Intelligence Agency Corruption News Articles

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On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee released a report on how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) "colluded with Big Tech and 'disinformation' partners to censor Americans." The 36-page report raises three familiar issues: first, government actors worked with third parties to overturn the First Amendment; second, censors prioritized political narratives over truthfulness; and third, an unaccountable bureaucracy hijacked American society. The House Report reveals that CISA, a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, worked with social media platforms to censor posts it considered dis-, mis- or malinformation. Brian Scully, the head of CISA's censorship team, conceded that this process, known as "switchboarding," would "trigger content moderation." Additionally, CISA funded the nonprofit EI-ISAC in 2020 to bolster its censorship operations. In launching the nonprofit, the government boasted that it "leverage[d] DHS CISA's relationship with social media organizations to ensure priority treatment of misinformation reports." The switchboard programs directly contradict sworn testimony from CISA Director Jen Easterly. The report outlines how CISA censored "malinformation – truthful information that, according to the government, may carry the potential to mislead." Dr. Kate Starbird, a member of CISA's "Misinformation & Disinformation" subcommittee, lamented that many Americans seem to "accept malinformation as 'speech' and within democratic norms."

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

A MintPress investigation has found that a host of Western government officials, intelligence agents and assets have been directly involved in intimate collaboration with Nazi groups and individuals since at least 2014. This has included involvement in creating and operating the Nazi-run kill list in Ukraine. While Western media have belatedly been forced to concede that there are Nazi influences in Ukraine, many journalists have insisted that the visible fascist patches on uniforms are only there to troll Russians and that they are insignificant and a gift to Russian propaganda. Still, other journalists admit to asking Ukrainian service members to cover up their Nazi symbols. Last May, The Irish Independent claimed that [former adviser to Ukraine's foreign minister Cormac] Smith is "an unlikely key player in the information war," who "estimates he has given about 100 TV, radio and print interviews with the international media in the past few months to tell Kyiv's side of the story." Smith has a nice line in outrageous propaganda gambits, claiming that Russians are the actual Nazis and that they murder, rape and pillage, including the rape of children. As it turns out, the source of many of the allegations ... was the Ukraine parliamentary commissioner for human rights, Lyudmila Denisova. Last year, it was comprehensively demonstrated that her stories had little evidential basis. She ... admitted to "promoting fake news to persuade Western countries to send more arms and aid." Smith nonetheless carried on making vague allegations of rape for months afterward.

Note: US agencies used at least 1,000 ex-Nazis as spies and informants during the Cold War. Nazi doctors were also used used to teach the CIA mind control methods. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the war machine from reliable major media sources.

In 1979 the Sandinista revolution overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. As a Spanish speaking Latino, [Enrique] Prado ... was recruited as a CIA officer responsible for overseeing the development of the Contra army based in Honduras and conducting cross border attacks on communities in Nicaragua. Prado believes they [were] the "good guys". The International Court of Justice thought otherwise. In 1986 the court ruled the US attacks on Nicaragua were violations of international law. The Reagan administration and media largely ignored the ruling. Later, journalist Gary Webb documented the catastrophic social damage inside the US caused by the cheap cocaine flooding some US cities. Webb was attacked by establishment media. In 1998 the CIA Inspector General acknowledged, "There are instances where C.I.A. did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity, or take action to resolve the allegations." The US deployed Nicaraguans, Afghans and extremist Arab recruits in proxy wars across the globe. "The attacks of September 11 descend in a direct line from events in 1979, the year in which the CIA, with full presidential authority, began carrying out its largest ever clandestine operation - the secret arming of Afghan freedom fighters (mujaheddin) to wage a proxy war against the Soviet Union," [said author Chalmers Johnston].

