Government Corruption News StoriesExcerpts of Key Government Corruption News Stories in Major Media
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More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel – including scores of generals and admirals – have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression, according to a Washington Post investigation. In Saudi Arabia, for example, 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for the Defense Ministry since 2016. The ministry is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, who U.S. intelligence agencies say approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist, as part of a brutal crackdown on dissent. Saudi Arabia's paid advisers have included retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, a national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Obama and President George W. Bush. Others who have worked as consultants for the Saudis since Khashoggi's murder include a retired four-star Air Force general and a former commanding general of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. All the while, the gulf countries' security forces have continued to commit human rights abuses at home and beyond their borders. With shared intelligence, aerial refueling and other support from the U.S. government and contractors, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have intervened in Yemen's civil war to disastrous effect, triggering a global humanitarian crisis and killing thousands of civilians.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
The Saudi government has sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets he posted while inside the United States, some of which were critical of the Saudi regime. His son, speaking publicly for the first time, alleges that the Saudi government has tortured his father in prison and says that the State Department mishandled the case. While the Biden administration has gone to considerable effort to secure the release of high-profile Americans from Russia, Venezuela and Iran, it has been less public and less successful in securing the release of U.S. citizens held in Saudi Arabia. In fact, despite that Saudi Arabia is supposedly a U.S. ally, the Saudi government under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is dealing with its U.S.-citizen critics more harshly than ever. Saudi American Saad Ibrahim Almadi ... is not a dissident or an activist; he is simply a project manager from Florida. But last November, when he traveled to Riyadh to visit family, he was detained regarding 14 tweets posted on his account. Almadi was charged with harboring a terrorist ideology, trying to destabilize the kingdom, as well as supporting and funding terrorism. The State Department told [his son] Ibrahim not to speak publicly about the case, but he no longer believes that staying quiet will secure his father's freedom. And he says that State has handled his father's case with neglect and incompetence. Ibrahim said that Saudi jailers threaten to torture prisoners who involve foreign governments in their cases.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
October was a good month for Gilead Sciences, the giant manufacturer of antivirals. On 8 October, the company inked an agreement to supply the European Union with its drug remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19–a deal potentially worth more than $1 billion. Two weeks later, on 22 October, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved remdesivir for use against the pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in the United States. Both decisions baffled scientists who have closely watched the clinical trials of remdesivir unfold. At best, one large, well-designed study found remdesivir modestly reduced the time to recover from COVID-19 in hospitalized patients with severe illness. A few smaller studies found no impact of treatment on the disease whatsoever. Then ... the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Solidarity trial showed that remdesivir does not reduce mortality or the time COVID-19 patients take to recover. Both [the] FDA's decision and the EU deal came about under unusual circumstances that gave the company important advantages. FDA never consulted a group of outside experts that it has at the ready to weigh in on complicated antiviral drug issues. The European Union, meanwhile, decided to settle on the remdesivir pricing exactly 1 week before the disappointing Solidarity trial results came out. Gilead, having donated remdesivir to the trial, was informed of the data on 23 September and knew the trial was a bust.
Note: Remdesivir had never been approved by the FDA for use before Oct. 2020, yet was rushed through the approval process, while Nobel-prize winning drug Ivermectin was all but banned, even though there was minimal evidence of harm. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
President Biden announced major steps toward decriminalizing marijuana possession Thursday, offering mass pardons for anyone convicted of a federal crime for simply possessing the drug, and urging governors to do the same. He also directed his administration to expedite a review of whether marijuana should continue to be listed as a Schedule I substance, a classification reserved for the most dangerous drugs, including heroin, LSD and ecstasy. "Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana," Biden said in a video statement. "It's time that we right these wrongs." He added: "There are thousands of people who were convicted for marijuana possession who may be denied ... opportunities as a result." While no one is currently serving time in federal prison solely for the crime of simple marijuana possession, officials said, about 6,500 people have such convictions on their records. Those convictions would be pardoned, and the offenders' records cleared, under an administrative process. Thousands of additional people who are residents of the District, which is subject to federal law, could also be pardoned, officials said. Others affected could be those arrested in places such as airports and federal parks, which are under federal law enforcement jurisdiction. Biden's actions, however, do not directly affect the vast majority of marijuana-related convictions, which are pursued under state law.
