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.

In a country that spends so much time extolling the glories of democracy, it's amazing how many elected officials go out of their way to discourage voting. States are adopting rules that make it hard, and financially perilous, for nonpartisan groups to register new voters. Florida recently reached a new low when it actually bullied the League of Women Voters into stopping its voter registration efforts in the state. The Legislature did this by adopting a law that seems intended to scare away anyone who wants to run a voter registration drive. Since registration drives are particularly important for bringing poor people, minority groups and less educated voters into the process, the law appears to be designed to keep such people from voting. In Washington, a new law prevents people from voting if the secretary of state fails to match the information on their registration form with government databases. There are many reasons that names, Social Security numbers and other data may not match, including typing mistakes. The state is supposed to contact people whose data does not match, but the process is too tilted against voters. Colorado recently imposed criminal penalties on volunteers who slip up in registration drives. Protecting the integrity of voting is important, but many of these rules seem motivated by a partisan desire to suppress the vote, and particular kinds of voters, rather than to make sure that those who are entitled to vote [can] do so.

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products. Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced...by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items. The FCC has declined to comment on the investigation but investigators from the commission's enforcement unit recently approached Ms Farsetta for a copy of her group's report. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items. The FCC was urged to act by a lobbying campaign organised by Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy. More than 25,000 people [have] written to the FCC about the VNRs.

A working paper by John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, called "The Israel Lobby" was printed in the London Review of Books...and all hell broke loose. For having the sheer effrontery to point out the painfully obvious -- that there is an Israel lobby in the United States -- Mearsheimer and Walt have been accused of being anti-Semitic, nutty and guilty of "kooky academic work." Of course there is an Israeli lobby in America. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)...calls itself "America's Pro-Israel Lobby." In the United States, we do not have...full-throttle debate about Israel. Jews who criticize Israel are charmingly labeled "self-hating Jews." As I have often pointed out, that must mean there are a lot of self-hating Israelis, because those folks raise hell over their own government's policies all the time. It's...the vehemence of the attacks on anyone perceived as criticizing Israel that makes them so odious. Israel is the No. 1 recipient of American foreign aid, and it seems an easy case can be made that the United States has subjugated its own interests to those of Israel. Whether you agree or not, it is a discussion well worth having and one that should not be shut down before it can start by unfair accusations of "anti-Semitism."

Note In this article, Molly Ivans acknowledges that she is a pro-Israel Jew who believes we need to talk about the powerful influence of the Jewish lobby on American government. For information on how Harvard distanced itself from the above paper: http://www.nysun.com/article/29638. For the mixed reaction to this academic paper in Israel: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0324/dailyUpdate.html

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here to swear in Dr. Gregg Rickman as our Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism. Greg is going to serve as our first Anti-Semitism Special Envoy and this is a position that was created by the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. I want to recognize the seminal role of Congress in creating this position. President Bush has said that defending freedom also means disrupting the evil of anti-Semitism. Today ethnic and religious differences are still viewed by some as a license to kill. And we are reminded of the sad history of humankind when prejudice and hatred turn violent against those who are simply different.

Note: Why not have a special envoy for monitoring and combating racism and prejudice?

JOURNALISTS. Our attorney general is coming for us. On Sunday, Alberto Gonzales told ABC's "This Week" that he would consider prosecuting reporters who get their hands on classified information and break news about President Bush's terrorist surveillance program. "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility. We have an obligation to enforce those laws." Asked...if The New York Times should be prosecuted for its initial story on government surveillance without warrants, Gonzales said, "We are engaged now in an investigation about what would be the appropriate course of action." This is the same administration that...has already set the presidential record in claiming the authority to circumvent the law in more than 750 cases. Gonzales...issued the infamous "torture memo" that advised President Bush to throw the Geneva Convention into the trash can for detainees in the war on terror. Gonzales...helped the administration block and drag its feet on the release of presidential papers from Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Gonzales helped to withhold or delay highly classified documents from the president's own 9/11 Commission and from...the energy task force of Vice President Dick Cheney. The actions of Gonzales show how little the Bush administration promotes the rights of the press. With every pronouncement, freedom is disappearing, in incremental steps.

