Government Corruption News Articles

Excerpts of key news articles on

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Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

The Feb. 27 disappearance of a retired Air Force major general with a vast institutional knowledge about UFOs is a "grave national security crisis," says investigative journalist Ross Coulthart. William Neil McCasland, 68, was reported missing after leaving his Albuquerque, N.M., home on foot, according to local authorities, who have teamed up with the FBI to find the former military official. To Coulthart, the way McCasland vanished – reportedly along a running trail without his watch and phone – suggests something nefarious. McCasland ... is also considered a trove of information about whatever secrets the government may be hiding about UFOs, "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAPs) and nonhuman intelligent life. During his tenure in the Air Force, McCasland oversaw classified space weapons programs and was head of research at Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, Coulthart notes. That facility has long been rumored to house fragments of extraterrestrial debris from Roswell, N.M. Coulthart said he finds it interesting McCasland's disappearance comes shortly after President Donald Trump promised disclosure about whatever files the government holds on UFOs and alien life. "The timing is screechingly relevant," Coulthart said. "The fact that Gen. Neil McCasland has disappeared off the face of the earth is a grave national security crisis. This is a man with some of the most sensitive secrets of the United States in his head."

Note: Hacked emails released by Wikileaks reveal Tom DeLonge, the founder of To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, telling former White House chief of staff John Podesta that General McCasland was involved in a project related to extraterrestrial material, having previously led the Wright Patterson Air Force Base lab where the Roswell incident materials were reportedly taken. McCasland allegedly worked with DeLonge and helped assemble his advisory team. In our new 23-minute video UFO Disclosure Explained: New Solutions for Humanity, civil rights advocate and leading attorney for the UFO disclosure movement Daniel Sheehan and WantToKnow.info Director Amber Yang explore how this topic will open the door to technologies and ideas that could transform how we address humanity's greatest challenges.

"We had no way to compete with their technology, with their weapons. I swear, I've never seen anything like it," a Venezuelan security guard says in a video widely shared on social media and promoted by the White House. His account tells how U.S. special forces in Venezuela captured then-President Maduro using new technology which incapacitated the entire protective team and allowed two dozen U.S. troops to easily defeat hundreds of defenders. Guard: "At one point, they launched something–I don't know how to describe it... it was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move." In the 90's and early 2000s, the Pentagon poured resources into the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, now rebranded the Joint Intermedia Force Capabilities Office. Their task was to develop non-lethal, or less-lethal weapons which ... would disable or incapacitate people. The Pentagon worked on a wide variety of concepts, including strobe dazzlers, malodorants and electroshock projectiles. One of the biggest was the millimeter-wave Active Denial System or ‘pain beam' which could inflict severe pain and drive back rioters from several hundred meters away. A patented device known as Electromagnetic Personnel Interdiction Control (EPIC) ... uses radio waves "to excite and interrupt the normal process of human hearing and equilibrium."

Note: Acoustic or sonic weapons can vibrate the insides of humans to stun them, nauseate them, or even "liquefy their bowels and reduce them to quivering diarrheic messes," according to a Pentagon briefing. These devices can also cause excruciating pain, with some able to heat up skin from a distance and others that can beam sound into the skull of a human. Learn more about non-lethal weapons in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

The Defense Department has spent more than a year testing a device purchased in an undercover operation that some investigators think could be the cause of a series of mysterious ailments impacting US spies, diplomats and troops that are colloquially known as Havana Syndrome. A division of the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, purchased the device for millions of dollars in the waning days of the Biden administration, using funding provided by the Defense Department, according to two ... sources. Officials paid "eight figures" for the device, these people said, declining to offer a more specific number. The device is still being studied and there is ongoing debate ... over its link to the roughly dozens of anomalous health incidents that remain officially unexplained. The device acquired by HSI produces pulsed radio waves, one of the sources said, which some officials and academics have speculated for years could be the cause of the incidents. Although the device is not entirely Russian in origin, it contains Russian components. The device could fit in a backpack. Havana Syndrome, known officially as "anomalous health episodes" ... first emerged in late 2016, when a cluster of US diplomats stationed in the Cuban capital of Havana began reporting symptoms consistent with head trauma, including vertigo and extreme headaches. In subsequent years, there have been cases reported around the world.

