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.

The FBI thoroughly searched its archives and found no evidence that more videos of the Oklahoma City bombing exist, agency employees told a judge [on July 28] in a trial that has rekindled questions about whether any others were involved in the 1995 attack. Additional searches for videos that Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue believes are being withheld would be burdensome and fruitless, FBI attorney Kathryn Wyer argued during the first day of a bench trial. Trentadue says the agency is refusing to release videos that show a second person was with Timothy McVeigh when he parked a truck outside the Oklahoma City federal building and detonated a bomb that killed 168 people. The government says McVeigh was alone. [But] the 30 video recordings the FBI has released don't show the explosion or McVeigh's arrival in a rental truck. Unsatisfied by the FBI's previous explanations and citing the public importance of the tapes, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups has ordered the agency to explain why it can't find videos that are mentioned in evidence logs. Trentadue believes the presence of a second suspect explains why his brother, Kenneth Trentadue, was flown to Oklahoma several months after the bombing, where he died in a federal holding cell. Kenneth Trentadue bore a striking resemblance to a police sketch based on witness descriptions of the enigmatic suspect "John Doe No. 2," who was never identified..

Note: There is strong evidence of a major cover-up in the Oklahoma City bombing. See this Wall Street Journal article, this Associated Press article, this ABC News article, and this Deseret News article for examples.

A sweeping [gag] order issued in Australia to block reporting of any bribery allegations involving several international political leaders in the region has been exposed by WikiLeaks. The prohibition emerged from a criminal case in the Australian courts and applies throughout the country. It was issued by the criminal division of the supreme court of Victoria in Melbourne. The Australia-wide [gag] order is a superinjunction, which means it also contains a clause insisting that the terms of the order itself should remain secret. [It] states: "Subject to further order, there [shall] be no disclosure, by publication or otherwise, of any information derived from or prepared for the purposes of these proceedings including the terms of these orders." In a statement published with the leak, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said the gagging order relates to a case that "concerns the subsidiaries of the Australian central bank". He said it was the first blanket suppression order of this nature in Australia since 1995. "With this order, the worst in living memory, the Australian government is not just gagging the Australian press, it is blindfolding the Australian public," said Assange, who is himself Australian. "This is not simply a question of the Australian government failing to give this international corruption case the public scrutiny it is due. Foreign minister Julie Bishop must explain why she is threatening every Australian with imprisonment in an attempt to cover up an embarrassing corruption scandal involving the Australian government".

Note: Very few media were even willing to report on the reasons for this gag order, which were clearly to cover up corruption at the highest levels. See the CNN article for how no mention is even made of what was revealed. It seems that the higher up the corruption goes, the more vehemently courts rule to keep the investigations secret. Could there be a double standard here? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

The [UK] government [has] announced an inquiry into historical allegations of child sex abuse by leading political figures. The Westminster inquiry will investigate not just the rape and assault of children at group homes going back decades but also accusations that child abuse by politicians and other public figures was deliberately covered up or even facilitated by members of the elite. [The] Parliament has ... spent 30 years failing to catch the pedophiles in its own house. Before the inquiry was even announced, it emerged that 114 files concerning allegations of abuse against children involving senior political figures had mysteriously disappeared. What links all these convicted or alleged predators of children is not background or upbringing. What united them was power and access — and a sense of entitlement, acquired from Britain’s traditional elite, that came from the knowledge that their reputations were too great for them to be held accountable. In many cases, investigation by the authorities was deliberately deflected. Nowhere is this truer than at Britain’s top “public schools,” as the private secondary, usually boarding, schools are known. In these, a culture of bullying and sexualized violence has been understood for more than a century as part of the process of training young men to be leaders. Teachers at 130 of these schools have been implicated; several schools are under criminal investigation by the police. That victims of child abuse often grow up to replicate that abuse, to become bullies or tyrants or covert sexual predators, has long been understood as a human tragedy. Only in Britain does it seem to have been the intrinsic psychology at the dark heart of the governing elite.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the "direct involvement" of government agents or informants, a new report says. Some of the controversial "sting" operations "were proposed or led by informants", bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist. The lengthy report, released on [July 21] by Human Rights Watch, raises questions about the US criminal justice system's [respect for] civil rights and due process in post-9/11 terrorism cases. [The report] portrays a system that features not just the sting operations but secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial detentions and convictions significantly removed from actual plots. "In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act," the report alleges. Out of the 494 cases related to terrorism the US has tried since 9/11, the plurality of convictions ... are not for thwarted plots but for "material support" charges, a broad category expanded further by the 2001 Patriot Act that permits prosecutors to pursue charges with tenuous connections to a terrorist act or group. Several cases featured years-long solitary confinement for accused terrorists before their trials. Some defendants displayed signs of mental incapacity. Jurors for the 2007 plot to attack the Fort Dix army base, itself influenced by government informants, were anonymous, limiting defense counsel's ability to screen out bias.

