Government Corruption Media Articles

Excerpts of Key Government Corruption Media Articles in Major Media

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Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing 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.

The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, health and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday. The American Human Development Index has [issued a report] measuring well-being ... with shocking results. The US finds itself ranked 42nd in global life expectancy and 34th in survival of infants to age. Suicide and murder are among the top 15 causes of death and although the US is home to just 5 per cent of the global population it accounts for 24 per cent of the world's prisoners. The report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities. "The report shows that although America is one of the richest nations in the world, it is woefully behind when it comes to providing opportunity and choices to all Americans to build a better life," the authors said. Some of its more shocking findings reveal that ... Asian-American males have the best quality of life and black Americans the lowest, with a staggering 50-year life expectancy gap between the two groups. Using official government statistics, the study points out that because American schools are funded primarily from local property taxes, rich districts get the best state education. The US has no federally mandated sick pay, paternity leave or annual paid vacation.

Note: For lots more on health issues from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.

Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001. The book says that the International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were "categorically" torture, which is illegal under both American and international law. The book says Abu Zubaydah was confined in a box "so small ... he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position" and was one of several prisoners to be "slammed against the walls," according to the Red Cross report. The C.I.A. has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were waterboarded, a practice in which water is poured in the nose and mouth to [cause near] suffocation and drowning. The book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer ... offers new details of the agency’s secret detention program, as well as the bitter debates in the administration over interrogation methods. Citing unnamed "sources familiar with the report," Ms. Mayer wrote that the Red Cross document "warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted."

Note: For lots more on war and war crimes, click here.

Myths die hard, and one of the most corrosive ones today is the mistaken idea that Iraqis want us in Iraq. They do not. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has shocked official Washington by publicly saying he wants to negotiate a withdrawal date for U.S. forces and if not an exact date, a timetable for their withdrawal. Who does he think he is, Barack Obama? Yes, yes, Maliki may be a politician with his finger in the wind as he is trying to fend off his young firebrand Shiite rival, Muqtada al-Sadr, who wants the U.S. out yesterday, but clearly the Iraqi "wind" is blowing Sadr's way. Depending on how the question is asked, it appears that at least 70 percent of Iraqis want Americans to leave either immediately or expeditiously. Here at home, about 60 percent of Americans want U.S. forces to be withdrawn within the next year.

Note: If the Iraqi people and leadership want the U.S. out, why are we still there? For a good answer, click here.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has pledged to cover costs of civilian lawyers defending alleged terrorists, is in a struggle with the U.S. Treasury Department over a permit to pay $250-an-hour fees and other expenses to attorneys who have been shuttling to [the] U.S. Navy base [at Guantanamo]. The Treasury division, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, is the same unit that polices American citizens' travel to Cuba. Its authority to license defense costs at the war courts here, called military commissions, comes from anti-terror legislation. ACLU director Anthony Romero accused the Bush administration of foot-dragging, noting civilian defense lawyers were slow to receive security clearances to meet accused terrorists held for years without access to attorneys. "Now the government is stonewalling again by not allowing Americans' private dollars to be paid to American lawyers to defend civil liberties," he said. He called the slow licensing an "obstruction of justice" at a time when "the Bush administration insists on moving ahead with the prosecutions." The program is called the John Adams Project, sponsored by the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Under it, attorneys will be paid for travel, expenses, research and copying as well as $250 an hour to defend men ... now facing death penalty prosecutions at the war court. Top criminal defense lawyers typically charge at least $550 an hour.

Note: For important reports on threats to civil liberties from major media sources, click here.