Note: Read more about Havana Syndrome. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.

The police department in Heber City, Utah, was forced to explain why a police report software declared that an officer had somehow shapeshifted into a frog. As Salt Lake City-based Fox 13 reports, the flawed tool seems to have picked up on some unrelated background chatter to devise its fantastical fairy tale ending. "The body cam software and the AI report writing software picked up on the movie that was playing in the background, which happened to be ‘The Princess and the Frog,'" police sergeant Rick Keel told the broadcaster, referring to Disney's 2009 musical comedy. "That's when we learned the importance of correcting these AI-generated reports." The department had begun testing an AI-powered software called Draft One to automatically generate police reports from body camera footage. The goal was to reduce the amount of paperwork – but considering that immense mistakes are falling through the cracks, results clearly vary. Draft One was first announced by police tech company Axon – the same firm behind the Taser, a popular electroshock weapon – last year. The software makes use of OpenAI's GPT large language models to generate entire police reports from body camera audio. Experts quickly warned that hallucinations could fall through the cracks in these important documents. Critics also argue that the tool could be used to introduce deniability and make officers less accountable in case mistakes were to fall through the cracks.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and police corruption.

On November 26, soldiers of the Presidential Guard took power in yet another West African country. This time, it was Guinea-Bissau – the tiny country on the Atlantic coast better known to the world as the region's first "narco-state." Since its independence in 1974, the former Portuguese colony has endured nine coups, making it one of West Africa's most fragile states. [The country] acts as a key transit point for the cocaine trade between the northern tier of South America and Europe. The latest coup is the second successful military takeover this year in Africa's rapidly expanding coup belt. According to the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), "Politics and cocaine in Guinea-Bissau have gone hand in hand for decades. Upheavals in one cause ripples in the other." The United States established diplomatic relations with Guinea-Bissau in 1975. Guinea-Bissau's importance as the key transshipment point for cocaine between Colombia and the fast-growing market in Europe grew steadily over the years since. In 2013, Gen. Antonio Indjai, Guinea-Bissau's senior military official at the time, was charged for conspiring to traffic drugs and procure military-grade weapons including surface-to-air missiles for Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia (the "FARC"). In 2019, one of two large cocaine shipments seized in Guinea-Bissau was linked to ... the Al-Mourabitoun terrorist group, which is affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

Note: Many of the recent coups in Africa have been carried out by people affiliated with US intelligence or military interests. Read our Substack investigation into the dark truths behind the US War on Drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the War on Drugs.

Politicians push government IDs. In a TSA announcement, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem sternly warns, "You will need a REAL ID to travel by air or visit federal buildings." European politicians go much further. They're pushing government-mandated digital IDs that tie your identity to nearly everything you do. The second richest man in the world, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, says, "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything." That's a good thing? "That is a recipe for disaster and totalitarianism," says privacy specialist Naomi Brockwell. "Privacy is not about hiding. It's about an individual's right to decide for themselves who gets access to their data. A digital ID will strip individuals of that choice." "I already have a government-issued ID," says Tokarev. "Why is a digital one worse?" "It connects everything," says Brockwell. "Your financial decisions, social media posts, your likes, things that you're watching, places you're going. You won't be able to voice things anonymously online anymore. Everything you say will be tied back to who you are." Even without a digital ID, Canada froze the bank accounts of truckers who protested COVID-19 vaccine mandates. With a digital ID, politicians could do that much more easily. "It makes you super easy to target," says Brockwell, "easy to silence if suddenly you become 'problematic.' Whoever controls that data has a lot of power. We're simply handing it to them."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

