Government Corruption News Stories

Excerpts of Key Government Corruption News Stories 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: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Less than six months into the Biden administration, more than 15 consultants from the firm WestExec Advisors have fanned out across the White House, its foreign policy apparatus, and its law enforcement institutions. Five, some of whom already have jobs with the administration, have been nominated for high-ranking posts, and four others served on the Biden-Harris transition team. Even by Washington standards, it's a remarkable march through the revolving door, especially for a firm that only launched in 2017. The pipeline has produced a dominance of WestExec alums throughout the administration, installed in senior roles as influential as director of national intelligence and secretary of state. WestExec clients, meanwhile, have controversial interests in tech and defense that intersect with the policies their former consultants are now in a position to set and execute. The creeping monopolization of foreign policymaking by a single boutique consulting firm has gone largely unnoticed. The firm describes one of its chief selling points as its "unparalleled geopolitical risk analysis," now confirmed by the saturation of its employees in positions of power. WestExec has also succeeded in getting tech startups into defense contracts. Deputy Director of the CIA David S. Cohen was an early member of WestExec's "core team." But it's impossible to know who his clients were, because an exemption for the spy agencies' officials means that his disclosure is not publicly available.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

This month, ProPublica revealed that American billionaires essentially do not pay taxes, and within hours the White House had awkwardly promised no fewer than four federal investigations into the identity of the individual who had alerted the news organization to this fact. By Thursday, a North Carolina congressman was demanding the FBI director explain why he hadn't made any arrests or at the very least, "executed any search warrants or raided any offices" in the international manhunt for the leaker. ProPublica carefully chose the six billionaires whose tax returns it chose to single out for specific scrutiny. But ProPublica seems to have deliberately underthrown. After breathlessly informing readers they possessed a "trove" of 15 years' worth of tax returns on literally "thousands" of the world's richest people, the story's three authors proceeded to weave a few juicy and non-contextualized facts into a narrative that felt like a protracted sidebar to the "real" story. We learned that the 25 richest billionaires in America added $401bn to their net worths between 2014 and 2018 and paid about 3% of that amount in taxes, but we didn't learn much about any specific billionaire's tax avoidance strategies. Fifteen years of tax return information on thousands of American plutocrats is, to be sure, one of the biggest stories of the decade. It's just not clear ProPublica has that much appetite for sticking with the story.

Note: In the US, former tax lobbyists often write the rules on tax dodging. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.

At a US border detention centre in the Texan desert, migrant children have been living in alarming conditions - where disease is rampant, food can be dangerous and there are reports of sexual abuse. The tented camp in the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas, is the temporary home for over 2,000 teenaged children who have crossed the US-Mexico border alone. A number of tents have also been set up just to accommodate the large numbers of sick children - the children have nicknamed it 'Covid city'. In addition to Covid, outbreaks of the flu and strep throat have also been reported since the camp opened in late March. And some children in need of urgent medical attention have been neglected. Photos and video smuggled out of the facility by staff and given to the BBC, show rows of flimsy bunks, set inches from each other, extending in long lines. There are reports of staff sexually abusing children at the Fort Bliss camp. At a camp training session, secretly recorded by a staff member and shared with the BBC, an employee voiced concern. "We have already caught staff with minors inappropriately," she said. Another employee told the BBC that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had spoken to staff about a rape. "DHS mentioned there was a rape - they are giving the girls pregnancy tests," she said. "And I heard the other night that another contractor was caught in a boys' tent, you know, doing things with him."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

Managers and career staff in the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention tampered with the assessments of dozens of chemicals to make them appear safer, according to four scientists who work at the agency. The whistleblowers, whose jobs involve identifying the potential harms posed by new chemicals, provided ... detailed evidence of pressure within the agency to minimize or remove evidence of potential adverse effects of the chemicals, including neurological effects, birth defects, and cancer. Information about hazards was deleted from agency assessments without informing or seeking the consent of the scientists who authored them. Some of these cases led the EPA to withhold critical information from the public about potentially dangerous chemical exposures. In other cases, the removal of the hazard information or the altering of the scientists' conclusions in reports paved the way for the use of chemicals, which otherwise would not have been allowed on the market. William Irwin, [one] of the four whistleblowers, who has worked at the EPA for over 11 years as a toxicologist, was ... moved out of the office after repeatedly resisting pressure to change his assessments to favor industry. Irwin said that while it had seemed obvious that the pressure stemmed from chemical companies, the science adviser in the office made the point irrefutably clear during an argument over one particular chemical assessment.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