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

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

The U.S. military bankrolled early development of a non-lethal microwave weapon that creates sound inside your head. The project is known as MEDUSA a contrived acronym for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio. And it should not be confused with the Long Range Acoustic Device and similar gadgets which simply project sound. This one uses the so-called "microwave auditory effect": a beam of microwaves is turned into sound by the interaction with your head. Nobody else can hear it unless they are in the beam as well. The idea (dubbed "the telepathic ray gun") was mentioned in a 1998 US Army study, which turned up in a recent Freedom of Information Act document dump. Five years later, the Navy decided to put some R&D dollars into the project. Now ... Dr. Lev Sadovnik of the Sierra Nevada Corporation has provided more details. There are health risks, he notes. The biggest issue from the microwave weapon is ... the risk of brain damage from the high-intensity shockwave created by the microwave pulse. A device that delivered a lethal shockwave inside the target's skull might make an effective death ray. Dr. Sadovnik also makes the intriguing suggestion that ... it might be used at low power to produce a whisper that was too quiet to perceive consciously but might be able to subconsciously influence someone. Sadovnik even suggests subliminal advertising, beaming information that is not consciously heard (a notion also spotted on the US Army's voice-to-skull page).

Note: This 20 minute CNN Special Report on electromagnetic frequency weapons from 1985 shows some of what this technology was known to be capable of over 30 years ago. Recent incidents in Cuba and China suggest the possibility that much more advanced forms of acoustic or electromagnetic weapons are currently in use. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing non-lethal weapons news articles from reliable major media sources.

The [DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility] that polices [DOJ] lawyers' conduct has been operating under a growing shroud of secrecy. It is taking on some of the weightiest issues in government -- examining the role Justice's lawyers played in formulating administration interrogation policies for suspected terrorists and in endorsing a National Security Agency program of warrantless electronic surveillance. It has ... the task of deciding whether department lawyers engaged in selective prosecution of Democratic political figures. It also is looking into lawyers' involvement in a decision ... to deport a Canadian citizen to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured. But officials have declined to say whether even one government lawyer has been found to have engaged in professional misconduct in connection with the war on terrorism -- despite often fierce criticism from civil liberties groups, defense lawyers and judges. The [unit] has exonerated department lawyers in at least two high-profile terrorism-related investigations. The office found that department lawyers had not engaged in misconduct in connection with ... using special warrants to round up and incarcerate men after Sept. 11. The OPR also exonerated department lawyers in ... the case of Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim attorney in Portland, Ore., who was detained when the FBI erroneously linked his fingerprints to ... the March 2004 Madrid train bombings. But the resolution of most matters investigated by the OPR remains closely guarded, even in cases where courts have found evidence of serious prosecutorial misconduct.

Note: For lots more on government secrecy, click here.

The former Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt returned to what she called her "other family" in France today as doubt was cast on the apparently daring rescue that won her freedom. While she was still in the air, the Swiss radio station RSR broadcast a report questioning the official version of the operation to free Ms Betancourt and 14 other hostages -- saying that money, not cunning, had clinched their freedom. RSR said that the 15 hostages "were in reality ransomed for a high price, and the whole operation afterwards was a set-up". Citing a source "close to the events, reliable and tested many times in recent years", it said that the United States -- which had three citizens among those freed -- was behind the deal and put the price at $20 million. The Colombian Foreign Ministry furiously denied the allegations, with a spokesman calling them "completely false." He added: "They are lies". General Freddy Padilla, head of the Colombian military, categorically denied they had paid "a single peso" to Farc. The French Foreign Ministry denied any involvement in any deal. The US has not responded to the [allegations].

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say. The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism. In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said. At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world’s largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry. The contracts are expected to be awarded Monday to Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, as well as to several smaller oil companies. The deals have been criticized by opponents of the Iraq war, who accuse the Bush administration of working behind the scenes to ensure Western access to Iraqi oil fields even as most other oil-exporting countries have been sharply limiting the roles of international oil companies in development. Though enriched by high prices, the companies are starved for new oil fields. American military officials say the pipelines [in Iraq] now have excess capacity, waiting for output to increase at the fields.

Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the real reasons behind the war in Iraq, click here.