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

On April 20, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell admitted he orchestrated the joint letter that torpedoed the New York Post's bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop in the weeks leading up to the November 2020 US Presidential election, at the direct request of Joe Biden's campaign team. That letter ... asserted the leaked material bore unambiguous hallmarks of a Kremlin "information operation." In all, 51 former senior intelligence officials endorsed the declaration. This intervention was sufficient for Twitter to block all sharing of the NY Post's exposĂ©s and ban the outlet's official account. Twitter's public suppression of the NY Post's disclosures was complemented by a covert operation to identify and neutralize anyone discussing the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, courtesy of Dataminr, a social media spying tool heavily connected to British and American intelligence services. In-Q-Tel [is] the CIA's venture capital arm. In 2016, The Intercept revealed In-Q-Tel was financing at least 38 separate social media spying tools, to surveil "erupting political movements, crises, epidemics, and disasters." Among them was Dataminr, which enjoys privileged access to Twitter's "firehose" – all tweets published in real time – in order to track and visualize trends as they happen. [In 2020], the U.S. was ... engulfed by incendiary large-scale protests. Dataminr kept a close eye on this upheaval every step of the way, tipping off police to the identities of demonstrators.

Note: While Hunter Biden was indicted for three felony gun charges and nine counts of tax-related crimes, his laptop also revealed suspicious business dealings with corrupt overseas firms. Learn more about the history of military-intelligence influence on the media in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

We have long known about the F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover's animus toward the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hoover built an extensive apparatus of surveillance and disruption designed to destroy King. It's time to ... recognize the power structure that supported the F.B.I.'s campaign. Many Americans – starting with the president – thought movement activists like King posed threats to the established order and needed to be watched and controlled. Members of the press could have exposed the bureau's campaign. And many government officials who could have stopped, curtailed or exposed the F.B.I.'s attack on King instead enabled or encouraged it. F.B.I. records declassified in the past several years and documents from the Johnson archives released in 2022 force us to reconsider the nature of Johnson's involvement in the F.B.I.'s campaign against King. White House documents ... suggest that Johnson, from the beginning of his presidency in 1963 to King's assassination in 1968, was apprised almost weekly by Hoover himself on the F.B.I.'s surveillance of King. Johnson did nothing to stop or rein in the F.B.I., even after at least one top administration official expressed concern. In addition to the president and the media, other officials at the F.B.I. ... worked to ruin King. Scores of ranking officials and agents at the F.B.I., dozens of elected officials and several informants embedded in King's inner circles knew what was going on, and none, as far as the public records indicate, blew a whistle on the campaign.

Note: Few people know about the 1999 King Family civil trial in Memphis, where it took a jury only one hour to find the U.S. government guilty for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.

The story of Bruno Bréguet, one the most enigmatic figures of the shadowy battle between western security services and international violent extremists during the so-called "golden age of terrorism" in the 1970s and 1980s, has been given a new twist. A new book has revealed that in his later years Bréguet served not only the infamous Illich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, but the US government too. Bréguet's spying for the CIA earned him tens of thousands of dollars, and contributed to the capture of his erstwhile boss by French secret services in 1994. The news that the CIA was prepared to hire as an agent a man like Bréguet, who had been twice convicted by Israel and France for his terrorist activities and is believed to have bombed a pro-democracy radio station in Munich funded by the US government, underlines the moral and ethical questions facing intelligence services when it comes to recruiting such individuals. If anyone in the CIA balked at employing Bréguet as an agent, there is no record of their concerns. For the next four years, Bréguet appears to have supplied information to the CIA, possibly indirectly contributing key elements to the French intelligence operation that successfully grabbed Carlos from a clinic in Khartoum in 1994. Breguet's final mystery remains unresolved however. In 1995, the veteran extremist turned CIA agent disappeared definitively after boarding a ferry from a Greece to Italy. Was he murdered? Or did he commence a new life under a false identity?

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

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has acknowledged for the first time that it purchased US location data rather than obtaining a warrant. The disclosure came today during a US Senate hearing. Senator Ron Wyden ... put the question of the bureau's use of commercial data to its director, Christopher Wray: "Does the FBI purchase US phone-geolocation information?" Wray said his agency was not currently doing so. "To my knowledge, we do not currently purchase commercial database information that includes location data derived from internet advertising," Wray said. "I understand that we previously–as in the past–purchased some such information for a specific national security pilot project. But that's not been active for some time." In its landmark Carpenter v. United States decision, the Supreme Court held that government agencies accessing historical location data without a warrant were violating the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches. The decision left open a glaring loophole that allows the government to simply purchase whatever it cannot otherwise legally obtain. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Defense Intelligence Agency are among the list of federal agencies known to have taken advantage of this loophole. The Department of Homeland Security ... purchased the geolocations of millions of Americans from private marketing firms. The data were derived from ... benign sources, such as mobile games and weather apps.

