News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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In short, the climate for freedom of the press in the U.S. feels more ominous than it has for decades. One appropriate response is to protest vociferously and seek the passage of a federal shield law for journalists. But it's also crucial for us to reflect on why this is happening now - and a major reason, I think, is that we in the news media are widely perceived as arrogant, out of touch and untrustworthy. A recent report from the Pew Research Center, "Trends 2005," is painful to read. The report says that 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing in their daily newspapers, up from 16 percent two decades ago. it's a rare news organization that is trusted by more than one-third of the people in either party: the one thing Democrats and Republicans agree on is that the news media are not trustworthy.
When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized that the controls could not be more aggressive because the cost to industry already far exceeded the public health payoff. What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion. That analysis estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA did, but top agency officials ordered the finding stripped from public documents.
In the midst of the California energy troubles in early 2001, when power plants were under a federal order to deliver a full output of electricity, the Enron Corporation arranged to take a plant off-line on the same day that California was hit by rolling blackouts, according to audiotapes of company traders. The tapes and memorandums were made public by a small public utility north of Seattle that is fighting Enron over a power contract. They also showed that Enron, as early as 1998, was creating artificial energy shortages and running up prices in Canada in advance of California's larger experiment with deregulation. The tapes provide new details of market manipulation during the California energy crisis that produced blackouts and billions of dollars of surcharges to homes and businesses on the West Coast in 2000 and 2001. In one January 2001 telephone tape of an Enron trader the public utility identified as Bill Williams and a Las Vegas energy official identified only as Rich, an agreement was made to shut down a power plant providing energy to California. The shutdown was set for an afternoon of peak energy demand. The next day, Jan. 17, 2001, as the plant was taken out of service, the State of California called a power emergency, and rolling blackouts hit up to a half-million consumers, according to daily logs of the western power grid. Officials with the Snohomish County Public Utility District in Washington State, which released the tapes, said they believed Enron officials had taken similar measures with other power plants. This tape, they said, was proof of what was going on.
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
The words drifted across the frozen battlefield: 'Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht'. To the ears of the British troops peering over their trench, the lyrics may have been unfamiliar but the haunting tune was unmistakable. After the last note a lone German infantryman appeared holding a small tree glowing with light. 'Merry Christmas. We not shoot, you not shoot.' It was just after dawn on a bitingly cold Christmas Day in 1914, ... and one of the most extraordinary incidents of the Great War was about to unfold. Weary men climbed hesitantly at first out of trenches and stumbled into no man's land. They shook hands, sang carols, lit each other's cigarettes, swapped tunic buttons and addresses and, most famously, played football. The unauthorised Christmas truce spread across much of the 500-mile Western Front where more than a million men were encamped. There is only one man in the world still alive who spent 25 December 1914 serving in a conflict that left 31 million people dead, wounded or missing. Alfred Anderson was 18 at the time. 'I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence,' he said. 'Only the guards were on duty. We all went outside the farm buildings and just stood listening. But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted "Merry Christmas", even though nobody felt merry.' In some parts of the front, the ceasefire lasted several weeks. 'I'll give Christmas Day 1914 a brief thought, as I do every year. And I'll think about all my friends who never made it home. But it's too sad to think too much about it. Far too sad,' he said, his head bowed and his eyes filled with tears.
Note: For more on this amazing moment in history, including a powerfully moving song, click here.
The US passport is about to go electronic, with a tiny microchip embedded in its cover. The chip is the latest outpost in the battle to outwit tamperers. But it's also one that worries privacy advocates. The RFID (radio frequency identification) chip in each passport will contain the same personal data as now appear on the inside pages - name, date of birth, place of birth, issuing office - and a digitized version of the photo. But the 64K chip will be read remotely. And there's the rub. The scenario, privacy advocates say, could be as simple as you standing in line with your passport as someone walks by innocuously carrying a briefcase. Inside that case, a microchip reader could be skimming data from your passport to be used for identity theft. Or maybe authorities or terrorists want to see who's gathered in a crowd and surreptitiously survey your ID and track you. Why not choose a contact chip, where there would be no possibility of skimming, asks Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project. "There was another way to go, which was to put an electronic strip in the passport that would require contact." The State Department says it's just following international standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), under the umbrella of the United Nations. The ICAO specified the RFID ... at the behest of the United States. All countries that are part of the US visa-waiver program must use the new passports by Oct. 26, 2005. Mr. Steinhardt ... says the US pushed through the standards against the reservations of the Europeans. "Bush says at the G8 meeting, 'We have to adhere to the global standard,' as though we had nothing to do with it," he says in exasperation.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For more on the risk of RFID chips, click here.