Note: Why was this important news not picked up by any major US media? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations news articles from reliable major media sources.

The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist. The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted. The rulebook ... was developed behind closed doors by representatives of the nation’s intelligence, military, and law-enforcement establishment, including the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI. Emblazoned with the crests of 19 agencies, it offers the most complete and revealing look into the secret history of the government’s terror list policies to date.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations news articles from reliable major media sources.

Bill Binney worked at the National Security Agency [for] nearly three decades as one of its leading crypto-mathematicians. He then became one of its leading whistleblowers. The NSA is overseen by Congress, the courts and other government departments. It's also supposed to be watched from the inside by its own workers. But over the past dozen years, whistleblowers like Binney have had a rough track record. Those who tried unsuccessfully to work within the system say Edward Snowden — the former National Security Agency contractor who shared top-secret documents with reporters — learned from their bitter experience. For Binney, the decision to quit the NSA and become a whistleblower began a few weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he says he discovered the spy agency had begun using software he'd created to scoop up information on Americans — all without a court order. "I had to get out of there, because they were using the program I built to do domestic spying, and I didn't want any part of it, I didn't want to be associated with it," he says. "I look at it as basically treason. They were subverting the Constitution." Binney says he and two other NSA colleagues who also quit tried sounding the alarm with congressional committees. But because they did not have documents to prove their charges, nobody believed them. Snowden, he says, did not repeat that mistake. "He recognized right away, it was very clear to me, that if he wanted anybody to believe him, he'd have to take a lot of documentation with him — which is what he did," Binney says.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations news articles from reliable major media sources.

The former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden said in a wide-ranging interview ... that the oversight of surveillance programs was so weak that members of the United States military working at the spy agency sometimes shared sexually explicit photos they intercepted. He also said the British government often pioneered the most invasive surveillance programs because its intelligence services operate with fewer restrictions intended to protect individual privacy than its counterparts in the United States and other allies. “In the course of their daily work they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work, for example an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation but they’re extremely attractive,” he said. “So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and they show a co-worker. And their co-worker says: ‘Oh, hey, that’s great. Send that to Bill down the way.’ ” Mr. Snowden said that type of sharing ... was “seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions.” He said that this was never reported and that the system for auditing surveillance programs was “incredibly weak.” Mr. Snowden had particularly stark criticism for the British government’s surveillance programs, because in Britain the respect for individual privacy, he said, “is not strongly encoded in law or policy.” Because it has fewer restrictions, British intelligence platforms “are used as a testing ground” for programs of all five intelligence partners, a group referred to as “Five Eyes,” which includes Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.”

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing privacy news articles from reliable major media sources.

Even while the debate over whether cell phones cause cancer rages on, researchers are starting to explore other potentially harmful effects that the ubiquitous devices may have on our health. Because they emit low-level electromagnetic radiation (EMR), it’s possible that they can disturb normal cell functions and even sleep. And with male infertility on the rise, Fiona Mathews at the University of Exeter, in England, and her colleagues decided to investigate what role cell phones might play in that trend. In their new research, they analyzed 10 previous studies, seven of which involved the study of sperm motility, concentration and viability in the lab, and three that included male patients at fertility clinics. Overall, among the 1,492 samples, exposure-to-cell-phone EMR lowered sperm motility by 8%, and viability by 9%. Exactly how much the cell phones are contributing to lower-quality sperm isn’t clear yet — the researchers note that how long the phones are kept in pockets, as well as how much EMR the phones emit (most are legally required to stay below 2.0 W/kg) are also important things to consider when figuring out an individual’s risk. But the lab-dish studies do show that sperm are affected by the exposure, and that provides enough reason to investigate the possibility that cell phones may be contributing to lower-quality sperm and potentially some cases of infertility.