Note: The War on Drugs has been called a trillion dollar failure. In the US, police arrest more people for marijuana use than for all violent crimes combined.
Harry Truman became President in April, 1945. Two years later, he signed the National Security Act, which established the C.I.A.. It was supposed to do what its name suggested: centralize the intelligence that various agencies gathered. "It was not intended as a â€Cloak and Dagger' Outfit!," Truman later wrote. In its charter, the C.I.A. was banned from domestic spying. There was no mention of covert action in the law that chartered the C.I.A., but Presidents–starting with Truman–began using it that way. One of the agency's first operations involved meddling in the 1948 Italian election. During the Vietnam War, the C.I.A. had discouraging intelligence to offer, and, when successive Administrations didn't want to hear it, focused on being helpful by providing ... supposedly quick fixes. That meant abetting a coup in 1963, spying on antiwar protesters, and launching the Phoenix Program, an anti-Vietcong campaign marked by torture and by arbitrary executions. More than twenty thousand people were killed under Phoenix's auspices. The C.I.A. has had a "defining failure" for every decade of its existence–sometimes more than one. In the nineteen-nineties, it was the lack of foresight about the Soviet Union; in the two-thousands, it was the phantom weapons of mass destruction, followed by torture and, in still evolving ways, by the drone-based program of targeted killings, with its high toll of civilian deaths. It's difficult to know, at this point, what the C.I.A.'s next defining failure ... will be.
Note: Read more about the CIA's Phoenix Program, which included the kidnapping, torture, and murder of civilians during the Vietnam War. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
The main U.S.-based scientific organization at the center of the controversy over the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic has won a new grant from the National Institutes of Health for risky bat coronavirus surveillance research, despite losing a previous award for failing to provide records essential to an investigation into that origin. The grant was awarded September 21 to EcoHealth Alliance, helmed by Peter Daszak, and is titled "Analyzing the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam." The new grant comes despite an open congressional investigation into the organization, which has two other ongoing NIH grants and a third in negotiation. The aim of the new research is to identify areas of potential concern for future pandemic emergence in order to help public health authorities suppress an outbreak before it breaks containment. But the process of performing the research introduces the risk of sparking an outbreak that would not otherwise have occurred, a concern highlighted by The Intercept last year: "Virtually every part of the work of outbreak prediction can result in an accidental infection. Even with the best of intentions, scientists can serve as vectors for the viruses they hunt – and as a result, their work may put everyone else's lives on the line along with their own." "It is disturbing that additional funding continues to be awarded for the same high-risk research that may have caused the current pandemic," said [molecular biologist] Richard Ebright.
Note: Watch an excellent interview in which a former EcoHealth Alliance VP turned whistleblower reveals blatant law-breaking and lies committed by Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
The Biden administration bought $290 million of anti-radiation drugs this week as the president warned of "the prospect of Armageddon" being sparked by warmongering Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed that the major supply of Nplate was part of "ongoing efforts to be better prepared to save lives following radiological and nuclear emergencies." The drug – which can be used on kids as well as adults – is "approved to treat blood cell injuries that accompany acute radiation syndrome [ARS] in adult and pediatric patients," the department said. Such radiation sickness "occurs when a person's entire body is exposed to a high dose of penetrating radiation, reaching internal organs in a matter of seconds," the alarming HHS release noted. Nplate, made by California-based Amgen, stimulates the body's production of platelets "to reduce radiation-induced bleeding." The $290 million funding came from Project BioShield, the 2004 law that provides investment that encourages companies to "develop the medical countermeasures that are critical to national security." The initial announcement did not detail how ... the drug would be distributed. An HHS spokesperson insisted that the investment was part of "ongoing" nuclear prep, and had "not been accelerated by the situation in Ukraine." However, it was approved just days before President Biden publicly admitted that Putin was "not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons."
