News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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Rajabai Sawant used to pick and sort waste on the streets of Pune with a sack on her back. The plastic she collected from a public waste site would be sold for some money that saved her children from begging. Today, dressed in a dark green jacket monogrammed with the acronym Swach (solid waste collection and handling) over a colourful sari, the 53-year-old is one among an organised group of waste collectors and climate educators who teach residents in urban Pune how to segregate and manage waste, based on a PPPP – a pro-poor private public partnership. Swach was set up in 2005 by a trade union of waste pickers, Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP), which was ... envisioned a scheme that enhanced waste collectors' work instead of displacing them. These [PPPP] partnerships are contracts between the state or local authority and a group of private individuals that aim to provide a public service while simultaneously alleviating poverty. Of the waste generated by the city, Swach sorts and recycles about 227 tonnes a day (82,891 tonnes a year) that is diverted away from landfills. It saves the city Ł10m that would have been needed for processing, transportation and human resources. Today, Swach has more than 3,850 self-reliant waste picker members, who provide daily doorstep waste collection services to citizens of Pune who pay a small monthly fee. Under the PPPP, each member is a shareholder and earns about 16,000 rupees (Ł140) a month.
Note: Explore more positive stories on reimagining the economy.
If there is one thing that Ilya Sutskever knows, it is the opportunities–and risks–that stem from the advent of artificial intelligence. An AI safety researcher and one of the top minds in the field, he served for years as the chief scientist of OpenAI. There he had the explicit goal of creating deep learning neural networks so advanced they would one day be able to think and reason just as well as, if not better than, any human. Artificial general intelligence, or simply AGI, is the official term for that goal. According to excerpts published by The Atlantic ... part of those plans included a doomsday shelter for OpenAI researchers. "We're definitely going to build a bunker before we release AGI," Sutskever told his team in 2023. Sutskever reasoned his fellow scientists would require protection at that point, since the technology was too powerful for it not to become an object of intense desire for governments globally. "Of course, it's going to be optional whether you want to get into the bunker," he assured fellow OpenAI scientists. Sutskever knows better than most what the awesome capabilities of AI are. He was part of an elite trio behind the 2012 creation of AlexNet, often dubbed by experts as the Big Bang of AI. Recruited by Elon Musk personally to join OpenAI three years later, he would go on to lead its efforts to develop AGI. But the launch of its ChatGPT bot accidentally derailed his plans by unleashing a funding gold rush the safety-minded Sutskever could no longer control.
Note: Watch a conversation on the big picture of emerging technology with Collective Evolution founder Joe Martino and WTK team members Amber Yang and Mark Bailey. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI.
According to recent research by the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, "nearly 1 in 5 young people believe it's OK to track their partner whenever they want". Many constantly share their location with their partner, or use apps like Life360 or Find My Friends. Some groups of friends all do it together, and talk of it as a kind of digital closeness where physical distance and the busyness of life keeps them apart. Others use apps to keep familial watch over older relatives – especially when their health may be in decline. When government officials or tech industry bigwigs proclaim that you should be OK with being spied on if you're not doing anything wrong, they're asking (well, demanding) that we trust them. But it's not about trust, it's about control and disciplining behaviour. "Nothing to hide; nothing to fear" is a frustratingly persistent fallacy, one in which we ought to be critical of when its underlying (lack of) logic creeps into how we think about interacting with one another. When it comes to interpersonal surveillance, blurring the boundary between care and control can be dangerous. Just as normalising state and corporate surveillance can lead to further erosion of rights and freedoms over time, normalising interpersonal surveillance seems to be changing the landscape of what's considered to be an expression of love – and not necessarily for the better. We ought to be very critical of claims that equate surveillance with safety.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
The inaugural "AI Expo for National Competitiveness" [was] hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project – better known as the "techno-economic" thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt. The conference's lead sponsor was Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel that's best known for inspiring 2019 protests against its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at the height of Trump's family separation policy. Currently, Palantir is supplying some of its AI products to the Israel Defense Forces. I ... went to a panel in Palantir's booth titled Civilian Harm Mitigation. It was led by two "privacy and civil liberties engineers" [who] described how Palantir's Gaia map tool lets users "nominate targets of interest" for "the target nomination process". It helps people choose which places get bombed. After [clicking] a few options on an interactive map, a targeted landmass lit up with bright blue blobs. These blobs ... were civilian areas like hospitals and schools. Gaia uses a large language model (something like ChatGPT) to sift through this information and simplify it. Essentially, people choosing bomb targets get a dumbed-down version of information about where children sleep and families get medical treatment. "Let's say you're operating in a place with a lot of civilian areas, like Gaza," I asked the engineers afterward. "Does Palantir prevent you from â€nominating a target' in a civilian location?" Short answer, no.
