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.

I reported on eight of the [Downing Street] memos while working at the Daily Telegraph in September 2004. I then moved to the Sunday Times, where I obtained the other two memos. Why did the US newspapers take so long to pick up on the story? The memos were so momentous in what they told us about how Bush and Blair went to war...that they surely had to be reported. They were not only “the smoking gun” that proved all the lies; they also proved the lack of planning for the aftermath; the fraudulent use of the UN to make the war legal; and...the way in which the allies began the war...months before they went to the UN or Congress to get backing for war. The memo actually says...that the Prime Minister agreed at Crawford in April 2002 to go to war, so the British needed to "create the conditions" which would make the war legal under international law. In the wake of 9/11, the US media were initially prevented from any criticism of the administration. Then when the need to criticize became unavoidable, they were cowed by administration claims that it helped the terrorists. There is something grotesque about Bush saying that his administration is setting “a forward strategy for freedom” around the world while it is attempting at the same time to bully the US press back into submission at home. I don’t for one moment believe it will succeed. But none of us can afford to be complacent.

MI5 is facing an internal revolt by officers alarmed about intelligence failures and the lack of resources to fight Islamic terrorism. To illustrate their concern, agents have leaked more topsecret documents to The Sunday Times because they want a public inquiry into the “missed intelligence” leading up to the July attacks in London. They believe ministers have withheld information from the public about what the security services knew about the suspects before the bombing of July 7 and the abortive attacks of July 21. The documents include an admission by John Scarlett, head of SIS, the secret intelligence service (also known as MI6), that one of the July 21 suspects was tracked on a trip to Pakistan just months before the attempted bombings. MI5, which is responsible for national security, allowed the July 21 suspect to travel to Pakistan after he was detained and interviewed at a British airport. It stopped monitoring him because it said “the Pakistani authorities assessed that he was doing nothing of significance”. They are critical of Blair, who has ruled out an inquiry saying it would distract the security services from fighting terrorism. The assessment echoes a decision by MI5 to halt surveillance on two of the July 7 bombers 16 months before the attacks. Both were filmed and taped by MI5 agents as they met two men allegedly plotting to carry out a terrorist attack in England.

The Minnesota Commerce Department on Thursday announced plans to fine a gas station chain $140,000 for repeatedly selling gas below the state's legal minimum price. The fine against Midwest Oil of Minnesota is twice as large as any imposed on a company since 2001, when the state established a formula based on wholesale prices, fees and taxes to determine a daily floor for gas prices. The price law was intended to prevent large oil companies from driving smaller competitors out of business, but some critics argue it fails to protect consumers. According to the Commerce Department, the Midwest-owned stations in Anoka, Oakdale and Albert Lea sold gas below the minimum price on 293 days in 2005. Kevin Murphy, deputy commissioner of the department, called the violations "willful, continuing, and egregious and warrant a substantial penalty."

The longest sentence for any member of the American military linked to a torture-related death of a detainee in Iraq or Afghanistan has been five months, a human rights group reported Wednesday. In only 12 of 34 cases has anyone been punished for the confirmed or suspected killings, said the group, Human Rights First, which is based in New York and Washington. Beyond those cases, in almost half of 98 known detainee deaths since 2002, the cause was never announced or was reported as undetermined. "In dozens of cases documented here, grossly inadequate reporting, investigation and follow-through have left no one at all responsible for homicides and other unexplained deaths," it said in the report, based on military court records, news reports and other sources. The Pentagon says it conscientiously investigates such deaths. When asked Wednesday for a status report on investigations and prosecutions in individual cases of abuse, the Pentagon said it could not offer a comprehensive compilation because the information was too scattered. Army lawyers at the Pentagon do not "have access to the information because other Army commands have the documents," Maj. Wayne Marotto, a spokesman, said.

Who could have imagined that, in the post-9/11 world, the United States government would approve a deal giving control over six major American ports to a country with ties to terrorism? But this is exactly what the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has done. Since 1999, the ports of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities have been operated by a British concern, P & O Ports, which has now been bought by Dubai Ports World, a company controlled by the government of the United Arab Emirates. While the United Arab Emirates is deemed by the Bush administration to be an ally in the war on terrorism...two of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of the emirates, and some of the money for the attacks came from there. It was one of only three countries in the world that recognized the Taliban regime. And Dubai was an important transshipment point for the smuggling network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea with equipment for making nuclear weapons. Most terrorism experts agree that the likeliest way for a weapon of mass destruction to be smuggled into our country would be through a port. After all, some 95 percent of all goods from abroad arrive in the United States by sea, and yet only about 6 percent of incoming cargo containers are inspected for security threats.