Note: Remember how for decades the tobacco industry claimed cigarettes caused no harm even while they were hiding studies which proved the opposite. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.

Within weeks of setting off a geiger counter and scrubbing three layers of skin off his hands and arms, former Navy quartermaster Maurice Enis recalled being pressured to sign away U.S. government liability for any future health problems. Enis and about 5,000 fellow sailors aboard the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier had finally left Japan, after 80-some days aiding victims of the March 11, 2011, Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, and were about to take a long-awaited port call in Thailand. But first, they were told they needed to fill out some paperwork. "They had us [to] sign off that we were medically fine, had no sickness, and that we couldn't sue the U.S. government," Enis [says], recalling widespread anger among the sailors who ... felt they had little choice. [On] the [second] anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, Enis joined a lawsuit with more than 100 other service members who participated in the rescue mission and who have since developed medical issues they contend are related to radioactive fallout from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Rather than targeting the U.S. government, the federal lawsuit names plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. the defendant. TEPCO, as the company is known, provided false information to U.S. officials about the extent of spreading radiation from its stricken reactors, according to Roger Witherspoon on his blog Energy Matters.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing nuclear power news articles from reliable major media sources.

The CIA is acknowledging for the first time the extent of its deep involvement in Chile, where it dealt with coup-plotters, false propagandists and assassins. The agency [released] a declassified report required by the U.S. Congress. Despite the disclosures, the CIA report admits to no abuses or cover-up by CIA agents. But it chronicles clandestine contacts authorized by then-U.S. President Richard Nixon and other top U.S. officials which it said would violate standards now upheld by the agency. Among the disclosures: The CIA had prior knowledge of the plot that overthrew Allende three years later. The CIA supported a kidnapping attempt of Chile's army chief in October 1970, as part of a plot to prevent the congressional confirmation of Allende as president. The kidnapping attempt failed, and Gen. Rene Schneider was shot and killed. The CIA later paid $35,000 to the kidnappers in what it termed "humanitarian" assistance. The CIA made a one-time payment to secret police head Gen. Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, the head of the military regime's feared secret police. He was sentenced in 1993 for killing Chilean socialist leader Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976. Contreras has said the CIA was behind the assassination. The report also describes efforts to influence news media in Chile against Allende and to continue anti-leftist propaganda efforts by successor Pinochet, "including support for news media committed to creating a positive image for the military Junta" now accused of an array of abuses during his 17-year rule, including more than 3,000 killings.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations news articles from reliable major media sources.

The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, “amplif[y]” sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be “extremist.” The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call. The tools were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG’s use of “fake victim blog posts,” “false flag operations,” “honey traps” and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users. A newly released top-secret GCHQ document called “JTRIG Tools and Techniques” provides a comprehensive, birds-eye view of just how underhanded and invasive this unit’s operations are. The document—available in full here—is designed to notify other GCHQ units of JTRIG’s “weaponised capability” when it comes to the dark internet arts, and serves as a sort of hacker’s buffet for wreaking online havoc.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations news articles from reliable major media sources.

The NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, has urged lawyers, journalists, doctors, accountants, priests and others with a duty to protect confidentiality to upgrade security in the wake of the spy surveillance revelations. Snowden said professionals were failing in their obligations to their clients, sources, patients and parishioners in what he described as a new and challenging world. "What last year's revelations showed us was irrefutable evidence that unencrypted communications on the internet are no longer safe. Any communications should be encrypted by default," he said. Snowden's plea for the professions to tighten security came during an extensive and revealing interview with the Guardian in Moscow. During the seven hours of interview, Snowden: • Said if he ended up in US detention in Guantánamo Bay he could live with it. • Does not have any regrets. • Said that ... he was independently secure, living on savings, and money from awards and speeches he has delivered online round the world. • Made a startling claim that a culture exists within the NSA in which, during surveillance, nude photographs picked up of people in "sexually compromising" situations are routinely passed around. He works online late into the night; a solitary, digital existence not that dissimilar to his earlier life. He said he was using part of that time to work on the new focus for his technical skills, designing encryption tools to help professionals such as journalists protect sources and data. He is negotiating foundation funding for the project, a contribution to addressing the problem of professions wanting to protect client or patient data, and in this case journalistic sources.

Note: Read the transcript of the Guardian's new interview of Edward Snowden. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government surveillance news articles from reliable major media sources.