Fannie Mae, the mortgage giant accused of inflating its earnings while rewarding executives with rich bonuses, reached an agreement with the federal government today to pay a $400 million fine. Accusing former Fannie Mae executives of operating an "arrogant and unethical" corporate culture, federal regulators condemned the company in a report today that detailed a pattern of systematic financial manipulation at the company's highest levels. "Senior management manipulated accounting; reaped maximum, undeserved bonuses; and prevented the rest of the world from knowing." Fannie Mae's financial results during that time were "illusions deliberately and systematically created by senior management. Senior executives worked strenuously to hide Fannie Mae's operational deficiencies, significant risk exposures, and improper earnings management" the report said. As part of the settlement, Fannie Mae neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. Because of Fannie Mae's sheer size and reach into the American economy, however, there are limits to how much the company's clout could be curtailed, [said] Jonathan Koppell, a professor of politics and management at Yale. "Their business reaches into every Congressional district," he said. Fannie Mae's $400 million settlement is more than three and a half times the fine Freddie Mac, its smaller rival in the mortgage business, paid in 2003.

Note: Catherine Austin Fitts served as an assistant secretary of HUD in the first Bush Administration. As a woman of high integrity, she tried to blow the whistle on the major shady dealings at Fannie Mae and HUD, and suffered for it. She now manages a highly inspiring organization dedicated to powerful, positive economic and social change. I highly recommend exploring her Solari website at http://www.solari.com

The [9/11] commission's conclusions and recommendations should be totally rejected. Its story is full of lies, distortions and omissions of fact. Following are two of the more than 40 reasons why the official story about what happened on 9/11 is untrue. First, who were the hijackers? None of those named appear on any of the passenger lists released by the airlines. Six of the men named by the government are still alive. We know that because European media have interviewed them. In his book, "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," Dr. David Ray Griffin documents all that and concludes the whole report is one long lie. Second, in the months after 9/11 all of the surviving New York City Fire Department personnel who were on the scene were interviewed. Those oral histories were recorded and withheld from the public until Aug. 15, 2005. Only after losing in court three times did the city of New York finally release them. All 503 are now posted on The New York Times Web site. Why did the city fight so hard to keep them from the public? It turns out those oral histories reveal details about what was happening in the World Trade Center buildings that are completely inconsistent with the tale told by the commission. Dozens of firefighters and medics reported hearing, seeing and feeling explosives going off in the buildings that collapsed. Why were there explosives, very powerful explosives by all accounts, going off in the buildings? The report seems to be an obvious cover-up. The question that we all need to ask is: What is the commission covering up? Was 9/11, in fact, an inside job?

MI5 is being accused of a cover-up for failing to disclose to a parliamentary watchdog that it bugged the leader of the July 7 suicide bombers discussing the building of a bomb months before the London attacks. MI5 had secret tape recordings of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the gang leader, talking about how to build the device and then leave the country because there would be a lot of police activity. However, despite the recordings, MI5 allowed him to escape the net. Transcripts of the tapes were never shown to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC), which investigated the attacks. The new evidence shows MI5 monitored Khan when he met suspects allegedly planning another, separate attack; that he had knowledge of the "late-stage discussions" of this plot; and that he was recorded having discussions with them about making a bomb and leaving the country. The disclosures will increase pressure for a public inquiry into the atrocity, with greater powers to demand evidence and interrogate witnesses.

