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.

It was Soviet intervention, not the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that caused Japan to surrender. Most Americans cling to the myth that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 [forced] Japan's surrender without a U.S. invasion. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. As the National Museum of the U.S. Navy makes clear, the atomic bombs ... "made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria ... changed their minds." As shocking as this may be to Americans today, it was well known to military leaders at the time. In fact, seven of America's eight five-star officers in 1945 said that the bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible or both. Following the defeat at Saipan in July 1944, many Japanese leaders realized the war could not be won militarily. Telegrams going back and forth between Japanese officials in Tokyo and Moscow made it clear that the Japanese were seeking an honorable way to end what they had started. The U.S. had been firebombing and wiping out Japanese cities since early March. Destruction reached 99.5 percent in the city of Toyama. Japanese leaders accepted that the U.S. could and would wipe out Japan's cities. It didn't make a big difference whether this was one plane and one bomb or hundreds of planes and thousands of bombs. The atomic bombs contributed next to nothing to U.S. victory, but they did slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Note: Read a detailed description of how the New York Times suppressed and skewed the facts about the effects of the atomic bomb in order to forward the war-profiteering agenda. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about government corruption and the manipulation of public opinion.

President Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, the Japanese city that the United States nearly destroyed with a nuclear bomb in 1945. While the bombing ... killed as many as 150,000 people, Obama is not expected to apologize during his visit. After more than 70 years, why not apologize for Hiroshima? Countries in general do not apologize for violence against other countries. What else has America not apologized for? Here are a few ideas. During the Vietnam War, the United States sprayed about 12 million gallons of Agent Orange, a herbicide, over areas of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. About 1 million people were disabled or suffered health problems because of contact with the herbicide. There has been no apology for this or for other controversies of the war. In 1953, democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup [that] was carried out under CIA direction ... with the aid of the British Secret Intelligence Service. The United States and Britain have never apologized for [this], with the Obama administration recently stating that it had no plans to. The United States is also widely suspected of involvement in a bloody 1973 coup that ousted socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 and put dictator Augusto Pinochet in control. In 1977, Brady Tyson, deputy leader of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, did ... offer an apology for the U.S. involvement in the coup, but he was quickly disavowed by the State Department.

Note: Read a detailed description of how the New York Times suppressed and skewed the facts about the effects of the atomic bomb in order to forward the war-profiteering agenda. Although CIA involvement in the Iranian coup and the Pentagon's prolonged support for the Pinochet regime's torturers are now well-known, the intelligence community remains unapologetically corrupt.

British police investigating allegations of historical child sex abuse said more than 1,400 people had been named as suspects including 261 described as "people of public prominence" including dozens of politicians and TV stars. Child abuse scandals over the last few years have prompted the government to launch a major public inquiry. Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the officer leading that inquiry named "Operation Hydrant", said 1,433 people were being investigated of whom 216 were now dead. The suspects included 135 figures from TV, film or radio, 76 politicians involved in both local and national politics, 43 from the music industry and seven from the sporting world. "This investigation is massive and a testimony to how the attitude to victims is changing," said Sheila Taylor, chief executive of the National Working Group Network, a charity which tackles child sexual exploitation. The issue of child abuse came to widespread prominence in 2012 when the late BBC TV presenter Jimmy Savile was shown to have abused hundreds of victims for decades. Since then, other household names have been convicted, allegations have been made against a number of former or deceased politicians, while detectives are also looking into claims powerful figures forced police to drop inquiries into paedophile rings involving high-profile people. Bailey said that 666 of the offenders being investigated were alleged to have carried out abuse at institutions including schools, children's homes and religious institutions.

Note: In 1984, UK security services raided major newspapers to prevent the publication of articles on paedophile rings run by prominent politicians. Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this topic in the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