[Phil Donahue:] I [have] produced ... an anti-Iraq War documentary. It’s titled “Body of War,” and it is available on Netflix. I’d very much like you to see the behavior of the [US] congressmen [in my film]. They were summoned to the White House by WHIG, White House Iraq Group. This is a Karl Rove committee that included the advertising warriors who named our invasion “Shock and Awe,” and “Rolling Thunder,” like video games. And they gave them their talking points: “A smoking gun will become a mushroom cloud”; “The longer we wait, the more dangerous he becomes”; “Saddam has more weapons of mass destruction than Hitler ever had”; “I see Hitler in Saddam Hussein.” And they read this, they’re looking down at the piece of paper, in what was at most a shell debate, that led to the deaths of over 4,500 service people, men and women both, not to mention how many injuries, we’re not even sure, we’re not even sure how many Iraqis are dead, and the refugees are in the millions. This is unbelievable. You’ve got to see this debate. It’s truly a very instructive piece on what you can do if you scare the people. George Bush took this nation, the mainstream media included, and led it right into this war. It was an amazingly executed, brilliantly executed, plan. The politics of fear. We haven’t won a war, and we’re spending $2 billion a day on things that go “boom.” We have become a warrior nation. We have no respect for diplomacy. We have to be tough, and we don’t talk to people we don’t like.

Note: Learn lots more about the politics of fear by watching online the BBC documentary Power of Nightmares. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post. [90% of] account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else. Many of them were Americans. [Many] files, described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained, have a startlingly intimate, even voyeuristic quality. They tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded nevertheless. The cache Snowden provided came from domestic NSA operations under the broad authority granted by Congress in 2008 with amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA content is generally stored in closely controlled data repositories, and for more than a year. The files offer an unprecedented vantage point on the changes wrought by Section 702 of the FISA amendments, which enabled the NSA to make freer use of methods that for 30 years had required probable cause and a warrant from a judge.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government surveillance news articles from reliable major media sources.

William Binney is one of the highest-level whistleblowers [to] emerge from the NSA. He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War but resigned soon after September 11, disgusted by Washington’s move towards mass surveillance. On 5 July he spoke at a conference in London organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism and revealed the extent of the surveillance programs unleashed by the Bush and Obama administrations. “At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US”, Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.” Binney ... described a future where surveillance is ubiquitous and government intrusion unlimited. “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control”, Binney said. He praised the revelations and bravery of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Unlike Snowden, Binney didn’t take any documents with him when he left the NSA. He now says that hard evidence of illegal spying would have been invaluable. The latest Snowden leaks, featured in the Washington Post, detail private conversations of average Americans with no connection to extremism. It shows that the NSA is not just pursuing terrorism, as it claims, but ordinary citizens going about their daily communications. “The NSA is mass-collecting on everyone”, Binney said, “and it’s said to be about terrorism but inside the US it has stopped zero attacks.”

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government surveillance news articles from reliable major media sources.

His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy office that looks after the agency’s historical files. It was there that Scudder discovered a stack of articles, hundreds of histories of long-dormant conflicts and operations that he concluded were still being stored in secret years after they should have been shared with the public. To get them released, Scudder submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act — a step that any citizen can take, but one that is highly unusual for a CIA employee. Four years later, the CIA has released some of those articles and withheld others. It also has forced Scudder out. His request set in motion a harrowing sequence. He was confronted by supervisors and accused of mishandling classified information while assembling his FOIA request. His house was raided by the FBI and his family’s computers seized. Stripped of his job and his security clearance, Scudder said he agreed to retire last year after being told that if he refused, he risked losing much of his pension. “I submitted a FOIA and it basically destroyed my entire career,” Scudder said. Scudder’s case .. highlights the risks to workers who take on their powerful spy-agency employers. Scudder’s actions appear to have posed no perceptible risk to national security, but he found himself in the cross hairs of the CIA and FBI.

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

A former cabinet minister has said there "may well have been" a political cover-up of child sex abuse in the 1980s. Lord Tebbit told the Andrew Marr Show the culture at the time was to protect "the establishment" rather than delving "too far" into such claims. His comments come after it emerged that the Home Office could not locate 114 potentially relevant files. Current MP Keith Vaz said files had been lost "on an industrial scale". The government has rejected calls for an over-arching public inquiry into the various allegations of child abuse from that era. Lord Tebbit, who served in various ministerial roles under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, said at the time people had an "almost unconscious" tendency to protect "the system". "And if a few things had gone wrong here and there that it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into them," he said. "That view was wrong." Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, said there had been a "veil of secrecy over the establishment" for far too long. The Home Office's 2013 review found 527 potentially relevant files which it had kept, but a further 114 were missing, destroyed or "not found". Mr Vaz, chair of the Home Affairs Committee, said this represented loss of files "on an industrial scale" and it was "a huge surprise" that so much potential evidence had gone missing.