The Pentagon made $35 trillion in accounting adjustments last year alone – a total that's larger than the entire US economy and underscores the Defense Department's continuing difficulty in balancing its books. The latest estimate is up from $30.7 trillion in 2018 and $29 trillion in 2017, the first year adjustments were tracked in a concerted way. The figure dwarfs the $738 billion of defense-related funding in the latest US budget. The Defense Department acknowledged that it failed its first-ever audit in 2018 and then again last year. Auditors ... flagged a laundry list of problems, including accounting adjustments. There were 546,433 adjustments in fiscal 2017 and 562,568 in 2018, according to figures provided by Representative Jackie Speier, who asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate. The watchdog agency will report on the subject ... after reviewing more than 200,000 fourth-quarter 2018 adjustments totaling $15 trillion. The "combined errors, shorthand, and sloppy record-keeping by DoD accountants do add up to a number nearly 1.5 times the size of the US economy," said Speier. The report shows the Pentagon "employs accounting adjustments like a contractor paints over mold. Their priority is making the situation look manageable, not solving the underlying problem." The GAO estimated based on a sample that at least 96 percent of 181,947 automatic adjustments made in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 "didn't have adequate supporting documentation."

Note: Why was this not front page news? Why is it the vast majority of people know so little about Pentagon corruption? Read lots more in this excellent article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

The young couple posing in front of the faux Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas fit right in, two people in a sea of idealistic Democrats who had arrived in the city in February 2020 for a Democratic primary debate. Large donations to the Democratic National Committee – $10,000 each – had bought Beau Maier and Sofia LaRocca tickets to the debate. In fact, much about them was a lie. Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca were part of an undercover operation by conservatives to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns and the offices of Democratic as well as moderate Republican elected officials during the 2020 election cycle. Using large campaign donations and cover stories, the operatives aimed to gather dirt that could sabotage the reputations of people and organizations considered threats to a hard-right agenda. At the center of the scheme was an unusual cast: a former British spy connected to the security contractor Erik Prince, a wealthy heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune and undercover operatives like Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca who used Wyoming as a base to insinuate themselves into the political fabric of this state and at least two others, Colorado and Arizona. In more than two dozen interviews and a review of federal election records, The New York Times reconstructed many of the operatives' interactions in Wyoming and other states ... and spoke to people with whom they discussed details of their spying operation.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Interviews with more than two dozen experts on pesticide regulation – including 14 who worked at the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, or OPP – described a federal environmental agency that is often unable to stand up to the intense pressures from powerful agrochemical companies, which spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying each year and employ many former EPA scientists once they leave the agency. The enormous corporate influence has weakened and, in some cases, shut down the meaningful regulation of pesticides in the U.S. and left the country's residents exposed to levels of dangerous chemicals not tolerated in many other nations. This reporting has brought to light several instances in which the overlooking, burying, or scuttling of science has had direct consequences for human health. The alarming discoveries include an EPA report warning about the link between the pesticide glyphosate and cancer that never saw the light of day; the failure to consider evidence that a neonicotinoid pesticide causes brain damage; the refusal to investigate evidence that another pesticide that is an ingredient in Roundup may cause cancer ... and the agency's waiving of the vast majority of toxicity tests at the request of industry. The scientists who have identified these hazards described immense pressure from within the agency to overlook the risks they found. And several said they faced retribution for calling attention to the dangers of pesticides.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.

A monkey virus that contaminated polio vaccine given to tens of millions of Americans in the 1950s and '60s may be causing rare human cancers. For four decades, government officials have insisted that there is no evidence the simian virus called SV40 is harmful to humans. But in recent years, dozens of scientific studies have found the virus in a steadily increasing number of rare brain, bone and lung-related tumors - the same malignant cancer SV40 causes in lab animals. Even more troubling, the virus has been detected in tumors removed from people never inoculated with the contaminated vaccine, leading some to worry that those infected by the vaccine might be spreading SV40. By the end of 1996, dozens of scientists reported finding SV40 in a variety of bone cancers and a wide range of brain cancers, which had risen 30 percent over the previous 20 years. Then, Italian researchers reported finding SV40 in 45 percent of the seminal fluid samples and 23 percent of the blood samples they had taken from healthy donors. That meant SV40 could have been spreading through sexual activity, from mother to child, or by other means, which could explain how those never inoculated with the contaminated vaccine ... were being infected. Dr. James Goedert, the chief of the NCI's Viral Epidemiology Branch ... acknowledged that research is needed to resolve the question of whether SV40 is prevalent in the human population and, if so, how it might be spreading. But Goedert said he has no plans for such studies.

