Intelligence Agency Corruption News Stories

Excerpts of Key Intelligence Agency Corruption News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on intelligence agency 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.

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A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer claimed in an interview released Monday the agency has tried to downplay "anomalous health incidents" endured by government officials. The whistleblower, going by the pseudonym "Alice," told former CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge she was attacked by an "energy weapon" in 2021, prior to her medically retiring from the agency. She said that while serving in Africa, she heard a "weird noise" in her home one night before then experiencing what felt like "the reverb from a speaker." "I think that there are probably multiple weapons, I think there are weapons that can be fit in backpacks, ones that can be fit in the trunks of cars, ones that can be planted at a position with line of sight to people from across the street," she said. Alice told Herridge she experienced an "anomalous health incident (AHI)", alleging she has since suffered vertigo, cognitive difficulties and ear and head pressure. AHIs, not officially recognized by the medical community, were first reported by federal employees serving overseas in 2016. Alice claimed the CIA has continually "gaslight[ed]" her and other former officers, seeking to make them "question" their AHIs. She told Herridge she watches the agency continue to "deny people's humanity and their injuries." Herridge reported that multiple sources told her CIA Director William Burns privately said in 2021 he believed Russia was behind some of the attacks.

Note: Learn more about non-lethal weapons 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.

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.

The connection between the CIA and the Finders cult ... would constitute not simply an outlandish and perhaps criminal group purported to be abusing and trafficking children, but one sanctioned by the most powerful government on earth. U.S. Customs documents penned by Special Agent Ramon Martinez [reports that] the CIA stepped in to cover up the criminal activity of the Finders in the initial 1987 investigation. This would link the CIA with evidence of organized child trafficking, child abuse and allegations of ritual abuse and mind control. Martinez reportedly learned of this development from Sgt. Stitcher, the MPD detective who wrote reports indicative of CIA involvement with the Finders. Stitcher passed away from septic shock prior to the 1993 DOJ inquiry into allegations of a CIA coverup of the original investigation. Martinez wrote of his attempts to review evidence collected at Finders properties in Washington, D.C. during the initial 1987 investigation: "[I] attempted to access the evidence collected for a period of approximately two months. I was unsuccessful ... and was informed by Sergeant Stitcher (now deceased) that the Finders was a CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) front gone bad, and that the evidence was unavailable." The leader of the Finders cult was Marion G. Pettie, a former Air Force master sergeant who admitted that his son worked for CIA-front Air America. Former Nebraska State Senator John Decamp, author of "The Franklin Coverup," claimed that the Finders were associated with the CIA and that they were abusing children by means of indoctrination. "I was getting information anonymously," [he said]. "I found out later that it came from CIA people who were concerned. There is enough documentation to show that children, at a fairly tender age, were being used for sexual purposes, to compromise people, and for the "mind control" nonsense."

Note: Read more about the Finders. The CIA's Air America was also involved in illegal drug smuggling operations. In fact, the CIA's inspector general implicated the company in cocaine trafficking. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.

In 1954, a prison doctor in Kentucky isolated seven black inmates and fed them "double, triple and quadruple" doses of LSD for 77 straight days. No one knows what became of the victims. They may have died without knowing that they were part of the CIA's highly secretive program to develop ways to control minds – a program based out of a little-known Army base with a dark past, Fort Detrick. Detrick, still thriving today as the army's principal base for biological research ... was for years the literal nerve center of the CIA's hidden chemical and mind-control empire. [CIA chemist Sidney] Gottlieb searched relentlessly for a way to blast away human minds so new ones could be implanted. He tested an astonishing variety of drug combinations, often in conjunction with other torments like electro-shock or sensory deprivation. In the United States, his victims were unwitting subjects at jails and hospitals, including a federal prison in Atlanta and an addiction research center in Lexington, Kentucky. In Europe and East Asia, Gottlieb's victims were prisoners in secret detention centers. MK-ULTRA ended in failure in the early 1960s. "The conclusion from all these activities," [Gottlieb] admitted, "was that it was very difficult to manipulate human behavior in this way." Gottlieb was the most powerful unknown American of the 20th century – unless there was someone else who conducted brutal experiments across three continents and had a license to kill issued by the U.S. government.

