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.

Red-faced because the best pictures of its glory days are missing, NASA said Tuesday it was launching an official search for more than 13,000 original tapes of the historic Apollo moon missions. Everything from all 11 missions from launch to splashdown is on the videos. What's missing are the never-before-broadcast clear original videos not the grainy converted pictures the world watched on television more than three decades ago. The tapes aren't lost, insists the NASA official put in charge of the search. But he doesn't know where they are. The original video, taken directly from the moon and beamed to deep space network observatories in Australia, has never been seen by the general public or even NASA officials. There are 15 reels (three boxes) for just Apollo 11's stay on the moon. "It's the whole history of the entire mission, of everything that went on."

Note: Does this seem strange? If you are ready for something even stranger, see the documentary "Dark Side of the Moon" available free at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3288261061829859642. Though some claim this is a "mockumentary" on Stanley Kubrick's involvement with the moon landings, consider the large amount of money that went into making this very professional, sophisticated film. Could it be sophisticated disinformation put out purposely to lead investigators astray? The documentary certainly would explain the missing tapes above. Two Fox News clips raise more questions. Click here and here.

Ten years ago today, one of the most controversial news articles of the 1990s quietly appeared on the front page of the San Jose Mercury News. Titled "Dark Alliance"...the three-part series by reporter Gary Webb linked the CIA and Nicaragua's Contras to the crack cocaine epidemic that ripped through South Los Angeles in the 1980s. Most of the nation's elite newspapers at first ignored the story. A public uproar, especially among urban African Americans, forced them to respond. What followed was one of the most bizarre, unseemly and ultimately tragic scandals in the annals of American journalism. Top news organizations closed ranks to debunk claims Webb never made, ridicule assertions that turned out to be true and ignore corroborating evidence when it came to light. The whole shameful cycle was repeated when Webb committed suicide in December 2004. At first, the Mercury News defended the series, but after nine months, Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos wrote a half-apologetic letter to readers that defended "Dark Alliance" while acknowledging obvious mistakes. Webb privately (and accurately) predicted the mea culpa would universally be misperceived as a total retraction, and he publicly accused the paper of cowardice. He resigned a few months later. Meanwhile, spurred on by Webb's story, the CIA conducted an internal investigation that acknowledged in March 1998 that the agency had covered up Contra drug trafficking for more than a decade. History will tell if Webb receives the credit he's due for prodding the CIA to acknowledge its shameful collaboration with drug dealers.

Note: Many thanks to the Los Angeles Times for the courage to report this story. For more on this incredibly revealing, yet very tragic case which reveals corruption in both the government and media at the highest levels: http://www.WantToKnow.info/mediacover-up#webb

A special report in The New Yorker says the Bush administration was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks against Hizbullah in Lebanon, and US officials hoped that by helping Israel destroy or disarm the militant Islamic group, it would make it easier for the US to launch a preemptive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The report, written by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who also helped break the story about abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison and in the 70s broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, alleges Israeli officials travelled to Washington to talk to US officials, in particular Vice President Dick Cheney, about the plan. A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House "has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a pre-emptive blow against Hezbollah." CBS News reports that Israeli officials "fiercely denied" that it had sought a "greenlight" from Washington, and that it had no advance plan to attack Hizbullah. Yesterday Mr Hersh told CNN: "July was a pretext for a major offensive that had been in the works for a long time. They really want to go after Iran." Last month the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "Israel's military response...was unfolding according to a plan finalized more than a year ago". The report said that a senior Israeli army officer had been briefing diplomats, journalists and think-tanks for more than a year about the plan. It quoted Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at [Israel's] Bar-Ilan University, who said: "Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared."