Note: A follow-up article one week later is titled "New documents show the monkey virus is present in more recent polio vaccine." This BBC article further confirms these claims. And this video suggests that early vaccine creators knew they could cause cancer and that HIV may have been brought into the US through vaccines. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on vaccines from reliable major media sources.

The widow of controversial antivirus software magnate John McAfee said her husband was not suicidal, and blamed United States authorities for "this tragedy" after he was found dead in his cell in a prison near Barcelona. The 75-year-old McAfee, who had multiple run-ins with the law, was awaiting extradition after being charged with tax evasion in the United States last year. Speaking to reporters outside the prison on Friday, Janice McAfee demanded a thorough investigation, saying she wanted "answers of how this was able to happen." Janice McAfee's lawyer, Javier Villalba, [said] his client is waiting for the official autopsy to be done adding that the family has requested a second and independent one. "I blame the US authorities for this tragedy. Because of these politically motivated charges against him. My husband is now dead," Janice said. "His last words to me were: I love you and I will call you in the evening," Janice said. "He would have never quit this way. He would never take his life in this way, ever." His death came after a ruling from a three-judge panel at Spain's National Court in Madrid this week that McAfee could be extradited to the United States to face charges there. Janice said Friday the Spanish court's decision to extradite him did not come as a surprise and they had a plan in place to appeal it.

Note: Why does this article fail to mention that McAfee himself said "Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine," as confirmed in this article? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

John McAfee's wife publicly claimed that the US wanted the software tycoon to "die in prison" – just three days before he was found hanged in his cell. Janice McAfee made the damning statement Sunday in a Father's Day post while her husband was in a Spanish jail awaiting extradition to the US to face federal tax evasion charges. "John's honesty has often gotten him in trouble with corrupt governments and corrupt government officials because of his outspoken nature and his refusal to be extorted, intimidated or silenced," wrote Janice. "Now the US authorities are determined to have John die in prison to make an example of him for speaking out against the corruption within their government agencies," she wrote. Within three days, McAfee was found dead in a Barcelona jail, with his death Wednesday deemed a suicide and foul play ruled out by Spanish authorities. He too had earlier warned of a possible conspiracy, comparing it to ongoing rumors about late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's suicide in his Manhattan lockup in August 2019. "Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine," McAffee had earlier warned. His wife's message had insisted that there was "no hope of him ever [to] have a fair trial in America because there is no longer any justice in America. Before you were innocent until proven guilty but somehow that has changed to guilty until proven innocent."

Note: McAfee has long been an outspoken critic of corruption among the power elite. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Leaders of a First Nation in Canada said Thursday they have found indications of at least 751 unmarked graves near the site of a former residential school in Saskatchewan, the second such announcement here in less than a month as the country reckons with the devastating legacy of one of the darkest chapters of its history. Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme said the discovery was made near the grounds of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in the southeastern corner of the prairie province, confirming the stories of Indigenous elders and residential school survivors who had long told stories of a burial site there. Nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to the government-funded and church-run boarding schools, which were set up in the 19th century to assimilate them and operated until the late 1990s. Many children were forcibly separated from their families to be placed in the schools. Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in a 2015 report that many of the students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the schools, which barred them from practicing their traditions and speaking their languages. It said the schools carried out "cultural genocide" and effectively institutionalized child neglect. The commission identified more than 3,000 students who died at the schools, a rate that was far higher than for non-Indigenous school-aged children. Officials say the total number of children who died or went missing at the schools might never be known.

Note: The 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission report led to a $5 billion settlement between the government and surviving First Nation students. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Since 9/11, four times as many U.S. service members and veterans have died by suicide than have been killed in combat, according to a new report. The research, compiled by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, found an estimated 30,177 active duty personnel and veterans who have served in the military since 9/11 have died by suicide, compared with 7,057 killed in post 9/11 military operations. The figures include all service members, not just those who served in combat during that time. The majority of the deaths are among veterans who account for an estimated 22,261 of the suicides during that period. "The trend is deeply alarming," the report says. "The increasing rates of suicide for both veterans and active duty personnel are outpacing those of the general population, marking a significant shift." The Department of Veterans Affairs releases information on deaths by suicide, but it does not distinguish by conflict. The report's author, Thomas "Ben" Suitt III, took the VA data and estimated the total number of veteran suicides based on their ages and other factors. A total of 5,116 active duty service members have died by suicide since Sept. 11, 2001, the report says. Figures for the National Guard and Reserves are not available for the first 10 years, but from 2011 to 2020 an estimated 1,193 National Guard and 1,607 Reservists have died by suicide. In an interview, Suitt said the number 30,177 is likely well below the actual number of suicides for active duty and veterans.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and health from reliable major media sources.