Officials with the New Jersey attorney general’s office said on Monday that the state had agreed to a $400,000 settlement in a lawsuit filed by a former state trooper who said that he was beaten and harassed by members of a secret group of rogue officers within the State Police. The former trooper, Justin Hopson, filed the lawsuit in 2003. In it, he described a series of beatings, threats and acts of vandalism that he said occurred after he refused to support an arrest by another trooper in 2002. Mr. Hopson said that he was attacked by members of a loose-knit group within the State Police known as the Lords of Discipline. For years, minority and female troopers have complained that they have been harassed by members of the group. In 2005, the state attorney general’s office issued a report that found seven troopers guilty of harassing their colleagues. The troopers received punishments ranging from reprimands to 45-day suspensions. Mr. Hopson, 33, filed suit after the March 2002 arrest of a woman for drunken driving, which he said was improper because the woman had not been behind the wheel. When Mr. Hopson refused to endorse fellow troopers’ versions of events surrounding the arrest, court papers said, a campaign to silence him began. First, there were threatening notes left around his station house. Then, Mr. Hopson said, his car was vandalized. By the time he sued the state in December 2003, Mr. Hopson said that he had been the victim of a series of beatings at the hands of another trooper.

Note: Read a follow-up article on how this good man is calling for all of us to step up. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing police corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

June 6 will be the third anniversary of The Guardian’s publication of top-secret documents provided by [Edward] Snowden that showed that the National Security Agency was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Mr. Snowden [has been] denounced ... as a traitor. [Former Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton said in a Democratic presidential debate [that], “He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistle-blower.” Thomas Drake would disagree. Mr. Drake was a senior N.S.A. official who had also complained, 12 years earlier, about warrantless surveillance. He went up the chain of command [to] the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General. Things did not go well. F.B.I. agents raided his house. He was forced to resign and was indicted on 10 felony charges arising from an alleged “scheme” to improperly “retain and disclose classified information.” He ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for “exceeding authorized use of a government computer” in exchange for the government’s dropping the other charges. He now works at an Apple store. Mr. Snowden followed the Drake case closely in the news media and drew the obvious conclusion: Going through [official] channels was worse than a dead end. [John] Crane, a former assistant inspector general in the Defense Department who oversaw the whistle-blower program, has now come forward alleging that Mr. Drake was persecuted by the very officials in his office who were supposed to protect him.

Note: John Crane was forced out of the Pentagon in 2013. His story is told in a new book, titled, Bravehearts: Whistle Blowing In The Age of Snowden by Mark Hertsgaard. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

Edward Snowden has called for a complete overhaul of US whistleblower protections after a new source from deep inside the Pentagon came forward with a startling account of how the system became a “trap” for those seeking to expose wrongdoing. The account of John Crane ... appears to undermine Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and [others] who argue that there were established routes for Snowden other than leaking to the media. Crane, a longtime assistant inspector general at the Pentagon, has accused his old office of retaliating against a major surveillance whistleblower, Thomas Drake. Not only did Pentagon officials provide Drake’s name to criminal investigators, Crane told the Guardian, they destroyed documents relevant to his defence. Thomas Drake’s legal ordeal ruined him financially. His case served as a prologue to Snowden’s. In 2002, Drake and NSA colleagues contacted the Pentagon inspector general to blow the whistle on [a] tool, Trailblazer, for mass-data analysis. Crane, head of the office’s whistleblower unit, assigned investigators. For over two years, with Drake as a major source, they ... prepared a lengthy secret report [that] eventually [helped] to kill the program. As far as Crane was concerned, the whistleblower system was working. But after an aspect of the NSA’s warrantless mass surveillance leaked to the New York Times, Drake himself came under investigation and eventually indictment [for] hoarding documentation – exactly what inspector-general investigators tell their whistleblowers to do.

Note: John Crane was forced out of the Pentagon in 2013. His story is told in a new book, titled, Bravehearts: Whistle Blowing In The Age of Snowden by Mark Hertsgaard. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

As the Obama administration prepares to publish a long-delayed accounting of how many militants and noncombatant civilians it has killed since 2009, its statistics may be defined as much by what is left out as by what is included. Release of the information was first envisioned ... as part of strict new guidelines President Obama announced for the United States’ controversial use of drones and other forms of lethal force to battle terrorism abroad. Such operations, Obama said ... would also be subject to new transparency and oversight. The death tolls, like the guidelines, will cover places where the United States conducts airstrikes but does not consider itself officially at war. They are likely to exclude Pakistan, where the CIA has conducted hundreds of drone strikes. The United States still does not publicly acknowledge CIA attacks inside Pakistan, although the Pentagon announced Saturday that it had targeted Taliban leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour in Pakistan. Not all strikes in the included countries are considered counterterrorism actions. The totals will almost inevitably be challenged by independent groups that keep their own tallies and for years have charged that the administration undercounts civilian deaths caused by drone strikes. In emailed responses to written questions, the Defense Department said it keeps no central list of strikes “outside areas of active hostilities.” Some are announced by the Pentagon, some by Central Command in charge of Yemen, and others by the Africa Command. Some are not made public at all.

