligence officers for a $5,000 reward. Rabbani [was] a taxi driver in Karachi. He spoke three languages–Urdu, Arabic and English. When he was detained, on Sept. 10, 2002, Rabbani didn't know his wife was pregnant. He said he found out about it three years later from a letter–the first communication he had received from her since his detention. He met his 20-year-old son, Jawwad, for the first time upon his return to Pakistan in February. After 18˝ years at Guantanamo Bay, he stepped off a plane in Pakistan in February–a free but broken man. Years of hunger strikes and force feeding have left him unable to eat most solid food. "I never, never, ever sleep at night," he said. His only means of escape was art. By the time of his release, he had made hundreds of paintings. In May, 20 of Rabbani's paintings were shown at a gallery in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Rabbani said he was transferred several times to camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan known as black sites–secret CIA interrogation facilities. There, he said, he was tortured until he told his captors anything he thought they wanted to hear. A total of 779 men were at some point detained [at Guantanamo]. Like Rabbani, most were eventually released without ever having been charged with a crime. Rabbani says he doesn't expect he will ever fully recover, physically or mentally. "Some things will never be fixed," he said.

Note: Read more about Guantanamo Bay's horrors. Check out the incredible ships created by Moath al-Alwi, another prisoner held at Guantánamo Bay without charges since 2002. The Pentagon has declared that art produced at Guantánamo Bay belongs to the US government, and not the artists. Authorities have refused to release the artworks from prison.

Last week, the Biden administration said it would allow the Azov Brigade, a Ukrainian military unit, to receive U.S. weaponry and training, freeing it from a purported ban imposed in response to concerns that it committed human rights violations and had neo-Nazi ties. A photo posted by the unit itself, however, seems to suggest that the U.S. was providing support as far back as December of last year. The photo, in tandem with the administration's own statements, highlights the murky nature of the arms ban, how it was imposed, and under what U.S. authority. Two mechanisms could have barred arms transfers: a law passed by Congress specifically prohibiting assistance to Azov, and the so-called Leahy laws that block support to units responsible for grave rights violations. The State Department said this month that weapon shipments will now go forward after a Leahy law review, but won't comment on if and when a Leahy ban was in effect. The congressional prohibition, the U.S. says, does not apply because it barred assistance to the Azov Battalion, a predecessor to the Azov Brigade. The original unit had earned scrutiny for alleged human rights violations and ties to neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies. The U.S. has not made clear about when the apparent ban started, but a deputy Azov commander and media reports indicate some type of prohibition has been in effect for nearly a decade – though the congressional ban has only been in effect since 2018.

Note: Facebook changed its censorship policies to permit calls for the death of Russian soldiers and praise for the Azov Battalion. Learn more about US covert military support for Neo-Nazis in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

High-level former intelligence and national security officials have provided crucial assistance to Silicon Valley giants as the tech firms fought off efforts to weaken online monopolies. John Ratcliffe, the former Director of National Intelligence, Brian Cavanaugh, a former intelligence aide in the White House, and [former White House National Security Advisor Robert] O'Brien jointly wrote to congressional leaders, warning darkly that certain legislative proposals to check the power of Amazon, Google, Meta, and Apple would embolden America's enemies. The letter left unmentioned that the former officials were paid by tech industry lobbyists at the time as part of a campaign to suppress support for the legislation. The Open App Markets App was designed to break Apple and Google's duopoly over the smartphone app store market. The companies use their control over the app markets to force app developers to pay as much as 30 percent in fees on every transaction. Breaking up Apple and Google's hold over the smartphone app store would enable greater free expression and innovation. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act similarly encourages competition by preventing tech platforms from self-preferencing their own products. The Silicon Valley giants deployed hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying efforts to stymie the reforms. For Republicans, they crafted messages on national security and jobs. For Democrats, as other reports have revealed, tech giants paid LGBT, Black, and Latino organizations to lobby against the reforms, claiming that powerful tech platforms are beneficial to communities of color and that greater competition online would lead to a rise in hate speech.The lobbying tactics have so far paid off. Every major tech antitrust and competition bill in Congress has died over the last four years.

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

In May, the New York State government agreed to subsidize news media. The legislation allows tax credits for up to half of journalists' salaries. Not every outlet can write off employment costs. Excluded ... are nonprofit operations as well as those owned by publicly traded companies. Governments have tried to suppress dissenting views. If a massive chunk of journalists' income comes from one reliable source–government coffers–they'll inevitably treat government as the audience to please rather than locals who've proven difficult to court and who distrust the press. Under such subsidies, the future of local media could be one of well-funded media outlets ignored by their nominal communities as they produce reports tailored for the tastes of bureaucrats with funding power. That's been an ongoing problem with publicly funded journalism. "In Europe, we have seen governments harm the reputation and independence of public media to the point of limiting their citizens' access to differing points of view," Freedom House research analyst Jessica White wrote. In December, a report from The Future of Free Speech, an independent think tank ... warned, "the global landscape for freedom of expression has faced severe challenges in 2023. Even open democracies have implemented restrictive measures." The report documented how obsession with "hate speech," "terrorist content," and "disinformation" are wielded as bludgeons by officials against critics of government officials and their policies.