Note: Is it any surprise that the US government is giving a gift of $290 million (US taxpayer money) to big Pharma? Remember that like previous huge purchases of drugs that were never used, these drugs have expiration dates after which they must be tossed. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Anybody who works in Washington knows that think tanks play an important role in advising the government on policy. One organization in particular has dramatically increased its influence over the past decade. The policy shop in question is McKinsey, a global – and highly profitable – consulting firm. In the foreign policy community, think tanks are widely viewed as the traditional brokers in the marketplace of ideas. But this is changing. Whether based in investment banks like Goldman Sachs, management consultancies like McKinsey or political risk firms like the Eurasia Group, private-sector institutions have started to act like policy knowledge brokers. Consultants have been key advisers to the government for decades, but recent trends have caused their star to rise at the same time that traditional think tanks face new challenges. The University of Pennsylvania's annual think tank report has stressed "the fierce competition think tanks are facing from consulting firms" in recent years. And think tank officials have acknowledged the sway of donors. Bill Goodfellow, the executive director of the Center for International Policy, told the Times: "It's absurd to suggest that donors don't have influence. The danger is we in the think tank world are being corrupted in the same way as the political world." The irony is that the nonprofit actors, in trying to expand their base of support, have been accused of compromising their independence, while the explicitly for-profit world of consultants has avoided the charge.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Even before he became director of the FBI, [J. Edgar] Hoover was conducting secret intelligence operations against U.S. citizens he suspected were anarchists, radical leftists or communists. After a series of anarchist bombings went off across the United States in 1919, Hoover sent five agents to infiltrate the newly formed Communist Party. "From that day forward, he planned a nationwide dragnet of mass arrests to round up subversives, round up communists, round up Russian aliens," [author Tim] Weiner says. On Jan. 1, 1920, Hoover sent out the arrest orders, and at least 6,000 people were arrested and detained throughout the country. "When the dust cleared, maybe 1 in 10 was found guilty of a deportable offense," says Weiner. Hoover, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt all came under attack for their role in the raids. Hoover started amassing secret intelligence on "enemies of the United States" – a list that included terrorists, communists, spies – or anyone Hoover or the FBI had deemed subversive. Later on, anti-war protesters and civil rights leaders were added to Hoover's list. "Hoover saw the civil rights movement from the 1950s onward and the anti-war movement from the 1960s onward, as presenting the greatest threats to the stability of the American government since the Civil War," [Weiner] says. "These people were enemies of the state, and in particular Martin Luther King [Jr.] was an enemy of the state."
Note: Read more about the FBI's COINTELPRO program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.