The term we employ is the 'Nexus of Politics and Terror.' It does not imply that there is no terror. But it also does not deny that there is politics, and it refuses to assume that counterterror measures in this country are not being influenced by politics. [Here are] remarks made on May 10, 2005 by [former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge] discussing the old color-coded terror threat warning system. 'Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it. And we said, "For that?" In the light of those remarks...it is imperative that we examine each of the coincidences of timing since 2002, including the one last week, in which excoriating comments by leading Republicans about leading Democrats just happened to precede arrests in a vast purported terror plot, arrests that we now know were carried out on a time line requested not by the British, nor necessitated by the evidence, but requested by this government. We introduce these coincidences to you exactly as we did when we first compiled this top 10 list after the revelation that the announced threats New York's subway system, last October, had been wildly overblown. [See either of the two links above for the 10 highly suspicious coincidences, or view the broadcast at the links below.]

Note: To view this highly revealing broadcast, see http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm or click here

A shell coated with depleted uranium pierces a tank like a hot knife through butter. It also leaves behind a fine radioactive dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Depleted uranium is the garbage left from producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and energy plants. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., [Herbert Reed] ran into a buddy from his unit. And another, and another. They began to talk. [They] all have depleted uranium in their urine. The veterans, using their positive results as evidence, have sued the U.S. Army, claiming officials knew the hazards of depleted uranium, but concealed the risks. The Department of Defense says depleted uranium is powerful and safe. Military research on mice shows that depleted uranium can enter the bloodstream and come to rest in bones, the brain, kidneys and lymph nodes. Other research in rats shows that DU can result in cancerous tumors and genetic mutations. Fifteen years after it was first used in battle, there is only one U.S. government study monitoring veterans exposed to depleted uranium. Number of soldiers in the survey: 32. Depleted uranium falls into the quagmire of Gulf War Syndrome, from which no treatment has emerged. About 30 percent of the 700,000 men and women who served in the first Gulf War still suffer [this] baffling array of symptoms. Depleted uranium has long been suspected as a possible contributor. It took more than 25 years for the Pentagon to acknowledge that Agent Orange...was linked to [major disease and] sufferings. It took 40 years for the military to compensate sick World War II vets exposed to massive blasts of radiation during tests of the atomic bomb.

Note: Why isn't the media reporting more on this health disaster? For lots more on how veterans suffer from corporate and governmental denial and manipulations, see what a highly decorated U.S. General has to say on the suffering of soldiers at http://www.WantToKnow.info/warcoverup. For an amazingly revealing documentary with interviews from top sources on the depleted uranium cover-up, click here.

The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policy makers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal. At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA and the degree to which harsh tactics such as water-boarding were authorized by administration officials. When interrogators engage in waterboarding, prisoners are strapped to a plank and dunked in water until nearly drowning. One section of the draft would outlaw torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, but it does not contain prohibitions from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." Another section would apply the legislation retroactively. The initiative is "not just protection of political appointees, but also CIA personnel who led interrogations." Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the administration."

A shocking new book by the 9/11 Commission co-chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton says Americans still don't know the whole truth about their government's initial response to those terrorist attacks that day. [The book] outlines repeated misstatements by the Pentagon and Federal Aviation Administration. Fog of war ... could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations, and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue. Untrue -- the military's original timeline of United Flight 93. Equally untrue, the government's timeline for American Flight 77 and details about fighter jets scrambled to intercept it. DOD did not accurately report to the 9/11 Commission on the response to the September 11, 2001 hijackings. So far, government investigators stopped short of calling all of these inaccuracies lies. If all of the after-action reports are untrue, for whatever reason, that's a lie. Incompetence and ineptitude on the part of this government ... in the weeks leading up to 9/11 are established. The fact that the government would permit deception ... the fact that they would continue and perpetuate the lie suggests that we need a full investigation of what is going on and what is demonstrably an incompetent and at worst deceitful federal government.

Note: Explore a video and transcript presenting very well documented evidence of billions of dollars of financial manipulations suggesting there is much more to 9/11 than most would think.