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs ... warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents. 'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.' The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors. Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. A former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Note: Though I don't agree with these doomsday scenario predictions (the Pentagon tends to focus on worst-case scenarios), the suppression of this report clearly does not serve the public.

In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department. The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks. But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy -- governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved -- it continued virtually without outside notice until December. Historians say the program is removing material that can do no conceivable harm to national security. They say it is part of a marked trend toward greater secrecy under the Bush administration, which has increased the pace of classifying documents, slowed declassification and discouraged the release of some material under the Freedom of Information Act. "I think this is a travesty," said Dr. Nelson. "I think the public is being deprived of what history is really about: facts."

Note: More on this in the National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB179

Radiation detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the “shock and awe” bombing campaign against Iraq. Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain. Government officials, however, say the sharp rise in uranium detected by radiation monitors in Berkshire was a coincidence and probably came from local sources. Each detector recorded a significant rise in uranium levels during the Gulf war bombing campaign in March 2003. The reading from a park in Reading was high enough for the Environment Agency to be alerted. “This research shows that rather than remaining near the target as claimed by the military, depleted uranium weapons contaminate both locals and whole populations hundreds to thousands of miles away,” [Liverpool University's Chris Busby] said. Busby’s report shows that within nine days of the start of the Iraq war on March 19, 2003, higher levels of uranium were picked up on five sites in Berkshire. On two occasions, levels exceeded the threshold at which the Environment Agency must be informed, though within safety limits. The report says weather conditions over the war period showed a consistent flow of air from Iraq northwards.

Note: For more on the depleted uranium cover-up: http://www.WantToKnow.info/050405depleteduranium

That the United States Senate has a body called the Intelligence Committee is an irony George Orwell would have truly appreciated. In a world without Doublespeak, the panel, chaired by GOP Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, would be known by a more appropriate name -- the Senate Coverup Committee. Although the committee is officially charged with overseeing the nation's intelligence-gathering operations, its real function in recent years has been to prevent the public from getting hold of any meaningful information about the Bush administration. Hence its never-ending delays of the probe into the bogus weapons intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq. And its squelching, on Thursday, of an expected investigation into the administration's warrantless spying program.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the number of insiders alleging wrongdoing in government...has surged, as have reprisals against them. That's the message from this week's congressional hearing on protections for national security whistle-blowers. "The system is broken," says Rep. Christopher Shays (R) of Connecticut, who chaired the House Government Affairs subcommittee hearing. Government scientists and even analysts at the scholarly Congressional Research Service...report efforts to control their contact with the press and public. If whistle-blowers and others "do not see an option for dissent within the system, then the system is in bad shape," says Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA, spoke out about efforts by the NASA press office to screen his speeches and limit his contact with the press. When lawmakers on the House panel asked what other issues they should heed, watchdog groups cited the case of Louis Fisher, a senior analyst at Congressional Research Service. "The CRS has been severely compromised," says William Weaver, a political scientist at the University of Texas in El Paso and a founder of the National Security Whistle-blowers Coalition. Says Fisher himself: "For the last 33 years my job was to defend legislative prerogative and constitutional government, and suddenly that's a bad thing to do."

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Maryland did not violate the First Amendment rights of two Baltimore Sun reporters by prohibiting state employees from talking to them, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled yesterday. In November 2004, the governor's press office issued a directive instructing every employee of the state's executive branch not to speak to David Nitkin, a political reporter at The Sun, or Michael Olesker, a columnist who has since left the paper. "Do not return calls or comply with any requests," the directive said. The reason for the ban, it explained, was that the two reporters "are failing to objectively report on any issue dealing with" the governor's administration. In a radio appearance, Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, said the ban was "meant to have a chilling effect" on the reporters.

Five government whistleblowers said Tuesday they had faced retaliation for calling attention to alleged government wrongs. They told their stories to the House Government Reform Committee's national security subcommittee, whose chairman, Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., indicated an interest in altering the law to better protect national-security whistleblowers. Army Spc. Samuel Provance laid out what he considers to be a pattern of systemic abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. He said his rank was reduced for disobeying orders not to speak about mistreatment he saw at the prison. Russ Tice, a former NSA analyst, has called attention to possible constitutional abuses and security breaches at NSA. He said he was given psychological evaluations deeming him mentally unstable, and his clearance was revoked. He's now unemployed. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer says the Defense Intelligence Agency has made a series of allegations against him since he disclosed information about a program known as Able Danger. He says the program identified four Sept. 11 hijackers before the attack. Richard Levernier, a retired Energy Department nuclear security specialist, said he lost his security clearance and effectively his job for giving the media an unclassified report about shortfalls in nuclear security.