Indonesian specialist Fred Burks ... is making a noisy exit from government service after 18 years of interpreting for top U.S. officials, including President Bush and former president Bill Clinton. Burks resigned last month in protest against what he sees as excessive government secrecy, and since then has been treating anybody who will listen with insider stories about private meetings he attended. Burks interpreted for Bush at an Oval Office meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri in September 2001, eight days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He says Bush displayed such a detailed grasp of Indonesian issues at the meeting that he came away thinking the president must have been fed information through a hidden earpiece. Burks says he is free to talk about his work as a contract interpreter for senior government officials because he was never required to sign a secrecy agreement. That changed last month when the State Department insisted he agree to a new contract that included a pledge never to disclose "any information" that he learned in the course of his government interpreting work to unauthorized outsiders. He refused. "It was ridiculous," said Burks, who learned Indonesian while teaching in Borneo in 1981 and living with an Indonesian family. "In theory, it meant I couldn't even tell my family where I was traveling if that information had not already been made public." He says he also has never had a security clearance. Burks's fluency in Indonesian and Mandarin Chinese made him a valued asset for the State Department.
Note: If the above link fails to function, click here. Mr. Burks agrees that some level of secrecy is necessary, but that current levels are far beyond tolerable. For brief descriptions of some of the fascinating meetings at which Mr. Burks was present, click here. For lots more on secrecy and an insider's perspective, click here.
The Justice Department appears to be hiding behind national security fears in an attempt to dodge a wrongful dismissal suit. Former FBI linguist Sibel Edmonds claims she was fired in retaliation for blowing the whistle on security breaches she says hampered translation of documents and communications related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She filed suit to get her job back, but recently a federal judge tossed out her case, not on its merits but on the grounds that hearing her claims might expose government secrets and damage national security. That keeps under wraps the inspector general's report that investigated Edmonds' allegations. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, a Bush appointee, said he couldn't explain himself further because the explanation itself might expose sensitive secrets. He did say that he'd accepted Attorney General John Ashcroft's explanation that the suit could "expose intelligence-gathering methods and disrupt diplomatic relations with foreign governments." The Boston Globe reported that Ashcroft ordered material in the case retroactively classified. Edmonds must feel a bit like Alice at the tea party, where justice is not being served, and where a secret is a secret but why it's a secret or who says it's a secret is a secret, and we can't tell you why because it's a secret.
Note: Sibel Edmonds just recently self-published a book exposing major intelligence cover-ups around 9/11. To see this highly rated book in which she breaks the government gag order placed on her, click here. For lots more verifiable news on this courageous woman, click here.
A Chicago FBI agent who has complained to the media and Congress that the bureau bungled terrorism investigations had been targeted for firing by supervisors who vowed to "take him out," according to a memo written by a former high-ranking official in the FBI's disciplinary office. The FBI opened an internal investigation against Agent Robert G. Wright Jr. in 2003 just days after his appearance at a news conference and on a national television news program, according to the memo obtained by the Tribune. The top two agents in the FBI's disciplinary office at the time, Robert J. Jordan and J.P. "Jody" Weis, ordered an investigation into Wright for insubordination and had already made up their minds to have him fired, according to the memo. The memo, written by John Roberts when he was third in command of the Office of Professional Responsibility, questioned how often supervisors misused the disciplinary process to silence employees critical of the FBI. His lawyer, Stephen Kohn, said the memo's point is clear. "The FBI uses its Office of Professional Responsibility to retaliate against whistleblowers," Kohn said. The memo, written while Roberts still worked as unit chief for the office, was heavily censored by the bureau before it was turned over to the Judiciary Committee. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Wright has held two national news conferences and has given several television news interviews in which he accused the FBI of mishandling terrorism investigations during the 1990s into fundraising by militant Islamic groups such as Hamas.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on the realities behind the surface activities of powerful intelligence agencies, click here.