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

After flying under the radar for years, the case of Genaro GarcĂ­a Luna is finally raising alarms in Congress, with one of the Senate's top Republicans demanding answers about how Mexico's highest-ranking cop was able to partner with DEA and FBI, "at the time that he funneled roughly 103,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States" for the Sinaloa Cartel. GarcĂ­a Luna became the most senior Mexican law enforcement official ever convicted of narco-corruption when a Brooklyn federal jury delivered a unanimous guilty verdict on a five-count indictment that charged him with taking massive bribes to enable cartel drug smuggling, kidnappings, and murders while he was in office from 2001 to 2012. GarcĂ­a Luna's position involved close collaboration with U.S. anti-narcotics agencies that operate in Mexico, and it gave him discretion over the spending of hundreds of millions in American tax dollars delivered as security aid. That money was supposed to go toward fighting the cartels, but his trial showed he was leaking sensitive intelligence, protecting drug shipments, and disrupting efforts to capture ... cartel leaders. On Feb. 22, a day after the guilty verdict, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to the heads of the DEA and FBI asking what the agencies knew about GarcĂ­a Luna and when, and demanding evidence ... that could shed new light on the relationship. In short, Grassley wants to know if American tax dollars were being sent to Mexico while the DEA and FBI were tolerating GarcĂ­a Luna's corruption.

Note: This case adds to the evidence that the War on Drugs is a trillion dollar failure. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Genaro GarcĂ­a Luna, Mexico's former top law enforcement official known as the "architect" of the Mexican side of the drug war, was found guilty in New York federal court of collaborating with the Sinaloa cartel, the biggest organized crime group in North America. For years, GarcĂ­a Luna was the U.S. government's most trusted ally in the war on drugs. As public security secretary, he wielded incredible power, overseeing Mexico's Federal Police, the prison network, and a vast intelligence-gathering infrastructure, while working with the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security in the fight against Mexican cartels. The case portrayed GarcĂ­a Luna and his network of corrupt officials as a handful of bad apples, and what U.S. officials knew about GarcĂ­a Luna's illicit activities went mostly unexplored, despite the government's role in providing funding, equipment, and training that has fueled drug-related violence. GarcĂ­a Luna was found guilty of all five charges, including drug trafficking and continuing a criminal enterprise. Prosecutors alleged that he received around $274 million in bribes from the cartel from 2001 to 2012, first as head of the Federal Investigative Agency, the Mexican equivalent of the FBI, and then as secretary of public security. GarcĂ­a Luna left public office in 2012 following a change in presidency and moved to Miami where he started a security consulting company and lived a lavish lifestyle.

Note: The War on Drugs has been described as a trillion dollar failure. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in intelligence agencies from reliable major media sources.

In 2017, the CIA had plotted to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who had taken refuge five years earlier in the Ecuador embassy in London. A senior US counter-intelligence official said that plans for the forcible rendition of Assange to the US were discussed "at the highest levels" of the Trump administration. The informant was one of more than 30 US officials – eight of whom confirmed details of the abduction proposal – quoted in a 7,500-word investigation by Yahoo News into the CIA campaign against Assange. The plan was to "break into the embassy, drag [Assange] out and bring him to where we want", recalled a former intelligence official. Another informant said that he was briefed about a meeting in the spring of 2017 at which President Trump had asked if the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide "options" about how this could be done. The Trump-appointed head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, said publicly that he would target Assange and WikiLeaks as the equivalent of "a hostile intelligence service". Top intelligence officials intended to decide themselves who is and who is not a journalist, and lobbied the White House to redefine other high-profile journalists as "information brokers", who were to be targeted as if they were agents of a foreign power. In 2013 ... a team of 120 counter-intelligence officers ... failed to find a single person in Iraq and Afghanistan who had died because of the disclosures by WikiLeaks.