A U.S. senator is pressing the FBI for more information after a whistleblower alleged that an internal review found 665 FBI personnel have resigned or retired to avoid accountability in misconduct probes over the past two decades. The whistleblower told the office of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley ... that the Justice Department launched the review of the FBI's disciplinary database in 2020 following an Associated Press investigation into sexual misconduct allegations involving at least six senior FBI officials. The follow-up review found 665 FBI employees, including 45 senior-level officials, resigned or retired between 2004 and 2020 following a misconduct probe but before a final disciplinary letter could be issued, according to a letter this week from Grassley to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. It was not clear how many of those cases involved sexual misconduct. Grassley's office, which declined to make the whistleblower or underlying documents available to protect the person's identify, said that was the kind of information it was still seeking but estimated the number could be in the "hundreds." The AP investigation in December 2020 identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the prior five years ranging from unwanted touching and advances to coercion. It found that several senior FBI officials have avoided discipline – quietly transferring or retiring with full benefits – even after claims of sexual misconduct against them were substantiated.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
The US has few ways to track the substantial supply of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other weaponry it has sent across the border into Ukraine, sources tell CNN, a blind spot that's due in large part to ... the easy portability of many of the smaller systems now pouring across the border. In the short term, the US sees the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of equipment to be vital to the Ukrainians' ability to hold off Moscow's invasion. But the risk, both current US officials and defense analysts say, is that in the long term, some of those weapons may wind up in the hands of other militaries and militias that the US did not intend to arm. "We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero," said one source briefed on US intelligence. "It drops into a big black hole." In making the decision to send billions of dollars of weapons and equipment into Ukraine, the Biden administration factored in the risk that some of the shipments may ultimately end up in unexpected places, a defense official said. The Biden administration and NATO countries say they are providing weapons to Ukraine based on what the Ukrainian forces say they need, whether it's portable systems like Javelin and Stinger missiles or the Slovakian S-300 air defense system that was sent over the last week. For decades, the US sent arms into Afghanistan. Inevitably, some weapons ended up on the black market including anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, the same kind the US is now providing to Ukraine.
Note: CBS released a documentary revealing that most weapons sent to the Ukraine never made it to their intended destination. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Dr. Anthony Fauci and his wife's net worth grew by $5 million during the COVID-19 pandemic as thousands of US residents struggled financially, according to a government spending watchdog group. The combined wealth of the 81-year-old retiring director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his bioethicist wife, Christine Grady, soared from $7.5 million in 2019 to $12.6 million at the end of 2021, according to a report from the non-profit OpenTheBooks. "Despite becoming a figure of controversy, the system has rewarded Dr. Fauci handsomely," the group's CEO, Adam Andrzejewski, [said]. "Fauci's soaring net worth was based on career-end salary spiking, lucrative cash prizes awarded by non-profit organizations around the world and an ever-larger investment portfolio. He is the top-paid federal employee, his first-year golden parachute retirement pension is the largest in federal history, and he's accepting $1 million prizes from foreign non-profits." Last year, Fauci raked in lucrative awards from nonprofits, including $1 million from the Dan David Foundation for "speaking truth to power" and "defending science" during the Trump Administration. He kept $910,400 of that award, while roughly 10% went to scholarship winners. His total compensation was $456,028 last year, up from the $434,312 he earned in 2020. Overall, the couple's investments also increased by more than $900,000 in 2021 while their portfolios – which included trust, retirement and college education accounts – jumped $800,000 in 2020.
Note: Why is Anthony Fauci paid more than the U.S. president? Could it be a reward for gifting big Pharma with many billions in profits? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
We are keeping many people in prison even though they are no danger to the public, a jaw-dropping new statistic shows. That serves as proof that it's time to rethink our incarceration policies for those with a low risk of reoffending. To protect those most vulnerable to covid-19 during the pandemic, the Cares Act allowed the Justice Department to order the release of people in federal prisons and place them on home confinement. More than 11,000 people were eventually released. Of those, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) reported that only 17 of them committed new crimes. That's not a typo. Seventeen. That's a 0.15 percent recidivism rate in a country where it's normal for 30 to 65 percent of people coming home from prison to reoffend within three years of release. Of those 17 people, most new offenses were for possessing or selling drugs or other minor offenses. Of the 17 new crimes, only one was violent (an aggravated assault), and none were sex offenses. This extremely low recidivism rate shows there are many, many people in prison we can safely release to the community. These 11,000 releases were not random. People in low- and minimum-security prisons or at high risk of complications from covid were prioritized for consideration for release. The federal Cares Act home confinement program should inspire similar programs across the country. Virtually all states have programs available to release elderly or very sick people from prison, but they are hardly used and should be expanded.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.
