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How A Defense Contractor Compromised US Navy Intelligence, Military Contractors Exploit Taxpayers, America's First Black Astronaut
Revealing News Articles
June 4, 2024

Dear friends,

Welcome to our weekly newsletter, where we summarize important news articles from reliable sources on controversial issues that impact our lives. This week we've summarized key news articles on:

  • how US Navy intelligence was compromised at high levels by a crooked contractor known as "Fat Leonard" Francis
  • US support for a prolific human rights abuser in Afghanistan
  • more evidence that Anthony Fauci engaged in a conspiracy to hide the true origins of COVID-19
  • the US Food and Drug Administration considering more informative ingredients labeling rules for packaged foods
  • a look inside the world of doomsday prepping and elite survival bunkers

Our independent media news articles (skip to this section now):

  • how military contractors are increasingly given more leeway in what they can charge the Defense Department with less oversight, according to new provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2025 (NDAA)

Our inspiring stories (skip to this section now):

  • how Ed Dwight, America's first Black astronaut, recently became the oldest person ever to reach space
  • neighborhood groups using a cooperative strategy to finance unconventional construction or renovation projects that traditional lenders won't touch
  • a program in Zambia that invites women to heal their depression together

Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the news source listed. If any link fails, see this page. The most important sentences are highlighted. By educating ourselves and spreading the word, we can work together to create a more free and informed society.

With faith in a transforming world,
Mark Bailey and Amber Yang for PEERS and WantToKnow.info

Special note: We're excited to announce an experimental feature in our search engine created by team member Mark Bailey! In addition to our traditional keyword search, you can now search our comprehensive news article archive using prompts, similar to ChatGPT. This enhancement will make it even easier to explore information related to the vast array of topics we cover. Explore it now and see how this new tool can improve your search experience. With 13,000+ news articles in our database, Mark also created a visual chart of all of the media sources we use, which allows readers to explore the variety and scope of our media sources. Watch a brief video about the project here!


How Fat Leonard compromised admirals in charge of Navy intelligence
May 7, 2024, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/05/07/how-fat...

Leonard Glenn Francis, and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, held $200 million in contracts to resupply U.S. Navy ships and provide port security in Asia. But Francis had recently been arrested. Federal agents were shocked to discover ... that he had obtained reams of classified information from corrupt Navy officers about the itineraries of U.S. warships and submarines. Francis, a high school dropout with a prior felony record, penetrated the Navy’s elaborate counterintelligence defenses with astonishing ease — and far more extensively than the Pentagon has publicly acknowledged — by bribing ... officers for classified material. Navy counterintelligence officials failed to detect hemorrhaging leaks of military secrets to Francis while he exploited the information for his company’s bottom line. Since 2015, 10 Navy officers have admitted to leaking classified material to Francis and his firm in exchange for prostitutes, cash and other favors, the records show, making the Malaysian defense contractor among the most prolific espionage agents in modern history. After a lengthy investigation and the suspension of [Vice Adm. Ted Branch and Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless'] access to classified information, the Navy determined that Branch violated federal ethics rules and committed official misconduct by accepting meals and other gifts from Francis. Loveless was indicted and tried on bribery charges, though prosecutors dropped the case against him.

Note: Read more about the massive bribery scheme that Leonard Francis used to compromise the US Navy. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Fat Leonard bribery cases fall apart because of prosecution blunders
May 20, 2024, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/05/20/fat-leonard...

Few Navy officers entangled themselves in the Fat Leonard corruption scandal more than Steve Shedd. In court documents and testimony, the former warship captain confessed to leaking military secrets on 10 occasions for prostitutes, vacations, luxury watches and other bribes worth $105,000. Shedd might avoid punishment for his crimes. The reason: a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct in the Fat Leonard investigation that has caused several cases to unravel so far and is threatening to undermine more. The cases collapsed after defense attorneys alleged that prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego relied on flawed evidence and withheld information favorable to the defense during the 2022 bribery trial of five other officers who had served in the Navy’s 7th Fleet in Asia. After Francis’s arrest in 2013, nearly 1,000 individuals came under scrutiny, including 91 admirals. Federal prosecutors brought criminal charges against 34 defendants. Twenty-nine of them, including Shedd, pleaded guilty. Legal analysts said it is possible that even Francis might catch a break, though he has already pleaded guilty to bribing “scores” of military officers and defrauding the Navy of tens of millions of dollars. During the 2022 trial ... the prosecution team led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Pletcher withheld a witness statement that contradicted some of the government’s allegations and did not divulge that one of its lead investigators had made inaccurate statements.