Note: CIA interest in assassinating Assange coincided with Wikileaks' publication of leaked CIA hacking tools. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

Louis Armstrong, his wife and a diplomat from the US embassy were out for dinner in a restaurant in what was still Léopoldville, capital of the newly independent Congo. The [musician] was in the middle of a tour of Africa ... organised and sponsored by the State Department. What Armstrong did not know was that his host that night in November 1960 was not the political attaché as described, but the head of the CIA in Congo. "Armstrong was basically a Trojan horse for the CIA," said Susan Williams ... author of White Malice, a new book which exposes the astonishing extent of the CIA's activities across central and west Africa. Armstrong's host, CIA station chief Larry Devlin, and other US intelligence officers posted to Congo used the cover of the musicians's visit to get access to the strategically important and very wealthy province of Katanga, which had recently seceded. There was much of interest to the CIA in Katanga, ranging from senior officials with whom they could not otherwise meet to crucial mining infrastructure, with 1,500 tons of uranium and vast potential to procure more. The CIA in the Congo, led by Devlin, was trying to kill the Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, 35-year-old Patrice Lumumba, fearful that he would lead the country into the Soviet camp. A mile or so from where Armstrong and Devlin had dined, the charismatic Lumumba was being held prisoner ... by soldiers loyal to Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, the young military chief with a close working relationship with the CIA, who had effectively seized power some weeks earlier. Within two months of Armstrong's tour, Lumumba was murdered in Katanga. Devlin later claimed that the CIA was responsible, telling a US Congressional investigation "that the coup of Mobutu … was arranged and supported, and indeed, managed, by the CIA".

Note: Read how the CIA used modern art and other cultural figures as weapons during the Cold War in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

The Pentagon is running a 60,000-strong secret army made up of soldiers, civilians and contractors, who travel the world under false identities embedded in consultancies and name-brand companies – without the knowledge of the American people or most of Congress. The top-secret army was created by the Pentagon over the past 10 years as part of a program called "signature reduction," and operates both domestically and internationally using a low-profile force of clandestine warriors who sometimes wear civilian clothes as they carry out their assignments, Newsweek reported. The force is 10 times the size of the covert elements of the CIA, comes with a cost of more than $900 million, and engages about 130 private companies in operations in locales like the Middle East and Africa. About half of the "signature reduction" force is made up of special forces. Military intelligence specialists comprise the second-largest element inside the force. But the ... fastest-growing group in the unit is made up of cyber-warriors who use false personas and "nonattribution" or "misattribution" techniques online to disguise themselves so they can track high-value targets, collect "publicly accessible information" and engage in influence campaigns to manipulate social media. One recently retired senior officer who oversaw one of the programs said no one is fully aware of their extent or the implications they have for military warfare.

Note: Learn more about mission creep in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the intelligence community from reliable major media sources.

John Longan was an agent with the US Border Patrol in the 1940s and '50s. Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Longan ... moved on to work for the CIA. Put simply, Longan taught local intelligence and police agencies how to create death squads to target political activists, deploying tactics that he'd used earlier to capture migrants on the border. He arrived in Guatemala in late 1965 and put into place a paramilitary unit that, early the next year, would execute what he called OperaciĂłn Limpieza, or Operation Cleanup. Within three months, this unit conducted over 80 raids and multiple assassinations, including an action that, over the course of four days, led to the capture, torture, and execution of more than 30 prominent left-wing opposition leaders. The military dumped their bodies into the sea, while the government denied any knowledge of their whereabouts. Longan's OperaciĂłn Limpieza was a decisive step in the unraveling of Guatemala, empowering an intelligence system that over the course of the country's civil war would be responsible for tens of thousands of disappearances, 200,000 deaths, and countless tortures. It was common practice during the Cold War to send former Border Patrol agents to train foreign police through CIA-linked "public safety" programs. Men like Longan helped speed up the pace with which local security forces could target and kill political reformers, thus accelerating political polarization and social misery.

Note: Learn more about CIA crimes in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.