The home and office of Kyle Foggo, who stepped down on Monday as the Central Intelligence Agency's No. 3 official, were searched today. Mr. Foggo resigned after becoming entangled in a widening investigation that has already brought down former Representative Randy Cunningham. Mr. Foggo's workplace in Langley, Va., and his residence in Virginia were searched this morning by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the C.I.A. inspector general's office. April Langwell, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I.'s San Diego office, said Mr. Foggo had been under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service of the Defense Department's inspector general's office, as well as by the C.I.A.'s inspector general and the F.B.I. The inquiry by the C.I.A.'s inspector is examining whether he improperly awarded agency contracts to a longtime friend, Brent R. Wilkes, a military contractor whose companies have received nearly $100 million in government contracts over the years. Mr. Foggo, 51, has admitted attending poker parties throughout the 1990's that Mr. Wilkes held in a suite at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. The parties were primarily attended by C.I.A. officials and congressmen, and Mr. Cunningham, a California Republican, occasionally attended. Several news media accounts have reported that prostitutes frequented the parties.

Note: This article has huge significance. Until just a few years ago, there was a virtual blackout in the media on any negative coverage of the CIA. The fact that the Feds raided the home of the #3 man in the CIA and it was reported in top newspapers is an external manifestation of huge shake-ups going on behind the scenes. Buzzy Krongard, the previous #3 at the CIA has been linked to the millions of dollars in suspicious stock option trades made just prior to 9/11 that were never claimed, though this received little media coverage.

Is there a case for conspiracy theories about 9/11 and the Iraq war? About 10 minutes into the ultra-low-budget documentary 'Loose Change,' now making its way around the Internet, that late, great genius of addled truth-telling, Hunter S. Thompson, is heard giving his gonzo opinion of the way the American press behaved after 9/11. "Well, let's see, 'shamefully' is the word that comes to mind," he says. The kernel of truth in all the conspiracy theories is that the Bush administration's biggest supporters and closest political allies have benefited mightily from its policy of open-ended war. Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old company -- which is all about both oil and defense -- has seen its stock rise from about $12 a share to about $80 a share under this administration. ExxonMobil, which has contributed mightily to the Republican Party, has seen its stock soar from about $32 to $64 since Bush took office. Share prices in both companies, and in their industries, were plunging before the Bush administration came to office in early 2001. 'Loose Change' doesn't present a plausible case for conspiracy, only a collection of innuendoes. But the invasion of Iraq, well, that's a rather different matter. As a whole raft of books by former members of the administration, Bush admirers and outside analysts have established over the last couple of years, the president and vice president were hell-bent on toppling Saddam Hussein even before September 2001.

Note: Though the author belittles 'Loose Change,' he also makes some great points and alerts people to the fact that this free documentary has gained wide popularity.

The Defense Department's accounting practices are in such disarray that defense officials can't track how much equipment the military owns, where it all is or exactly how they spend defense dollars every year. The report by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities called the Pentagon's financial-management practices an embarrassment. "Today, if the Defense Department were a private business it would be involved in a major scandal," said Kwai Chan, a former top official with the Government Accountability Office and the report's author. The nonpartisan group, made up of more than 600 current and retired business executives from U.S. companies, thinks that federal spending priorities are undermining national security. A report this year from the White House's Office of Management and Budget found that 20 out of 23 defense programs that auditors looked at...didn't use strong financial-management practices. In reports to Congress in recent years, the GAO found $100 million that could be collected annually from defense contractors who underpaid federal taxes. The federal government had collected less than 1 percent of that. $1.2 billion in Army supplies shipped to Iraq [also] couldn't be accounted for. As a result, military units ended up short on "tires, tank tracks, helicopter spare parts, radio batteries and other basic items." The Defense Department's Office of the Inspector General has pronounced the department "un-auditable."

Note: The article failed to mention Rumsfeld's own admission "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," as reported on CBS. The CBS article goes on to state that "[the Pentagon's] own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends." See this highly underreported article at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet. For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people's conversations around the world. "I specialized in what's called special access programs," Tice said of his job. "We called them 'black world' programs and operations." But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret "black world" operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA. Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call...and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use. President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants. But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions. The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers.

