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.

Amid daily revelations about prewar intelligence and a growing scandal surrounding the indictment of the vice president's chief of staff and presidential adviser, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to investigate the internal war that was waged between the intelligence community and Richard Bruce Cheney, the most powerful vice president in the nation's history. "A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies," Cheney told Americans just after 9/11. He warned the public that the government would have to operate on the "dark side." In The Dark Side, airing June 20, 2006, at 9 P.M. on PBS...FRONTLINE tells the story of the vice president's role as the chief architect of the war on terror and his battle with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for control of the "dark side." Drawing on more than 40 interviews and thousands of documents, the film provides a step-by-step examination of what happened inside the councils of war. After the attacks on 9/11, Cheney seized the initiative and pushed for expanding presidential power, transforming America's intelligence agencies, and bringing the war on terror to Iraq. In the initial stages of the war on terror, Tenet's CIA was rising to prominence as the lead agency in the Afghanistan war. But when Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with the president that there was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the agency and Tenet.

Dozens of members of the Bush administration's domestic-security team...are collecting bigger paychecks in different roles: working on behalf of companies that sell security products, many directly to the federal agencies the officials once helped run. At least 90 officials at the Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security...are executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domestic-security business. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge...stands to profit now that Savi Technology, a maker of radio-frequency-identification equipment that the department pushed while he was secretary, is being bought by Lockheed Martin. He was appointed to the Savi board three months after resigning from the department. Former Homeland Security undersecretary Asa Hutchinson...the biggest potential for profit among Hutchinson's ventures appears to come from his role as an investor in Fortress America Acquisition. Hutchinson, before the [company's] stock was sold publicly, bought 200,000 shares for $25,000. At Friday's trading price the stock was worth more than $1.2 million. More than two-thirds of the department's most senior executives in its first years have moved through the revolving door. Federal law prohibits senior executive-branch officials from lobbying former government colleagues or subordinates for at least a year after leaving public service. But by exploiting loopholes in the law...it is often easy for former officials to do just that.

Covering Guantanamo means wrangling with...logistics so nonsensical that they turn two hours of reporting into an 18-hour day...with hostile escorts who seem to think you're in league with Al Qaeda...a Pentagon power play that muzzles already reluctant sources and an unceremonious expulsion to Miami on a military plane, safety-belted onto whatever seat is available. In this case, that seat was the toilet. I ended up on that plane, on that seat, because...the only three newspaper reporters who managed to surmount Pentagon obstacles to covering the first deaths at Guantanamo were ordered off the base. When unexpected news breaks, like the suicides, the Pentagon's knee-jerk reflex to thwart coverage reminds me of how Communist officials used to organize Cold War-era propaganda trips for Moscow correspondents but then pull the plug when embarrassing realities intruded. What little we learn often comes to light by accident. During my first visit in January 2005...I asked...if the facility had ever been at or near capacity. "Only during the mass-hanging incident," the Navy doctor replied, provoking audible gasps and horrified expressions among the public affairs minders...none of whom were particularly pleased with the disclosure that 23 prisoners had attempted simultaneously to hang themselves with torn bed sheets in late 2003. Under ground rules we must agree to if we want access to the base, journalists may not have any contact with detainees, who are removed from sight at all but one camp during media tours.

At a congressional hearing, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said the Environmental Protection Agency had designated as confidential the details of about 140 Superfund sites where toxic exposure remained uncontrolled. The secret data included information about how much money and time it would take to clean up the dangerous sites, including one site where the EPA predicted it would take 26 years to close off access to toxics. "This isn't a question of left or right," Boxer said, waving a document marked "Privileged" by EPA officials to prevent its release to the public. "This is a question of right and wrong." The Superfund program was created almost three decades ago in response to environmental disasters such as Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, N.Y., where chemical contamination forced the removal of 800 families and led to $200 million in remediation costs. Those sites are areas where the public still faces some possible exposure to toxic substances -- such as a building near buried radioactive waste that was not surrounded by a fence. A skateboard park built over the site, however, was protected by a layer of dirt. One Republican-sponsored bill moving through Congress would limit data available on toxic substances released into communities, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has blocked information on flooding dangers in Florida.

Note: Major toxic hazards would seem to be a direct threat to the security of those living around the hazards, yet the EPA is keeping these records secret. If you read the entire article, you will see how the LA Times is framing this as a Democrat vs. Republican issue, when it is in fact about public health and safety.