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

Starting in 2016, United States government intelligence agencies, news media, and establishment leaders in both political parties warned of a vast Russian conspiracy to interfere in elections. Every major allegation proved to be wrong or profoundly misleading. According to every serious political scientist, Russia had no measurable influence in the 2016 elections. According to intelligence and security services, the news media, and establishment political leaders across the Western World, Russia is currently interfering in European elections by secretly bribing conservative politicians. Yesterday, the Washington Post repeated the claim. But neither the government agencies nor the news media have produced any evidence to support their accusations, and every single individual accused of taking money from the Russians has denied it. What we are witnessing appears to be establishment politicians weaponizing government intelligence agencies to interfere in Europe's elections, with the active participation of mainstream German NGOs and news media companies. The weaponization of government by politicians and intelligence agencies should terrify us all. Just because you're not the victim in this particular case, either because you're not European or conservative, is no reason to think that what's happening couldn't affect you and the people you love and care about in the future.

Note: Read about the 2016 leak of DNC documents that was blamed on Russian Hackers. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

"El Flaco" ... works as a mercenary, he said, and had come to discuss a closely guarded secret of Mexico's most powerful cartels: The FGM 148 Javelin infrared-guided, missile launcher. El Flaco maintains he has been trained to perform special operations using shoulder-fired weapons, including the Javelin. He said he now trains others to use it as well. If El Flaco is telling the truth, Javelins would be among the most extreme examples of the escalation in the arms race between cartels and Mexican military. Cartels' arsenals now include belt-fed gatling guns, drone bombs and land mines. The U.S.-made Javelin is the most sophisticated shoulder-fired missile launcher in the world, with a range of a mile and a half. Its main purpose is to destroy military tanks, but it also has the capacity to take down low-flying helicopters. There are holes in the U.S. tracking system. During the Iraq War in 2003, the department lost track of 35 Javelins provided to Iraqi allied forces. ISIS was found to have a Javelin in Syria, Kurdish fighters there also obtained a Javelin and the weapon was found at a Libyan warlord base. Since 2018, the Mexican government has reported seizing a dozen rocket launchers and 56 grenade launchers from cartels. Thomas Brandon with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was clear that "criminal organizations and drug cartels based in Mexico continue to look towards the United States as a source of supply for firearms and in this case military grade weapons such as grenades, machine guns, and Man-Portable Air Defense."

Note: American officials allowed thousands of illegal guns to be trafficked into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Twenty years ago, FedEx established its own police force. Now it's working with local police to build out an AI car surveillance network. The shipping and business services company is using AI tools made by Flock Safety, a $4 billion car surveillance startup, to monitor its distribution and cargo facilities across the United States. As part of the deal, FedEx is providing its Flock surveillance feeds to law enforcement, an arrangement that Flock has with at least four multi-billion dollar private companies. Some local police departments are also sharing their Flock feeds with FedEx – a rare instance of a private company availing itself of a police surveillance apparatus. Such close collaboration has the potential to dramatically expand Flock's car surveillance network, which already spans 4,000 cities across over 40 states and some 40,000 cameras that track vehicles by license plate, make, model, color and other identifying characteristics, like dents or bumper stickers. Jay Stanley ... at the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was "profoundly disconcerting" that FedEx was exchanging data with law enforcement as part of Flock's "mass surveillance" system. "It raises questions about why a private company ... would have privileged access to data that normally is only available to law enforcement," he said. Forbes previously found that [Flock] had itself likely broken the law across various states by installing cameras without the right permits.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

The U.S. Postal Service has shared information from thousands of Americans' letters and packages with law enforcement every year for the past decade, conveying the names, addresses and other details from the outside of boxes and envelopes without requiring a court order. Postal Service officials have received more than 60,000 requests from federal agents and police officers since 2015. Each request can cover days or weeks of mail sent to or from a person or address, and 97 percent of the requests were approved. The surveillance technique, known as the mail covers program, has long been used by postal inspectors to help track down suspects or evidence. The practice is legal, and the inspectors said they share only what they can see on the outside of the mail. [Sen. Ron] Wyden said in a statement, "Thousands of Americans are subjected to warrantless surveillance each year, and ... the Postal Inspection Service rubber stamps practically all of the requests they receive." He also criticized the agency for "refusing to raise its standards and require law enforcement agencies monitoring the outside of Americans' mail to get a court order, which is already required to monitor emails and texts." Anxieties over postal surveillance are classically American. In 1798, Vice President Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter that his fears of having his private communications exposed by the "infidelities of the post office" had stopped him from "writing fully & freely."