Charlie Black, senior adviser to John McCain, caused a fluff by saying that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil would be a "big advantage" to his candidate. No one mentioned that eight years ago, the Project for a New American Century called for "a new Pearl Harbor" that could move the American people to accept the neoconservative vision of militarized global domination. Then 9/11 happened, lifting George W. Bush from the shadows of a disputed election to the heights of a "war presidency." Bush has taken on unprecedented powers since the events of 9/11. On that day, the president issued his "Declaration of Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks" under the authority of the National Emergencies Act. This declaration, which can be rescinded by joint resolution of Congress, has instead been extended six times. In 2007, the declaration was quietly strengthened with the issuance of National Security Presidential Directive 51, which gave the president the authority to do whatever he deems necessary in a vaguely defined "catastrophic emergency," including everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Not a single congressional hearing was held on this directive. Will Congress act decisively to remove the president's emergency powers, challenge the directive and defend the Constitution?

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week. The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment. This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant. Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. Both documents, as prepared by the E.P.A., “showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy, to reduce greenhouse gases,” one of the senior E.P.A. officials said. “That’s not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can’t work.”

Note: For many important reports on global warming from major media sources, click here.

Eleven years after the last major effort to balance the federal government's books, advocates of fiscal integrity are seeking to make a comeback. Most notable is Pete Peterson, a son of Greek immigrants and Wall Street chieftain who has vowed to invest $1 billion of his personal fortune to alert Americans that their government is going broke. He has lured former U.S. comptroller general David Walker to his fledgling Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which will finance advertising, lobbying and grass-roots efforts designed to pressure the next president and Congress. The situation has gotten much worse since past presidents and Congress negotiated deficit-reduction deals in 1990, 1993 and 1997. The federal deficit is estimated at $357 billion. The national debt, as calculated by the Treasury Department, is more than $9.3 trillion. Future liabilities, from government pensions to elderly entitlements, bring the total to $53 trillion — $175,000 per person, according to Peterson and Walker. Both men say a comprehensive fix will need to include overhauls of the nation's health care and tax systems. At the core of the effort is Peterson, 82, a founder of the Concord Coalition fiscal watchdog group, who has preached the danger of federal budget deficits for decades. He and Walker spoke Tuesday at a House Budget Committee hearing and met privately with congressional backers of balanced budgets. Peterson is retiring this year as senior chairman of the Blackstone Group, which he co-founded. [He is a] former secretary of Commerce in the Nixon administration and chairman of Lehman Brothers.

Government lawyers say the ongoing investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks could be compromised if the airline industry is allowed to seek more information from the FBI to defend itself against lawsuits brought by terrorism victims. The government urged a judge to block aviation companies from interviewing five FBI employees who the companies say will help them prove the government withheld key information before the 2001 attacks. The lawyers said it would be impossible to interview the employees without disclosing classified or privileged material that could "cause serious damage to national security and interfere with pending law enforcement proceedings." The largest investigation in FBI history has resulted in 167,000 interviews and more than 155,000 pieces of evidence and involved the pursuit of 500,000 investigative leads, the lawyers wrote. The airlines and aviation companies are defending themselves against lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries, fatalities, property damage and business losses related to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The companies filed separate lawsuits against the CIA and the FBI last August to force terrorism investigators to tell whether the aviation industry was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks. Meanwhile, lawyers for the victims of the attacks ... recounted in court papers numerous hijackings and attacks aboard planes before Sept. 11 that they said should have put the airline industry on notice that a disastrous attack could occur.

Note: For a two-page overview of many unanswered questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concessions to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields. The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations. The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts [would] give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts. There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. Sensitive to the appearance that they were profiting from the war and already under pressure because of record high oil prices, senior officials of two of the companies, speaking only on the condition that they not be identified, said they were helping Iraq rebuild its decrepit oil industry.

Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the real reasons behind the war in Iraq, click here.

The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability. In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." He called the abuse "systemic and illegal." And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in The New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement. Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an epilogue to his own investigation. The new report, he writes, "tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual's lives on their bodies and minds. The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes."

Note: For many revealing reports on the brutal realities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, click here.