A Montreal woman who underwent intense electroshock treatment in a program funded by the CIA 50 years ago has been awarded $100,000. Gail Kastner was given massive electroshock therapy to treat depression in 1953 at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. She was left out of a federal compensation package in 1994 because her treatment was deemed to have been less intense than that of other victims of the experiments. Her treatment was also found to have had fewer long-term effects. A Federal Court judge reversed that ruling, and awarded her the same amount Ottawa gave to 77 others as compensation for their treatment. Dr. Ewan Cameron, who was director of the Allan Memorial Institute, conducted experiments using electroshock and drug-induced sleep. The research was funded from 1950 to 1965 by the CIA and by the Canadian government.
Note: Did you know that 78 people received awards of $100,000 each for having been subjected to CIA and government-funded experiments in controlling the mind? There is much more to this story. Don't miss our very well documented two-page summary on this little-known topic: click here.
Mexican Air Force pilots filmed 11 unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern Campeche state, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed. A videotape made widely available to the news media ... shows the bright objects, some sharp points of light and others like large headlights, moving rapidly in what appears to be a late-evening sky. The lights were filmed on March 5 by pilots using infrared equipment. They appeared to be flying at an altitude of about 11,480 feet, and allegedly surrounded the Air Force jet as it conducted routine anti-drug trafficking vigilance in Campeche. Only three of the objects showed up on the plane's radar. "Was I afraid? Yes. A little afraid because we were facing something that had never happened before," said radar operator Lt. German Marin in a taped interview. "I couldn't say what it was ... but I think they're completely real," added Lt. Mario Adrian Vazquez, the infrared equipment operator. Vazquez insisted that there was no way to alter the recorded images. The plane's captain, Maj. Magdaleno Castanon, said the military jets chased the lights "and I believe they could feel we were pursuing them." When the jets stopped following the objects, they disappeared, he said. A Defense Department spokesman confirmed ... that the videotape was filmed by members of the Mexican Air Force. The spokesman declined to comment further and spoke on customary condition of anonymity. The video was first aired on national television [and] then again at a news conference ... by Jaime Maussan, a Mexican investigator who has dedicated the past 10 years to studying UFOs. "This is historic news," Maussan told reporters. "Hundreds of videos (of UFOs) exist, but none had the backing of the armed forces of any country. ... The armed forces don't perpetuate frauds."
Note: To watch TV reports of this sighting on Fox News and CNN, click here.
More than 240 [Russians died in the autumn of 1999] in a wave of bombings that destroyed three blocks of flats, two in Moscow and one in the town of Volgodonsk. The Russian authorities were swift to lay the blame at the door of Chechen separatists. But no supporting evidence has emerged. Two men from the Caucasus were convicted of involvement after a closed trial this year, but it was widely denounced as a charade. Instead a growing body of proof has surfaced that links the bombings ... to the FSB - the revamped KGB. Independent investigators, including several MPs, who have sought to look into the case have been intimidated, arrested or beaten. Analysts and investigators claim that President Vladimir Putin, who was FSB chief until August of that year and subsequently prime minister, must know the truth. Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "He would know not just what happened but who the suspects were. The truth will not damage him because it won't be told until after he is gone." The 1999 bombings proved to be Mr Putin's political making. He positioned himself as a strongman who would crush the Chechen rebels and restore order to the ailing country. Riding a wave of nationalist fervour, in eight months he went from being a virtual political unknown to winning the presidency by an easy margin.
Note: For an excellent overview of false-flag operations, click here.
Two convicted felons' roles in running elections in King County have raised new questions about the adequacy of safeguards to protect the integrity of elections. County election officials were unaware of convicted embezzler Jeffrey W. Dean's criminal background when he was named in 1999 to lead an outside team that would design a computer system for managing elections. Dean, who used his computer savvy to cover up his embezzlement of $465,341 from a Seattle law firm in the 1980s, was given keys to the election offices on the fifth floor of the King County Administration Building. And he had unrestricted access to the elections office's high-security computer room where votes are tallied. Dean, 60, has not been involved in King County elections since 2002, but John L. Elder, 48, a convicted drug dealer who was imprisoned with Dean at the Cedar Creek Corrections Center and worked with Dean on county contracts, supervises the printing of ballots and the sorting and mailing of absentee ballots. Dean...put his computer expertise and his election savvy to work when Global Election Systems asked him for help. Dean, whose family business, Spectrum Print and Mail Services had been doing printing and mailing for King County elections for several years, was familiar with the county's voter-registration data. In 1988 [a] law firm confronted Dean over accounting discrepancies. According to Barry Wolf, a partner in the now-defunct Culp firm...Dean disguised his thefts by altering computer records. Dean was [later] appointed to the Global board of directors and named senior vice president with an annual salary of $144,000. When Diebold completed its purchase of Global in January 2002, Diebold reviewed employees' backgrounds and learned of Dean's and Elder's convictions. Dean lost his job but stayed on as a consultant on the Voter View project. Diebold Election Systems marketing director Mark Radke said Dean left the company because he wasn't needed. Radke declined to say whether Dean's criminal past played a role in his departure.