Note: Read more about the massive bribery scheme that Leonard Francis used to compromise the US Navy. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


America’s Monster: How the U.S. Backed Kidnapping, Torture and Murder in Afghanistan
May 22, 2024, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/world/asia/afghanistan-abdul-raziq...

Abdul Raziq [was] one of America’s most important partners in the war against the Taliban. American generals cycling through Afghanistan made regular pilgrimages to visit him, praising ... the loyalty he commanded from his men, who were trained, armed and paid by the United States and its allies. The Americans were by his side until the very end. When he was gunned down by an undercover Taliban assassin in 2018, he was walking next to the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin S. Miller, who celebrated him as a “great friend” and “patriot.” But to countless Afghan civilians under his reign, Raziq was something else entirely: America’s monster. His battlefield prowess was built on years of torture, extrajudicial killings and the largest-known campaign of forced disappearances during America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan. He transformed the police into a fearsome combat force without constraints, and his officers abducted hundreds, if not thousands, of people to be killed or tortured in secret jails. Most were never seen again. The culture of lawlessness and impunity he created flew in the face of endless promises by American presidents, generals and ambassadors to uphold human rights and build a better Afghanistan. Raziq’s tactics ... stirred such enmity in parts of the population that the Taliban turned his cruelty into a recruiting tool, broadcasting it to attract new fighters. Many Afghans came to revile the American-backed government and everything it represented.

Note: Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime 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.


New COVID Select Memo Details Allegations of Wrongdoing and Illegal Activity by Dr. Fauci’s Senior Scientific Advisor
May 22, 2024, Committee on Oversight and Accountability
https://oversight.house.gov/release/new-covid-select-memo-details...

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a staff memorandum titled “Allegations of Wrongdoing and Illegal Activity by Dr. David Morens, Senior Advisor to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases former-Director, Dr. Anthony Fauci.” This memo presents overwhelming evidence from Dr. Morens’s own email that he engaged in serious misconduct ... while serving as a Senior Advisor to Dr. Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic. The memo includes previously unreleased email correspondence ... that incriminates Dr. Morens in undermining the operations of the U.S. government, unlawfully deleting federal COVID-19 records, using a personal email to avoid the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and repeatedly acting unbecoming of a federal employee. Further, the memo reveals new emails suggesting Dr. Fauci was aware of Dr. Morens’s nefarious behavior and may have even engaged in federal records violations himself. Email evidence suggests Dr. Fauci used his personal email to conduct official business. This raises serious questions as to whether Dr. Fauci took part in a conspiracy amongst the highest levels of NIH to hide official records related to the origins of COVID-19. Dr. Fauci was potentially aware of, and may have engaged in, undermining the operations of the U.S. government by assisting Dr. Morens’s efforts to backchannel internal NIH information to EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources.


Biggest Bombshells From New Fauci COVID Emails
May 23, 2024, Newsweek
https://www.newsweek.com/inside-fauci-morens-coronavirus-emails...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is under fire after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic reviewed more than 30,000 pages of subpoenaed emails and documents from Dr. David Morens, Fauci's former senior adviser. The subcommittee ... said the emails raised "serious questions as to whether Dr. Fauci took part in a conspiracy amongst the highest levels of [the National Institutes of Health] to hide official records related to the origins of COVID-19." The 35-page memo "incriminates Dr. Morens in undermining the operations of the U.S. government, unlawfully deleting federal COVID-19 records, [and] using a personal email to avoid the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)." Many of Morens' emails were sent to or copied Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance. EcoHealth Alliance received a $3.4 million NIH grant in 2014, of which about $600,000 was sent to the Wuhan virology lab. Many of Morens' emails mentioned avoiding FOIA requests and urged individuals to contact his private email address rather than his NIH government-issued account. On May 13, 2021, Morens wrote an email, which Daszak was copied on, suggesting someone speak with Fauci through an unofficial, private channel. He wrote: "Interview Tony directly and connected him to our 'secret' back channel." The subject line of the email suggested the conversation was about the origins of COVID-19.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources.