A disaster relief company that took supplies that were supposed to go to Sept. 11 rescuers at the World Trade Center escaped punishment after the government discovered its own employees had stolen artifacts from ground zero, once-secret federal documents show. Dan L'Allier...told The Associated Press he witnessed 45 tons of the New York loot being unloaded in Minnesota at his company's headquarters. He and a colleague...complained to a company executive but were ordered to keep quiet. They went instead to the FBI. The two whistleblowers eventually lost their jobs, received death threats and were blackballed in the disaster relief industry. But they remained convinced their sacrifice was worth it to make sure justice was done. They were wrong. Federal prosecutors eventually charged KEI...but excluded the Sept. 11 thefts. The lead investigators for the FBI and [FEMA] told AP that the plan to prosecute...stopped as soon as it became clear in late summer 2002 that an FBI agent in Minnesota had stolen a crystal globe from ground zero. That prompted a broader review that ultimately found 16 government employees, including a top FBI executive and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, had such artifacts from New York or the Pentagon. "It's a sad indictment of our justice system that they would let people go in order to cover up misconduct by federal employees," said Jane Turner, the lead FBI agent. She too became a whistleblower alleging the bureau tried to fire her for bringing the stolen artifacts to light.

The Bush administration told a judge in Detroit that the president's warrantless domestic spying is legal and constitutional, but refused to say why. The judge should just take his word for it, the lawyer said, because merely talking about it would endanger America. Today, Senator Arlen Specter wants his Judiciary Committee to take an even more outlandish leap of faith for an administration that has shown it does not deserve it. Mr. Specter wants the committee to approve a bill he drafted that tinkers dangerously with the rules on wiretapping, even though the president has said the law doesn't apply to him anyway, and even though Mr. Specter and most of the panel are just as much in the dark as that judge in Detroit. The bill could well diminish the power of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, which was passed in 1978 to prevent just the sort of abuse that Mr. Bush's program represents. This is not a time to offer the administration a chance to steamroll Congress into endorsing its decision to ignore the 1978 intelligence act and shred constitutional principles on warrants and on the separation of powers. This is a time for Congress to finally hold Mr. Bush accountable for his extralegal behavior and stop it.

The federal government sued the New Jersey attorney general and other state officials Wednesday to stop them from seeking information about telephone companies' cooperation with the National Security Agency. The unusual filing...is the latest effort by federal authorities to halt legal proceedings aimed at revealing whether and how often AT&T, Verizon and other phone companies have provided customer records to the NSA without a court order. New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber, a Democrat, and other officials sent subpoenas to five carriers on May 17, asking for documents that would explain whether they supplied customer records to the NSA, the lawsuit said. The subpoenas followed by a few days a USA Today report that the phone companies had complied with the secretive agency's request for the phone records of millions of ordinary Americans after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Justice Department said more than 20 lawsuits have been filed around the country alleging that the phone companies illegally assisted the NSA. The government says sensitive national security information would be revealed if judges allow those cases to proceed. In this matter, the federal government said the New Jersey officials are treading on federal turf and that the companies, if forced to comply with the subpoenas, would be confirming or denying the existence of the program. President Bush and other top federal officials have refused to do that.

With waived-consent studies becoming more prevalent, critics question whether the public understands how they work and whether test subjects get adequate protection. [A] trial, which is reported in today's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), was halted because a device called the AutoPulse, which was used to revive cardiac-arrest victims, failed to save more lives than when rescuers performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Patients in these types of studies...are treated under a broad federal rule that allows researchers to test emergency treatments on patients with specific, life-threatening medical conditions without their explicit consent as long as they remain under close watch of independent reviewers. Studies have included large, multi-city, randomized trials, which scientists consider the gold standard for medical research. The [PolyHeme] trial has raised concern among some ethicists and alarm in Congress, where Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Finance Committee, is conducting an investigation. Grassley is concerned that people who live in the 19 states where PolyHeme is being tested have had inadequate notice about the trial. The FDA requires that community input be sought in the regions around test sites. "It is outrageous that, for all intents and purposes, the FDA allowed a clinical trial to proceed, which makes every citizen in the United States a potential 'guinea pig,' without providing a practical, informative warning to the public," Grassley wrote in a letter to the FDA in February.