Democratic strategists have spent millions of dollars to aid extremists. In the current election cycle ... Democrats across the country spent millions of dollars to boost the candidacies of right-wing Maga candidates in the Republican primaries, on the theory that those extremists would be easier to defeat in the general election. The Washington Post found that Democrats had spent close to $20m in eight states on ads meant to elevate the profile of far-right candidates and election deniers running for governorships and for Congress. A number of those candidates, like the maniacal Christian zealots Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Darren Bailey in Illinois, did in fact win their primaries, setting up, in theory, easier races for the Democrats in those states to win, because, in theory, swing voters prefer not to vote for lunatics. It is not hard to see why it is dumb to dedicate resources to making Maga Republicans more visible and viable within their own party. You are promoting an awful ideology in hopes of winning votes – but in the long run, politics is a battle of ideology. The votes follow the ideology. The consultants are fighting on the wrong battleground, and no matter how many polls they have, they are not clever enough to predict the chaotic long-run effects of fueling a movement that is the opposite of the movement we should be trying to build. Spending money to try to dupe hapless Republican voters into backing the goofiest fascist is not just stupid; it goes against justice.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on elections corruption from reliable major media sources.
A shadowy world government. Political kingmakers. A capitalist cabal looking to impose its will across the globe. For decades, conspiracy theorists have tried to decode the secretive Bilderberg Group, an annual gathering of the some of the world's most powerful figures. Since 1954, the Bilderberg Group has been gathering in secret to discuss everything from the rise and fall of communism to nuclear warfare to cybersecurity. The group began as a way to create more cooperation between Europe and North America during the Cold War, and Bilderberg releases an annual list of the people who will attend and the topics they'll discuss, but beyond that, little leaves the walls of the meeting rooms. Theorists also cite the inclusion of Bill Clinton at the meetings in 1991 before he was president and Tony Blair's presence in 1993 before he became the British prime minister as examples of the group's power. Past attendees have included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (who will also be attending this year), former Chase Manhattan chief executive David Rockefeller, and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Two-thirds of this year's attendees are from Europe while a third are from the U.S., including Sam Altman, president of the tech seed accelerator Y Combinator; NBC News's Richard Engel; Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina; LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman; and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on secret societies from reliable major media sources.
The Justice Department is failing to adequately and efficiently collect data about deaths in state prisons and local jails, with at least 990 incidents going uncounted by the federal government in fiscal year 2021 alone, according to a newly released bipartisan Senate report. The report's findings were the focus of a hearing ... which took the federal Bureau of Prisons and then-Director Michael Carvajal to task this summer over accusations of unsanitary and unsafe conditions at a penitentiary in Atlanta and other allegations of misconduct across the federal prison system. Now, the conclusion of a 10-month investigation into how the Justice Department oversees the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act accuses the agency of missing death counts that are readily available on public websites and in arrest-related databases. The law requires that states and federal agencies report in-custody death information to the attorney general. The information was due at the end of 2016, but the Senate report says it won't be completed until 2024. "DOJ's failure to implement DCRA has deprived Congress and the American public of information about who is dying in custody and why," the report says. "This information is critical to improve transparency in prisons and jails, identifying trends in custodial deaths that may warrant corrective action – such as failure to provide adequate medical care, mental health services, or safeguard prisoners from violence – and identifying specific facilities with outlying death rates."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the prison system from reliable major media sources.
All but one scientist who penned a letter in The Lancet dismissing the possibility that coronavirus could have come from a lab in Wuhan were linked to its Chinese researchers, their colleagues or funders, a Telegraph investigation can reveal. The influential journal published a letter on March 7 last year from 27 scientists in which they stated that they "strongly condemned conspiracy theories" surrounding Covid-19. It effectively shut down scientific debate into whether coronavirus was manipulated or leaked from a lab in Wuhan. Researchers who tried to investigate a link but were stonewalled and branded conspiracy theorists called it an "extreme cover-up". Despite declaring no conflicts of interest at the time, it has since emerged that the letter was orchestrated by British zoologist Peter Daszak, president of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance, which funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the leak was suspected. However, The Telegraph can disclose that 26 of the 27 scientists listed in the letter had connections to the Chinese lab, through researchers and funders closely linked to Wuhan. While Mr Daszak eventually declared his involvement in the EcoHealth Alliance, he failed to mention that five other signatories also worked for the organisation. A further three of the signatories were from Britain's Wellcome Trust, which has funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the past. Out of 27 signatories, only Prof Ronald Corley, of Boston University, appears to have no links to funders or researchers.
