Government Corruption Media Articles

Excerpts of Key Government Corruption Media Articles in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

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.

Eighty-nine Democratic members of the U.S. Congress last week sent President George W. Bush a letter asking for explanation of a secret British memo that said "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support the Iraq war in mid-2002. The timing of the memo was well before the president brought the issue to Congress for approval. The Times of London newspaper published the memo -- actually minutes of a high-level meeting on Iraq held July 23, 2002 -- on May 1. British officials did not dispute the document's authenticity.

Flight 11's transponder had stopped working. It was no longer sending a radar pulse. The plane's altitude also became a matter of guesswork for controllers, though the Boeing 767 was still visible on radar. Two F-15 jets were reportedly dispatched from Otis Air Force Base. Just before or after the military planes got off the ground, however, the controllers report they lost site of Flight 11's radar signal over Manhattan. The controller who had handled the plane from the beginning of the ordeal was stunned. A few minutes later, the Nashua controllers heard reports that a plane had crashed into a building.

Note: According to the official story, once the transponders were turned off in the four 9/11 airplanes, they could no longer be tracked. As the above article and air traffic controllers will tell you, though the altitude is no longer reported, planes are still visible on radar once the transponder is off. The plane that flew into the Pentagon was known to be hijacked for over half an hour before it struck. Military radar also can rapidly track incoming missiles that obviously don't send out transponder signals. So how is it possible that the military headquarters of the entire United States was hit, when radar must have tracked this plane on it's way there?

Declassified US government documents show that a man suspected of involvement in the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane worked for the CIA. Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born Venezuelan and anti-Castro dissident, was an agent and informer. The papers also reveal that an FBI informer "all but admitted" that Mr Posada was one of those behind the 1976 bombing that killed 73 people. Mr Posada, who denies any involvement, is said to be seeking asylum in the US. His lawyer says his client, thought to be in hiding in the Miami area, deserves US protection because of his long years of service to the country. The documents, released by George Washington University's National Security Archive, show that Mr Posada, now in his 70s, was on the CIA payroll from the 1960s until mid-1976. Mr Posada once boasted of being responsible for a series of bomb attacks on Havana tourist spots in the 1990s.

Note: Why did the U.S. media fail to pick up this astounding story?

The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says. Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled. Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

A federal appeals court rejected a fired FBI contractor's bid to revive her lawsuit against the government. Sibel Edmonds said she was fired from her job as a wiretap translator because she told superiors she suspected that a co-worker was leaking information to targets of an ongoing FBI investigation. The FBI said it fired her because she committed security violations and disrupted the office. The Justice Department's inspector general said Edmonds's allegations about a coworker "raised serious concerns that, if true, could potentially have extremely damaging consequences for the FBI."

Note: This article doesn't even mention 9/11, yet Ms. Edmonds has stated publicly that her testimony would put top government officials behind bars for their role in blocking information which could have stopped the 9/11 attacks. For more eye-opening information, click here and here. Read Ms. Edmond's open letter to the chairman of the 9/11 Commission to find out what key people in government don't want you to know about her testimony. See also her excellent website http://www.justacitizen.com  She was also instrumental in forming a National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

Note: The following is the New York Times website's abstract of this article, which is a very good summary.

2003 Medicare bill is object lesson in how special interests hold America's health care system hostage; says law subsidizes private health plans, which have repeatedly failed to deliver promised cost savings, and creates unnecessary layer of middlemen by requiring that drug benefit be administered by private insurers; says it specifically prohibits Medicare from using its purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices; notes that Rep Billy Tauzin, who shepherded drug bill through Congress, now heads all-powerful drug-industry lobbying group, and Thomas Scully, former Medicare administrator, negotiated for future health industry lobbying job at same time he was pushing drug bill; calls Medicare bill corrupt deal created by corrupt system.