The government doled out as much as $1.4 billion in bogus assistance to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, getting hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and even a divorce lawyer, congressional investigators have found. The GAO concluded that as much as 16 percent of the billions of dollars in FEMA help to individuals after the two hurricanes was unwarranted. GAO provided lawmakers with a copy of a $2,358 U.S. Treasury check for rental assistance that an undercover agent got using a bogus address. The money was paid even after FEMA learned from its inspector that the undercover applicant did not live at the address. FEMA paid an individual $2,358 in rental assistance, while at the same time paying about $8,000 for the same person to stay 70 nights at more than $100 per night in a Hawaii hotel. FEMA also could not establish that 750 debit cards worth $1.5 million even went to Katrina victims. Among the items purchased with the cards: an all-inclusive, one-week Caribbean vacation; five season tickets to New Orleans Saints professional football games; and adult erotica products in Houston. FEMA paid millions of dollars to more than 1,000 registrants who used names and Social Security numbers belonging to state and federal prisoners for expedited housing assistance.

A January poll [found] that 64% of Iraqis believe that crime and violent attacks will decrease if the U.S. leaves Iraq within six months. If that's true, then what are we doing there? It was questions very much like [this]...that led, eventually, to the publication of the first of the Pentagon Papers on June 13, 1971, 35 years ago this week. Nearly two years earlier...I first started copying the 7,000 pages of top-secret documents from my office safe at Rand...an act that I fully expected would send me to prison for life. It became increasingly clear that the whole chain of command, civilian and military, was participating in a coverup. It's a system that lies reflexively, at every level from sergeant to commander in chief, about murder. And I had...7,000 pages of documentary evidence to prove it. The papers documented in stunning detail a pattern of lies and deceptions by four presidents and their administrations over 23 years to conceal their war plans. It became clear to me that the justifications that had been given for our involvement were false. I thought to myself: I don't want to be part of this lying machine anymore. Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials...who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates -- the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth -- earlier than I did -- before more lives are lost or a new war is launched.

Note: If you have time to read only one full article on war deception, I can't recommend this one highly enough. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Marine, Pentagon official, and State Department officer in Vietnam, more than any single person exposed the huge deception involved in the Vietnam War. The story of his experience is astonishingly similar to what is happening today.

The doors may be closing shortly on the nine-year-old Project for a New American Century, the neoconservative think tank headed by William Kristol, former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle. The PNAC was short on staff -- having perhaps a half-dozen employees -- but very long on heavy hitters. The founders included Richard B. Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Paul D. Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, William J. Bennett, Zalmay Khalilzad and Quayle. PNAC and its supporters dominated the Bush administration's foreign policy apparatus and championed a policy to get rid of Saddam Hussein long before Sept. 11, 2001. In its famous 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton, PNAC said "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime . . . now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. The signatories wrote that "we are fully aware of the dangers of implementing this policy."

Note: Though the PNAC was staffed by some of the most powerful people in the U.S. government who clearly wanted Hussein out of power long before 9/11, no major papers were willing to report these crucial facts. Had Americans known of this, many likely would not have initially supported the war on Iraq. For more on this important information: http://www.WantToKnow.info/9-11cover-up10pg#pnac

The provincial government will announce tomorrow that Ontario is embracing more nuclear power plants. Premier Dalton McGuinty has privately spoken of his government's plans to confidants for days, insiders say. In an off-the-record speech on Saturday night in Ottawa to the secretive Bilderberg group, McGuinty discussed the pros and cons of more nuclear plants. The premier privately admitted the public will officially learn of the plans tomorrow. Insiders told the Star he was unequivocal in private conversations about his support for the controversial electricity source. McGuinty's staff deliberately omitted any mention of his speech Saturday to the Bilderberg session...from his public itinerary. The group, named for the Dutch hotel the organization first met at in 1954, holds its sessions behind closed doors amid tight security. Because participants in Bilderberg sessions are sworn to secrecy under threat of ex-communication from the group, politicians tend to lower their guard and speak candidly. It was the kind of power-broker audience the premier, who sat with Pataki, Reisman and Queen Beatrix, would want to reach when delivering a message about investing in Ontario — and massive investment will be required to pay for $40 billion in nuclear plants.

Note:If the above link fails, click here. If the Bilderbergers truly support the interests of all of us, why the need for so much secrecy? Why is there no website? Why until just a few years ago was there virtually no reporting on the influential Bilderberg Group at all in the major media?