Note: Watch this video which shows how governments promote war in order to pad the pockets of mega-corporations which profit greatly from arms sales. Drone strikes almost always miss their intended targets and reportedly create more terrorists than they kill. Casualties of war whose identities are unknown are frequently mis-reported to be "militants". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.

“When the guilt of our roles in facilitating this systematic loss of innocent life became too much, all of us succumbed to PTSD,” [said] an open letter to the Obama administration, crafted by four former Air Force servicemen, each of whom played a role in the nation’s targeted killing program. The moral pang of the letter reflects a very basic ethical tenet. Concluding the letter, the former soldiers write that after suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, “We were cut loose by the same government we gave so much to - sent out in the world without adequate medical care, reliable health services, or necessary benefits. Some of us are now homeless. Others of us barely make it.” Several years ago now, The New York Times published an op-ed by one of the authors titled “Drones, Ethics, and the Armchair Soldier,” which argued that the physical remove of drone warfare would give pilots the space to engage in moral reflection ... that the urgency and danger of traditional warfare often preclude. In the United States, conscientious objection to engaging in war is permitted on secular and moral ground - but only if the individual objects to war on the whole. Members of the US armed forces are not allowed to [refuse] to engage in particular wars or ... military assignments on the basis of a moral objection. Drones [open] up both moral dilemma and moral opportunity. Every soldier is in fact required to disobey illegal orders (to deliberately kill civilians, for example). But this is different from conscientious objection.

Note: Drone strikes almost always miss their intended targets and reportedly create more terrorists than they kill. Casualties of war whose identities are unknown are frequently mis-reported to be "militants". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is ramping up her fundraising schedule, attending a number of fundraisers this week that cost donors six-figures to attend. The former secretary of state attended a pair of small, intimate gatherings in New York City on Thursday evening that cost donors a minimum of $100,000 to attend. On Wednesday, she attended two $100,000-a-head events in Englewood, N.J., and New York City. [The] Thursday event was at the home of Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent New York businesswoman and supporter of Mrs. Clinton and Democratic candidates. Six-figure fundraisers are a new frontier in presidential politics, made possible by a 2014 Supreme Court case that tossed a key contribution limit governing how much donors could give across the board in a single election cycle. As a result, campaigns and parties can now fundraise in tandem with each other. Mrs. Clinton’s events on Thursday [were] not the campaign’s first foray into high-dollar fundraising. In April, the campaign held an event at the home of actor George Clooney. The event cost $33,400 to attend, though donors who contributed $353,400 could sit at the head table.

Note: Read about Hillary's direct connections with the Rothschild family, as revealed through Wikileaks data. Read also a recent Washington Post article stating that control over US politics by the financial elites has ushered the country into a "new Gilded Age". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing elections corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

Morley Safer, who was a correspondent on CBS’s 60 Minutes from 1970 until just last week, died Thursday at age 84. In 1965, Safer was sent to Vietnam by CBS. That August he filed a famous report showing American soldiers burning down a Vietnamese village. The next year, he wrote a newspaper column about a visit to Saigon by Arthur Sylvester, the ... head of all the U.S. military’s PR. Sylvester, [who] had arranged to speak with reporters for U.S. outlets, [said] that American correspondents had a patriotic duty to disseminate only information that made the United States look good. A network television correspondent said, “Surely, Arthur, you don’t expect the American press to be the handmaidens of government.” “That’s exactly what I expect,” came the reply. An agency man raised the problem [of] the credibility of American officials. [Sylvester], the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, [responded]: “Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid. Did you hear that? Stupid.” A Democratic senator from Indiana, entered Safer’s article into the Congressional Record, and ... a Republican representative from Missouri called for Sylvester to resign. For its part, the Pentagon told CBS executives: “Unless you get Safer out of there, he’s liable to end up with a bullet in his back.” Moreover, Sylvester absolutely meant what he said [to] the journalists in Saigon. [By that time], he’d already told some of the key U.S. government lies about the Cuban missile crisis.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about military corruption and the manipulation of public opinion.