Note: Read more about the troubling experiments of Sidney Gottlieb. Much remains unknown about the 150+ subprograms sponsored by MUKUltra. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.

The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu's arrival to office as Prime Minister. In [Netanyahu's] 1996 book Fighting Terrorism, Israel would not fight the terrorists; it would fight the states that support the terrorists. More accurately, it would get the US to do Israel's fighting for it. This was confirmed to General Wesley Clark after 9/11. He was told ... that "we're going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years–we're going to start with Iraq, and then we're going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran." Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria, including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria's oil fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery. The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in Operation Timber Sycamore. That effort finally came to "fruition" this week, after more than 300,000 deaths in the Syrian war since 2011. The U.S. has by now led or sponsored wars against Iraq (invasion in 2003), Lebanon (U.S. funding and arming Israel), Libya (NATO bombing in 2011), Syria (CIA operation during 2010's), Sudan (supporting rebels to break Sudan apart in 2011), and Somalia (backing Ethiopia's invasion in 2006). A prospective U.S. war with Iran, ardently sought by Israel, is still pending. Strange as it might seem, the CIA has repeatedly backed Islamist Jihadists to fight these wars, and jihadists have just toppled the Syrian regime. The CIA, after all, helped to create al-Qaeda in the first place by training, arming, and financing the Mujahideen in Afghanistan from the late 1970s onward.

Note: Remember when Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon fought with Syrian militias armed by the CIA? Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on 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.'"

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and intelligence agency corruption.

Even for those familiar with parts of the stories about women who were deceived into intimate relationships with undercover police officers, the evidence that has emerged in recent weeks has been shocking. The litany of destructive behaviour either carried out by, or caused by, officers deployed to spy on campaigners, who were mostly active in leftwing causes, is being laid bare as never before: self-harm, heroin use, unprotected sex leading to emergency contraception, coercive control and the sudden abandonment of female partners and children. On Tuesday, Belinda Harvey told the public inquiry how she was manipulated by Bob Lambert, who tricked at least three other women into relationships as well. Next week, Mr Lambert will face questions about who authorised the tactic of targeting and seducing young, female activists – and why he employed it so many times. Last month, another undercover officer testified that Mr Lambert had "bragged" about fathering a child. In their jointly authored book, Deep Deception, five women described how they found out that they had been systematically lied to by former partners – in some cases after decades of confusion and self-doubt. Mr Lambert stands out not only for the number of secret relationships he initiated and his alleged involvement in an arson plot, but also because his five-year deployment as a police spy in the 1980s was treated as a triumph. He was given a commendation and went on to run covert operations.

Note: Read more about the dozens of activists tricked into having romantic relationships with undercover police. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption.

The existence of a squad of police officers sent deep undercover in political groups was so top secret that many of the UK's most senior officers were completely oblivious until they began reading reports in the Guardian 10 years ago. When Lisa Jones ... and her friends established that [her boyfriend Mark] Kennedy was a police officer who had been spying on climate change activists, the story [collapsed] a major trial ... quashing the convictions of environmental activists who had been prosecuted for conspiring to shut down one of the UK's biggest power stations. The police spies initially belonged to the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which was created to control the restive protests of the late 1960s, including those opposed to the war in Vietnam, but continued to monitor protest groups for a further four decades. Their deployments typically lasted four to five years, with officers living alongside political campaigners, forming deep bonds of friendship, or romantic liaisons, with their targets. At least three of the police spies fathered children with women they met while undercover. Over more than four decades, at least 139 police officers were given fake identities to closely monitor the inner workings of more than 1,000 political groups. These police spies were tasked with gathering intelligence that could be used to disrupt and monitor political groups. Their targets included the black power movement, the anti-apartheid campaign, leftwing groups, and anarchists. Many ... were instructed by their superiors to adopt the identities of dead children to lend credibility to their aliases – with some, in a macabre ritual, even visiting the graves of the deceased children whose identities they were using. One of the most notorious police spies, Bob Lambert, who adopted the identity of a seven–year-old boy who had died of a congenital heart defect in 1959.

Note: Read more about the dozens of activists tricked into having romantic relationships with undercover police. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption.

Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) was more than a leader – he was a force, a relentless advocate who confronted an entrenched culture of injustice with courage and strength. Malcolm X set the stage for me and many others who were called to continue the fight against injustice. His fight was cut short by a horrific assassination carried out in front of his wife and children, followed by a cover-up that his family believes involved some of the most highly regarded agencies in our country at the time. On Nov. 15, I joined some of our nation's foremost attorneys in filing a lawsuit on behalf of the Shabazz family, seeking to uncover the truth surrounding Malcolm's assassination on Feb. 21, 1965, in New York City. Through this lawsuit, we plan to prove in court the accusation that government agencies, including the FBI, the CIA and the New York Police Department, actively facilitated and then covered up Malcolm X's assassination through several coordinated actions. We believe the FBI and the NYPD engaged in a cover-up after the assassination, concealing key documents, manipulating witness testimony and wrongfully prosecuting innocent men to divert attention from their own roles in his death. Our case is being brought forward in the wake of a public apology from former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who, in November 2021, acknowledged that ... two of three men who'd been convicted of murdering Malcolm X, hadn't committed the crime.

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

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 federal jury held a defense contractor legally responsible for contributing to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib for the first time. The jury awarded a total of $42 million to three Iraqi men – a journalist, a middle school principal, and fruit vendor – who were held at the notorious prison two decades ago. The plaintiffs' suit accused Virginia-based CACI, which was hired by the U.S. government to provide interrogation services at Abu Ghraib, of conspiring with American soldiers to torture detainees. CACI had argued that while abuses did occur at Abu Ghraib, it was ultimately the Army who was responsible for this conduct, even if CACI employees may have been involved. The defense contractor also argued there was no definitive evidence that their staff abused the three Iraqi men who filed the case – and that it could have been American soldiers who tortured them. The jury did not find that argument persuasive. The case was filed 16 years ago but got caught up in procedural hurdles, as CACI tried more than 20 times to dismiss the lawsuit. The plaintiffs – Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari, Salah Hasan Nusaif Al-Ejaili, and Asa'ad Hamza Hanfoosh Zuba'e – had testified about facing sexual abuse and harassment, as well as being beaten and threatened with dogs at Abu Ghraib. "My body was like a machine, responding to all external orders," [said] Al-Ejaili, a former journalist with Al Jazeera. "The only part I owned was my brain."

Note: Read more about the horrors of Abu Ghraib. 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 military corruption from reliable major media sources.

The United States' secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake. Academic and private sector researchers have been engaged in a race ... to create undetectable deepfakes. The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense's Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country's most elite, clandestine military efforts. "Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content." JSOC wants the ability to create online user profiles that "appear to be a unique individual that ... does not exist in the real world," with each featuring "multiple expressions" and "Government Identification quality photos." The document notes that "the solution should include facial & background imagery, facial & background video, and audio layers." JSOC hopes to be able to generate "selfie video" from these fabricated humans. Each deepfake selfie will come with a matching faked background, "to create a virtual environment undetectable by social media algorithms." A joint statement by the NSA, FBI, and CISA warned [that] the global proliferation of deepfake technology [is] a "top risk" for 2023. An April paper by the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute was similarly concerned: "Experts expect the malicious use of AI, including the creation of deepfake videos to sow disinformation to polarize societies and deepen grievances, to grow over the next decade."

Note: Why is the Pentagon investing in advanced deepfake technology? Read about the Pentagon's secret army of 60,000 operatives who use fake online personas to manipulate public discourse. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and media corruption from reliable major media sources.

On a chilly, early morning in January 2019, a group of animal rights activists descended upon a poultry farm in central Texas. Activists with Meat the Victims, a decentralized, global movement to abolish animal exploitation, later uploaded gruesome photos of injured and dead chicks to social media platforms. The police identified [Sarah Weldon] and issued a warrant for her arrest, along with 14 other activists. She was charged with criminal trespassing. The local police weren't the only ones paying attention. An FBI agent in Texas had been secretly monitoring the demonstration. His focus? Weapons of mass destruction. The FBI has been collaborating with the meat industry to gather information on animal rights activism, including Meat the Victims, under its directive to counter weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, according to agency records. The records also show that the bureau has explored charging activists who break into factory farms under federal criminal statutes that carry a possible sentence of up to life in prison – including for the "attempted use" of WMD – while urging meat producers to report encounters with activists to its WMD program. "This ... is textbook escalation by government actors against successful efforts by social movements that they disagree with or find subversive," said Justin Marceau, a law professor. "Framing of civil disobedience against factory farms as terrorism is a form of government repression."