On November 4, Abigail Spanberger, a CIA case officer in the Middle East from 2006 to 2014, was elected as Virginia's 75th governor. Spanberger's CIA background raises concern that she will appoint people who will advance the CIA's interests and ... enable greater CIA penetration of higher education. The latter is already a big problem, with the CIA planting professors, setting up journals and carrying out recruitment on many campuses, and even running covert operations through them. She also voted for massive military aid appropriations to Ukraine; pushed to have Russia designated as a state sponsor of terrorism; supported the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites; supported sanctions against Russia, Syria, Venezuela and other countries that took a devastating humanitarian toll; and expressed vocal support for Israel as it was carrying out genocide in Gaza and bombed Syria, Iran and Lebanon. While the CIA may not have directly assisted her campaign, which would be illegal, her election can still be considered a violation of constitutional principles mandating a separation of powers given her presumed loyalty to an Executive Branch agency–the CIA. John Kiriakou, a CIA whistleblower who lives in Virginia, stated that "Spanberger's election as governor of Virginia is a real positive for the CIA, in that the CIA has countless facilities across the state and will be assured of continued cooperation with the Governor's Office. With that said, every Virginia governor, of both parties, has kowtowed to the CIA over the years, so don't expect any changes."

Note: As governor-elect, Spanberger appointed senior transition and security officials drawn from the national security apparatus and major Wall Street investment firms. Read the full article to learn more. Learn more about the dark history of the CIA in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

Imet my best friend, Ursula Guidry, in college. Ursula died from cancer when her children were in preschool. We'll never know if her death was pure "bad luck," or whether it had something to do with growing up amidst plastics-manufacturing facilities. What we know for certain is that the toxic chemicals emitted by those facilities can ravage the human body. It's against that backdrop that I watch Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin work feverishly to dismantle the safeguards protecting people from toxic chemical exposures. The U.S. averages one chemical spill, fire, or explosion every three days, but Zeldin's attacks almost guarantee an increase. Every part of the petrochemical supply chain puts communities at risk, including the nation's millions of miles of pipelines. In Satartia, Miss., a pipeline carrying carbon dioxide used in oil drilling ruptured from heavy rains and floods, spewing carbon dioxide for hours. The carbon dioxide displaced oxygen in the air, so car engines stopped running and people could not escape. Dozens were hospitalized. Acute CO2 emissions cause heart malfunction and death by asphyxiation. Extreme flooding can also submerge Superfund toxic waste dumps. Nearly 1 in 4 Americans live within three miles of a Superfund site. Zeldin's plans are a gift to the fossil fuel and petrochemical corporations. For the rest of us, they are an explosive and hostile attack on our children, our families, and our best friends.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.

November 30 marks the International Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare. Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed an estimated 20 million gallons of herbicides over southern Vietnam, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, and parts of Cambodia. Nearly two-thirds was Agent Orange, later discovered to be contaminated with 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) – a potent, long-lasting dioxin. TCDD is a known human carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor, linked to cancers, reproductive disorders, and birth defects that can span generations. By the letter of the CWC, Agent Orange is not classified as a "chemical weapon." If you ask a Vietnam veteran suffering from Parkinson's, cancer, heart disease, or any of the 19 types of conditions the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) associates with Agent Orange exposure, you'll hear a very different story. To them, it was every bit a weapon designed to destroy life and health. A 2018 Government Accountability Office report found that over 757,000 veterans – about one in four who served – were receiving benefits linked to Agent Orange. The 2022 PACT Act broadened that circle to veterans who served in other areas where Agent Orange was used. By 2024, more than 84,000 new Vietnam-era veterans were granted compensation, many due to exposure. Fifty years after the Vietnam War ended, the toxic legacy of Agent Orange and other dioxins lingers on.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and toxic chemicals.

Military aviation accidents are spiking. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D- Mass.) office reported this week, the rate of severe accidents per 100,000 flight hours, was a staggering 55% higher than it was in 2020. Her office said mishaps cost the military $9.4 billion, killed 90 service members and DoD civilian employees, and destroyed 89 aircraft between 2020 to 2024. The Air Force lost 47 airmen to "preventable mishaps" in 2024 alone. The U.S. continues to utilize aircraft with known safety issues or are otherwise prone to accidents, like the V-22 Osprey, whose gearbox and clutch failures can cause crashes. Dan Grazier, director of the Stimson Center's National Security Reform Program, told RS that the lack of flight crew experience is a problem. "The total number of flight hours U.S. military pilots receive has been abysmal for years. Pilots in all branches simply don't fly often enough to even maintain their flying skills, to say nothing of improving them," he said. This is often because aircraft are not ready to fly. "One of the main reasons behind the lack of flying time, is the simple fact that modern military aircraft are excessively complex machines that don't work as often as the services need them to do," Grazier told RS. He said that popular aircraft, like the F-35, often are not mission capable. "Pentagon officials can ... insist on simpler aircraft with high readiness rates as a key performance parameter."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.

