Government Corruption Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Government Corruption Media Articles in Major Media
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Sibel Edmonds, who formed the 100-plus member National Security whistle-blowers Coalition in 2002, began working as a linguist for the FBI the week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. Several months into her contract, she discovered "shoddy" translations relevant to 9/11 created by translators who had "failed the proficiency exams." Edmonds says the translator was sent to Guantanamo Bay to translate "the most sensitive terrorist-related information" from interviews of detainees. Edmonds also notified her superiors that a co-worker was responsible for translating wiretaps of a company the latter used to work for. [Edmonds] was fired in March 2002. When Edmonds asked why, she received a letter saying her contract had been "terminated completely for the government's convenience." In its final report, the inspector general concluded that "we believe that many of (Edmonds') allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services." The same month the report was released, Edmonds' lawsuit to contest her firing was dismissed. Legal briefs show the government had invoked the so-called state secrets privilege, arguing that the lawsuit would jeopardize national security. "Instead of protecting and standing up for whistle-blowers, this is just giving the complete green light to retaliate," says Edmonds, who lost her appeal.
Note: This article fails to mention that Edmonds has repeatedly stated in public forums and in the press that she has specific information on the involvement of certain high officials in 9/11. For more on this vital topic, click here.
From 1995 to 2001, Bogdan Dzakovic served as a team leader on the Federal Aviation Administration's Red Team. Set up by Congress to help the FAA ... the elite squad tested airport security systems. In the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Dzakovic says, the team was able to breach security about 90% of the time, sneaking bombs and submachine guns past airport screeners. Expensive new bomb detection machines consistently failed. The team repeatedly warned the FAA of the potential for security breaches and hijackings but was told to cover up its findings. Eventually, the FAA began notifying airports in advance when the Red Team would be doing its undercover testing. He and other Red Team members approached the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General, the General Accounting Office and members of Congress about the FAA's alleged misconduct. No one did anything. "Immediately (after 9/11), numerous government officials from FAA as well as other government agencies made defensive statements such as, 'How could we have known this was going to happen?' " Dzakovic testified later before the 9/11 Commission. After filing [a] complaint, Dzakovic was removed from his Red Team leadership position. He now works for the Transportation Security Administration. His primary assignments include tasks such as hole-punching, updating agency phonebooks and "thumb-twiddling." At least he hasn't received a pay cut, he says. He makes about $110,000 a year for what he describes as "entry-level idiot work."
In 2002, decorated FBI Special Agent Mike German was investigating meetings between terrorism suspects. When he discovered other officers had jeopardized the investigation by violating wiretapping regulations, he reported what he found to his supervisors. German says he had ... just received a mass e-mail from FBI Director Robert Mueller, urging other whistle-blowers to come forward. "I was assuming he'd protect me," German says. Instead ... his accusations were ignored, his reputation ruined and his career obliterated. Although the Justice Department's inspector general confirmed German's allegations ... he says he was barred from further undercover work and eventually compelled to resign. The experience is familiar to other government employees who have blown the whistle on matters of national security since 9/11. An increasing number of whistle-blowers allege that rather than being embraced, they're being retaliated against for coming forward. Those who come forward often face harassment, investigation, character assassination and firing. For those who are fired ... there is little recourse. Most national security whistle-blowers are not protected from retaliation by law. That's because the intelligence-gathering agencies are exempted from the 1989 whistle-blower Protection Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled against whistle-blowers in 125 of 127 of the reprisal cases seen by the court since 1994. Many had been star employees at the top of the pay scale and had spent decades in civil service. "I'm one of the last people who survived," says [Coleen] Rowley, the former FBI whistle-blower and Time magazine "Person of the Year." She says widespread, favorable media coverage saved her FBI career.
Most people first heard about Russell Tice last December when the former National Security Agency intelligence analyst asked to testify before Congress about NSA programs he claims are illegal. But his confrontation with his employer began much earlier. In 2001, Tice reported suspicions that an employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which oversees the NSA and other intelligence-gathering agencies, was spying for China. When he followed up on the allegations several years later, Tice was ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation. Although he had passed his regular exam nine months earlier, the in-house psychologist conducting the latest evaluation decided Tice had psychotic paranoia. After almost 20 years in intelligence, Tice's security clearance was revoked. He was transferred to a maintenance position at the NSA vehicle pool, and then to a government furniture warehouse. Just days after publicly urging Congress to pass stronger protections for federal intelligence agency whistle-blowers facing retaliation, he was fired in May 2005. "They treat a whistle-blower like a virus which they basically surround with buffers in an attempt to marginalize, isolate and prevent from having an impact on an organization," says Tice's lawyer, Joshua Dratel.