Concerned citizens have been warning that new electronic voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to steal elections. Now there is proof. When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. Computer-security experts [who tried] to foil the safeguards and interfere with an election...were disturbingly successful. It was an "easy matter," they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times. They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count. And...they were able to change votes from a remote location. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails. Maryland's 16,000 machines all have identical locks on two sensitive mechanisms, which can be opened by any one of 32,000 keys. The security team had no trouble making duplicates...although that proved unnecessary since one team member picked the lock in "approximately 10 seconds." Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, rushed to issue a self-congratulatory press release with the headline "Maryland Security Study Validates Diebold Election Systems Equipment." The study's authors were shocked to see their findings spun so positively. In Boone County, Ind., last fall...an electronic system initially recorded more than 144,000 votes in an election with fewer than 19,000 registered voters. Given the growing body of evidence, it is clear that electronic voting machines cannot be trusted until more safeguards are in place.
Note: How is Diebold able to brag about its success when the tests clearly fairled.Why didn't this news make front page headlines?
In mid-August 2003, Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold, wrote a letter inviting 100 wealthy friends to a fund-raiser at his home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. He wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." A longtime Republican, he is a member of President Bush's "Rangers and Pioneers," an elite group of loyalists who have raised at least $100,000 each for the 2004 race. Through Diebold Election Systems, Mr. O'Dell's company is among the country's biggest suppliers of paperless, touch-screen voting machines.
Note: This Nov. 2003 article became pay for view only shortly after the 2004 elections. For lots more reliable, verifiable information on various aspects of the elections cover-up, see our Elections Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/electionsinformation.
The software that runs many high-tech voting machines contains serious flaws that would allow voters to cast extra votes and permit poll workers to alter ballots without being detected, computer security researchers said. "We found some stunning, stunning flaws," said Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who led a team. Diebold Election Systems...has about 33,000 voting machines operating in the United States. The systems...could be tricked by anyone with $100 worth of computer equipment, said Adam Stubblefield, a co-author of the paper. "Practically anyone in the country -- from a teenager on up -- could produce these smart cards that could allow someone to vote as many times as they like." The list of flaws in the Diebold software is long, according to the paper, which is online at avirubin.com/vote.pdf. Ballots could be altered by anyone with access to a machine, so that a voter might think he is casting a ballot for one candidate while the vote is recorded for an opponent. Douglas W. Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, said he was shocked to discover flaws cited in Mr. Rubin's paper that he had mentioned to the system's developers about five years ago. "That such flaws have not been corrected in half a decade is awful." Peter G. Neumann, an expert in computer security at SRI International, said the Diebold code was "just the tip of the iceberg" of problems with electronic voting.
Note: Why wasn't this front page headlines in all media?
A U.S. company launched Thursday in Mexico the sale of microchips that can be implanted under a person's skin and used to confirm everything from health history to identity. The microchips ... went on sale last year in the United States. The microchip, the size of a grain of rice, is implanted in the arm or hip and can contain information on everything from a person's blood type to their name. In a two-hour presentation, Palm Beach, Florida-based Applied Digital Solutions Inc. introduced reporters to the VeriChip and used a syringe-like device and local anesthetic to implant a sample in the right arm of employee Carlos Altamirano. “It doesn't hurt at all,” he said. “The whole process is just painless.” Antonio Aceves, the director of the Mexican company charged with distributing the chip here, said that in the first year of sales, the company hoped to implant chips in 10,000 people and ensure that at least 70 percent of all hospitals had the technology to read the devices. One chip costs $150 and has a $50 annual fee. Users can update and manage their chips' information by calling a 24-hour customer service line. The VeriChip can track subjects who are within 5 miles, but officials want to develop a new chip that can use satellite technology to track people who are farther away and may have been kidnapped. While the idea of using the chip to track people has raised privacy concerns in the United States, the idea has been popular with Mexicans. The company hopes to have the new anti-kidnapping chip developed by 2003.