Sarah wasn't expecting to experience paralysis at 7 am on a weekday during a meditation at her home. But in August, while listening to "The Gateway Tapes"–a set of guided meditations intended to help people reach new planes of consciousness–she says her limbs froze. Sarah ... says the tapes–which she had been listening to on and off for months–took her on a roller-coaster journey of out-of-body experiences. "I was in and out of time and space," she says. Developed by radio broadcasting executive Robert Monroe, the Gateway Process claims to be "a voyage of self-discovery" that can help people go "farther, deeper and faster into different dimensions of consciousness." Monroe founded the Monroe Institute in 1971. The facility claims to help coax people out of their bodies via in-person and virtual retreats, and even Spotify playlists, by way of self-hypnosis style exercises powered by "binaural beats"–sounds attuned to different frequencies which play in each headphone ear. In the early 1980s ... the CIA and the Department of Defense sent US Army lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonnell to the institute to ascertain its suitability as a defense contractor. McDonnell gave the organization and its unusual curriculum his approval in a 1983 report which has since been declassified. "There is a sound and rational basis," McDonnell writes, "in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives."

Note: A society that can self-regulate, self-heal, and access deeper layers of perception is harder to manipulate and even harder to govern through fear. Read our latest Substack, How Consciousness Research Can Help Heal a Divided World to learn more about the Gateway Project. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the mysterious nature of reality.

Those who have kept track of the rise of the Thielverse, which includes figures such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and JD Vance, have understood that an agenda to usher in a unique form of authoritarianism has been slowly introduced into the mainstream political atmosphere. "I think now it's quite clear that this is the PayPal Mafia's moment. These particular figures have had an extremely significant influence on US government policy since January, including the extreme distribution of AI throughout the US government," [investigative journalist Whitney] Webb explains. It's clear that the architects of mass surveillance and the military industrial complex are beginning to coalesce in unprecedented ways within the Trump administration and Webb emphasizes that now is the time to pay attention and push back against these new forces. If they have their way, all commercial technology will be completely folded into the national security state – acting blatantly as the new infrastructure for techno-authoritarian rule. The underlying idea behind this new system is "pre-crime," or the use of mass surveillance to designate people criminals before they've committed any crime. Webb warns that the Trump administration and its benefactors will demonize segments of the population to turn civilians against each other, all in pursuit of building out this elaborate system of control right under our noses.

Note: Read about Peter Thiel's involvement in the military origins of Facebook. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.

President Donald Trump's authorization this week of Central Intelligence Agency operations aimed at toppling Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro prompted warnings from foreign policy experts. The amount of narcotics entering the United States via the country is relatively insignificant. Approximately 90% of US-bound cocaine enters the country via Mexico, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration and other government agencies. Venezuela is also not a significant source of fentanyl, which is the leading cause of overdoses in the US and is also trafficked primarily through Mexico."Using covert or military measures to destabilize or overthrow regimes reminds us of some of the most notorious episodes in American foreign policy, which undermined the human rights and sovereignty of countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean," said [policy advisor Matt] Duss. The US has launched at least 41 interventions that successfully overthrew governments in the hemisphere since 1898. Washington has helped install and prop up brutal dictators and assisted in the subversion of democratic movements, including by training Venezuelan forces in torture and repression at the notorious US Army School of the Americas. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have also died as a result of US economic sanctions on Venezuela, according to research from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "If Venezuela did not possess oil, gas, gold, fertile land, and water, the imperialists wouldn't even look at our country," [Maduro] added.

Note: Read our Substack investigation into the dark truths behind the US War on Drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the War on Drugs.

