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.

1. Cost of the Manhattan Project (through August 1945): $20,000,000,000. 2. Total number of nuclear missiles built, 1951-present: 67,500. 3. Estimated construction costs for more than 1,000 ICBM launch pads and silos, and support facilities, from 1957-1964: nearly $14,000,000,000. 4. Total number of nuclear bombers built, 1945-present: 4,680. 5. Peak number of nuclear warheads and bombs in the stockpile/year: 32,193/1966 6. Total number and types of nuclear warheads and bombs built, 1945-1990: more than 70,000/65 types 7. Number currently in the stockpile (2002): 10,600 (7,982 deployed, 2,700 hedge/contingency stockpile) 8. Number of nuclear warheads requested by the Army in 1956 and 1957: 151,000 9. Projected operational U.S. strategic nuclear warheads and bombs after full enactment of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty in 2012: 1,700-2,200 10. Additional strategic and non-strategic warheads not limited by the treaty that the U.S. military wants to retain as a "hedge" against unforeseen future threats: 4,900

Note: The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project was completed in August 1998 and resulted in the book Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 edited by Stephen I. Schwartz. To understand how these huge amounts of money affect our world, see what a top US general had to say about what he learned at this link.

The Ministry of Defence will destroy all future UFO reports it receives so it does not have to make them public, a previously secret memo reveals. Britain's official UFO investigation unit and hotline were closed down at the start of December. Since then reports of strange sights in the skies sent to the MoD have been kept for 30 days before being thrown out, the newly released policy document shows. This stance was adopted so defence officials would not have to publish the information in response to freedom of information (FoI) requests or pass it to the National Archives. The MoD recorded 634 UFO sightings in 2009, the second highest annual total after 1978, when there were 750, according to UFO expert Dr David Clarke. This compares with an average of about 150 reports a year over the past decade. The document includes as an annex a printout from the US Department of Defence website explaining that the American government stopped collecting reports of UFO sightings in December 1969.

Note: For a concise summary of key testimony on UFO sightings by highly-credible government and military officials, click here. For astonishing media reports revealing the existence of UFOs, click here.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, suggested [that] the organization might one day be called on to provide countries with a global reserve currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar. "That day has not yet come, but I think it is intellectually healthy to explore these kinds of ideas now," he said in a speech on the future mandate of the 186-nation Washington-based lending organization. Strauss-Kahn said such an asset could be similar to but distinctly different from the IMF's special drawing rights, or SDRs, the accounting unit that countries use to hold funds within the IMF. It is based on a basket of major currencies. He said having other alternatives to the dollar "would limit the extent to which the international monetary system as a whole depends on the policies and conditions of a single, albeit dominant, country." Several countries, including China and Russia, have called for an alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency.

Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities behind the world financial and economic crisis, click here.

President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation's main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act. Provisions in the measure would have expired on [February 28] without Obama's signature [the day before]. The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government's ability to monitor Americans in the name of national security. Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will: -- Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones. -- Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations. -- Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group. Obama's signature comes after the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to extend the measure. The Senate also approved the measure, with privacy protections cast aside. Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government's authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

Note: Remember that the PATRIOT Act was passed by Congress immediately after weaponized anthrax attacks on two key senators opposed to the legislation, a crime that the FBI has closed the books on without solving. Congress continues to support the Act despite its widespread unpopularity with the US public. Why? For lots more from major media sources on the increasing government threats to civil liberties, click here.

The introduction of a genetically modified potato in Europe risks the development of human diseases that fail to respond to antibiotics, it [has been claimed]. German chemical giant BASF this week won approval from the European Commission for commercial growing of a starchy potato with a gene that could resist antibiotics – useful in the fight against illnesses such as tuberculosis. Farms in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic may plant the potato for industrial use, with part of the tuber fed to cattle, according to BASF, which fought a 13-year battle to win approval for Amflora. But other EU member states, including Italy and Austria and anti-GM campaigners angrily attacked the move, claiming it could result in a health disaster. During the regulatory tussle over the potato, the EU's pharmaceutical regulator had expressed concern about its potential to interfere with the efficacy of antibiotics on infections that develop multiple resistance to other antibiotics, a growing problem in human and veterinary medicine. Drug resistance is part of the explanation for the resurgence of TB, which infects eight million people worldwide every year.

Note: For an excellent summary of the threats to health from genetically-modified foods, click here.