Note: For many years, both the U.S. and U.K. denied the existence of Echelon, which according to the BBC article below is a "spying network that can eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/503224.stm

Congressional Republicans and Democrats demanded answers from the Bush administration Thursday about a government spy agency secretly collecting records of ordinary Americans' phone calls to build a database of every call made within the country. This database affects as many as 200 million Americans. AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., and BellSouth Corp. telephone companies began turning over records of tens of millions of their customers' phone calls to the NSA program shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 'We have reached a privacy crisis,' said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-MA, the ranking Democrat on the House Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee. 'The N.S.A. stands for Now Spying on Americans.' Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News Channel: "The idea of collecting millions or thousands of phone numbers, how does that fit into following the enemy?" The Justice Department has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the NSA refused to grant its lawyers the necessary security clearance. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility [said] they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program.

Note: Who gave the NSA power to stop the Justice Department from performing an inquiry?

The Pentagon has secretly shipped tens of thousands of small arms from Bosnia to Iraq in the past two years, using a web of private companies, at least one of which is a noted arms smuggler blacklisted by Washington and the UN. The US government arranged for the delivery of at least 200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq in 2004-05. But though the weaponry was said to be for arming the fledgling Iraqi military, there is no evidence of the guns reaching their recipient. The command force in Iraq...and the overseeing US general, had claimed "not to have ... received any weapons from Bosnia." A Nato official.. told Amnesty: "There is no tracking mechanism to ensure they do not fall into the wrong hands." The Moldovan air firm which flew the cargo out of a US air base at Tuzla, north-east Bosnia, was flying without a licence. The firm, Aerocom, [was] named in a 2003 UN investigation of the diamonds-for-guns trade in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Some of the firms used in the Pentagon sponsored deals were also engaged in illegal arms shipments from Serbia and Bosnia to Liberia and to Saddam Hussein four years ago. The Pentagon commissioned the US security firms Taos and CACI - which is known for its involvement in the Abu Ghraib prison controversy in Iraq - to orchestrate the arms purchases and shipments.

A bold and controversial law that shuts down bars and restaurants after 11 p.m. has turned Diadema, one of Brazil's most violent cities, into an urban model. The law has cut homicides by nearly half and has slashed other crimes by as much as 80 percent after forcing nearly all of the city's 4,800 bars and restaurants in 2002 to stop selling alcohol between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Since then, the homicide rate has dropped by 47 percent, traffic accidents by 30 percent, assaults against women by 55 percent, and alcohol-related hospital admissions by 80 percent. "Diadema had a large homicide rate, and we estimated that based on the data they gave us, the intervention prevented about 270 homicides over a three-year period," said Joel Grube...director of prevention research. The law's success has municipalities across Brazil adopting similar measures. At least 120 towns and cities have restricted the hours in which alcohol can be served, and the federal government now offers additional funds for law enforcement to localities that implement such measures. With little federal control over alcohol sales or consumption, closing bars in troubled areas is an effective way to cut alcohol-related problems, said Ronaldo Laranjeira, a Sao Paulo physician who led the joint Brazil-U.S. study of homicide rates in Diadema after the law took effect. "They made a relatively modest intervention that doesn't really cost any money, and they got these dramatic improvements."

Congress wants to change the Internet. This is news to most people because the major news media have not actively pursued the story. Both the House and Senate commerce committees are promoting new rules governing the manner by which most Americans receive the Web. Congressional passage of new rules is widely anticipated, as is President Bush's signature. Once this happens, the Internet will change before your eyes. Currently, your Internet provider does not voluntarily censor the Web as it enters your home. This levels the playing field between the tiniest blog and the most popular Web site. Yet...AT&T and Verizon have publicly discussed their plans to divide the information superhighway into separate fast and slow lanes. Web sites and services willing to pay a toll will be channeled through the fast lane, while all others will be bottled up in the slower lanes. If the new telecom regulations pass without safeguarding net neutrality, the big telecom companies...will be free to decide which Web sites get to your computer faster and which ones may take longer - or may not even show up at all. Any corporate restriction on information gathering directly counters the original purpose of the World Wide Web. "Universality is essential to the Web," says its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. "It loses its power if there are certain types of things to which you can't link."