Some 10,000 American troops are currently supporting the Trump-ordered counternarcotics operations in the Caribbean. At this point the military intervention has killed 27 people, including individuals who are likely not Venezuelan. President Trump's most recent explanation to reporters for this unprecedented Pentagon build-up off Venezuela's coast was surprisingly reminiscent of the failed "war on drugs" which hearkens all the way back to the days of Richard Nixon, when he famously declared it "public enemy number one". There was a time ... where the CIA itself was the biggest narco-trafficker in United States and perhaps the entire Western hemisphere. This was to fund regime change and covert operations in Latin America after a belated Congressional crackdown on taxpayer funding for black ops. In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News [published a] series of articles linking the CIA's "contra" army to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles. During the 1980s the CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government through sales of cut-rate cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross. The CIA's drug network, wrote [journalist Gary] Webb, "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the ‘crack' capital of the world." Black gangs used their profits to buy automatic weapons, sometimes from one of the CIA-linked drug dealers.

Note: Though President Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs by declaring drugs "public enemy No. 1," secretly he admitted in a 1973 Oval Office meeting that marijuana was "not particularly dangerous." The War on Drugs is a trillion dollar failure that has been made worse by every presidential administration since Nixon. Don't miss our in-depth investigation into the dark truths behind the War on Drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the War on Drugs.

Eswatini, the landlocked nation formerly known as Swaziland, is Africa's last remaining absolute monarchy. In May, officials from the US and Eswatini signed a deal that allows the Trump administration to deport people from all over the world to the African nation. A copy of the arrangement I reviewed shows that the United States has agreed to pay Eswatini $5.1 million to take in up to 160 so-called "third-country nationals"–immigrants who came to the US with no ties to the country to which they are being deported. In July, the first five of such men arrived in Eswatini, where they were sent to a maximum-security prison and detained in the country without any clear legal basis. Last weekend, the Trump administration sent 10 more people to the Eswatini prison. None of the 15 men sent to the nation are from Eswatini. But they are now under the authority of its king. The situation is a "legal black hole," according to Tin Thanh Nguyen, a North Carolina–based attorney who is representing five men from Vietnam and Laos now imprisoned in the African country. As he explained in a statement Monday: "I cannot call [my clients]. I cannot email them. I cannot communicate through local counsel because the Eswatini government blocks all attorney access." A practice that would have been unthinkable under past administrations is becoming normalized: sending ICE detainees, without due process, to far-flung prisons in countries with notorious human rights records.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.

Powerful tools that collect and aggregate data, enable facial recognition, and increase surveillance have become a bedrock of American policing over the past two decades. In collaboration with private technology companies, law enforcement agencies at all levels have experimented with how to implement these tools and created a large consumer market for them. Against this backdrop, it is essential to understand the role of the tech industry in both increasing the reach of local law enforcement and enabling mass deportations by the Trump administration. ICE is, for example, one of the largest customers for Clearview AI, a facial recognition company that has scraped more than 30 billion faces from internet sources. Data brokers, including one owned jointly by several airline companies, are actively selling data to ICE and other federal agencies. One of the most troubling recent developments in police data is that it captures information about all people. This "dragnet" approach to data collection is designed to give law enforcement maximum access to the entire population, transforming all personal information into potential evidence. Increasingly, law enforcement agencies are opting to purchase this data rather than collect it themselves, exploiting a loophole in Fourth Amendment legal protections. Some police departments have begun pressuring people into providing DNA samples at routine traffic stops, an attempt to expand their databases.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.

The very week the United States' Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a $346 million arms sale to Nigeria, the U.S. State Department also released its 2024 Country report on human rights practices in the West African country. Security forces of Nigeria, Washington's most significant ally in Sub-Saharan Africa, habitually operate with impunity and without due regard for human rights protection – a key condition for receiving U.S. security cooperation. For example, the report spotlighted the following human rights abuses as ongoing concerns: "arbitrary and unlawful killings; disappearances; or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious abuses in a conflict." It also claimed that "military operations against ISIS-WA, Boko Haram, and criminal organization targets" often resulted in civilian deaths. Other findings include the use of "excessive force," "sexual violence and other forms of abuse" by the military. Since the 1950s, the U.S. has been the world's leading arms-exporting nation accounting between 2019 and 2023 for 42 percent of all global arms exports. Several laws exist ostensibly to regulate and ensure that U.S. security assistance is provided to allies without undermining America's core values. However, not once have any of the relevant legal provisions conditioning arms sales on respect for human rights and civilian harm concerns been enforced.