Six years after the intense fighting began in the Iraqi town of Fallujah between US forces and Sunni insurgents, there is a disturbingly large number of cases of birth defects in the town. Fallujah is less than 40 miles (65km) from Baghdad, but it can still be dangerous to get to. As a result, there has been no authoritative medical investigation, certainly by any Western team, into the allegations that the weapons used by the Americans are still causing serious problems. The Iraqi government line is that there are only one or two extra cases of birth defects per year in Fallujah, compared with the national average. But in the ... Fallujah General Hospital ... we found a paediatric specialist, Dr Samira al-Ani, who told us that she saw two or three new cases every day. Most of them, she said, exhibited cardiac problems. The specialist, like other medical staff at the hospital, seemed nervous about talking too openly about the problem. But it is impossible, as a visitor, not to be struck by the terrible number of cases of birth defects there. We heard many times that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children. We went to a clinic for the disabled, and were given details of dozens upon dozens of cases of children with serious birth defects.

Note: There is strong evidence that the US military was experimenting with dangerous weapons like white phosphorus in Fallujah. For more on this, click here.

Flying Toblerones, mysterious illnesses and silky-white substances are among hundreds of close encounters described in previously top-secret files released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). More than 6,000 pages of material spanning from 1994 to 2000 holds hundreds of other-worldly experiences with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and apparent aliens across Britain. Aircraft of all shapes and sizes have been witnessed flying over a wide range of locations. One man told police he was physically sick and developed a ''skin condition'' after an eerie ''tube of light'' enveloped his car in Ebbw Vale, in Wales, at 10.40pm on January 27 1997. Other highlights include: -- A man arrived at his Birmingham home at 4am on March 20, 1997, to discover an illuminated blue triangle hovering over his garden. The craft shot off leaving behind a ''silky-white'' substance on the tree-tops, which he collected in a jam-jar. -- A UFO sighted by Boston and Skegness police, in Lincolnshire, was captured on film. The police reported the sighting to the coastguard, who in turn alerted ships in North Sea - where a crew saw more UFOs. -- A letter from senior MoD official Ralph Noyes in which he describes seeing a film of UFOs captured by RAF fighter pilots in 1956. Mr Noyes claims the footage was shown at a secret underground screening arranged for Air Defence staff at the MoD Main Building in 1970.

Note: For a concise summary of key testimony on UFO sightings by highly-credible government and military officials, click here. For astonishing media reports revealing the existence of UFOs, click here. And for an excellent database compiled by a British police officer of intriguing UFO sightings reported by police, click here.

An herbicide that contaminates the tap water consumed by millions of Americans has been found to produce gender-bending effects in male frogs, "chemically castrating" some and turning others into females, a study shows. Frogs in the experiment were exposed to amounts of the weedkiller atrazine that are comparable to the levels allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency, says lead researcher Tyrone Hayes of the University of California-Berkeley. In Hayes' earlier studies, atrazine caused male frogs to begin growing eggs in their testes. In this experiment, 10% of the males exposed to atrazine — one of the most commonly used herbicide in the world — actually changed sex; some were able to breed and lay eggs. Nearly all of the other males had low testosterone and sperm levels, which made them unable to reproduce, Hayes says. The experiment [raises] new questions about the safety of atrazine, which other studies have linked to human birth defects, low birth weight, prematurity and low sperm count. About 75% of stream water samples and 40% of groundwater samples contain atrazine, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, detected atrazine in 90% of tap water samples from 139 water systems. The European Union has banned the chemical.

Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on important health issues, click here.

An internal Republican National Committee fundraising presentation obtained by Ben Smith at Politico proposes that GOP fundraisers shake the money tree by motivating donors based on "fear" of President Obama. The document also uses the controversial image of the president made up like Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight. Part of the presentation included a slideshow explaining “RNC Marketing 101," suggesting that direct marketing is based on “Visceral Giving” in which donors can be motivated by “fear,” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration” and “Reactionary.” Asks another slide: "What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate ...?" The answer is "Save the country from trending toward Socialism!” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse [says] "The express strategy of the Republican party is not to offer new ideas, but ‘fear.’ Republicans can no longer deny that they are peddling fear when they are literally selling it as their path back to power."

Note: The Democratic party also has made ample use of fear, particularly under the Bush administration. For a powerfully insightful essay which describes how various factions of the power elite use fear and more to manipulate the public and what we can do about it, click here.