When the price of the blood-pressure drug Nitropress leaped from $215 to $881 last year, an increase of 300%, it triggered public outrage. [Drug maker] Valeant Pharmaceuticals International ... would buy patents for unique, lifesaving drugs, hike their prices and then watch the profits roll in. In the wake of the Valeant pricing scandal ... congressional and media investigations have revealed that the embattled company’s business model is hardly unique. In a memo from Oct. 16, 2015 ... the global investment bank Canaccord Genuity wrote that the price increases were not out of the ordinary. In a report from the same day, BMO Capital Markets reiterated that Valeant’s tactics were a “common industry practice” and that “at least 14 different pharmaceutical companies, excluding Valeant,” had made similar price hikes in recent years. The drug industry boasts some of the biggest profits of any industry. Wall Street investors have swooned over the sector. From 2012 to the middle of 2015, more than $50 billion in new capital poured into the industry. That influx of cash shifted the character of the industry. Instead of focusing on time-consuming R&D, drug companies began worrying more about delivering short-term gains to shareholders. For 20 of the biggest drug companies, 80% of shareholder earnings in 2014 were the result of price hikes. [The] industry ... spends more on lobbying than any other industry in the country.

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

Brazil’s suspended president has described the impeachment campaign as "more clearly than ever" a "coup" after leaked tapes suggested that her opponents were trying to remove her simply to halt a corruption probe. In only her second public appearance since being removed from office pending a trial, Dilma Rousseff responded to new evidence suggesting that the aim of the impeachment process is stifle a massive corruption inquiry, known as the “Car Wash” probe. Leaked tapes appear to show Romero Jucá, the planning minister in the new government, discussing the impeachment process as a way of stopping the “Car Wash” inquiry into corruption at Petrobras, the state oil company ... which has implicated dozens of politicians. In the conversation, Mr Jucá appears to agree that “there has to be an impeachment” to halt the probe. Mr Jucá has also been suspended from office. The revelations boosted Ms Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, or “PT”, which has repeatedly described the campaign to oust her as a “coup”. Ricardo Berzoini, a senior member of Ms Rousseff’s cabinet, said the “revelation” of the tapes “demonstrates the real reason for the coup against democracy.” Mr Berzoini added: “The goal is to stop the Car Wash investigation and sweep the investigation under the rug. The Brazilian people have a right to know everything about these recordings. We cannot allow a dialogue like this to not be investigated thoroughly.”

Note: This coup is reportedly handing literal control of Brazil's economy to Goldman Sachs and bank industry lobbyists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.

Say the name Bernie Madoff, and chances are everyone will immediately remember the Ponzi scheme that bilked investors of $64 billion. What likely won’t spring to mind is JPMorgan Chase’s role in the more than decadelong fraud. And the link is all the more egregious, Helen Davis Chaitman, an attorney who represents 1,600 of Madoff’s victims, and Lance Gotthoffer write in “JPMadoff: The Unholy Alliance Between America’s Biggest Bank and America’s Biggest Crook,” because the federal government has failed to prosecute any of the bankers involved. Madoff trustee Irving Picard laid out JPMorgan’s involvement in a complaint, which was turned into a list of stipulations the government entered as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with JPMorgan. The stipulations outline two violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, under which banks are responsible for alerting authorities to suspected illegal activity by customers. JPMorgan, the world’s sixth-largest bank by total assets, pleaded ignorance of wrongdoing but accepted the stipulations and paid a $1.7 billion fine. [When] Madoff began kiting checks ... Bankers Trust Co. spotted the illegal activity and closed Madoff’s account. That’s when Madoff moved his business to JPMorgan, depositing $150 billion from 1986 through 2008. JPMorgan handled only Madoff’s illegal investment advisory business, not the successful stock trading business that employed 190 of Madoff’s 200 employees. And though the bank was prosecuted, none of the bankers involved with Madoff’s account were.

Note: JP Morgan Chase's role in the Madoff scandal is outrageous, but it is relatively minor in comparison to the massive securities fraud and cover-up perpetrated by this and other corrupt financial institutions.