Fifty years ago, American scientists were in a frantic race to counter what they saw as the Soviet threat from germ warfare. Biological pathogens they developed were tested on volunteers from a pacifist church and were also released in public places. In the 1950s, the Seventh-day Adventist Church struck an extraordinary deal with the US Army. It would provide test subjects for experiments on biological weapons at the Fort Detrick research centre near Washington DC. The volunteers were conscientious objectors who agreed to be infected with debilitating pathogens. In return, they were exempted from frontline warfare. The research involved anthrax, other lethal bacteria and biological poisons. But it wasn't just the white coat volunteers and sailors who were subject to experiments. The scientists also conducted tests on an unsuspecting American public. Scientists used what they thought was a harmless simulant in major bio-weapon tests across US cities and on public transport. It was a bacteria which they believed was harmless but which would mimic the dispersal of deadly biological agents such as anthrax. But later research showed that the strain of Bacillus globigii, or BG, did pose a risk to people who were ill or whose immune system was failing. In a damning report, [a U.S. Senate committee] concluded that the Department of Defense (DoD) repeatedly failed to comply with required ethical standards when using human subjects in military research - and that the DoD demonstrated a pattern of misrepresenting the danger of various exposures and continued to do so.

Note: For other well documented instances of governments using humans as guinea pigs in order to forward a military agenda, click here.

Three judges emerged after years of secret deliberation to rule that Europe had imposed a de facto ban on GM [genetically modified] food imports between 1999 and 2003, violating WTO rules. The court also ruled that Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Luxembourg had no legal grounds to impose their own unilateral import bans. Actually, the judges said much more, but in true WTO style no one has been allowed to know what. A few bureaucrats in the US, EU, Argentina and Canada have reportedly seen the full 1,045-page report, and an edited summary of some of its conclusions has been leaked. But no one, it seems, will take responsibility for the ruling, which may force the EU to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate some of the world's most heavily subsidised farmers, and could change the laws of at least six countries that have imposed GM bans. It is now clear that the real reason the US took Europe to the WTO court was...to make it easier for its companies to...open regulatory doors in China, India, south-east Asia, Latin America and Africa, where most US exports now go. This is where millions of tonnes of US food aid heads, and where US GM companies are desperate to have access, buying up seed companies and schmoozing presidents.

Note: For an excellent summary of the dangers of genetically modified foods that Americans are already eating without their knowledge, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/deception10pg

When Dr. Morando Soffritti ... saw the results of his team's seven-year study on aspartame, he knew he was about to be injected into a bitter controversy over this sweetener. Aspartame is sold under the brand names Nutra-Sweet and Equal and is found in such popular products as Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Snapple and Sugar Free Kool-Aid. Hundreds of millions of people consume it worldwide. Dr. Soffritti ... oversees 180 scientists and researchers in 30 countries. Dr. Soffritti's study concluded that [aspartame] was associated with unusually high rates of lymphomas, leukemias and other cancers. The study ... involved 1,900 laboratory rats and cost $1 million. Soffritti said he was inspired to look at aspartame because of what he calls "inadequacies" in the cancer studies done by Searle in the 1970's. Others have also challenged Searle's studies. Years before the F.D.A. approved aspartame, the agency had serious concerns about the accuracy and credibility of Searle's aspartame studies. From 1977 to 1985 -- during much of the approval process -- Searle was headed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is now the secretary of defense. Searle was acquired by Monsanto in 1985. Dr. Soffritti said ... more research and open debate were needed on whether aspartame was a carcinogen. "It is very important to have scientists who are independent and not funded by industry looking at this."

Note: If you want to understand the influence of big money on your health, this article is well worth reading. And for an abundance of solid information on the dangers of aspartame, don't miss this webpage. Our Health Information Center has lots more. And for an excellent, incredibly eye-opening documentary on aspartame that will raise more questions about diet soft drinks, click here.

Despite a huge and costly effort by the media, the public still has an incomplete picture of what really happened during the [war in Afghanistan] and of how Osama bin Laden survived it. Gary Berntsen's Jawbreaker provides a valuable new account by a major participant that fills in many blanks. Berntsen was a top CIA field commander in the most critical sector of a new kind of war; at various times, the CIA veteran had elements of the Delta Force, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and tactical air units reporting to him. Crown Publishers has chosen unnecessarily to position it as a diatribe that the CIA tried to suppress. In fact, while the CIA dragged its feet in reviewing the manuscript for classified material and redacted plenty of specifics, the book is hardly an attack on the CIA. In fact, the overall picture of the CIA here is far more flattering than that in The 9/11 Commission Report. Still, to portray Jawbreaker as "the book the CIA doesn't want you to read" (as the cover puts it), the publisher has displayed the redactions throughout the book as large black lines. Contradicting Bush administration denials, Berntsen writes that his teams discovered bin Laden and the remnants of his entourage in the now famous Tora Bora Mountains along the lawless, rugged Afghan-Pakistani border. Berntsen recounts very credibly how he and others pleaded with Gen. Tommy Franks and the Pentagon brass to put in blocking forces so that bin Laden and the remnants of al Qaeda's leadership could not flee into Pakistan. But for reasons that remain unclear to Berntsen ... the Bush administration or Franks decided to depend instead on local Afghan warlords rather than put U.S. forces on the ground to block bin Laden's escape.