Vaccine industry officials helped shape legislation behind the scenes that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist secretly amended into a bill to shield them from lawsuits, according to e-mails obtained by a public advocacy group. E-mails and documents written by a trade group for the vaccine-makers show the organization met privately with Frist's staff and the White House about measures that would give the industry protection from lawsuits filed by people hurt by the vaccines. Frist, along with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., ordered the vaccine liability language inserted in a defense spending bill in December without debate and in violation of usual Senate practice. In a written statement, Frist spokeswoman Amy Call stated that the senator had promised publicly to include the vaccine liability protection in the defense spending bill. She did not address the issue of the influence of industry lobbyists.

Note: For one-paragraph summaries of media articles showing why the vaccine makers want this protection, click here.

"The story was developing a momentum of its own, despite a virtual news blackout from the major media. Ultimately, public pressure forced the national newspapers into the fray. The Washington Post, the NY Times, and the LA Times published stories, but spent little time exploring the CIA's activities. Instead, my reporting became the focus. It was remarkable [my editor] Ceppos wrote, that the four Post reporters assigned to debunk the series "could not find a single significant factual error." A few months later, the Mercury News [due to intense CIA pressure] backed away from the story, publishing a long column by Ceppos apologizing for "shortcomings." The NY Times hailed Ceppos for "setting a brave new standard," and splashed his apology on their front page." (click for more)

    -- Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Webb, excerpted from landmark book Into The Buzzsaw

Divine Strake is the code name for a massive non-nuclear test planned for June 2. An explosion of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil - ANFO - will send a mushroom cloud perhaps 10,000 feet into the Nevada sky. I suppose reasonable people can disagree about whether to test, but Utahns, downwind from so many nuclear tests that were supposed to be safe, yet turned out to be deadly, can be forgiven if they're wary. What makes me go nuclear is the use of "Divine" in the name. I've really had it with the Bush administration positioning things like they were ordered up by God. There are at least nine other divine tests on the books, including Divine Warhawk and, to really prove the point, Divine Hates. We ignore poor people...we turn our backs on genocide, and we spend our vast wealth and waste our sharp minds on war. Then we name the effort after deity. As if this experiment is ordained by God. Could this be why people hate us? We see people across the globe possessed by such a religious vehemence that their humanity is ruined. Crazed with bloodlust, they must destroy human life, American life, to prove God is on their side. Americans find this indefensible. Then why is President Bush's team putting the language of the holy to our war efforts? I can only wonder what God might really think of America's "Divine" projects. Who would Jesus bomb? If we fail to grasp that lesson, if we keep confusing the unholy with the sacred, our jihad looks a lot like theirs.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person prosecuted in connection with the worst terrorist attack in American history, did not get the death penalty because some jurors concluded that he had little to do with Sept. 11. Yet two presumed key planners of the Al Qaeda [9/11] plot, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, have not been charged, though they have been in U.S. custody for more than three years. A central contradiction in the Bush administration's fight against terrorism is that bit players often have been put on trial, while those thought to have orchestrated the plots have been held in secret for questioning. Current and former intelligence officials have said that the CIA has used aggressive interrogation techniques -- including "waterboarding," which makes a suspect feel as if he is drowning -- on captured Al Qaeda leaders. As a result, many legal experts say it may be too late to try Mohammed and Binalshibh in a regular court of law. "They cannot be prosecuted because of the way they have been interrogated," said University of Maryland law professor Michael Greenberger. "They have been subjected to very aggressive questioning, and any statements they made now can't be used against them." An open trial for the Al Qaeda leaders could reveal that U.S. agents used harsh methods, even torture, to extract information, he added. "We have prosecuted a marginal character who appeared unmoored from reality, while the real planners of the crime will not be brought before justice in the United States," Greenberger said.

Note: The powerful 9/11 documentary "Loose Change" was listed in the top ten of Google's most popular videos every day for the month of April 2006 (see http://video.google.com/videoranking). People are waking up all over. Tell your friends and colleagues about this history-making documentary and consider ordering 10 copies for $30 at http://www.loosechange911.com/order.htm

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.