Few politicians stray from pledging absolute fidelity to strong U.S.-Israel relations. But former South Bay Rep. Tom Campbell has come under fire for accepting $1,300 in contributions during his 2000 Senate campaign from a former Florida professor. The professor, Sami Al-Arian, pleaded guilty in 2006 to conspiring to help a terrorist organization, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian had not been charged with a crime when he made the donation. Campbell's rivals in the race to face Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in November - Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina - hope to use his links with the professor to gain ground on Campbell, who has high name recognition and leads most polls. Campbell [has] stood behind his opinion that the United States should support Palestinians and Israel should they agree to share Jerusalem as a capital city.

Note: How rare it is that the media will actually state the obvious, that if top politicians don't support Israel, they rarely get elected? Why is this? And why is it that everyone knows Israel has nuclear bombs, yet officially Israel refused to acknowledge this and it is almost never talked about?

It's time to reflect on the immense powers Americans have ceded to the government and [the] potential for abuse by federal, state and local authorities. The global Internet and telecommunications infrastructure provides massive information on almost ... every person on the planet. One power truly stands out --- the all-encompassing reach and technological capabilities of the US National Security Agency. If you want to be secure, don't use a phone, a computer, credit card or any other technologically linked system because it guarantees that Big Brother will find you. Big Brother is not just the government. Most consumer "spying" comes from subpoenas and requests from non-terrorist-related federal, state, local agency requests and non-governmental private litigation and discovery. Simply put, a subpoena issued by a court in support of private litigation and discovery may have the same impact on an individual as the full force of the NSA. What information is typically requested from a company by say a plaintiff's lawyer during some discovery phase? Well, it's everything. In fact, it's generally a fishing expedition for every log file, every uploaded video, photo, chat session and anything else they can get their hands on.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on the continuing development of a global society under Big Brother's constant gaze, click here.

To some criminal-justice experts the violence that erupted [at a prison] located about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, was an inevitable consequence of a state prison system long hobbled by massive overcrowding, program cuts and understaffed facilities. And given the state's ongoing budget woes — with $1.2 billion in cuts mandated to the prison budget — the situation is likely to only get worse. "Overcrowding is the first issue," says Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. "You're talking about hundreds of men moved into triple bunks in what used to be gyms and cafeterias. They're not even cells. They're just empty places where we're shoving people." In addition to overcrowding, the state's corrections efforts are the nation's most expensive — and one of the least effective. The state spends $10 billion annually, or $49,000 per inmate for a year in custody, according to statistics from the nonpartisan policy-advising group Legislative Analyst's Office. Yet, California's recidivism rate is 70%, one of the worst in the country.

Note: At $49,000 per year per inmate, do you think there might be a better way to rehabilitate these people?

Thousands of UFOs have been spotted in the last 20 years around the UK, according to newly released documents. More than 6,000 pages of reports describe people's experiences with unidentified flying objects between 1994 and 2000. Details have been released under a three-year project between the Ministry of Defence and The National Archives. The reports detail how objects of various shapes and sizes have been witnessed flying over a range of locations. Some drawings by witnesses have also been released. Included in the latest release is a letter from senior MoD official Ralph Noyes, in which he describes seeing a film of UFOs captured by RAF fighter pilots in 1956. Mr Noyes claims the footage was shown at a secret underground screening arranged for air defence staff at the MoD in 1970. Experts believe the records highlight how shapes of reported UFOs have changed over the last few decades. Many reports in this latest file describe aircraft as big, black and triangular in shape with lights along the edges, whereas the predominant form in the 1940s to 1950s was saucer or disc-shaped. The files are available to download for free for a month from the National Archives website.

Note: For a concise summary of key testimony on UFO sightings by highly-credible government and military officials, click here. For astonishing media reports revealing the existence of UFOs, click here.

Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin. Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American International Group, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers. These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company or, in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit. “It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house — you create an incentive to burn down the house,” said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich. As Greece’s financial condition has worsened, undermining the euro, the role of Goldman Sachs and other major banks in masking the true extent of the country’s problems has drawn criticism from European leaders. But even before that issue became apparent, a little-known company backed by Goldman, JP Morgan Chase and about a dozen other banks had created an index that enabled market players to bet on whether Greece and other European nations would go bust.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the realities of the global financial crisis, click here.

A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center. "In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards," says Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Mr. Gage, who is a member of the American Institute of Architects, managed to persuade more than 1,000 of his peers to sign a new petition requesting a formal inquiry. "The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction. We are therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials," Mr. Gage adds. "The implications are enormous."

Note: To read statements questionig the official account of the events of 9/11 by hundreds of professors, government officials and professionals, click here and here. For our 9/11 Information Center, click here.