Note: "Nominating a target" is military jargon that means identifying a person, place, or object to be attacked with bombs, drones, or other weapons. Palantir's Gaia map tool makes life-or-death decisions easier by turning human lives and civilian places into abstract data points on a screen. Read about Palantir's growing influence in law enforcement and the war machine. For more, watch our 9-min video on the militarization of Big Tech.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has canceled plans to introduce new rules designed to limit the ability of US data brokers to sell sensitive information about Americans, including financial data, credit history, and Social Security numbers. The CFPB proposed the new rule in early December under former director Rohit Chopra, who said the changes were necessary to combat commercial surveillance practices that "threaten our personal safety and undermine America's national security." The agency quietly withdrew the proposal on Tuesday morning. Data brokers operate within a multibillion-dollar industry built on the collection and sale of detailed personal information–often without individuals' knowledge or consent. These companies create extensive profiles on nearly every American, including highly sensitive data such as precise location history, political affiliations, and religious beliefs. Common Defense political director Naveed Shah, an Iraq War veteran, condemned the move to spike the proposed changes, accusing Vought of putting the profits of data brokers before the safety of millions of service members. Investigations by WIRED have shown that data brokers have collected and made cheaply available information that can be used to reliably track the locations of American military and intelligence personnel overseas, including in and around sensitive installations where US nuclear weapons are reportedly stored.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
I had been a SEAL for five and a half years. After that, I worked as a contractor with the CIA. When that ended, I crashed–hard. I got into sleeping pills. I was using opiates. Eventually, I moved out of the country and started living in MedellĂn, Colombia. That's where I got really into cocaine. Eventually, I hit a point where I knew I couldn't keep going. A friend told me about psychedelic therapy, and I decided to try it. The first was Ibogaine. It's a 12-hour experience. I basically watched my entire life play out from a different perspective. After the Ibogaine effects wore off, I did another psychedelic called 5-MeO-DMT, sometimes called the "God molecule." The trip is described as an ego death, or death experience. It was the most intense, intuitive thing I've ever felt. I came out of it seeing the world differently. For the first time in my life, I realized everything is connected. That hit me in a way nothing else ever had. When I came back from that psychedelic experience, I didn't need the pills anymore. I didn't need the vodka. I quit everything. And for the first time in a long time, I was fully present with my family. That experience changed everything. It gave me a second chance. That's why I started talking about this publicly. I wanted other veterans ... to know there's a way out. A lot of them have been through the same thing – addiction, trauma, broken families, suicidal thoughts. When they hear that someone else made it through, they start to believe that maybe they can too.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on psychedelic medicine and healing the war machine.