Note: Learn about the loophole that allows US to fund child soldiers in countries like Nigeria. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.

The European Union expects Georgia to change radically to accommodate the EU. The Georgian government expects the EU to change radically to accommodate Georgia. What brought matters to a head between Georgia and the EU was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Georgian government condemned the invasion, sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine and imposed certain sanctions on Russia. However, it tried to block Georgian volunteers going to Ukraine to fight and rejected Western pressure to send military aid and to impose the full range of EU sanctions, leading to fresh accusations of being "pro-Russian." On this, President Kavelashvili pushed back very strongly. He accused the West of trying to provoke a new war with Russia that would be catastrophic for Georgia. Georgia has a government that represents the interests of our people…the same media outlets that accuse us of being under Russian influence tell the same lie about President Trump," [he said]. President Kavelashvili accused the U.S. "deep state" and organizations like USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the European Parliament of mobilizing the Georgian opposition to this end; "but despite all this pressure, we stood and continue to stand as guardians of Georgian national interest and of Georgian economic growth" – the latter comment a veiled reference to the very important economic links between Georgia and Russia.

Note: Our Substack, Working Together To End the War On Peace in Ukraine, challenges the dominant narrative on the Ukraine war, arguing that US and NATO policies, wartime corruption, media censorship, and corporate profiteering have fueled the conflict while blocking genuine peace efforts. Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.

In response to conservative influencer Charlie Kirk's murder, both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have suggested the White House will target left-wing groups and their donors. Fear of political retribution is not the only reason U.S. think tanks may be reluctant to share financial information. Even before these new threats against left-leaning groups, a Quincy Institute report found that over a third of the major foreign policy think tanks do not disclose any donor information, oftentimes because of their heavy reliance on special interests. The top 50 American think tanks received at least $110 million from foreign governments and $35 million from defense contractors in the past 5 years alone. Despite their positioning as objective and independent institutions, reliance on special interests can lead to self-censorship and perspective filtering. In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he would be canceling 83% of USAID's programs. The decision impacted think tanks all around the world. The Trump administration also cut funding for the Wilson Center and U.S. Institute for Peace, two congressionally-established think tanks. Many think tanks will no doubt look to other sources to fill the gaps in U.S. funding, particularly private companies and foreign governments willing to dole out millions of dollars with the intent to influence think tank research. Those sources will likely come with strings attached.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.

Seth Harp's The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces [is] an exposĂ© of the criminality and violence carried out by returning Special Forces personnel in American communities. We're in the middle of a political crisis right now in which the military's role is being radically expanded, including into US domestic life, all on the basis of fighting crime and drugs, and drugs being a national security threat. Yet ... damaged soldiers end up carrying out crime and violence at home as well as getting involved in the drug trade. Todd Michael Fulkerson, a Green Beret who was trained at Bragg, was convicted earlier this year of trafficking narcotics with the Sinaloa cartel. Another guy, Jorge Esteban Garcia, who was the top career counselor at Fort Bragg for twenty years – his job was to mentor and coach retiring soldiers on their career prospects – was literally recruiting for a cartel and was convicted of trafficking methamphetamine and supporting a violent extremist organization. And then a group of soldiers in the 44th Medical Brigade at Fort Bragg – all these soldiers are at Fort Bragg – were convicted of trafficking massive amounts of ketamine. You can look at every single region of the world that's a massive drug production center – which there really are not that many of them – and in every case, you can see that US military intervention preceded the country's becoming a narco state, not the other way around.

Note: Don't miss our in-depth investigation into the dark truths behind the War on Drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and the War on Drugs.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key 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.