Law enforcement is tracking Americans' cell phones in real time—without the benefit of a warrant. Amid all the furor over the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program a few years ago, a mini-revolt was brewing over another type of federal snooping that was getting no public attention at all. Federal prosecutors were seeking what seemed to be unusually sensitive records: internal data from telecommunications companies that showed the locations of their customers' cell phones—sometimes in real time, sometimes after the fact. Prosecutors "were using the cell phone as a surreptitious tracking device," said Stephen W. Smith, a federal magistrate in Houston. "And I started asking the U.S. Attorney's Office, 'What is the legal authority for this? What is the legal standard for getting this information?'" Those questions are now at the core of a constitutional clash between President Obama's Justice Department and civil libertarians alarmed by what they see as the government's relentless intrusion into the private lives of citizens. There are numerous other fronts in the privacy wars—about the content of e-mails, for instance, and access to bank records and credit-card transactions. The Feds now can quietly get all that information. But cell-phone tracking is among the more unsettling forms of government surveillance, conjuring up Orwellian images of Big Brother secretly following your movements through the small device in your pocket.

Note: For many key reports from major media sources on the disturbing trend toward increasing government and corporate surveillance, click here.

Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security company of defrauding the government for years by filing bogus receipts, double billing for the same services and charging government agencies for strippers and prostitutes, according to court documents unsealed this week. In a December 2008 lawsuit, the former employees said top Blackwater officials had engaged in a pattern of deception as they carried out government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The lawsuit, filed under the False Claims Act, also asserts that Blackwater officials turned a blind eye to “excessive and unjustified” force against Iraqi civilians by several Blackwater guards. Blackwater has earned billions of dollars from government agencies in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, when the company won contracts to protect American diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan. The former employees who filed the lawsuit, a married couple named Brad and Melan Davis, said there was little financial oversight of the money. The documents detailing the Davises’ accusations were unsealed after the Justice Department declined to join in the case against Blackwater, which last year changed its name to Xe Services.

Note: For lots more on corporate fraud and war profiteering from reliable sources, click here.

In 2009, the Justice Department began to release reports and top-secret memos detailing interrogation techniques ... used by CIA officers against suspected terror operatives. The list of brutal techniques, including holding prisoners in small boxes, staging mock executions, and water torture, is reminiscent of some of the worst human-rights abuses on record. In medieval Europe, torture was more than just a means of punishment. Many criminal trials of the era consisted of one or more 'ordeals,' painful tests designed to prove guilt or innocence through supernatural judgment. During waterboarding, a technique first used in the 14th century, torturers begin by pumping water directly into a victim's stomach or slowly flooding his throat with liquid. Used extensively during the Spanish Inquisition, the practice became less publicly acceptable during the Enlightenment, then experienced an underground resurgence in the 19th century. Since World War II, different forms of waterboarding have been employed by governments in Japan, Cambodia, the United Kingdom and the United States, among others. In addition to performing forced labor, prisoners at Nazi concentration camps became subjects in some of the cruelest medical experiments ever performed. They were often held at extreme altitudes and temperatures to help develop new survival strategies or exposed to deadly gases and diseases in order to test vaccines. Many of these tests, directed by the infamous Josef Mengele at Auschwitz, advanced Nazi ideology by establishing 'Jewish racial inferiority.'

Note: The above link leads to a revealing 12-part slide show on the history of torture. For more disturbing information on how Nazi torture techniques were eventually used by the CIA for mind control, click here.

An influential lobby group is asking the US government to basically consider open source as the equivalent of piracy - or even worse. It turns out that the International Intellectual Property Alliance ... has requested with the US Trade Representative to consider countries like Indonesia, Brazil and India for its "Special 301 watchlist" because they use open source software. What's Special 301? It's a report that examines the "adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights" around the planet - effectively the list of countries that the US government considers enemies of capitalism. It often gets wheeled out as a form of trading pressure - often around pharmaceuticals and counterfeited goods - to try and force governments to change their behaviours. Most FOSS [Free Open Source Software] isn't state-owned: it just takes price elasticity to its logical conclusion and uses free as a stick to beat its competitors with (would you ever accuse Google, which gives its main product away for free, of being anti-capitalist?). Governments don't even need to pass legislation. Even a recommendation can be enough. Last year the Indonesian government sent around a circular to all government departments and state-owned businesses, pushing them towards open source. But the IIPA suggested that Indonesia deserves Special 301 status because encouraging (not forcing) such takeup "weakens the software industry" and "fails to build respect for intellectual property rights."

A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll. Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey ... say they think the federal government [has] become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans. According to CNN poll numbers [just released] Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken.

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.