Note: Watch an excellent interview in which a former EcoHealth Alliance VP turned whistleblower reveals blatant law-breaking and lies committed by Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
A controversial British-born scientist has recused himself from an inquiry into the origins of the Covid pandemic. Dr Peter Daszak, president of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance, has "recused himself" from the inquiry by leading medical journal the Lancet after he failed to declare ties to the Wuhan Laboratory of Virology, which was conducting research into coronavirus in bats. Dr Daszak was also a member of the WHO investigation into the source of the pandemic that issued its report earlier this year. In February 2020 Dr Daszak, who has strongly condemned any suggestion that the virus came from the institute, co-authored a letter published in the Lancet with 26 other experts "in support of scientists, public health professionals and medical professionals combating Covid-19 in China". Dr Daszak has worked closely with Shi Zhengli, known as "batwoman", who leads work into bat viruses at the institute. And the EcoHealth Alliance, which has been a world leader in the hunt for animal viruses, has channeled some of its funding towards the institute, which involved collecting samples from bats and people at risk of infection from bat viruses. That grant was stopped in April 2020 on the orders of then president Donald Trump but was reinstated later in the year. Before he recused himself from the Lancet commission, which is supported by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Dr Daszak was one of a 12-strong international team looking at the origins of the pandemic.
Note: Watch an excellent interview in which a former EcoHealth Alliance VP turned whistleblower reveals blatant law-breaking and lies committed by Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
In early 2018, former National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander worked out a deal with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the cyber institute led by one of his closest aides, Saud al-Qahtani, to help the Saudi ruler train the next generation of Saudi hackers. The agreement between IronNet, founded by Alexander, and the cyber school ... faced no scrutiny for its association with Qahtani, after the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi he reportedly orchestrated just a few months later. Alexander officially inked the deal with the Prince Mohammed bin Salman College of Cyber Security, Artificial Intelligence, and Advanced Technologies – a school set up to train Saudi cyber intelligence agents – at a signing ceremony in Washington, D.C.. Saudi Arabia's agreement with IronNet was part of a host of moves to step up its cyber capabilities, coinciding with a campaign against the kingdom's critics abroad. Khashoggi, then a Washington Post columnist and prominent Salman critic, received a series of threatening messages, including one from Qahtani, warning him to remain silent. Khashoggi, whose family and close associates discovered listening malware electronically implanted on their smartphones, was then lured to the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul. It was there that a team dispatched by Qahtani detained and tortured the Saudi government critic. Qahtani, according to reports, beamed in through Skype to insult Khashoggi during the ordeal. Khashoggi was then dismembered with a bone saw.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms' rules. The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. Some [takedowns] involved posts from the summer that advanced anti-Russia narratives. One fake account posted an inflammatory tweet claiming that relatives of deceased Afghan refugees had reported bodies being returned from Iran with missing organs. The tweet linked to a video that was part of an article posted on a U.S.-military affiliated website. In 2020 Facebook disabled fictitious personas created by Centcom to counter disinformation spread by China suggesting the coronavirus responsible for covid-19 was created at a U.S. Army lab in Fort Detrick, Md.. The pseudo profiles ... were used to amplify truthful information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Congress in late 2019 passed a law affirming that the military could conduct operations in the "information environment" to defend the United States. The measure, known as Section 1631, allows the military to carry out clandestine psychological operations.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable 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.