American citizens working for al Qaeda overseas can legally be targeted and killed by the CIA under President Bush's rules for the war on terrorism. The authority to kill U.S. citizens is granted under a secret finding signed by the president after the Sept. 11 attacks. The CIA already has killed one American under this authority, although U.S. officials maintain he wasn't the target. On Nov. 3, a CIA-operated Predator drone fired a missile that destroyed a carload of suspected al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The target of the attack ... was the top al Qaeda operative in that country. But the CIA didn't know a U.S. citizen, Yemeni-American Kamal Derwish, was in the car. The Bush administration said the killing of an American in this fashion was legal. The Bush administration and al Qaeda together have defined the entire world as a battlefield — meaning the attack on ... Derwish was tantamount to an air strike in a combat zone. According to CBS Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen, this is legal because the President and his lawyers say so. "I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here. There are authorities that the president can give to officials," said Condoleezza Rice. Previously, the government's authority to kill a citizen outside of the judicial process has been generally restricted to when the American is directly threatening the lives of other Americans or their allies. The CIA declines comment on covert actions and the authorities it operates under. Scott L. Silliman, director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Securit [asks], "could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in Washington, D.C., under the same theory? The answer is yes, you could."
President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaida two days before Sept. 11 but did not have the chance before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, U.S. and foreign sources told NBC News. The document, a formal National Security Presidential Directive, amounted to a “game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the earth,” one of the sources told NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski. In many respects, the directive ... outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials did not believe that Bush had had the opportunity to closely review the document in the two days between its submission and the Sept. 11 attacks. But it had been submitted to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the officials said Bush knew about it and had been expected to sign it. The couching of the plans as a formal security directive is significant, Miklaszewski reported, because it indicates that the United States intended a full-scale assault on al-Qaida even if the Sept. 11 attacks had not occurred.
Note: Why was this kept secret? Why is it still being kept secret?
Global power-brokers have a penchant for siting their get-togethers in inaccessible places. Since Seattle 1999, Washington and Prague 2000, the calendar of global get-togethers has attracted lively anti-globalisation demonstrations. Davos this year had unusually tight security to try and keep protestors well away, leading to allegations of unnecessary heavy-handedness by the Swiss police. This weekend, it is the turn of Bilderberg, perhaps the most secretive (or as the organisers would prefer to claim, discrete) club for the global elite. It holds its weekend on Stenungsund, an island off the Swedish west coast. The group was created by Denis (now Lord) Healey, Joseph Retinger, David Rockefeller and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (a former SS officer) - the group aimed to [bring] together financiers, industrialists, politicians and opinion formers; the press have never been allowed access. There is a growing perception that globalisation is a process which is being managed for the benefit of a small proportion of the planet's residents and at terrible cost to many more. There is a perception of illegitimacy about unaccountable corporate power and governments elected on low turnout: sooner or later global power-brokers will have to recognise this crisis of legitimacy, and engage with protestors rather than run away from them.
Note: For lots more reliable news on powerful secret societies, click here. And for another balanced article on the powerful Bilderberg Group, click here.
The U.S. government has been covering up evidence of extraterrestrial visits for more than 50 years, an array of 20 retired Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence officers said Wednesday. They demanded Congress hold hearings on what they say is long-standing secret U.S. involvement with UFOs and extraterrestrials. Calling it the "greatest secret of the 20th century," the officials, who termed themselves "witnesses" of UFO-related events, described a series of military investigations they said they saw: crashes of alien spacecraft, bodies of alien beings, secret government documents, even James Bond-style "erasures" of people who knew too much. "The field is filled with hoaxes and scams," said Dr. Steven Greer, director of the Disclosure Project, which had gathered the witnesses. "But it doesn´t mean all of it is." The 20 witnesses, he said, were a fraction of the 400 people who are willing to testify under oath and under congressional immunity about a secretive portion of the government they say has gone out of control.
Note: For a CNN news video clip on this highly revealing event, click here. For lots more reliable, verifiable information suggesting a major UFO cover-up, click here.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.