During the past two years, [Actor Stephen] Heller tapped the family savings and lost two jobs while fighting charges that he took copies of documents from a law firm where he worked. Prosecutors said he copied more than 500 pages of documents, including memos suggesting Diebold may have broken state law by providing Alameda County with electronic voting machines that hadn't been certified by state officials. Soon after, Heller gave the documents to Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, which was involved in a lawsuit claiming Diebold used uncertified software in 17 counties. Harris then turned them over to the secretary of state and the Oakland Tribune. Heller was sentenced Monday to three years probation and ordered to pay his former law firm $10,000 in restitution. The records detailed potential problems with electronic voting machines made by Diebold. Heller was hailed by digital rights and political activists as a whistle-blower who tried to do the right thing. Some observers believe prosecuting Heller could prevent other people from revealing potential flaws with electronic voting systems. Some of Diebold's machines failed to work properly in the March 2004 primary election. Two months later, then-Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified 14,000 Diebold electronic voting machines. [Shelley's] lawsuit was eventually joined by the state attorney general's office. Diebold settled for $2.6 million last year. Heller hopes his case will bring about changes and prevent corporations from keeping details of election equipment and software secret. "The only thing that should be secret is our ballots," Heller said.
Note: So a whistleblower who exposes major corruption later proven to be true is fined and penalized. What kind of system is this? For lots more, click here.
Farmers and ranchers won't be forced to register their cows, pigs and chickens in a nationwide database aimed at helping track the outbreak of disease, the Bush administration said Wednesday. Hoping to dampen widespread opposition to the animal tracking program, the Agriculture Department has decided it should remain voluntary. First promised in response to the discovery of mad cow disease in this country, the tracking system would pinpoint an animal's movements within 48 hours after a disease was discovered. Investigators never found all 80 of the cattle that came to the U.S. from Canada with the infected dairy cow that became the country's first case of mad cow disease in 2003. Many cattle ranchers are wary of the program because they want records kept confidential and don't want to pay for the system. The industry estimates it could cost more than $100 million annually.
New video and photographic evidence ... puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of Robert Kennedy's assassination. It reveals that the operatives and four unidentified associates were at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in the moments before and after the shooting on 5 June, 1968. The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles. Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary on an anti-War ticket and was set to challenge Nixon for the White House. A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone assassin. However, even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember the shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the time. Witnesses placed Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy but the autopsy showed the fatal shot came from one inch behind. Dr Herbert Spiegel, a world authority on hypnosis at Columbia University, believes Sirhan may have been hypnotically programmed to act as a decoy for the real assassin. Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base. David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated.
Note: There is ample evidence that Sirhan Sirhan was a programmed Manchurian Candidate. Declassified CIA documents show that U.S. intelligence services were creating programmed assassins back as early as the 1950s. For reliable, verifiable information on this key topic, click here.
In 1968, Robert Kennedy seemed likely to follow his brother, John, into the White House. Then, on June 6, he was assassinated - apparently by a lone gunman. But Shane O'Sullivan says he has evidence implicating three CIA agents in the murder: On June 5 1968, Robert Kennedy wins the California Democratic primary. After midnight, he finishes his victory speech at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles ... in a crowded pantry when 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan steps down from a tray-stacker with a "sick, villainous smile" on his face and starts firing at Kennedy with an eight-shot revolver. As Kennedy lies dying on the pantry floor, Sirhan is arrested as the lone assassin. He carries the motive in his shirt-pocket (a clipping about Kennedy's plans to sell bombers to Israel). But the autopsy report suggests Sirhan could not have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. And more bullet-holes are found in the pantry than Sirhan's gun can hold, suggesting a second gunman. Three years ago, I started writing a screenplay about the assassination [and was] caught up in a strange tale of second guns and "Manchurian candidates" (as the movie termed brainwashed assassins). As I researched the case, I uncovered new video and photographic evidence suggesting that three senior CIA operatives were behind the killing. Morales died of a heart attack in 1978, weeks before he was to be called before the HSCA [House Select Committee on Assassinations]. Joannides died in 1990. Campbell may still be out there somewhere, in his early 80s. Given the positive identifications we have gathered on these three, the CIA and the Los Angeles Police Department need to explain what they were doing there.