Note: To read a concise summary of reliable news reports that raise serious questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.

Twenty-one-year-old Katia...left home on what she believed would be a trip to buy goods in Turkey, but instead she was sold into sexual slavery for $1,000. In "Sex Slaves," FRONTLINE follows [her husband] Viorel on an extraordinary journey deep into the world of sex trafficking to try to find his wife...and then free her from the violent pimp who now "owns" her. Along the way, the production team takes a rare, hidden-camera look at the various traffickers, pimps and middlemen who illegally buy and sell hundreds of thousands of women each year. Lured by traffickers who prey on their dreams of employment abroad, many of the women are then kidnapped and "exported" to Europe, the Middle East, the United States and elsewhere. During this process, they may be sold to pimps, locked in brothels, drugged, terrorized and raped repeatedly. "How much will a girl cost?" co-producer Felix Golubev asks a trafficker in Moldova while posing undercover as an interested buyer from North America. "Five hundred to 600 dollars" replies the trafficker." As Viorel searches for Katia, we learn what she might be enduring from other trafficked women. Twenty-eight-year-old Oksana was sold 13 times over an eight-month period before finally being allowed to return to her native Ukraine. "There were 22 girls in a three-bedroom apartment, and each girl got beaten up at least once a day. One girl ran away and went to the police for help, but she was taken back. Policemen…used our services." "Sex Slaves" exposes the government indifference that allows the global sex trade to continue virtually unchecked and what needs to be done.

Note: If you want to know about secret government involvement in the sex trade and sex abuse, see the harrowing, yet powerful essay at http://www.WantToKnow.info/nationbetrayed10pg and a highly revealing, free Discovery Channel documentary at http://www.WantToKnow.info/060501conspiracyofsilence

They were loyal conservatives and Bush appointees. They fought a quiet battle to rein in the president's power in the war on terror. And they paid a price for it. James Comey...resigned as deputy attorney general in the summer of 2005. Comey's farewell speech...contained...an unusual passage. Comey thanked "people who came to my office, or my home, or called my cell phone late at night, to quietly tell me when I was about to make a mistake; they were the people committed to getting it right....Some of them did pay a price for their commitment to right, but they wouldn't have it any other way." These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, [they] fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men. They did not see the struggle in terms of black and white but in shades of gray -- as painfully close calls with unavoidable pitfalls. They worried deeply about whether their principles might put Americans at home and abroad at risk. Their story...is a quietly dramatic profile in courage.

Note: If you want to understand the complexities involved behind the scenes at the top levels of US politics, I most highly recommend reading this entire article. It is five webpages in length.

Bush's relationship to science can be illustrated by the fact that he is speaking rapturously of producing ethanol from (of all things) switch grass -- but not saying a word about what many scientists say may be the greatest disaster facing humankind: global climate change. [In] a Time magazine cover story...Mark Thompson and Karen Tumulty write that "growing numbers of researchers, both in and out of government, say their findings -- on pollution, climate change, reproductive health, stem-cell research and other areas in which science often finds itself at odds with religious, ideological or corporate interests -- are being discounted, distorted or quashed by Bush Administration appointees. In the past two years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has collected the signatures of more than 8,000 scientists -- including 49 Nobel laureates... -- who accuse the Administration of an unprecedented level of political intrusion into their world. Says Francesca Grifo, director of the group's Scientific Integrity Program,"'What's new is its pervasive and systemic nature. We get calls every week from federal scientists reporting stuff to us. Rarely, however, are they willing to put their jobs and their research grants at risk by going public with their complaints." 29-year NASA veteran James Hansen, who is director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, charged on the front page of the New York Times that he has been muzzled by the agency. Melissa Block interviewed Bransby on NPR and found out that politics played a role in Bush's mention of switch grass.

The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq. KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. Officials of the corps said that they had solicited bids and that KBR was the lone responder. A spokesman for the corps, Clayton Church, said that the centers could be at unused military sites or temporary structures and that each one would hold up to 5,000 people. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jamie Zuieback...added that she could not provide additional information about the company's statement that the contract was also meant to support the rapid development of new programs.

Note: For lots more on disturbing potential uses for these detention centers, click here. And for a revealing 2002 Los Angeles Times articled title "Camps for Citizens,"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.