BlackRock Inc.'s annual proxy statement devotes more than 50 pages to executive pay. How many of those are useful in understanding why Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink was compensated to the tune of $37 million for 2024? Not enough. The asset manager's latest remuneration report has heightened significance because BlackRock's shareholders delivered a rare and large protest vote against its pay framework at last year's annual meeting. That followed recommendations ... to withhold support for the so-called say-on-pay motion. In the wake of the rebuke, a board committee responsible for pay and perks took to the phones and hit the road to hear shareholders' gripes. Investors wanted more explanation of how the committee members used their considerable discretion in arriving at awards. There was also an aversion to one-time bonuses absent tough conditions. Incentive pay is 50% tied to BlackRock's financial performance, with the remainder split equally between objectives for "business strength" and "organizational strength." That financial piece was previously described using a non-exhaustive list of seven financial metrics. Now there are eight, gathered under three priorities: "drive shareholder value creation," "accelerate organic revenue growth" and "enhance operating leverage." There's no weighting given to the three financial priorities. The pay committee says Fink "far exceeded" expectations, but those expectations weren't quantified.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial industry corruption.
An unlikely natural ally in the fight against microplastics has been discovered. Researchers in China have found that invasive water hyacinths are adept at absorbing microplastics without harm to the plant itself. Experiments against a control group showed that plastics were mostly trapped on the outside of the water hyacinth's root systems. The few that get inside the plant are quickly separated before nutrients get to the leaves. Typically, plants exposed to microplastics suffer ill effects. Water hyacinths are native to South America. Two plants were able to produce 1,200 daughter plants in four months, according to one study. Any given population of water hyacinth can double in size in six days. Once dropped into a new foreign habitat, invasive species ... can squeeze out native species, reduce biodiversity, and eliminate vital ecosystem services. Not long ago, Arkansas had to issue a statement on the threat water hyacinths posed to agriculture. On the flip side, microplastics are a scourge. They'll often end up in the fish we catch, and once eaten by humans, they can cause problems with the endocrine, immune, and reproductive systems. Despite their rapid proliferation, it may still be worth strategically deploying water hyacinths. Other studies have shown that water hyacinths can also absorb heavy metals and agricultural runoff. Meanwhile, enterprising individuals have been able to take the excess biomass of the plants and turn it into briquettes and bioplastics.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on microplastic solutions.
A $500 million lawsuit filed Monday in Washtenaw County Circuit Court is taking aim at the Michigan Department of Corrections, alleging that prison officials subjected hundreds of incarcerated women to illegal surveillance by recording them during strip searches, while showering, and even as they used the toilet. At the heart of the case is a deeply controversial and, according to experts, unprecedented policy implemented at Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility, the only women's prison in Michigan. Under the Michigan Department of Corrections policy directive, prison guards were instructed to wear activated body cameras while conducting routine strip searches, capturing video of women in states of complete undress. The suit, brought by the firm Flood Law, alleges a range of abuses, including lewd comments from prison guards during recorded searches, and long-term psychological trauma inflicted on women, many of whom are survivors of sexual violence. Attorneys for the 20 Jane Does listed on the suit and hundreds of others on retainer argued that this practice not only deprived women of their dignity, but also violated widely accepted detention standards. No other state in the country permits such recordings; many have explicit prohibitions against filming individuals during unclothed searches, recognizing the inherent risk of abuse and the acute vulnerability of the people being searched. Michigan, the attorneys said, stands alone.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.
Automakers are increasingly pushing consumers to accept monthly and annual fees to unlock preinstalled safety and performance features, from hands-free driving systems and heated seats to cameras that can automatically record accident situations. But the additional levels of internet connectivity this subscription model requires can increase drivers' exposure to government surveillance and the likelihood of being caught up in police investigations. Police records recently reviewed by WIRED show US law enforcement agencies regularly trained on how to take advantage of "connected cars," with subscription-based features drastically increasing the amount of data that can be accessed during investigations. Nearly all subscription-based car features rely on devices that come preinstalled in a vehicle, with a cellular connection necessary only to enable the automaker's recurring-revenue scheme. The ability of car companies to charge users to activate some features is effectively the only reason the car's systems need to communicate with cell towers. Companies often hook customers into adopting the services through free trial offers, and in some cases the devices are communicating with cell towers even when users decline to subscribe. In a letter sent in April 2024 ... US senators Ron Wyden and Edward Markey ... noted that a range of automakers, from Toyota, Nissan, and Subaru, among others, are willing to disclose location data to the government.