The US food industry has long buried the truth about their products. Is that coming to an end?
May 20, 2024, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/20/food...

More than a dozen countries require that companies print nutritional labels on the front of food packages – a move that’s come as the rate of diet-related diseases, like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and obesity, increases worldwide. So far, the United States does not require any front-of-package nutrition labels. But that could soon change. The US Food and Drug Administration is currently developing front-of-package labels that it could require corporations to begin printing as early as 2027. Despite significant opposition from food companies ... the FDA is evaluating different mandatory label designs to determine which is most effective at informing consumers, but also which is legal under US corporate free speech laws. The labels under consideration by the FDA ... mark only “nutrients of concern”, like sugar and sodium – not-ultra processed foods. But many advocates say that should change. UPFs are industrially formulated products made out of substances extracted from foods, like sugars, salts, hydrogenated fats, bulking agents and starches. Today, UPFs make up 73% of the US food supply, according to Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute, and provide the average US adult with more than 60% of their daily calories. But research is increasingly linking UPFs to a whole host of health issues: from cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes to colorectal cancer and depression.

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


Doomsday prepping: Inside elite underground survival bunker
February 19, 2024, NewsNation
https://www.newsnationnow.com/banfield/inside-elite-underground...

From everyday Americans to celebrities, doomsday preppers are stocking up for fears of the end of the world, nuclear war, a major economic collapse or World War III. Now, real estate speculators say there are plenty of people concerned about the future to buy properties in bunker communities. Doomday prepping has been defined as: “The management of stockpiled household items in anticipation of market disruption.” Preppers are people who make preparations to survive without government assistance in the event there is a disaster. They may learn survivalist skills as well as stockpile supplies such as food and ammunition. In the past year, Finder.com says 39% of millennials and 40% of those in Generation Z reported spending money on prepping. [Vivos xPoint is] a former Army base turned bunker community in South Dakota that’s off-grid and built to be self-sufficient. Some people have a plane full of gas to get them to their bunkers at any moment. Some of the bunkers have generators, a bomb blast door, gun safes, an electrical room and storage for food, along with bedrooms and bathrooms. The South Dakota property of more than 530 bunkers is built to be self-sufficient. Out of all the $55,000 bunkers on site, about 200 have sold and sales have been picking up. Many countries in the world, including the U.S., advise people to prepare to survive for three days without assistance from authorities in the case of an emergency.

Note: Read more about elite doomsday bunkers.


From luxury bunkers to tactical vehicles, the ultra-rich are preparing for the Big One
March 9, 2024, CBC News (Canada's Public Broadcasting System)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/billionaire-bunkers-doomsday-1.7130152

In December, Wired magazine revealed that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta and one of the richest individuals on the planet, was building a $100-million US compound in Hawaii. The compound includes a bunker — 5,000 square feet, to be specific, with concrete walls and an escape hatch. What does this tell us? It's a sign that at least some of the ultra-rich are anxious about global events and are making contingency plans for the Big One — whatever form that may take. The feeling is very much in the air. Architectural Digest named "luxury bunkers" one of the real estate trends of 2023. Brian Cramden, president of Hardened Structures, a Virginia-based firm that builds multimillion-dollar fortified homes and bomb shelters, said work has been "steady" for years but that he has seen a "major uptick in the last two, three months." "With Putin and North Korea and what's going on in Gaza, I'm getting lots of inquiries," he said. "It's [wars], it's Trump, it's the divisiveness of the nation." Cramden said the most commonly cited threats include a breakdown of law and order; the detonation of a nuclear weapon; a hostile power activating an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to disrupt the communications network; and the diffuse effects of climate change. Vivos, a California-based company that provides "shelter solutions," told CBC "inquiries and applications are up over 2,000 per cent year over year."