At the bedside of a single Covid-19 patient who's already received the full official treatment protocol and is failing anyway, the decision to administer a drug like ivermectin, or fluvoxamine, or hydroxychloroquine, or any of a dozen other experimental treatments, seems like a no-brainer. Nothing else has worked, the patient is dying, why not? Telescope out a little further, however, and the ivermectin debate becomes more complicated, reaching into a series of thorny controversies, some ridiculous, some quite serious. The ridiculous side involves ... the censorship of ivermectin news. Anyone running a basic internet search on the topic will get a jumble of confusing results. YouTube's policies are beyond uneven. It's been aggressive in taking down videos ... and doling out strikes to independent media figures. Ivermectin has suffered the same fate as thousands of other news topics since Donald Trump first announced his run for the presidency nearly six years ago, cleaved in two to inhabit separate factual universes for left and right audiences. The drug has become a test case for a controversy that's long been building in health care, about how much input patients should have in their own treatment. Should people on their deathbeds be allowed to try anything to save themselves? That seems like an easy question to answer. Should the entire world be allowed to practice self-care on a grand scale? That's a different issue.

Note: Don't miss the entire article to see just how crazy the medical establishment has become in treating COVID. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

The US navy set off a massive explosion last week, detonating a 40,000lb blast as part of a test to determine whether its newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, is ready for war. The test, known as a full ship shock trial, is just the first of three planned blasts over the coming months. But the amount of explosive used – 40,000 lbs – is enough to have outsized effects on any marine life in the area, said Michael Jasny, who directs the Natural Resources Defense Council's Marine Mammal Protection Project. "The navy's own modeling indicates that some smaller species of marine mammals would be expected to die within 1-2km of the blast, and that some marine mammal species would suffer injury including hearing loss out to 10km of the blast. That gives some sense of the power of the explosives we are talking about," Jasny said. "We don't know how conscientiously the blast site was chosen, and we don't know how effective the monitoring was before the detonation, so it's hard to put a great deal of faith in the safety of marine life." The area is home to populations of dolphin and small whales at this time of year, and Jasny says that's worrisome because as a general rule, smaller animals are more vulnerable to blast injury. "A large whale might need to be within a few hundred meters of the blast to die, while a small mammal could be a couple of kilometers away," he said, adding that even if the animals survive, loss of hearing is a significant problem for mammals who make their living in the ocean.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and marine mammals from reliable major media sources.

An FBI special agent was testifying in the government's high-profile terrorism trial against Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheik" suspected of plotting the first attack on the World Trade Center. Frederic Whitehurst, a chemist and lawyer who worked in the FBI's crime lab, testified that he was told by his superiors to ignore findings that did not support the prosecution's theory of the bombing. "There was a great deal of pressure put upon me to bias my interpretation," Whitehurst said in U.S. District Court in New York in 1995. After the Justice Department's inspector general began a review of Whitehurst's claims, Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh decided to launch a task force to dig through thousands of cases involving discredited agents. The task force took nine years to complete its work and never publicly released its findings. Officials never notified many defendants of the forensic flaws in their cases and never expanded their review to catch similar mistakes. If the Justice Department was secretive, the agency's independent inspector general was not. Michael R. Bromwich's probe culminated in a devastating 517-page report in April 1997 on misconduct at the FBI lab. He concluded that FBI managers failed – in some cases for years – to respond to warnings about the scientific integrity and competence of agents. The chief of the lab's explosives unit, for example, "repeatedly reached conclusions that incriminated the defendants without a scientific basis" in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Note: Read more about the FBI's mishandling of forensic evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing case. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced he will support changes to the military justice system that would take sexual assault cases away from the chain of command and let independent military lawyers handle them. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who has long pushed for legislation on the issue, praised Austin's move but [said] that it doesn't go far enough. Austin said he will present President Biden with a series of recommendations aiming to "finally end the scourge of sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military." It's a seismic shift that requires amending the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which no other secretary of defense has been willing to do. Austin's announcement follows a report by the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military, whose mandate from Biden was to find solutions to improve accountability, prevention, climate and culture, and victim care and support involved in such cases. The Pentagon has long resisted any outside interference. In studying the issue for several years, Gillibrand said, "We recognized that there's a lot of bias in the military justice system." She noted that the rate of sexual assaults in the military continues to grow, but relatively few cases go to trial or end in convictions. A 2020 report from the Defense Department indicates unrestricted reports of sexual assaults in the military have doubled, while the rate of prosecution and conviction has been halved since 2013.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