There was a close-up of a soldier who was holding someone's severed leg. There were photos of G.I.'s happily posing with the bodies of dead Iraqis. This is what happens in war. It's the sickening reality that is seldom seen in the censored, sanitized version of the conflict that Americans typically get from the government and the media. Mr. Delgado, 23, is a former Army reservist who was repelled by the violence and dehumanization of the war. He completed his tour in Iraq. But he sought and received conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged last January. Some of the most disturbing photos in his possession were taken after G.I.'s at Abu Ghraib opened fire on detainees who had been throwing rocks at guards during a large protest. Four detainees were killed. The photos show American soldiers posing and goofing around with the bodies of the detainees. In one shot ... a G.I. is leaning over the top of the body bag with a spoon in his right hand, as if he is about to scoop up a portion of the dead man's wounded flesh. "These pictures were circulated like trophies," Mr. Delgado said. Some were posted in command headquarters. But while at work in a headquarters office, he said, he learned that most of the detainees at Abu Ghraib had committed only very minor nonviolent offenses, or no offenses at all. (Several investigations would subsequently reveal that vast numbers of completely innocent Iraqis were seized and detained by coalition forces.) His goal, he said, is to convince his listeners that the abuse of innocent Iraqis by the American military is not limited to "a few bad apples," as the military would like the public to believe.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For more on war manipulations and the suffering of our soldiers by a highly decorated U.S. general, click here.

"This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents. John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record."

It is time...for the United States to cease its Cold War-style reliance on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. The risk of an accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch is unacceptably high. Much of the current US nuclear policy has been in place since before I was secretary of defense, and it has only grown more dangerous and diplomatically destructive in the intervening years. On any given day...the president is prepared to make a decision within 20 minutes that could launch one of the most devastating weapons in the world. To declare war requires an act of congress, but to launch a nuclear holocaust requires 20 minutes' deliberation by the president and his advisors. After leaving the Defense Department, I became president of the World Bank. During my 13-year tenure, from 1968 to 1981, I was prohibited...from commenting publicly on issues of US national security. [Afterwards] I decided to go public with some information that I knew would be controversial, but that I felt was needed to inject reality into these increasingly unreal discussions about ... nuclear weapons. To launch weapons against a nuclear-equipped opponent would be suicidal. To do so against a nonnuclear enemy would be militarily unnecessary, morally repugnant, and politically indefensible. The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons carries a very high risk of nuclear catastrophe. There is no way to reduce the risk to acceptable levels, other than to first eliminate the hair-trigger alert policy and later to eliminate or nearly eliminate nuclear weapons.

The federal judge overseeing the prosecution of admitted al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui has blocked an attempt by the Justice Department's inspector general to release a report on FBI missteps prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a ruling unsealed yesterday. Without explanation, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema denied the request by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, who completed the report last July but since has been unable to get permission to provide an unclassified version of the document to the public. The report, titled "A Review of the FBI's Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the September 11 Attacks," provides an in-depth examination of three episodes considered potential missed opportunities to detect the Sept. 11 plot, including Moussaoui's arrest in August 2001.

Note: Moussaoui is one of only two people ever to be charged with direct involvement in 9/11. For more key info on Moussaoui, click here. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Aug. 27, 2001, an FBI agent was trying to make sure that Moussaoui did "not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center." Why have we not heard more about all this?

The so-called global war on terrorism does not exist, a high-ranking army officer has declared in a speech that challenges the conventional political wisdom. In a frank speech, Brigadier Justin Kelly dismissed several of the central tenets of the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, saying the "war" part is all about politics and terrorism is merely a tactic. Speaking at a conference on future warfighting, Brigadier Kelly, the director-general of future land warfare, also suggested that the "proposition you can bomb someone into thinking as we do has been found to be untrue".

Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and mid-2004, the nation’s prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported Sunday. While the crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released. In 2004, one in every 138 U.S. residents was in prison or jail. 61 percent of prison and jail inmates were of racial or ethnic minorities, the government said. An estimated 12.6 percent of all black men in their late 20s were in jails or prisons, as were 3.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.7 percent of white men in that age group, the report said.