Twenty years ago this month, on December 10, 2004, former San Jose Mercury News investigative reporter Gary Webb died by apparent suicide. Webb had left the newspaper in 1997 after his career was systematically destroyed because he had done what journalists are supposed to do: speak truth to power. In August 1996, Webb penned a three-part series ... that documented how profits from the sale of crack cocaine in Los Angeles in the 1980s had been funneled to the Contras, the right-wing, CIA-backed mercenary army responsible for helping to perpetrate [a] large-scale terrorist war against Nicaragua. At the same time, the crack epidemic had devastated Black communities in South Central LA–which meant that Webb's series generated understandable uproar among Black Americans. Webb was subjected to a concerted assault by the corporate media, most notably the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times, as detailed in a 1997 intervention by FAIR's Norman Solomon. The media hit job relied heavily on denials from the CIA itself–as in "CIA Chief Denies Crack Conspiracy." In December 1997, the same month Webb left the Mercury News after being discredited across the board and abandoned by his own editors, the New York Times reassured readers that the "CIA Says It Has Found No Link Between Itself and Crack Trade." Leading media outlets ... buried or obstructed news suggesting Contra-cocaine links.

Note: Read more about journalist Gary Webb. Learn more about the dark truth behind the US war on drugs. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war on drugs.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump announced he has filed a $100 million lawsuit against multiple government and law enforcement agencies for an alleged conspiracy that led to the 1965 assassination of civil rights activist and religious leader Malcolm X. Crump was joined by one of Malcolm X's daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz, in announcing the news on the family's behalf. The suit accuses the U.S. government, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA and the New York Police Department of being involved in the events that led to Malcolm X's assassination and a decadeslong cover-up. It includes claims of excessive use of force against Malcolm X, deliberate creation of danger, failure to protect, denial of access to the courts for Malcolm X's family, conspiracy, fraudulent concealment and wrongful death. Malcolm X was 39 when he was shot 21 times by multiple gunmen who opened fire at him during a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York on Feb. 21, 1965. His wife and children were in the crowd at the time. The suit claims that the government agencies had knowledge of credible threats to Malcolm X's life and didn't act to prevent the assassination. The suit claims the FBI coordinated with undercover informants within the Nation of Islam, from which Malcolm X separated. It accuses the agencies of removing security personnel from the ballroom, encouraging the assassination and failing to intervene, later taking steps to conceal their involvement after the assassination.

Note: Malcolm X was one of four prominent figures killed for speaking truth to power during this era. Read our Substack to learn more about the undeniable evidence that connects these same abuses of power to Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on assassinations and intelligence agency corruption.

A House committee revealed Friday that the Pentagon, other US agencies and the European Union – in addition to the State Department – have funded a for-profit "fact-checking" firm that allegedly served "as a nontransparent agent of censorship campaigns." House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote a letter to the firm, NewsGuard, demanding more details about the public-private collaboration that led last year to the State Department being sued by conservative outlets that were labeled more "risky" than their liberal counterparts. NewsGuard has briefed committee staff on contracts it had with the Defense Department in 2021, including the Cyber National Mission Force within US Cyber Command; the State Department and its Global Engagement Center; and the EU's Joint Research Centre. The Oversight panel in June opened its investigation into NewsGuard's apparent participation in a government-funded "censorship campaign" to allegedly discredit and even demonetize news outlets by sharing its ratings of their reliability with advertisers. "These wide-ranging connections with various government agencies are taking place as the government is rapidly expanding into the censorship sphere," the chairman wrote. "One search of government grants and contracts from 2016 through 2023 revealed that there were 538 separate grants and 36 different government contracts specifically to address ‘misinformation' and ‘disinformation.'"

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Rapper and activist Chuck D appeared at the White House earlier this summer, announcing that he was joining forces with YouTube and Antony Blinken's State Department to become one of Washington's "global music ambassadors." Throughout the Cold War, the United States ... spent vast sums sending famous artists such as Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald overseas. The CIA deliberately chose to front the campaign with black musicians, helping to soften America's image and promote a (false) message of racial harmony. Despite the official end of the Cold War, the United States has never stopped using music and musicians to foment unrest and spark regime change. The partnership between YouTube and the State Department will see the platform push pro-U.S. music and messaging across the world. This is far from YouTube's only connection to the U.S. national security state. Its parent company, Google, is essentially a creation of the CIA. Both the CIA and the NSA bankrolled the Ph.D. research of Google founder Sergey Brin, and senior CIA officials oversaw the evolution of Google during its pre-launch phase. As late as 2005, the CIA was still a major shareholder in Google. These shares resulted from Google's acquisition of Keyhole, Inc., a CIA-backed surveillance firm whose software eventually became Google Earth – the civilian offshoot of a spying software the U.S. government uses.