Lyndon Johnson relished summoning underlings in to confer with him while he sat on the toilet. Richard Nixon authorized illegal wiretaps on perceived enemies because, as he later told an interviewer, "when the president does it, it's not illegal." Bill Clinton wantonly had sex with intern Monica Lewinsky. Why is it said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely? In the past few years...research has zeroed in on what an intoxicating elixir power can be. And one thing has become clear: The phrase "drunk with power" is often a dead-on description. These new studies show that power acts to lower inhibitions, much the same as alcohol does. It explains why powerful people act with great daring and sometimes behave rather like gorillas. "Disinhibition is the very root of power," said Stanford Professor Deborah Gruenfeld, a social psychologist who focuses on the study of power. "For most people, what we think of as 'power plays' aren't calculated and Machiavellian -- they happen at the subconscious level. When people feel powerful, they stop trying to 'control themselves.'" People with power...tend to be more oblivious to what others think, more likely to pursue the satisfaction of their own appetites, poorer judges of other people's reactions, more likely to hold stereotypes, overly optimistic and more likely to take risks. People who are naturally selfish grow even more selfish if they attain power, while people who are naturally selfless and giving become more so with power. Henry Kissinger discerned that power is "the ultimate aphrodisiac." "Nearly all men can stand adversity," said Abraham Lincoln, "but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
Note: This most excellent article graphically describes the problems that can occur when a hierarchical political systems places certain individuals in positions of great authority. For more on this fascinating topic, click here.
In the world of thoroughbred racing, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohamed, has spared no expense in making himself a big man. The sheikh's taking the same no expense spared approach to promoting Dubai around the world. Prominent figures, including former President Bill Clinton, have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak, or act as consultants. President Bush's brother Neil was a guest of the royal family last year. And as Dubai grows from desert town to boomtown, again, no expense is being spared. Just putting up the world's tallest building isn't enough. The building will be twice this height when completed next year. One hundred sixty floors of the most luxurious apartments and offices the world has ever seen. All being built, it turns out, by workers who on average make less than a dollar an hour. Behind the glitzy world of Dubai are some 500,000 foreign workers who human rights groups say live in virtual enslavement. A report out just this week from the group Human Rights Watch concludes workers putting up Dubai's soaring towers are being systematically cheated and abused, with the sheikh's government looking the other way.
Note: If you want to see how deep this ugly hole goes, don't miss the eye-opening ABC News video at this link.
Last week’s elections provided a lot of disturbing news about the reliability of electronic voting. In a Congressional race...Sarasota County [Florida] reported that more than 18,000 people, or one in eight, did not choose either candidate. That “undervote” of nearly 13 percent is hard to believe, given that only about 2.5 percent of absentee voters did not vote. Ms. Jennings trails Mr. Buchanan by about 400 votes. The serious questions about the Buchanan - Jennings race only add to the high level of mistrust that many people already feel about electronic voting. Congress has resisted all appeals to pass a law that would ensure that electronic voting is honest and accurate across the nation. Partisan secretaries of state continue to skew the rules to favor their parties and political allies. States are adopting harsh standards for voter registration drives to make it harder for people to register. Some states have adopted an indefensible rule that provisional ballots cast at the wrong table of the correct polling place must be thrown out. Congress has failed to address these and other important flaws with the mechanics of the election system. But this...may be about to change. Senator Feinstein is saying that providing fair access to the ballot will be among her committee’s top priorities in the coming year. Election reform has tended to be a partisan issue, with Democrats arguing for reform and Republicans resisting it. It shouldn’t be. Congressional Democrats should make fixing this country’s broken system of elections a top priority, and Republicans should join them.