Note: Read more about elite doomsday bunkers.


World's billionaires are building bunkers and assembling fortresses outside their mansions
January 21, 2024, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12974609/What-know...

'Doomsday prepping' used to be seen as a hobby relegated to the paranoid fringe — but ordinary Americans spent a staggering $11 billion on survival items, just last year, from April 2022 to April 2023. About a third of US citizens admit to prepping, surveys show, but few have the resources today's billionaire bunker-builders have to devote to their own shelters. The world's wealthiest have increasingly spent hundreds of millions on securing underground compounds, private islands and (for the merely rich) 'survival condos.' Last year, the nonprofit coalition of physicists and other researchers behind Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set their Doomsday Clock 90 seconds to midnight: the closest humanity has been to doom in the clock's 76 year history. 'Russia's war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states interact, eroding norms of international conduct,' their 2023 Doomsday Clock statement explained. It's Gen-Z adults, those born after 1997, who have proven the most likely to be preparing for a disaster: a whooping 40 percent claimed to have spent money on doomsday supplies in 2022, according to a Finder survey. As one sustainable prepping influencer, content creator Brekke Wagoner, put it, 'Basically our weather is going to be more intense because of global climate change, if for no other reason you should have an emergency plan to deal with these inclement disasters, because they're coming whether we want them or not.'

Note: Read more about elite doomsday bunkers.


Key Articles From Independent Media


New Bipartisan Bill Allows Military Contractors To Fleece Taxpayers
May 21, 2024, The Lever
https://www.levernews.com/new-bipartisan-bill-allows-military...

After receiving more than $3.8 million in 2024 campaign donations from political action committees and individuals associated with the military industry, members of the House committee overseeing Pentagon spending just inserted two provisions into an upcoming bill that would exempt many more private products and services from competitive pricing guidelines and provide contractors far more leeway in what they can charge the Defense Department. Last year’s Pentagon spending bill totaled nearly $884 billion. Over the past decade, more than half of that budget has gone to military contractors. Many of the top military contractors — including Boeing, RTX Corporation, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — have seen sizable stock-value increases since the war in Gaza began in October 2023 while shooting down shareholder efforts at increased transparency. The provisions in the 2025 Pentagon spending bill are part of the 344-page National Defense Authorization Act of 2025 (NDAA). The provisions in question — Sections 811 and 812 — make good on a wishlist of policy changes that many military companies have been lobbying on for years. “As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I’m disappointed to see provisions in the NDAA that would allow contractors to further obscure pricing data,” Rep. Ro Khanna [said]. “This would lead to more inflated costs and waste taxpayer money when we could be investing it instead.”

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending 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.


Inspiring Articles


At age 90, America's first Black astronaut candidate has finally made it to space
May 19, 2024, NPR
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/19/1252354052/blue-origin-rocket...

Ed Dwight, the man who six decades ago nearly became America's first Black astronaut, made his first trip into space at age 90 on Sunday along with five crewmates aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket. The approximately 10-minute suborbital flight put Dwight in the history books as the oldest person ever to reach space. He beat out Star Trek actor William Shatner for that honor by just a few months. Shatner was a few months younger when he went up on a New Shepard rocket in 2021. In the 1960s, Dwight, an Air Force captain, was fast tracked for space flight after then-President John F. Kennedy asked for a Black astronaut. Despite graduating in the top half of a test pilot school, Dwight was subsequently passed over for selection as an astronaut, a story he detailed in his autobiography, Soaring On The Wings Of A Dream: The Untold Story of America's First Black Astronaut Candidate. After leaving the Air Force, Dwight went on to become a celebrated sculptor, specializing in creating likenesses of historic African American figures. Speaking with NPR by phone a few hours after Sunday's launch, Dwight said, "I've got bragging rights now." "All these years, I've been called an astronaut," Dwight said, but "now I have a little [astronaut] pin, which is ... a totally different matter." He said he'd been up to 80,000 feet in test flights during his Air Force career, but at four times that altitude aboard New Shepard, the curvature of the Earth was more pronounced.