U.S. spending in Iraq and Afghanistan helped push up global 2005 military expenditure by 3.5 percent to $1.12 trillion. The USA is responsible for 48 percent of the world total, distantly followed by the UK, France, Japan and China with 4 to 5 percent each. U.S. spending was behind about 80 percent of the gain in 2005.

Note: If you crunch the numbers you find that the U.S. spends literally ten times as much as the next highest spending country on military expenditures. Is it any wonder the U.S. is seen as a warring nation?

Among prominent attendees at this year's conference of the Bilderberg group, a secretive society that includes some of the world's most powerful people: Jacques Aigrain, CEO of Swiss Re. Ahmad Chalabi, former deputy prime minister of Iraq and long-time opponent of Saddam Hussein. George A. David, chairman of Coca-Cola. Paul Desmarais, CEO of Power Corporation. Richard Holbrooke, key American negotiator for 1995 Bosnian peace accords. Vernon Jordan, friend and onetime presidential aide to Bill Clinton. Henry Kissinger, foreign-policy guru and secretary of state under Richard Nixon. Ed Kronenburg, director of NATO's private office. Bernardino Leon Gross, Spain's foreign minister. Ronald S. Lloyd, chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston. Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands. Gordon Nixon, Royal Bank of Canada president, CEO. George Pataki, governor of New York state. Richard Perle, senior foreign policy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush. David Rockefeller, retired banker, heir to oil fortune. Dennis Ross, former Clinton Mideast negotiator. Giulio Tremonti, VP of Italy's chamber of deputies. James Wolfensohn, U.S. Mideast envoy, former head of the World Bank. Robert Zoellick, deputy U.S. secretary of state.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For those who know about the pre-war manipulations involving weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the participation of Ahmed Chalabi speaks volumes. And for a revealing three-minute video clip on CNN about this highly secretive group, click here.

A serene setting in Ottawa's west-end Kanata suburb has been transformed into a four-day festival of black suits, black limousines, burly security guards and a bevy of conspiracy theories. The security outside the Brookstreet Hotel is much tighter than it is on Parliament Hill. Inside, the CBC was told, all guests were asked to check out at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday. The hotel appears to be hosting the annual meeting of one of the world's most secretive and powerful societies: the Bilderberg group. But, of course, no one will admit it. People who follow the Bilderberg group say it persuaded Europe to adopt a common currency, and, among other things, persuaded Bill Clinton to support the North American Free Trade Agreement. "David Rockefeller is going to be here. Henry Kissinger is going to be here. Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, is going to be here" says Daniel Estulin, who has written a book about the Bilderberg group. Jim Tucker, who has followed the Bilderberg group for the last 30 years, told CBC News he is troubled by all the secrecy. "Officials of the United States government [should not] have a private meeting with private citizens about public policy," Tucker says.

Not only are America's prisons and jails largely failing the 13.5 million adults who pass through them each year, but the American public is also failing the prisons and jails. Politicians have passed laws dramatically increasing the inmate population to 2.2 million on a given day without understanding life behind bars or funding programs likely to help prisoners return home and not commit more crimes. Even the data that would help specialists make sense of U.S. crime and punishment are lacking. "We should be astonished by the size of the prisoner population, troubled by the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans and Latinos, and saddened by the waste of human potential," [a] panel said in a report to be presented to Congress. The recent boom in imprisonment has not always made Americans safer. Each year, the United States spends an estimated $60 billion on corrections. The report...finds too much violence and too little medical and mental health care, as well as a "desperate need for the kinds of productive activities that discourage violence and make rehabilitation possible." Studies...suggest that the most accurate indicator of a successful return to society is the inmate's connection to family. The panel described the high-security segregation of inmates as "counter-productive," often leading to greater prison violence and more serious crimes upon release.

Note: Certain elite groups are making large profits on the dramatic increase in numbers of prisoners across the nation over the past two decades. The prison-industrial complex sadly draws very little media attention.

In a public health emergency, suspected victims would no longer have to give permission before experimental tests could be run to determine why they're sick, under a federal rule published Wednesday. Privacy experts called the exception unnecessary, ripe for abuse and an override of state informed-consent laws. Health care workers will be free to run experimental tests on blood and other samples taken from people who have fallen sick as a result of a bioterrorist attack, bird flu outbreak, detonation of a dirty bomb or any other life-threatening public health emergency, according to the rule issued by the Food and Drug Administration. The rule took effect Wednesday but remains subject to public comment until Aug. 7. The FDA said it published the rule without first seeking comments because it would hinder the response to an outbreak of bird flu or other public health emergency.