The U.S. military called no witnesses, withheld evidence from detainees and usually reached a decision within a day as it determined that hundreds of men detained at Guantanamo Bay were “enemy combatants,” according to a new report. The analysis of transcripts and records...found that hearings that determined whether a prisoner should remain in custody gave the accused little opportunity to contest allegations against him. “These were not hearings. These were shams,” said Mark Denbeaux, an attorney and Seton Hall University law professor who along with his son, Joshua, is the author of the report. The military held Combatant Status Review Tribunals for 558 detainees...between July 2004 and January 2005 and found all but 38 were enemy combatants. Handcuffed detainees appeared before a panel of three officers with no defense attorney, only a military “personal representative.” Representatives said nothing in the hearings 14 percent of the time and made no “substantive” comments in 30 percent. In 74 percent of the cases, the government denied requests to call witnesses who were detained at the prison. The report is based on transcripts...released earlier this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit... The Military Commissions Act, which President Bush signed on Oct. 17, strips all non-U.S. citizens held under suspicion of being an enemy combatant of their right to challenge their detention in civilian courts with petitions of habeas corpus.
Poor people are needlessly dying because drug companies and the governments of rich countries are blocking the developing world from obtaining affordable medicines. Five years to the day after the Doha declaration - a groundbreaking deal to give poor countries access to cheap drugs - was signed at the World Trade Organisation, Oxfam says things are worse. The charity accuses the US, which champions the interests of its giant pharmaceutical companies, of bullying developing countries into not using the measures in the Doha declaration and the EU of standing by and doing nothing. Doha technically allows poor countries to buy cheap copies of desperately needed drugs, but the US is accused of trying to prevent countries such as Thailand and India, which have manufacturing capacity, [from] making and selling cheap generic versions so as to preserve the monopolies of the drug giants. "Rich countries have broken the spirit of the Doha declaration," said Celine Charveriat, head of Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign. "The declaration said the right things but needed political action to work and that hasn't happened. In fact, we've actually gone backwards. Many people are dying or suffering needlessly." The US has pursued its own free trade agreements with developing countries, tying them into much tighter observance of patent rights than anticipated at Doha. "The USA has also pressured countries for greater patent protection through threats of trade sanctions," the report says.
The United States last year provided nearly half of the weapons sold to militaries in the developing world, as major arms sales to the most unstable regions -- many already engaged in conflict -- grew to the highest level in eight years, new US government figures show. The United States supplied $8.1 billion worth of weapons to developing countries in 2005 -- 45.8 percent of the total. The figures underscore how the largely unchecked arms trade to the developing world has become a major staple of the American weapons industry, even though introducing many of the weapons risks fueling conflicts rather than aiding long-term US interests. [The U.S.] also signed an estimated $6.2 billion worth of new deals last year to sell attack helicopters, missiles, and other armaments to developing nations such as the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. There is growing evidence that the sales are increasingly more about dollars and cents for the US military-industrial complex. A UN panel [recently] voted to study whether a new treaty might be possible to regulate the sale of conventional arms. The United States was the only country out of 166 to vote no. A study last year by the progressive World Policy Institute found that the United States transferred weaponry to 18 of the 25 countries involved in an ongoing war. More than half of the countries buying US arms...were defined as undemocratic by the State Department's annual Human Rights Report, including top recipients Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.
The Bush administration said on Sunday that it would strenuously oppose one of the Democrats’ top priorities for the new Congress: legislation authorizing the government to negotiate with drug companies to secure lower drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries. In an interview, Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said he saw no prospect of compromise on the issue. Dozens of plans are available in every state. They charge different premiums and co-payments and cover different drugs. The 2003 Medicare law explicitly prohibits the federal government from negotiating drug prices or establishing a list of preferred drugs. Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who is in line to become the House speaker, has said the House will take up legislation to repeal that ban in its first 100 hours under Democratic control. Senate Democrats have expressed a similar desire. The eight Democrats newly elected to the Senate all say Medicare should have the power to negotiate with drug makers.
Note: To understand how the drug companies have become the most powerful lobby in government and will compromise our health for their profits, read what a top MD has to say by clicking here.