Nearly all members of the House of Representatives opted out of a chance to read this year's classified intelligence bill, and then voted on secret provisions they knew almost nothing about. The bill, which passed by 327 to 96 in April, authorized the Bush administration's plans for fighting the war on terrorism. Many members say they faced an untenable choice: Either consent to a review process so secretive that they could never mention anything about it in House debates, under the threat of prosecution, or vote on classified provisions they knew nothing about. Most chose to know nothing. A Globe survey sent to all members of the House, [revealed] the vast majority of the respondents ... said they typically don't read the classified parts of intelligence bills. The failure to read the bill, however, calls into question the vows of many House members to provide greater oversight of intelligence. The rules make open debate on intelligence policy and funding nearly impossible, lawmakers say. Revealing classified secrets has long been a crime, punishable by expulsion from the House and criminal prosecution. Operating largely in secret, the intelligence panels have a limited staff because of the security clearances involved. Further, committee members can't go to outside experts to vet policies or give advice, leaving members with no way to fact-check the administration's assertions. Democratic and Republican leaders are no longer briefed together, raising questions about whether the two leaders are being told the same things.

Note: If above link fails, click here. If you want to understand how U.S. Congressional representatives are kept in the dark and easily manipulated when it comes to intelligence matters, this article is a must read.

Kill anything that moves. Moments later, the 19 villagers lay dead or dying. Back home in California, Henry published an account of the slaughter. Yet he and other Vietnam veterans who spoke out about war crimes were branded traitors and fabricators. No one was ever prosecuted. Now, nearly 40 years later, declassified Army files show that Henry was telling the truth. The files are part of a once-secret archive ... that shows that confirmed atrocities by U.S. forces in Vietnam were more extensive than was previously known. The Times...obtained copies of about 3,000 pages -- about a third of the total -- before government officials removed them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. The documents detail 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by Army investigators. Many war crimes did not make it into the archive. The archive ... includes investigative files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for top military brass. The records describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese. Hundreds of soldiers ... described a violent minority who murdered, raped and tortured with impunity. Abuses ... were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam. Ultimately, 57 [soldiers] were court-martialed and just ... fourteen received prison sentences ranging from six months to 20 years, but most won significant reductions on appeal. The stiffest sentence went to a military intelligence interrogator. He served seven months of a 20-year term. Many substantiated cases were closed with a letter of reprimand, a fine or, in more than half the cases, no action at all.

The Sept. 11 commission was so frustrated with repeated misstatements by the Pentagon and FAA about their response to the 2001 terror attacks that it considered an investigation into possible deception, the panel's chairmen say in a new book. Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton also say in "Without Precedent" that their panel was too soft in questioning former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and that the 20-month investigation may have suffered for it. The book...recounts obstacles the authors say were thrown up by the Bush administration, internal disputes over President Bush's use of the attacks as a reason for invading Iraq, and the way the final report avoided questioning whether U.S. policy in the Middle East may have contributed to the attacks. "Fog of war...could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue," the book states. The questioning of Giuliani was considered by Kean and Hamilton "a low point" in the commission's examination of witnesses during public hearings. "We did not ask tough questions, nor did we get all of the information we needed to put on the public record." In their book, which goes on sale Aug. 15, Kean and Hamilton recap obstacles they say the panel faced in putting out a credible report in a presidential election year, including fights for access to government documents and an effort to reach unanimity.

Medicare's drug benefit has given a shot in the arm to pharmaceutical companies and insurers, whose revenue is climbing thanks to government subsidies for prescription medicine. What's happened so far: Drugmakers including GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer reported higher-than-expected sales and profit in the second quarter, with some of the momentum coming from Medicare. Meanwhile, membership rolls of big insurers, including UnitedHealth Group and Humana, are mushrooming as Medicare beneficiaries sign up for drug plans. Drug companies -- which successfully thwarted price-control attempts -- are reaping the rewards of more seniors and disabled people getting access to their medications. British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline's second-quarter net income grew 14 percent over the same quarter last year due in part to strong Medicare drug sales. Merck & Co., Schering Plough, Wyeth, Roche and Pfizer ... all exceeded analysts' expectations, reflecting sales boosts from the program. In the first three months of the benefit, brand-name drug prices rose 4 percent, according to a report from the AARP. WellPoint Inc., the nation's largest insurer, reported second-quarter profit gains of 34 percent. UnitedHealth ... posted quarterly profit gains of 26 percent. Humana reported earlier this week its second-quarter profit increased 9.9 percent and revenue jumped 52 percent over the same quarter last year, due in large part to a surge in Medicare membership. The insurer expects annual revenue to grow by 50 percent.