The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn't the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers. It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials. The Supreme Court now has struck down many of their legal interpretations. The quintet of lawyers, who called themselves the “War Council," drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military's code of justice, the federal court system and America's international treaties in order to prevent anyone ... from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes. The international conventions ... to which [the US is] a party, were abandoned in secret meetings among the five men in one another's offices: ... David Addington, the ... longtime legal adviser and now chief of staff to Cheney [whose] primary motive, according to several former administration and defense officials, was to push for an expansion of presidential power that Congress or the courts couldn't check; Alberto Gonzales, first the White House counsel and then the attorney general; William J. Haynes II, the former Pentagon general counsel; former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, [and] Timothy E. Flanigan, a former deputy to Gonzales.

Note: Virtually no major media other than the Herald picked up this key story.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan hoped for an easier life when he came [to Nuremberg, Germany] from Iraq nine years ago. He also hoped for a reward for his cooperation with German intelligence officers. "For what I've done, I should be treated like a king," he said outside a cramped, low-rent apartment he shares with his family. Instead, the Iraqi informant code-named Curveball has flipped burgers at McDonald's and Burger King, washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant and baked pretzels in an all-night bakery. He also has faced withering international scorn for peddling discredited intelligence that helped spur an invasion of his native country. It was intelligence attributed to Alwan -- as Curveball -- that the White House used in making its case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. He described what turned out to be fictional mobile germ factories. The CIA belatedly branded him a liar. After Curveball's role in the pre-invasion intelligence fiasco was disclosed by the Los Angeles Times four years ago, the con man behind the code name remained in the shadows. His security was protected and his identity concealed by the BND, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service. Along with confirmation of Curveball's identity, however, have come fresh disclosures raising doubts about his honesty -- much of that new detail coming from friends, associates and past employers. And records reveal that when Alwan fled to Germany, one step ahead of the Iraq Justice Ministry, an arrest warrant had been issued alleging that he sold filched camera equipment on the Baghdad black market.

Note: For much more information on the CIA's "disinformant" Curveball, click here. The lies he told were peddled by US media, including the major television networks and The New York Times and Washington Post, in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. For a powerful summary of major media cover-ups, click here.

The Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct the nation’s brainpower to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq, terrorism and religious fundamentalism. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has compared the initiative — named Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom (and warriors) — to the government’s effort to pump up its intellectual capital during the cold war after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957. Although the Pentagon regularly finances science and engineering research, systematic support for the social sciences and humanities has been rare. But if the uncustomary push to engage the nation’s evolutionary psychologists, demographers, sociologists, historians and anthropologists in security research — as well as the prospect of new financial support in lean times — has generated excitement among some scholars, it has also aroused opposition from others, who worry that the Defense Department and the academy are getting too cozy. Cooperation between universities and the Pentagon has long been a contentious issue. The Pentagon put out its first requests for proposals last week. Minerva will award $50 million over five years. Another set of grants administered by the National Science Foundation is expected to be announced by the end of this month. [Gates] contacted Robert M. Berdahl, [former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley and] the president of the Association of American Universities — which represents 60 of the top research universities in the country — in December to help design Minerva.

Note: For many revealing reports on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.

The U.S. military hid the locations of ... detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released. "We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said. [Another] person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world. "In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC," Fredman said. The document, along with two dozen others, shows that top administration officials pushed relentlessly for tougher interrogation methods. Fredman of the CIA also appeared to be advocating the use of techniques harsher than those authorized by military field guides. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong," the minutes report Fredman saying at one point.

Note: For many revealing reports on the brutal realities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, click here.

The Army official who managed the Pentagon’s largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops. The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations. Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company. “They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify,” he said in an interview. But he was suddenly replaced, he said, and his successors — after taking the unusual step of hiring an outside contractor to consider KBR’s claims — approved most of the payments he had tried to block. Mr. Smith’s account fills in important gaps about the Pentagon’s handling of the KBR contract, which has cost more than $20 billion so far and has come under fierce criticism from lawmakers. Mr. Smith ... is giving his account just as the Pentagon has recently awarded KBR part of a 10-year, $150 billion contract in Iraq.

Note: For a summary of US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler's book on war profiteering, click here.

Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing 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.