Note: Automakers can collect intimate information that includes biometric data, genetic information, health diagnosis data, and even information on people's "sexual activities" when drivers pair their smartphones to their vehicles. The automakers can then take that data and sell it or share it with vendors and insurance companies. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy.
Virginia Giuffre – who killed herself at her home in Western Australia – once sternly warned she would never commit suicide. The Jeffrey Epstein victim turned whistleblower made the statement in a post on X in 2019, replying to another user who claimed the "F.B.I. will kill her to protect the ultra rich and well connected." "I am making it publicly known that in no way, shape or form am I suicidal," she wrote. "I have made this known to my therapist and GP – If something happens to me – in the sake of my family do not let this go away and help me to protect them. Too many evil people want to see me [quieted]." The old tweet was resurfaced on X and shared by well-known conservatives including including House Republicans Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene. The ... suicide came just weeks after she made headlines for saying she had "four days to live" following a collision with a bus. The bus driver later disputed Giuffre's claim about the seriousness of the incident. Giuffre took legal action against billionaire financier and convicted pedophile Epstein in 2015, alleging she was sex trafficked at 16 after ... Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her from her job as a locker room attendant at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. She also alleged she was forced to have sex with disgraced Prince Andrew three times when she was 17 – including at Epstein's Little St. James island, in New Mexico and in Maxwell's London home.
Note: Could it be that there's more to this story than a tragic suicide? Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.
Data that people provide to U.S. government agencies for public services such as tax filing, health care enrollment, unemployment assistance and education support is increasingly being redirected toward surveillance and law enforcement. Originally collected to facilitate health care, eligibility for services and the administration of public services, this information is now shared across government agencies and with private companies, reshaping the infrastructure of public services into a mechanism of control. Once confined to separate bureaucracies, data now flows freely through a network of interagency agreements, outsourcing contracts and commercial partnerships built up in recent decades. Key to this data repurposing are public-private partnerships. The DHS and other agencies have turned to third-party contractors and data brokers to bypass direct restrictions. These intermediaries also consolidate data from social media, utility companies, supermarkets and many other sources, enabling enforcement agencies to construct detailed digital profiles of people without explicit consent or judicial oversight. Palantir, a private data firm and prominent federal contractor, supplies investigative platforms to agencies. These platforms aggregate data from various sources – driver's license photos, social services, financial information, educational data – and present it in centralized dashboards designed for predictive policing and algorithmic profiling. Data collected under the banner of care could be mined for evidence to justify placing someone under surveillance. And with growing dependence on private contractors, the boundaries between public governance and corporate surveillance continue to erode.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy.
More than a dozen private companies around the world are looking to profit from extreme measures to combat global warming – filling the sky with sunlight-blocking particles, brightening clouds or changing the chemistry of the oceans. The problem is that nobody knows how to control the unintended consequences. Some scientists who've studied and modeled the complexity of Earth's oceans and atmosphere say any "geoengineering" scheme big enough to affect the climate could put people at risk of dramatic changes in the weather, crop failures, damage to the ozone layer, international conflict and other irreversible problems. Environmental lawyer David Bookbinder is more afraid of geoengineering than he is of climate change. "The consequences of geoengineering could happen a lot faster and with much less warning," he said. He said the world lacks the legal or regulatory framework to ensure no single government or private entity takes a risky initiative. At the same time, "there's a clamor for tech solutions." Mark Z. Jacobson, an atmospheric modeler ... said we've already seen the results of several natural experiments. Some forms of air pollution have been cooling the planet by about 1 degree C, but that same pollution also kills millions of people from respiratory illnesses. In 1815, the eruption of Tambora injected so many particles into the atmosphere that 1816 was dubbed "the year without a summer." People died from crop failure and famine.
Note: Regenerative farming is far safer and more promising than geoengineering for stabilizing the climate. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on geoengineering and science corruption.