Helen Davis Chaitman, the lead attorney for Madoff’s victims and the author of The Law of Lender Liability, and Lance Gotthoffer, one of our nation’s premier litigators, are blowing the whistle on JPMorgan Chase big time. Their explosive ... book [is titled], “JPMadoff: The Unholy Alliance Between America’s Biggest Bank and America’s Biggest Crook.” This book is ... about the incestuous relationship between so-called U.S. federal prosecutors, politicians for whom they worked, and the flow of Wall Street money to those politicians. JPMC knew, for 20 years, that Madoff was conducting illegal transactions in his account at the Bank. JPMC had a unique window into Madoff’s crimes. And they said nothing to federal authorities ... in clear violation of our banking laws. In 1994 a JPMC officer wrote a memo analyzing the check kiting and calling it “outrageous.” But what he thought was outrageous was not that Madoff [was] violating the law, but that [he was] being paid interest by the Bank on uncleared funds. As a result, JPMC allowed the transactions to continue but required Levy and Madoff to pay back the interest the Bank had paid them on uncleared funds. In January 2014, JPMC paid over $3 billion to settle civil and criminal charges that it violated the law in its dealings with Madoff. They [had] waited until after Madoff confessed and was arrested to report to United States law enforcement that Madoff might have been operating illegally.

Note: JP Morgan Chase's role in the Madoff scandal is outrageous, but it is relatively minor in comparison to the massive securities fraud and cover-up perpetrated by this and other big banks in cooperation with corrupt government officials. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing financial industry corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

The Senate approved a bill Tuesday to allow victims and families of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its alleged involvement in the terrorist strikes. The bill, which the White House opposes ... had stalled for months. It now heads to the House. In the end, the bill's authors - John Cornyn of Texas, the second ranking Senate Republican, and Chuck Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Senate Democrat - were able to pass the bill on a voice vote, a rare feat in the divided chamber. White House press secretary Josh Earnest renewed the threat that President Barack Obama will veto the bill. The White House and State Department say the bill could have dramatic ramifications. "This legislation would change long standing international law regarding sovereign immunity. The President ... continues to harbor serious concerns that this legislation would make the United States vulnerable in other court systems around the world," Earnest said. The bill would prevent Saudi Arabia and other countries alleged to have terrorist ties from invoking their sovereign immunity in federal court. Saudi Arabia has long denied any role in the 9/11 attacks, but victims' families have repeatedly sought to bring the matter to court, only to be rebuffed after the country has invoked legal immunity allowed under current law. In March, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir warned lawmakers that it would sell $750 billion in U.S. assets ... should the bill become law.

Note: Saudi Arabia's influential charm offensive and its $750 billion threat have not stopped this legislation from moving forward. Read more on the Saudi role in Sept. 11 and the hidden 9/11 report pages. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.

John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 commission, told CNN Thursday that the classified 28 pages of a congressional investigatory report into the attacks contains evidence that as many as six Saudi officials supported al Qaeda in the run-up to the attacks. Those individuals, he said, worked for the Saudi Embassy in the U.S., Saudi charities and [a] Saudi government-funded ... mosque. Lehman charged that evidence of Saudi involvement was never sufficiently investigated. The individuals had hard ties to the government and hard ties to the hijackers, with one driving the hijackers from San Diego to Phoenix when they failed out of their first flight school. Other commission members, including former federal prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, are echoing Lehman's call. Lehman urged the declassification of the 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report, part of a congressional panel investigating intelligence failures related to the 9/11 attacks. His statements that as many as six officials were implicated appear to contrast with comments made by other members of the commission. The commission's chair and vice chairs, former Republican New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, released a statement in April saying that "only one employee of the Saudi government was implicated in the plot investigation."

Note: Read more on the Saudi role in Sept. 11 and the hidden 9/11 report pages. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.

Saudi government employees were part of a support network for the 9/11 hijackers. The Obama administration should move quickly to declassify a long-secret congressional report on Saudi ties to the 2001 terrorist attack, [said former 9/11 commission member John Lehman]. The comments ... signal the first serious public split among the 10 commissioners since they issued a 2004 final report that was largely read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11. The former chairman and vice-chairman of the commission [have] urged the Obama administration to be cautious about releasing the full congressional report on the Saudis and 9/11 – “the 28 pages”, as they are widely known in Washington. In fact, there were repeated showdowns, especially over the Saudis, between the staff and the commission’s hard-charging executive director ... Philip Zelikow. Zelikow fired a staffer, who had repeatedly protested over limitations on the Saudi investigation, after she obtained a copy of the 28 pages outside of official channels. Other staffers described an angry scene late one night, near the end of the investigation, when two investigators who focused on the Saudi allegations were forced to rush back to the commission’s offices after midnight after learning to their astonishment that some of the most compelling evidence about a Saudi tie to 9/11 was being edited out of the report.