The FBI has moved to fire a veteran agent who alleged that the bureau had mishandled domestic investigations. On Thursday, Robert Wright was ordered by superiors at an FBI counterterrorism command office in Washington to hand over his badge and weapon, was suspended and was told he would be fired within 30 days, said an official with Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group whose attorneys represent Wright. Wright was told he was being dismissed for, among other things, publicly discussing sensitive FBI matters in 2003, the official said. Wright has been under disciplinary investigation for almost three years. He has two lawsuits pending against the FBI. Yesterday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) sent FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III a letter repeating their support for Wright and expressing concern that the FBI was retaliating against him for his public statements.

Note: What the Post article completely fails to mention is that Robert Wright was hot on the trail of key terrorists before 9/11, yet he was ordered to stop the investigation by his FBI supervisors. For past media stories on this with links to original sources, click here, here, and here. Mr. Wright is one of the FBI agents who approached renowned attorney David Schippers just weeks before 9/11 to warn that a major terrorist attack was going to take place in lower Manhattan. For more, click here.

Just after midnight on Feb. 5, 1958, two U.S. Air Force jets, each traveling 500 mph, collided 35,000 feet over the Georgia countryside. Improbably, all four crew members survived and the accident might have passed into dim memory if not for the thermonuclear weapon jettisoned off Tybee Island, Ga. The bomb is still there. After a weeks-long search, it was "declared irretrievably lost on 16 April 1958," the Air Force reported four years ago in an assessment of whether to conduct a new search and recovery mission. It concluded that "it is in the best interest of the public and the environment to leave the bomb in its resting-place." The Navy Supervisor of Salvage, the report noted, didn't think the bomb could be found. Energy Department engineers' best guess was that it lay "buried nose-down, probably 5-15 feet below the seabed." Clearly, the Air Force would have been glad to let it go at that. However, it did not count on the determination of Derek Duke, a 60-year-old retired Air Force officer who lives nearby and for more than six years has been searching for the bomb in the waters around Tybee Island, about 16 miles from Savannah. Responding to Duke's claim that he had found an area of high radiation the Air Force returned last September to look again. The report on the new search has not been released. Any danger still presented by the Tybee bomb is from the 400 pounds of conventional explosives or from humans somehow ingesting uranium that might escape from the bomb and its silt prison.

Note: For another interesting article on this in USA Today on Oct. 19, 2004, click here. For a much more in-depth article on this incident, click here.

Colin Powell does not need more humiliation. But yesterday a London jury brought down another section of the case he made for war - that Iraq and Osama bin Laden were supporting and directing terrorist poison cells throughout Europe, including a London ricin ring. Yesterday's verdicts on five defendants ... make clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the "ricin ring" make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with us. The public record for the past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by some of yesterday's acquitted defendants. It wasn't. [Found there] were the internal documents of the supposed al-Qaida cell planning the "big one" in Britain. But the recipes were untested and unoriginal, borrowed from US sources. Moreover, ricin is not a weapon of mass destruction. It is a poison which has only ever been used for one-on-one killings. All the information roads led west, not to Kabul but to California and the US midwest. The recipes for ricin now seen on the internet were invented 20 years ago by survivalist Kurt Saxon. The chemical lists found in London were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California. But it seems this information was not shared with the then home secretary, David Blunkett, who was still whipping up fear two weeks later. The most ironic twist was an attempt to introduce an "al- Qaida manual" into the case. To show that the Jihad manual was written in the 1980s ... was easy. The ricin recipe it contained was a direct translation from a 1988 US book called the Poisoner's Handbook. We have all been victims of this mass deception.

Note: As the above link no longer functions, click here for the full article. According to a post on Prof. Michel Chossudovsky's excellent Center for Research on Globalization website and other inside sources, the British government ordered the above article removed from the website within a week of its publication. Someone doesn't want us knowing how we are manipulated into fear. For more on this, click here.

Dennis Kyne put up such a fight at a political protest last summer, the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue. "We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed," the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. "I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own." Accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest, Mr. Kyne was the first of the 1,806 people arrested in New York last summer during the Republican National Convention to take his case to a jury. But one day after Officer Wohl testified, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges. During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.