Research institutes and universities may engage in boycotts or divestment to pressure any country or government entity in the world. That right no longer exists when it comes to protests of Israel. Researchers and university employees who engage in certain nonviolent protests or political expression over human rights conditions in Israel may risk civil and criminal penalties, according to a new policy unveiled by the National Institutes of Health yesterday. The agency, the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, touches virtually every corner of the scientific community. The blanket boycott suppression is a radical expansion of so-called "anti-BDS" rules that restrict Americans from boycotting or simply advocating divestment from Israel-related businesses. The new NIH policy, which mirrors anti-BDS laws applied to contractors in thirty eight states ... applies to all "domestic recipients of new, renewal, supplement, or continuation awards" issued starting April 21. The Trump administration policy reflects a dramatic escalation in speech-policing regarding Israel. Since March 8th, immigration agents have arrested and threatened to deport a number of foreign students who have engaged in protests or criticism of Israel's government. Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year old PhD student at Tufts University caught in the recent sweep, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last month. She now resides in an ICE prison cell in Louisiana.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and government corruption.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, in a brief announcement unveiling new staff hires on Monday, released a blurb about Kelsey Barnes, her recently appointed senior advisor. Barnes is a former lobbyist for Syngenta, the Chinese state-owned giant that manufactures and sells a number of controversial pesticide products. Syngenta's atrazine-based herbicides, for instance, is banned in much of the world yet is widely used in American agriculture. It is linked to birth defects, low sperm quality, irregular menstrual cycles, and other fertility problems. The leadership of USDA is filled with personnel with similar backgrounds. Scott Hutchins, the undersecretary for research, is a former Dow Chemical executive at the firm's pesticide division. Kailee Tkacz Buller, Rollins's chief of staff, previously worked as the president of the National Oilseed Processors Association and Edible Oil Producers Association, groups that lobby for corn and other seed oil subsidies. Critics have long warned that industry influence at the USDA creates inherent conflicts of interest, undermining the agency's regulatory mission and public health mandates. The revolving door hires also highlight renewed tension with the "Make America Healthy Again" agenda promised by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans may serve as a test of whether establishment industry influence at the agencies will undermine MAHA promises.
Note: Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America's health crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.
A pavilion of towering windows in a Mexico City urban park is nearly packed. Everyone here wants the same thing: to dance freely, at no cost, without harassment or prejudice. Twenty-somethings, children with their mothers, teenagers and elderly couples gather around the disc jockey's console. "This is an open invitation for everyone to move as they wish in a safe space!" said Axel MartĂnez, one of the collective's founders, as he grabs a microphone and cheers the revelers on. At their own pace, each person is carried away by the music – and no one seems surprised by the moves of others. From experimental jazz pieces and smooth Egyptian hip-hop to the more familiar pulse of cumbias grooved with an electronic touch, people dance to it all. The party was organized by the Nueva Red de Bailadores or NRB (New Network of Dancers), a collective that aims to create spaces where people can gather to dance freely. There's no cover charge, no booze, and no pressure to do the "right" moves. As organizers pointed out, their parties forgo police and security, fostering a sense of collective care where attendees look out for one another. Isabel Miraflores, a 73-year-old retired high school assistant principal, came with her husband and said she enjoyed both the dancing and the presence of people of different ages. "I think it's wonderful because it's a free event," she said. "We get together with people from all parts of society and we have fun without any trouble."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the power of art and healing social division.
New chat logs released by the House Judiciary Committee this week show the extraordinary lengths the FBI went to behind the scenes to shut down any discussion of Hunter Biden's laptop in October 2020 after the New York Post broke the story. The conversations, withheld by the FBI under Director Chris Wray, show that senior leadership issued an internal "gag order" on the laptop. The FBI had been in possession of the abandoned MacBook Pro for 10 months by that stage, after computer repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac handed it over. The FBI's forensic analysts quickly determined the laptop belonged to Hunter, had not been tampered with or altered in any way, and was suitable to be used in court. Yet the chat logs show that senior FBI officials instructed agents to say "No comment" when asked about the laptop during regular meetings with social media companies before the 2020 election. The FBI had spent weeks warning Facebook and Twitter about election interference in the form of Russian disinformation and had told Twitter to be on guard for a "hack and leak" operation "likely" involving Hunter Biden. In other words, the FBI "prebunked" The Post's story so that the social media companies immediately censored it. The FBI knew The Post had received a hard-drive copy of the laptop from Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani because it had a covert surveillance warrant on the former mayor's iCloud.