Note: Animal rights activists are relentlessly prosecuted while the evidence of animal cruelty they uncover is ruthlessly suppressed. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in law enforcement and in the food system from reliable major media sources.

Two decades ago, Shahawar Matin Siraj started to feel uneasy about a plan to bomb a subway station in Manhattan. Osama Eldawoody, a New York City Police Department informant recruited after 9/11, had established himself as a father figure to Siraj, who was 21 when they met. But as it started to feel real, Siraj tried to back out – insisting about 18 times that he was not willing to place bombs in the station. "I have to, you know, ask my mom's permission," he had said. Siraj [was] arrested a week later ... and was sentenced in 2007 to 30 years in prison after three years of pretrial detention. Siraj is one of almost 1,000 terrorism defendants prosecuted by the U.S. since 9/11. More than 350 defendants' cases involved FBI stings with an informant or undercover agent. The fear of this kind of surveillance transformed the social fabric of Muslim communities and made them more insular. "You didn't know if the person you're talking to was an informant or undercover," says Fahd Ahmed, executive director of Desis Rising Up and Moving, or DRUM. (Siraj's family are members.) A 2014 Human Rights Watch report closely reviewed 27 federal prosecutions involving 77 defendants and found that in some instances, "the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act." The report also described a pattern of targeting people with mental or intellectual disabilities in these stings.

Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.

On Sept. 24, 2007, a red, white, and blue Gulfstream II fell from the sky over the Yucatán Peninsula. From the wreckage, [Mexican commandos] removed 132 industrial trash bags, weighing around 4 tons. The bags were filled with cocaine. The Gulfstream ... had flown for the CIA's rendition program. When it went down, it belonged to a newly-formed company near Boca Raton, Florida, called Donna Blue Aircraft ... an "undercover company" of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A Rolling Stone investigation into thousands of pages of government documents, flight logs, court filings, and local news reports ... confirmed there was a secret ICE operation called Mayan Jaguar. According to classified reports, ICE bought private planes from 2004 to 2007, intending to tag them with hidden tracking beacons and, through front companies like Donna Blue, sell them to drug traffickers. ICE agents would draw "approximately 20 planes" into Operation Mayan Jaguar. ICE stopped none of them, while other governments thwarted some, without ICE. The Drug Enforcement Administration, convinced that traffickers controlled Mayan Jaguar, ordered ICE to shut it down. "ICE Headquarters advised the agents … to continue working," according to another agent's IG testimony. Operation Mayan Jaguar would be "a coordinated interagency task force developed by the intelligence community," according to an internal ICE memo. The narcotics trade was largely legal until global prohibition began in the early 20th century. Waves of drug planes and state-sponsored trafficking weren't far behind. From the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA proprietary airlines flew arms into the Golden Triangle for anti-communist guerillas, and were suspected of flying out with the guerillas' opium. It was allegedly the same deal in the Eighties, but in Central America, with cocaine. In Asia, the CIA paid Afghan heroin lords to fight the Soviets, and later to fight the Taliban. In 1998, the CIA's marquee aviation front, Southern Air Transport, declared bankruptcy a week before the CIA's inspector general implicated the company in cocaine trafficking.

Note: Our investigative Substack article explores the dark truths behind the US war on drugs that the mainstream media ignores. For more, watch our Mindful News Brief on who's really behind the war on drugs. Check out our database of concise and revealing news summaries on the war on drugs from reliable media sources.