Note: The truth is gradually coming out. To learn how child sex abuse rings lead to the highest levels of government, watch this highly revealing Discovery Channel documentary.

[The] horrors of the Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal that saw the BBC accused of cover up and culture of secrecy to protect itself, ... opened the door on a potentially even more explosive scandal – the claims of a VIP Westminster paedophile ring operating from the heart of the British Establishment from the 1960s onwards. It has led to allegations of a massive cover up across Whitehall spanning decades, pressure on the police and prosecutors not to pursue cases and the apparent disappearance of key dossiers and files detailing claims of child abuse and alleged attackers. The story begins with Cyril Smith, the late Liberal Democrat MP, who was exposed as an alleged paedophile in 2012, two years after his death, aged 82. As early as the 1960s, he allegedly routinely assaulted young boys, especially in children’s homes and special schools in his home town, where he was MP from 1972 to 1992. He was also said to have been a visitor to the notorious Elm Guest house in South-west London, now the focus of a Scotland Yard investigation into an alleged VIP paedophile ring. Smith was only one of a number of alleged high profile child abusers within Westminster said to have been named in a 40-page dossier submitted to the Home Office by the late campaigning Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens in 1983. Mr Dickens told his family at the time that it named leading public figures, including senior politicians, and was going to “blow it all apart”. But the time bomb never exploded.

Note: The truth is slowly coming out. To learn how child sex abuse rings lead to the highest levels of government, watch this highly revealing Discovery Channel documentary. If you want to know more about cults involved in sexual abuse, read a professor's speech and a survivor's account.

The home of an MP who compiled a dossier alleging paedophile activity within Westminster was burgled twice in suspicious circumstances around the time he took it to the authorities, his son has said. Barry Dickens said nothing was taken in what appeared to be two "very professional" intrusions into his father Geoffrey's home in 1983, leading to suspicions they may have been related to his attempt to expose alleged abuse. He said he did not know what had happened to an apparent second copy of the dossier after the Home Office admitted one which it received for investigation at the time appeared to have been destroyed. "My parents had two burglaries at the time close to it without anything being taken, which seemed a very professional job the way they were carried out," Mr Dickens – whose father died in 1995 – [said]. He said the dossier contained concerns and worries expressed to the MP about the behaviour of ''those with a high profile, in an office or high status'' and questioned its subsequent disappearance. He said his father had been motivated to take on the cause of vulnerable young people by his own difficult childhood in a succession of foster homes and that he would be pleased that the case had become public now. Backing a public inquiry, [he] added: "A lot of people came forward with facts. I think it does need doing and finishing."

Note: See powerful evidence from a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse scandals reach to the highest levels of government

Lady Butler-Sloss, the retired high court judge appointed as chair of the inquiry panel examining child abuse, faced a backlash on [July 9] as Labour MPs and a victims' lawyer called on her to stand down over conflict of interest. Critics pointed out that her brother, the late Lord Havers, was attorney general from 1979 to 1987 when some of the controversy over the failure to prosecute child abuse cases could have arisen. Havers, who later served briefly as lord chancellor, backed the decision of the director of public prosecutions not to prosecute Sir Peter Hayman, a diplomat and subscriber to the Paedophile Information Exchange. Hayman was caught sending paedophile literature through the post but was not prosecuted. Alison Millar, a lawyer ... who is representing some of the victims of child abuse, [told] BBC Radio 4: "Baroness Butler-Sloss ... has very close connections to the very establishment this inquiry will be investigating – namely her brother. Picking someone who will be seen at the start potentially by survivors as someone who is very much of the establishment, linked to the establishment at the time, is not going to give people any confidence to come forward and be frank and fearless in front of this inquiry." Butler-Sloss, 80, was appointed on [July 7] by the home secretary, Theresa May, to chair the panel of enquiry that will examine handling of child abuse allegations by public institutions.

Note: For more on this, see this Daily Mail article.

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.