Note: This article fails to mention who pays for all these profits -- our tax dollars. To understand the degree of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, read a two-page summary by one of the most respected MDs in the U.S. at http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthcoverup

Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public. Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission. Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission [said], "It was just so far from the truth." In an article scheduled to be on newsstands today, Vanity Fair magazine reports aspects of the commission debate...and publishes lengthy excerpts from military audiotapes recorded on Sept. 11. ABC News aired excerpts last night. For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington. In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD's Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights.

Note: Why didn't they report this in the media when the 9/11 report was issued?

In 2002, [a] German-born molecular geneticist startled the scientific world by creating the first live, fully artificial virus in the lab. It was a variation of the bug that causes polio. The virus was made wholly from nonliving parts, using equipment and chemicals on hand. The most crucial part, the genetic code, was picked up for free on the Internet. The new technology opens the door to new tools for defeating disease and saving lives. But today, in hundreds of labs worldwide, it is also possible to transform common intestinal microbes into killers. Or to resurrect bygone killers, such the 1918 influenza. New techniques...allow the creation of synthetic viruses in mere days. Hardware unveiled last year by a Harvard genetics professor can churn out synthetic genes by the thousands, for a few pennies each. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declined so far to police the booming gene-synthesis industry. "It would be possible -- fully legal -- for a person to produce full-length 1918 influenza virus or Ebola virus genomes," said Richard H. Ebright, a biochemist and professor at Rutgers University. "It is also possible to advertise and to sell the product." Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal government budgets nearly $8 billion annually -- an 18-fold increase since 2001 -- for the defense of civilians against biological attack. Billions have been spent to develop and stockpile new drugs, most of them each tied to a single, well-known bioterrorism threat, such as anthrax. If successful, [each] drug is a solution for just one disease threat out of a list that is rapidly expanding to include man-made varieties.

Note: The government research lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, has been secretly developing this technology for decades. For serious questions on the role of secret government projects in deadly disease creation and dissemination, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/resources#emerging or click here.

Two Oakland police officers working undercover at an anti-war protest in May 2003 got themselves elected to leadership positions in an effort to influence [a] demonstration. The department assigned the officers to join activists protesting the U.S. war in Iraq ... a police official said last year in a sworn deposition. [At the] demonstration, police fired nonlethal bullets and bean bags at demonstrators who blocked the Port of Oakland's entrance in a protest. Dozens of activists and longshoremen on their way to work suffered injuries ranging from welts to broken bones and have won nearly $2 million in legal settlements from the city. In a deposition related to a lawsuit filed by protesters, Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan said activists had elected the undercover officers to "plan the route of the march and decide I guess where it would end up and some of the places that it would go." Oakland police had also monitored online postings by the longshoremen's union regarding its opposition to the war. The documents ... were released Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union, as part of a report criticizing government surveillance of political activists since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Jordan ... noted that "two of our officers were elected leaders within an hour on May 12." The idea was "to gather the information and maybe even direct them to do something that we want them to do." The ACLU said the Oakland case was one of several instances in which police agencies had spied on legitimate political activity since 2001.

The American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed. In a comprehensive report, a bipartisan 11-member panel of the bar association said Mr. Bush had used such "signing statements" far more than his predecessors, raising constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws. Michael S. Greco, the president of the bar association...said its report highlighted a "threat to the Constitution and to the rule of law." These broad assertions of presidential power amount to a "line-item veto" and improperly deprive Congress of the opportunity to override the veto, the panel said. In signing a statutory ban on torture and other national security laws, Mr. Bush reserved the right to disregard them. The bar association panel said the use of signing statements in this way was "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." From the dawn of the Republic, it said, presidents have generally understood that, in the words of George Washington, a president "must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto." In his first term, the panel said, Mr. Bush raised 505 constitutional objections to new laws. On 82 occasions, he asserted that he alone could supervise, direct and control the operations of the executive branch, under a doctrine known as the "unitary executive."