The U.S. House of Representatives moved Thursday to repeal a nearly two-decade-old war powers measure, marking what many lawmakers hope will be the beginning of the end of wide-ranging authorities given to the president after the 9/11 terror attacks. The vote was 268-161. The measure now heads to the Senate. Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California – who in 2001 and 2002 voted against two war power measures passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks – was the sponsor of the repeal bill. The plan would end the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, that greenlighted then-President George W. Bush's plans to invade Iraq. Lee's legislation drew bipartisan support. Her repeal of the 2002 authority, which was issued on Oct. 16 of that year, had more than 130 co-sponsors. In the Senate, Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia is sponsoring a similar bill with help from Republican Todd Young of Indiana and four other GOP senators. On Wednesday, the repeal drew the support of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for the first time. "It will eliminate the danger of a future administration reaching back into the legal dustbin to use it as a justification for military adventurism," Schumer said. He noted that former President Donald Trump used the 2002 authority as a partial justification for an airstrike against an Iranian target in Iraq last year. Now, with the Iraq War over for nearly a decade, the 2002 authorization, and its use as a primary justification for military action, has lost its vital purpose.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

The US Department of Justice is under increasing fire for the still-unfolding scandals involving the secret surveillance of journalists and even members of Congress in the waning days of the Trump presidency. In response to the growing scandal – and the scathing condemnations from the surveillance targets at the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN – the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, has vowed the DoJ will no longer use legal process to spy on journalists "doing their jobs." The Times, the Post and CNN are set to meet with the justice department this week to seek more information on what happened. Administrations in both parties have spied on journalists with increasing abandon for almost two decades, in contravention of internal DoJ regulations and against the spirit of the first amendment. Before Trump was known as enemy number one of press freedom, Barack Obama's justice department did more damage to reporters' rights than any administration since Nixon. But there is another issue looming large over this debate. Garland has said so far that the DoJ won't spy on journalists unless they are engaged in a crime. Well, the DoJ is currently attempting to make newsgathering a crime, in the form of its case against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. The actions described in the indictment against him, most notably the 17 Espionage Act charges, are indistinguishable for what reporters do all the time.

Note: Read more about the growing trend to criminally prosecute journalists who rely on confidential sources to expose corruption. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

US data on influenza deaths are a mess. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges a difference between flu death and flu associated death yet uses the terms interchangeably. There are significant statistical incompatibilities between official estimates and national vital statistics data. Compounding these problems is a marketing of fear - a CDC communications strategy in which medical experts "predict dire outcomes" during flu seasons. The CDC website states what has become commonly accepted and widely reported in the lay and scientific press: annually "about 36,000 [Americans] die from flu" and "influenza/pneumonia" is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. But why are flu and pneumonia bundled together? David Rosenthal, director of Harvard University Health Services, said, "People don't necessarily die, per se, of the [flu] virus. What they die of is a secondary pneumonia. So many of these pneumonias are not viral pneumonias but secondary [pneumonias]." In a written statement, CDC media relations responded to the diverse statistics: "Typically, influenza causes death when the infection leads to severe medical complications." Most such cases "are never tested for virus infection. The CDC uses indirect modelling methods to estimate the number of deaths associated with influenza." Thus the much publicized figure of 36,000 is ... an estimate generated by a model.

Note: Full text available at this link or this one. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.

Pulling a pistol from his waistband, the young man spun his human shield toward police. "Don't do it!" a pursuing officer pleaded. The young man complied, releasing the bystander and tossing the gun. Police ... soon learned that the 9mm Beretta had a rap sheet. Bullet casings linked it to four shootings. The pistol was U.S. Army property. The Army couldn't say how its Beretta M9 got to New York's capital. Until the June 2018 police foot chase, the Army didn't even realize someone had stolen the gun. Inventory records checked by investigators said the M9 was 600 miles away - safe inside Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In the first public accounting of its kind in decades, an Associated Press investigation has found that at least 1,900 U.S. military firearms were lost or stolen during the 2010s, with some resurfacing in violent crimes. AP's total is a certain undercount. Government records covering the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force show pistols, machine guns, shotguns and automatic assault rifles have vanished from armories, supply warehouses, Navy warships, firing ranges and other places where they were used, stored or transported. These weapons of war disappeared because of unlocked doors, sleeping troops, a surveillance system that didn't record, break-ins and other security lapses that, until now, have not been publicly reported. The Army sought to suppress information on missing weapons and gave misleading numbers that contradict internal memos.

Note: The Obama Administration covered up the ATF's Operation Fast and Furious, which lost track of 1,400-2,000 guns purchased by criminals and resulted in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The U.S. Army has unbelievably also lost many airplanes, tanks, and Javelin missiles. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.