Note: It took more than a year for New York Times and Washington Post to finally admit that the laptop was genuine. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and intelligence agency corruption.
Skydio, with more than $740m in venture capital funding and a valuation of about $2.5bn, makes drones for the military along with civilian organisations such as police forces and utility companies. The company moved away from the consumer market in 2020 and is now the largest US drone maker. Military uses touted on its website include gaining situational awareness on the battlefield and autonomously patrolling bases. Skydio is one of a number of new military technology unicorns – venture capital-backed startups valued at more than $1bn – many led by young men aiming to transform the US and its allies' military capabilities with advanced technology, be it straight-up software or software-imbued hardware. The rise of startups doing defence tech is a "big trend", says Cynthia Cook, a defence expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based-thinktank. She likens it to a contagion – and the bug is going around. According to financial data company PitchBook, investors funnelled nearly $155bn globally into defence tech startups between 2021 and 2024, up from $58bn over the previous four years. The US has more than 1,000 venture capital-backed companies working on "smarter, faster and cheaper" defence, says Dale Swartz from consultancy McKinsey. The types of technologies the defence upstarts are working on are many and varied, though autonomy and AI feature heavily.
Note: For more, watch our 9-min video on the militarization of Big Tech.
While attempting to control the weather might sound like science fiction, countries have been seeding clouds for decades to try to make rain or snow fall in specific regions. Invented in the 1940s, seeding involves a variety of techniques including adding particles to clouds via aircraft. It is used today across the world in an attempt to alleviate drought, fight forest fires and even to disperse fog at airports. In 2008, China used it to try to stop rain from falling on Beijing's Olympic stadium. But experts say that there is insufficient oversight of the practice, as countries show an increasing interest in this and other geoengineering techniques as the planet warms. The American Meteorological Society has said that "unintended consequences" of cloud seeding have not been clearly shown – or ruled out – and raised concerns that unanticipated effects from weather modification could cross political boundaries. And there have been instances when cloud seeding was used deliberately in warfare. The United States used it during "Operation Popeye" to slow the enemy advance during the Vietnam War. In response, the UN created a 1976 convention prohibiting "military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques". A number of countries have not signed the convention. Researcher Laura Kuhl said there was "significant danger that cloud seeding may do more harm than good", in a 2022 article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Note: Regenerative farming is far safer and more promising than geoengineering for stabilizing the climate. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on geoengineering and science corruption.
When the final, declassified records from the John F. Kennedy assassination files were posted on the National Archives' website last week, the first document researchers and reporters searched for was White House adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s June 1961 memorandum to the president titled "CIA Reorganization." "How could I have been so stupid as to let them proceed?" President John Kennedy asked his advisers following the CIA's infamous fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. Beyond the fact that the U.S. invasion of Cuba was an egregious act of aggression – violating international law and Cuba's sovereignty – its failure was a catastrophic embarrassment for JFK, only weeks into his White House tenure. Kennedy held CIA director Allen Dulles, and his deputy for covert operations Richard Bissell, personally responsible for deceiving him on the prospects for success of the ill-planned paramilitary assault. Indeed, as he processed the implications of the failed invasion, Kennedy vented his desire to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds." That concept was more than angry rhetoric; the president actually set in motion a secret set of deliberations on breaking up the intelligence, espionage and covert action functions of the CIA and subordinating its operations to the State Department. The CIA's operational branches would be "reconstituted" under a new agency.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the JFK assassination.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.