ULM, Germany -- Khaled el-Masri says his strange and violent trip into the void began with a bus ride on New Year's Eve 2003. When he returned to this city five months later, his friends didn't believe the odyssey he recounted. Masri said he was kidnapped in Macedonia, beaten by masked men, blindfolded, injected with drugs and flown to Afghanistan, where he was imprisoned and interrogated by U.S. intelligence agents. He said he was finally dumped in the mountains of Albania. A Munich prosecutor has launched an investigation and is intent on questioning U.S. officials about the unemployed car salesman's claim that he was wrongly targeted as an Islamic militant. Masri's story, if true, would offer a rare firsthand look at one man's disappearance into a hidden dimension of the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. authorities have used overseas detention centers and jails to hold or interrogate suspected terrorists, such as at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Many of the estimated 9,000 prisoners in U.S. military custody were captured in Iraq, but others, like Masri, were allegedly picked up in another country and delivered to U.S. authorities in Afghanistan or elsewhere for months of confinement.

Note: If the above link fails, click here.

At the start of the twisted treasure hunt that is "The Men Who Stare at Goats," the journalist Jon Ronson appears to be looking for furtive, paranoid quacks who play mind games. Take the goats of the title: Mr. Ronson cites a hundred of them. They have been used in top-secret experiments by psychic spies whose existence is not officially acknowledged by the United States Army. Military psychics are so well hidden that they aren't covered by the Army's coffee budget. It makes them cranky to have to bring their own coffee to work. "The damn psychic spies should be keeping their damn mouths shut, instead of chitchatting all over town about what they did." So says retired Maj. Gen. Albert N. Stubblebine III, the first of the many characters redolent of "Dr. Strangelove" who are found in this jaw-dropper of a -- hard to believe, but, yes -- nonfiction story. Some of these experts contend that a goat's heart can be stopped by the intense gaze of a certain kind of supersoldier. "Goat didn't have a chance," one of these tough guys [says]. Mr. Ronson ... describes the effort to deploy a Moscow scientist who had previously sent subliminal messages to Red Army troops ... in the Branch Davidian standoff. This scientist didn't work out because he was unwilling to transmit ... a bogus voice of God. He finds a prologue in MK-ULTRA, the real C.I.A. "Manchurian Candidate" research of the 1950's, which involved the disastrous use of LSD as a potential truth serum. And somehow Mr. Ronson is able to keep his book both light and nightmarish. [He] remains terrifically adept at capturing the horror of these developments without losing track of their lunacy.

Note: For the above article and lots more reliable information on these mind control programs, click here. For another excellent book by Ronson titled "Them: Adventure with Extremists," click here.

Since taking office two years ago, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has turned Brazil into a tropical outpost of the free software movement. Looking to save millions of dollars in royalties and licensing fees, Mr. da Silva has instructed government ministries and state-run companies to gradually switch from costly operating systems made by Microsoft and others to free operating systems, like Linux. On Mr. da Silva's watch, Brazil has also become the first country to require any company or research institute that receives government financing to develop software to license it as open-source, meaning the underlying software code must be free to all.

In the frenzied days after Sept. 11, 2001, when some flights were still grounded, dozens of well-connected Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, managed to leave the United States on specially chartered flights. Newly released government records show previously undisclosed flights ... and point to a more active role by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in aiding some of the Saudis in their departure. The F.B.I. gave personal airport escorts to two prominent Saudi families who fled the United States, and several other Saudis were allowed to leave the country without first being interviewed. The material ... provides details about the F.B.I.'s interaction with at least 160 Saudis who were living in or visiting the United States and were allowed to leave the country. Some of the departing Saudis were related to Osama bin Laden. In several ... cases, Saudi travelers were not interviewed before departing the country, and F.B.I. officials sought to determine how what seemed to be lapses had occurred. "From these documents, [the Saudi interviews that did occur] look like they were courtesy chats, without the time that would have been needed for thorough debriefings," said Christopher J. Farrell, who is ... a former counterintelligence interrogator for the Army. "It seems as if the F.B.I. was more interested in achieving diplomatic success than investigative success." The F.B.I. documents left open the possibility that some departing Saudis had information relevant to the Sept. 11 investigation.

Note: For lots more crucial, verifiable information suggesting a 9/11 cover-up, 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.