On June 28, 2009, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted by a military coup. The coup led to nearly 13 years of right-wing rule, marked by collusion with drug trafficking organizations, widespread privatization, violence, repression, and a significant migrant exodus. "During these 13 years that the right wing was in power, they were fully supported by the U.S. government," [said Zelaya]. "There was a lot of repression. There were killings of activists and land defenders throughout the country. Also, a lot of right-wing neoliberal policies that were put in place. We have no preference in [US] elections, between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. In the end, they act the same. They act in the interest of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the interest of a global elite that, through capitalism, has already taken over all the assets of wealth: the rivers, the seas, the forests, oil – the world elite manages it all through the speculative financial system. The planet's main resources, of raw economic goods, are those that influence the United States' government. Here, the coup plotters don't even get a traffic ticket – not even a slap on the wrist. Instead, they are offered political parties as if they are a democratic option. It is so absurd: the Honduran right, which put the generals in office who carried out the coup, proclaim themselves to be a democratic alternative. Those who murdered, those who looted, are democratic alternatives – totally absurd."

Note: Read more about the narco-state that the US supported in Honduras. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

Following Iran's missile barrage into Israel last week, carried out in retaliation for Israel's assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris called Iran a "destabilizing, dangerous force" in the Middle East, opening a new chapter in a long history of US hawkishness against Iran. This past Monday, she went even further, calling Iran the United States' "greatest adversary." It's hard to hear such statements without hearkening back to New Year's Eve, 1977, a year before the Iranian Revolution broke out. In the heat of growing civil unrest in Iran, US president Jimmy Carter attended a lavish state dinner with the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Twenty-four years earlier, during "Operation Ajax," the CIA, in collaboration with the British MI6, had orchestrated a coup that ousted the democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had won on a platform of nationalizing Iranian oil and taking it back from Western control. The coup set into motion the destruction of the country's budding democracy and would haunt Iranians for decades. The United States has worked to destabilize Iran for nearly a century. With the Democratic presidential nominee once again trotting out hawkish tirades against Iran while backing Israel's new assault on Lebanon, American officials seem to have learned nothing from history.

Note: Read more about the CIA-backed 1953 coup in Iran. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

A disturbing trend of undercover federal agents engaging minors online to plan acts related to terrorism abroad, then arresting them shortly after they turn 18, ought to raise eyebrows as well as outrage, given that many of these targets are teens who have significant cognitive and intellectual disabilities. The most recent case in Colorado involves Humzah Mashkoor, an 18-year-old from Westminster charged with "attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization," according to a U.S. Department of Justice December 2023 press release. Months earlier, in July last year, FBI agents arrested Davin Daniel Meyer, 18, of Castle Rock, charged with the same crime, which can carry a stiff penalty of decades in prison. And in June, 18-year-old Mateo Ventura of Massachusetts was charged with a similar crime of intention after being in contact not with terrorists but with undercover FBI agents. A fourth case occurred last year in Philadelphia. When you look at the striking similarities of these cases, it's not unreasonable to conclude that federal agents are failing morally and ethically by seemingly coaxing and cajoling minors – including two Colorado children with limited intellectual capacity and no history of harming anyone – to cross a line. The FBI agents then "get their man" – even before these individuals are in fact men. Enough time has gone by to show the human element to this story, but no reporters seem to be interested.

Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.

A flurry of reports picked up on the arrest of Mateo Ventura, an 18-year-old resident of the sleepy town of Wakefield, echoing government claims that an international terrorist financier and ISIS supporter had just been busted. The Department of Justice's own press release on the case likewise trumpeted Ventura's arrest for "knowingly concealing the source of material support or resources that he intended to go to a foreign terrorist organization." Ventura had never actually funded any terrorist group. The only "terrorist" he is accused of ever being in contact with was an undercover FBI agent who befriended him online as a 16-year-old, solicited small cash donations in the form of gift cards, and directed him not to tell anyone else. Mateo suffered from childhood developmental issues and had been forced to leave his school due to bullying. His case is less a serious terrorism bust than one of the many instances in which a troubled or mentally unfit young man was groomed by undercover FBI agents to commit a crime that would not have otherwise happened. This law enforcement tactic has been criticized by national security researchers who have scrutinized the FBI's role in manufacturing terrorism cases using vulnerable people who would have been unable to commit crimes without prolonged government assistance and encouragement. A 2014 Human Rights Watch report ... said, "In this way, the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals."

Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.