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

David Metcalf's last act in life was an attempt to send a message – that years as a Navy SEAL had left his brain so damaged that he could barely recognize himself. He shot himself in the heart, preserving his brain to be analyzed by a state-of-the-art Defense Department laboratory in Maryland. The lab found an unusual pattern of damage seen only in people exposed repeatedly to blast waves. The vast majority of blast exposure for Navy SEALs comes from firing their own weapons, not from enemy action. The damage pattern suggested that years of training intended to make SEALs exceptional was leaving some barely able to function. At least a dozen Navy SEALs have died by suicide in the last 10 years. A grass-roots effort by grieving families delivered eight of their brains to the lab. Researchers discovered blast damage in every single one. The damage may be just as widespread in SEALs who are still alive. A Harvard study ... scanned the brains of 30 career Special Operators and found an association between blast exposure and altered brain structure and compromised brain function. The more blast exposure the men had experienced, the more problems they reported with health and quality of life. Doctors treating the injured troops give them diagnoses of psychiatric disorders that miss the underlying physical damage. Much of what is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder may actually be caused by repeated exposure to blasts.

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

Russia is to blame for coups in the African Sahel, according to a new analysis by the Pentagon's top Africa researcher, which ignores the U.S. role in training leaders of these mutinies – and two decades of failed U.S. counterterrorism policies in the region. A series of reports by The Intercept found that military personnel who had received U.S. support were involved in coups in Burkina Faso (in 2014, 2015, and twice in 2022), Mali (in 2012, 2020, and 2021), and Niger (in 2023). U.S.-supported officers also played a role in coups in Mauritania (2008), Gambia (2014), Chad (2021), and Guinea (2021). The total number of U.S.-trained mutineers across Africa since 9/11 may be far higher than is known, but the State Department, which tracks data on U.S. trainees, is either unwilling or unable to supply it. The Pentagon is mandated to provide a briefing on coups carried out by U.S.-trained African partners to the Senate and House Armed Services committees but missed its March deadline. Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003, the first years of U.S. counterterrorism assistance in the Sahel. Last year, the number of violent events in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger alone reached 3,716, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a crisis monitoring organization. This represents a jump of more than 41,000 percent.

Note: Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

A recent audit of Pentagon funding of gain-of-function research outside the US "may have shielded" collaborations with Chinese biotech firms – including at least one linked to Beijing's military, a Republican senator alleged. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) pressed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for answers about redactions that had concealed the firms – WuXi AppTec, Pharmaron Beijing Co., and Genscript Inc. – from public scrutiny in the audit, according to a letter. "American taxpayers deserve transparency about the programs they are funding, and I am disappointed this OIG report does not provide that accountability," Marshall wrote. According to the Defense Department Office of Inspector General audit, more than $15.5 million in grants between 2014 and 2023 flowed through subrecipients to "contracting research organization[s] in China or other foreign countries for research related to potential enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential." However, the 20-page audit cited "significant limitations with the adequacy of data" – and said the Pentagon "did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding ... for the gain-of-function experiments. Such research is classified as "offensive biological work" by the Pentagon, which Marshall said "raises questions" about National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials having admitted this year to funding gain-of-function experiments at the ... Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 and military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Florida prosecutors heard graphic testimony about how the late millionaire and financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted teenage girls two years before they cut a plea deal, according to transcripts released Monday of the 2006 grand jury investigation. Epstein's ties to the rich and the powerful seems to have allowed him to continue to rape and sex traffic teenagers. Transcripts show that the grand jury heard testimony that Epstein, who was then in his 40s, had raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion. The teenagers testified and told detectives they were also paid to find him more girls. After the grand jury investigation, Epstein cut a deal with South Florida federal prosecutors in 2008 that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. He was sentenced to one and a half years in the Palm Beach County jail system, followed by a year of house arrest. He was required to register as a sex offender. According to the transcripts, Palm Beach Police Det. Joe Recarey testified in July 2006 that the initial investigation began when a woman reported in March 2005 that her stepdaughter who was in high school at the time said she received $300 in exchange for "sexual activity with a man in Palm Beach," Recarey testified. Another teenager ... told detectives that she was 17 years old when she was approached by a friend who said she could make $200 by providing a massage at Epstein's home. Epstein told her that he would pay her if she brought other "girls" to his home. "And he told her, ‘The younger, the better,'" Recarey said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.