Note: Explore more positive human interest stories.


Priced Out of Housing, Communities Take Development Into Their Own Hands
May 13, 2024, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/business/gentrifying-neighborhoods...

“Community-owned cooperative real estate” ... was developed a decade ago by a nonprofit legal group and a nonprofit neighborhood group in Oakland, Calif., and has been refined by legal and development groups in Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., and other cities. The cooperative strategy enables neighborhood groups to finance unconventional construction or renovation projects that banks and institutional lenders, which prefer strong cash-flow operations, won’t touch. Much of the approach stems from efforts by the federal and local governments to make it easier for small investors to put money into real estate developments. Federal rules once barred small investors — those whose net worth is less than $1 million or who make less than $200,000 a year in income — from participating in development projects; that changed in 2015. At the same time, a few states enacted laws allowing small investors to put their money into local developments. “Until that change, 90 percent of the residents in a community couldn’t make direct investments in a real estate project,” said Chris Miller [with] the National Coalition for Community Capital, a nonprofit group. “Michigan allows nonaccredited investors to invest up to $10,000 in a project now.” In Oakland, the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is widely credited with being one of the first community groups to apply the community-owned cooperative concept to a neighborhood project.

Note: Explore more positive stories about reimagining the economy.


How Women Are Helping Their Neighbors Heal From Depression
May 16, 2024, Reasons to be Cheerful
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/women-peer-led-therapy-depression/

Rhoda Phiri was having a hard time sleeping. She found it difficult to mingle with people in her community and at church. Even basic chores were hard. She was, she says, in a “dark corner.” Then one day in 2020, a couple of women knocked on the door of her home in Zambia. The women were with StrongMinds, an international nonprofit that provides support for depression, particularly among women and adolescents. She accepted the women’s invitation to join a group therapy program, held under a tree in an area near her home, and as she learned about depression, she recognized the signs in herself. “All the symptoms they were talking about, it’s like they were talking about me,” Phiri says. “It’s like they knew what I was going through.” Instead of relying on mental health professionals, StrongMinds offers group therapy facilitated by trained community members — often clients who have completed the treatment themselves, like Phiri. This group therapy model has proven to be an effective way to treat depression. Since the organization launched in 2013, half a million people have gone through the treatment program. Three-quarters of participants screened as being free of depression symptoms two weeks after completing it. “What we’ve learned in 11 years is that depression treatment can be, what we call, democratized,” says StrongMinds founder ... Sean Mayberry. “You can take it out of the hands of doctors and nurses and give it to the community itself.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


What Everyone Should Know About the Brain’s Ability to Heal
October 25, 2022, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/opinion/brain-stroke-recovery-fetterman.html

Our brains are made up of billions of cells that work together to create our every ability. Wipe out those cells, through a stroke or other brain trauma, and you may no longer be able to read, but you might still be able to speak, sing or write. It’s all about where the brain is damaged — which systems of cells are traumatized and which are not. The three-pound mass of neurological tissue that we call the brain has the power not only to create every ability we have but also to manifest our perception of reality. Our brains have a two-pronged defense mechanism that kicks in when brain trauma occurs. Not only are we able to grow some new neurons — a process called neurogenesis — especially in the sites where physical trauma has occurred, our brain cells are capable of neuroplasticity, which means they can rearrange which other neurons they are in communication with. That’s why, whenever I meet someone who has experienced a brain trauma of any sort, I don’t focus on what abilities that person has lost, but rather I marvel at what insights that person might have gained because of the experience. Few things have greater impact on how people choose to live their lives than neurological trauma or near-death experiences. And when we find ourselves to be neurologically impaired, we become vulnerable and need others to support us rather than criticize or judge us. I became a much more compassionate and empathetic person following my stroke and recovery. Perhaps I am not the only one.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


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