U..S. non-farm payrolls data—arguably the most closely watched indicator in the world's largest economy—are revised so often and by so much that they can't be trusted, some strategists argued yesterday. Their comments come after Friday's report for October showed huge upward revisions for job creation in August and September. And last month, the Bureau of Labour Statistics said 810,000 more jobs were created between March, 2005, and March, 2006, than originally thought—the biggest revision ever made to the data. "How can you trust a non-farm payroll report that shows such massive revisions—we have never seen this before to such an extent," David Rosenberg, North American economist at Merrill Lynch & Co., railed in a note to clients. The U.S. report—which measures the creation of non-agricultural jobs—is usually released on the first Friday of the month and provides the earliest economic snapshot of the previous month. It tends to be one of the top market-moving indicators, influencing stocks, bonds and currency markets in the U.S. and beyond. "We find it utterly comical and at times almost contemptible that some in our business still wish to trade pending this report," [investment guru] Dennis Gartman wrote in his newsletter yesterday. "Such is nonsense, for the report itself is nonsense."
"The Under Secretary of the Navy (UNSECNAV) is the Approval Authority for research involving: (a) Severe or unusual intrusions, either physical or psychological, on human subjects (such as consciousness-altering drugs or mind-control techniques). (b) Prisoners. (c) Potentially or inherently controversial topics (such as those likely to attract significant media coverage or that might invite challenge by interest groups). The UNSECNAV forwards to the Director, Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) for final determination: (a) All proposed research involving exposure of human subjects to the effects of nuclear, biological or chemical warfare agents or weapons, as required by reference (a)."
Note: This 2006 US Department of the Navy document shows that the US military continues to develop mind control techniques, use mind-altering drugs, and expose individuals to lethal nuclear, biological, and chemical agents while keeping it all out of the media's eye. For lots more showing blatant disregard for human rights on this topic, click here and here.
The Justice Department increasingly has refused to prosecute FBI cases targeting suspected terrorists over the past five years, according to private researchers who reviewed department records. The report being released Monday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University raises questions about the quality of the FBI's investigations. Prosecutors declined to bring charges in 131 of 150, or 87 percent, of international terrorist case referrals from the FBI between October 2005 and June 2006. That number marks the peak of generally steady increases from the 2001 budget year, when prosecutors rejected 33 percent of such cases from the FBI. The data "raise troubling questions about the bureau's investigation of criminal matters involving individuals the government has identified as international terrorists," the report said. It noted that prosecutions in traditional FBI investigations since 2001—including drug cases, white collar crimes and organized crimes—have decreased while the number of agents and other employees has risen. "So with more special agents, many more intelligence analysts, and many fewer prosecutions the question must be asked: What is the FBI doing?" the report said.
Note: With the current administration's frequent claims to be tough on terrorism, does this make any sense? Could it be that some of the accused are being protected from prosecution?
Folker Heinicke always had the feeling that something about his upbringing just wasn’t right. Raised in a German home full of wealth and privilege did not dull his notions that something was missing, but it would be decades before he would learn the full truth: he was the child of a Nazi program to strengthen the German race with Aryan blood. He and other children — known as “Lebensborn Kinder” or “source of life” kids — were the product of parents chosen for their traits to breed Hitler’s idealized blue-eyed, blonde-haired Aryan race. The Lebensborn program was the mirror opposite of the Nazi’s other, more hideous racial experiments. While millions of Jews and others deemed “undesirable,” were slaughtered, these children were carefully selected for their Aryan qualities and brought into the world in comfortable surroundings, well away from the Allied bombing raids. Of the estimated 5,000 to 8,000 born into Lebensborn homes in Germany, some were raised by their birth mothers, but many were given over to families of high-ranking SS officers to be raised according to Nazi doctrine.
Note: For more on the Lebensborn project, click here. To understand more about Nazi programs of mind control, click here.
The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk. The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." The battle over legal rights for terrorism suspects detained for years in CIA prisons centers on Majid Khan, a 26-year-old former Catonsville resident who was one of 14 high-value detainees transferred in September from the "black" sites to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The government, in trying to block lawyers' access to the 14 detainees, effectively asserts that the detainees' experiences are a secret that should never be shared with the public. An attorney for Khan's family, responded in a court document yesterday "the executive is attempting to misuse its classification authority...to conceal illegal or embarrassing executive conduct." Khan's family did not learn of his whereabouts until Bush announced his transfer in September, more than three years after he was seized. Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented several detainees at Guantanamo, said the prisoners "can't even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. This is 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
Note: Interesting that not only the government documents, but even this article avoids mentioning the word torture, when that is clearly what this is all about.
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.