Note: Learn more about the CIA's longstanding propaganda network in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

Nearly 25 years ago, a group of suicide bombers attacked the U.S.S. Cole off Aden, Yemen, with the loss of 17 U.S. sailors. A Saudi, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, believed to be the mastermind of the attack, was captured in 2002, and was officially charged in 2011 with leading the attack. He has become the longest-running capital murder case at Guantanamo. Al-Nashiri, like so many captives at Guantanamo, was subjected to secret imprisonment by the CIA as well as waterboarding, rectal abuse, and prolonged sleep deprivation. A previous judge at Guantanamo excluded the confessions of al-Nashiri and others because of CIA's torture and abuse. The al-Nashiri case was particularly egregious because his interrogators found him to be compliant, but a senior CIA official ordered the reinstatement of torture and abuse to include waterboarding. The CIA has always maintained that secret memoranda of George W. Bush's Department of Justice permitted the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" to include waterboarding in order to break the will of the captives. The CIA also had the support of psychologists and the American Psychological Association (APA) in conducting the coercive interrogation of terror suspects in Guantanamo and its secret prisons in East Europe and Southeast Asia. Two former military psychologists developed the CIA's sadistic techniques, which were based on Chinese efforts to obtain false confessions from American prisoners in the 1950s.

Note: Read more about how the American Psychological Association supported CIA torture operations. Learn more about US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

The CIA has for the first time acknowledged that the 1953 coup it backed in Iran that overthrew its prime minister and cemented the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was undemocratic. The CIA in 2013 admitted its role in the coup that brought down Iran's then prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, but until now has not publicly acknowledged that the move was undemocratic. Much of the agency's official history of the coup remains classified, complicating the public's understanding of an event that still resonates, as tensions remain high between Tehran and Washington. Iran's mission to the United Nations described the 1953 coup as marking "the inception of relentless American meddling in Iran's internal affairs" and dismissed the US acknowledgments. "The US admission never translated into compensatory action or a genuine commitment to refrain from future interference, nor did it change its subversive policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran," the mission said in a statement. Seven decades later, the 1953 coup remains as hotly debated as ever in Iran, where many see a straight line leading from the coup to the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ultimately toppled the shah. The coup also prompted the CIA into a series of further actions in other countries, including Guatemala, where US clandestine operations in 1954 installed a military dictator and sparked a 40-year civil war that likely killed approximately 245,000 people.

Note: This admission came in the CIA's official podcast. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

Louis Milione retired from the DEA a second time this summer amid reporting by The Associated Press on potential conflicts caused by his prior consulting for the pharmaceutical industry. Less than three months later, Milione again landed a plum job at Guidepost Solutions, a New York-based firm hired by some of the same companies he had been tasked with regulating when he returned to the DEA in 2021. Milione had spent four years at Guidepost prior to his return, leveraging his extensive experience and contacts from a 21-year DEA career. Milione is the most senior of a slew of DEA officials to have traded their badge and gun for a globe-trotting consulting job. His career stands out for two cycles through the revolving door between government and industry, raising questions about the potential impact on the DEA's mission to police drug companies blamed for tens of thousands of American overdose deaths. Milione's private-sector clientele also included Morris & Dickson Co., the nation's fourth-largest wholesale drug distributor, as it tried to stave off DEA sanctions for disregarding thousands of suspicious, high-volume orders. The DEA allowed the company to continue shipping drugs for nearly four years after a judge recommended its license be revoked for "cavalier disregard" of rules aimed at preventing opioid abuse. It was not until AP began asking questions this spring that the DEA moved to finally strip the Shreveport, Louisiana-based company of its license to distribute highly addictive painkillers.

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

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