An independent investigation has found that imprisoned former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham took advantage of secrecy and badgered congressional aides to help slip items into classified bills that would benefit him and his associates. Cunningham's case has put a stark spotlight on the oversight of classified or "black" budgets. Unlike legislation dealing with social and economic issues, intelligence bills and parts of defense bills are written in private, in the name of national security. That means it is up to members of Congress and select aides with security clearances to ensure that legislation is appropriate. Federal prosecutors found that Cunningham accepted $2.4 million in bribes, including payments for a mansion, a Rolls-Royce and a 65-foot yacht, in return for steering defense and intelligence contracts to certain companies. Cunningham pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than eight years in prison. Efforts to direct money to specific projects or interests, called earmarking, are common. But more than a dozen government officials and other experts...agreed that the process is vulnerable to abuse because of its classified nature. Secret legislation long has been a tool for pet projects. A Democratic aide on the Senate committee from 1985 to 1991 said classified bills are the perfect place to slip in provisions not scrutinized. Rarely do members of Congress examine the legislation, which is stored in safes in each committee's windowless, vault-like offices.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside an exclusive California retreat for government and business leaders Saturday to challenge the right of a "ruling elite" to make policy decisions without public scrutiny. The annual Bohemian Grove retreat has attracted powerful men such as Ronald Reagan, George Bush, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, philanthropist David Rockefeller, former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. It's also become a magnet for all types of activists who increasingly use the event to network and organize their campaigns. The men who attend the Bohemian Grove retreat spend two weeks performing plays, eating gourmet camp grub, listening to speakers and power-bonding at the 2,700-acre compound near the Russian River in Sonoma County. The retreat is organized by the exclusive San Francisco-based Bohemian Club. The club and event are shrouded in mystery, much like Yale University's most-famous secret society, Skull and Bones, whose members include President George W. Bush and his presidential rival Sen. John Kerry.

Note: This article strangely has been removed from the San Francisco Chronicle website. To see it in the Internet Archive, click here. For an informative five-minute ABC news clip on the power elite gathering Bohemian Grove reported in 1981, click here. And for reliable information on the most secretive meeting of the world's elite reported by the major media, see our Bilderberg Group compilation available here.

You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they're reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it. The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments. "Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal. These unknowing passengers who are doing nothing wrong are landing in a secret government document called a Surveillance Detection Report, or SDR. Air marshals told 7NEWS that managers in Las Vegas created and continue to maintain this potentially dangerous quota system. "Do these reports have real life impacts on the people who are identified as potential terrorists?" 7NEWS Investigator Tony Kovaleski asked. "Absolutely," a federal air marshal replied. "That could have serious impact ... They could be placed on a watch list. They could wind up on databases that identify them as potential terrorists or a threat to an aircraft. It could be very serious," said Don Strange, a former agent in charge of air marshals in Atlanta. He lost his job attempting to change policies inside the agency.

Note: For further reports on key civil liberties issues, click here.

The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday. The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration. Israel's request for expedited delivery of the satellite and laser-guided bombs was described as unusual by some military officers, and as an indication that Israel still had a long list of targets in Lebanon to strike. The new American arms shipment to Israel has not been announced publicly, and the officials who described the administration's decision to rush the munitions to Israel would discuss it only after being promised anonymity. Pentagon and military officials declined to describe in detail the size and contents of the shipment to Israel.

The House, displaying a foreign affairs solidarity lacking on issues like Iraq, voted overwhelmingly Thursday to support Israel in its confrontation with Hezbollah guerrillas. The resolution, which was passed on a 410-8 vote, also condemns enemies of the Jewish state. House Republican leader John Boehner cited Israel's "unique relationship" with the United States as a reason for his colleagues to swiftly go on record supporting Israel in the latest flare-up of violence in the Mideast. Yet as Republican and Democratic leaders rally behind the measure in rare bipartisan fashion, a handful of lawmakers have quietly expressed reservations that the resolution was too much the result of a powerful lobbying force and attempts to court Jewish voters.

Note: It's interesting to note that very few major media picked up this revealing story.

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.