Ottawa. On the outskirts of the nation's capital, a tony high-rise hotel beside a golf course is hosting the annual meeting for one of the world's most secretive and powerful societies. They're called the Bilderberg group. Those who follow the Bilderberg group say it got Europe to adopt a common currency, got Bill Clinton elected after he agreed to support NAFTA, and is spending this week deciding what to do about high oil prices and that pesky fundamentalist president of Iran. The Bilderberg group is a half-century-old organization comprising about 130 of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people. They don't have a website. Bilderberg says the privacy of its meetings helps encourage freewheeling discussion. An unsigned press release...confirmed this year's meeting would deal with energy issues, Iran, the Middle East, terrorism, immigration, Russia, European-American relations and Asia. The 2006 group includes David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of Holland, New York Gov. George Pataki, the heads of Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Canada, cabinet ministers from Spain, Greece and a number of media moguls. The group also includes a pair of prominent figures involved in planning the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- Richard Perle and Ahmad Chalabi. Fellow White House power-players Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, now head of the World Bank, have spoken to the group in the past. The prime ministers of Britain and Canada -- Tony Blair and Stephen Harper -- have addressed the group before.

Note: For two excellent articles from BBC describing this incredibly powerful, highly secretive group of elites:
http://www.WantToKnow.info/051115secretsocietiesbilderberg

A lawsuit filed Wednesday seeks to force the U.S. government to conduct mandatory reviews of genetically engineered foods and require labeling of such foods once they are approved. The Center for Food Safety's suit against the Food and Drug Administration comes after years of lobbying by environmental and consumer groups for more stringent regulation and labeling of biotech crops. Genetically modified crops, such as soybeans, corn, and canola, are grown widely throughout the United States, and the world leader in development and marketing of the gene-altered crops is...Monsanto. Yet the United States requires no independent testing of these crops or the food products they are used in, does not mandate what data companies must submit for review, and does not require that foods that contain biotech crops be labeled. CFS and more than fifty consumer and environmental groups, filed a legal petition with the FDA in March 2000, asking the agency to adopt a more rigorous approach to biotech food regulation, but the CFS said Wednesday that the FDA had ignored the petition. At various times over the last several years, different scientists, including some within the FDA, have warned that altering the genetic makeup of a food plant by inserting genes from one organism into another...could trigger unexpected food allergies, create toxins in food, or spread antibiotic-resistant disease. CFS said the tests that exposed that potential hazard have not been conducted on any of the genetically modified foods currently marketed.

Note: Many laboratory animals died in scientific tests of GM foods, yet this news has yet to be reported in the major media. If you want to understand the risks involved with the ever-increasing numbers of genetically modified organisms in the food you eat, don't miss: http://www.WantToKnow.info/deception10pg

The Central Intelligence Agency took no action after learning the pseudonym and whereabouts of the fugitive Holocaust overseer Adolf Eichmann in 1958, according to C.I.A. documents that shed new light on the spy agency's use of former Nazis as informers after World War II. The United States government...had no policy at the time of pursuing Nazi war criminals. The documents show the C.I.A. "failed to lift a finger" to hunt Eichmann and "forced us to confront not only the moral harm but the practical harm" of relying on intelligence from ex-Nazis. As head of the Gestapo's Jewish affairs office during the war, Eichmann implemented the policy of extermination of European Jewry, promoting the use of gas chambers and having a hand in the murder of millions of Jews. The Eichmann papers are among 27,000 newly declassified pages released by the C.I.A. to the National Archives under Congressional pressure to make public files about former officials of Hitler's regime later used as American agents. The material reinforces the view that most former Nazis gave American intelligence little of value and in some cases proved to be damaging double agents for the Soviet K.G.B. Since Congress passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 1998, the Interagency Working Group has persuaded the government to declassify more than 8 million pages of documents. But the group ran into resistance starting in 2002 from the C.I.A., which sought to withhold operational files from the 1940's and 50's.

Note: For more on clandestine government use of Nazi scientists in developing top-secret mind control programs with links for verification, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrol10pg

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.