Note: Zelikow's close ties to the Bush White House are among many problems with the official 9/11 Commission Report. Read more on the Saudi role in Sept. 11 and the hidden 9/11 report pages. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.

A CIA tip off to South Africa's apartheid regime which led to Nelson Mandela's arrest and 27-year imprisonment was condemned as a "betrayal of our nation" by the grandson and heir of the former president. Mandla Mandela called on US President Barack Obama to apologise and make a "full disclosure" of the events leading up to his grandfather's arrest in 1962 ... after a former CIA agent confirmed that he told the apartheid police how to find [Nelson] Mandela. "The USA put its imperial interests above the struggle for liberation of millions of people," said Mr Mandela, the former statesman's eldest grandson who is also an ANC MP. Donald Rickard said he and his handlers believed Mr Mandela was "the world's most dangerous communist outside of the Soviet Union" and he had no qualms about tipping the authorities off about his whereabouts in 1962, the height of the Cold War. The CIA's involvement in his detention after 17 years on the run has long been suspected but has never been confirmed until now. Mr Rickard ... broke his silence about his involvement in netting the "Black Pimpernel" as Mandela was known in an interview in March with researchers for a new film by British director John Irvin. Mr Rickard, who retired from the CIA in 1978 and spent the rest of his life in a remote spot in Colorado, died two weeks after the interview. Zizi Kodwa, a spokesman for the ANC, echoed claims by the ANC's secretary-general that the CIA was still interfering in South African politics.

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

Hidden microphones that are part of a clandestine government surveillance program that has been operating around the Bay Area has been exposed. Imagine standing at a bus stop, talking to your friend and having your conversation recorded without you knowing. It happens all the time, and the FBI doesn’t even need a warrant to do it. Jeff Harp, a ... security analyst and former FBI special agent said, “They put microphones under rocks, they put microphones in trees, they plant microphones in equipment. I mean, there’s microphones that are planted in places that people don’t think about, because that’s the intent!” FBI agents hid microphones inside light fixtures and at a bus stop outside the Oakland Courthouse without a warrant to record conversations, between March 2010 and January 2011. Federal authorities are trying to prove real estate investors in San Mateo and Alameda counties are guilty of bid rigging and fraud and used these recordings as evidence. The lawyer for one of the accused real estate investors who will ask the judge to throw out the recordings, told KPIX 5 News that, “Speaking in a public place does not mean that the individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy … private communication in a public place qualifies as a protected ‘oral communication.'”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about government corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

The scariest part of Emily Vorland’s relatively uneventful 2009 deployment to Iraq was that the enemy wore Army green. When a higher-ranking male officer sexually harassed her, her commander told Vorland to file a formal complaint. So she did. The investigation ... concluded she had “acted inappropriately,” engaged in consensual sex and was lying about it. A lesbian, she was concerned that her best defense was one that would end her military career. The Army [discharged her] for “unacceptable conduct.” Even as the military scrambles under congressional pressure to prevent future cases of sexual abuse, past victims are suffering for having stood up for themselves. Thousands of victims have been pushed out of the service with less-than-honorable discharges, which can leave them with no or reduced benefits, poor job prospects and a lifetime of stigma. Worse, when they try to rectify their situation, as Vorland did, fewer than 10% of them succeed, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch estimates. “Military personnel who report a sexual assault frequently find that their military career is the biggest casualty,” the group says in a new report. 163 veterans [were] ousted from the military between 1966 and 2015 after complaining about sexual abuse, ranging from harassment to rape. “Our interviews suggest that all too often superior officers choose to expeditiously discharge sexual-assault victims rather than support their recovery and help them keep their position,” the study says.

Note: A 2015 Associated Press article states that: "the true scope of sex-related violence in the military communities is vastly underreported." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles 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.