Government Corruption Media Articles
Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.
Corporate media is heralding the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the emergence of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as the new leader of Syria, despite his deep ties to both al-Qaeda and ISIS. CNN portrayed him as a “blazer-wearing revolutionary.” In 2013, [CNN] labeled him one of “the world’s 10 most dangerous terrorists,” known for abducting, torturing and slaughtering racial and religious minorities. Western governments consider Jolani’s new organization, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as one and the same as Al-Qaeda/Al-Nusra. Jolani – whose real name is Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a ... was captured by the U.S. military and spent over five years in prison, including a stint at the notorious Abu Ghraib torture center. While in Iraq, Jolani fought with ISIS and was even a deputy to its founder. Immediately upon release in 2011, ISIS sent him to Syria with a rumored $1 billion to found the Syrian wing of al-Qaeda. While both journalists and politicians in the U.S. are scrambling to change their opinions on Jolani and HTS, the reality is that, for much of its existence, Washington has enjoyed a very close relationship with al-Qaeda. The organization was born in Afghanistan in the 1980s, thanks in no small part to the CIA. Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA spent billions of dollars funding, arming, and training Afghan Mujahideen militiamen (like Osama bin Laden) in an attempt to bleed the Soviet occupation dry. The Bush administration would use [the 9/11] attacks as a pretext to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq, claiming that America could never be safe if al-Qaeda were not thoroughly destroyed. And yet, by the 2010s, even as the U.S. was ostensibly at war with al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was secretly working with [al-Qaeda] in Syria on a plan to overthrow Assad. The CIA spent around $1 billion per year training and arming a wide network of rebel groups to this end. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a leaked 2012 email, “AQ [al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”
Note: As recently as 2016, Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon were fighting with Syrian militias armed by the CIA. Read more about how radicalized Iraqis were swept into US military detention at Camp Bucca—a notorious facility often called a "terrorist university”—where they forged alliances that directly led to the rise of ISIS.
A new study of children living through the war in Gaza has found that 96% of them feel that their death is imminent and almost half want to die as a result of the trauma they have been through. A needs assessment, carried out by a Gaza-based NGO sponsored by the War Child Alliance charity, also found that 92% of the children in the survey were “not accepting of reality”, 79% suffer from nightmares and 73% exhibit symptoms of aggression. “This report lays bare that Gaza is one of the most horrifying places in the world to be a child,” Helen Pattinson, chief executive of War Child UK, said. “Alongside the levelling of hospitals, schools and homes, a trail of psychological destruction has caused wounds unseen but no less destructive on children who hold no responsibility for this war.” The estimated death toll in Gaza is more than 44,000 and a recent assessment by the UN Human Rights Office found that 44% of the fatalities it was able to verify were children. About 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza, approximately 90% of the territory’s total population, have been displaced, many several times. Half of that number are children who have lost their home and been forced to flee their neighbourhoods. More than 60% of the surveyed children reported having experienced traumatic events during the war and some had been exposed to multiple traumatic events. An estimated 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied, separated from their parents.
Note: American companies are profiting from the war in Gaza. Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
The U.S. defense budget is approaching $1 trillion. About half is going to defense contractors, who have a history of overcharging the Pentagon and fleecing American taxpayers. Raytheon recently agreed to pay $950 million to resolve investigations concerning defective pricing, foreign bribery and export control schemes. I look forward to working with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce waste and fraud at the Pentagon. Consolidation in the defense industry has allowed companies to drive up prices. The price of stinger missiles has increased from $25,000 in 1991 to $480,000 today. One reason is that Raytheon became the sole supplier and can drive up costs. We should make defense contracting more competitive, helping small and medium-sized businesses to compete for Defense Department projects. We can do this by reducing massive sole-source contracts that only specific large companies can fulfill, breaking up major acquisitions into smaller programs, and improving funding and administrative support to help companies cross the “valley of death” between research and product commercialization. The Defense Department also needs better acquisition oversight. Defense contractors have gotten away with overcharging the Pentagon and ripping off taxpayers for too long. DOGE should provide recommendations for systems to better manage government spending and acquisition.
Note: The above was written by Rep. Ro Khanna, representative for California's 17th congressional district. Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority. However, as many AI ethicists warn, this blinkered focus on the existential future threat to humanity posed by a malevolent AI ... has often served to obfuscate the myriad more immediate dangers posed by emerging AI technologies. These “lesser-order” AI risks ... include pervasive regimes of omnipresent AI surveillance and panopticon-like biometric disciplinary control; the algorithmic replication of existing racial, gender, and other systemic biases at scale ... and mass deskilling waves that upend job markets, ushering in an age monopolized by a handful of techno-oligarchs. Killer robots have become a twenty-first-century reality, from gun-toting robotic dogs to swarms of autonomous unmanned drones, changing the face of warfare from Ukraine to Gaza. Palestinian civilians have frequently spoken about the paralyzing psychological trauma of hearing the “zanzana” — the ominous, incessant, unsettling, high-pitched buzzing of drones loitering above. Over a decade ago, children in Waziristan, a region of Pakistan’s tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, experienced a similar debilitating dread of US Predator drones that manifested as a fear of blue skies. “I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray,” stated thirteen-year-old Zubair in his testimony before Congress in 2013.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and military corruption.
Covid-19 vaccine mandates did “more harm than good”, a House of Representatives report has claimed. A 525-page report from the coronavirus pandemic select committee argued that Joe Biden’s policy had cost thousands of people their jobs, harmed public confidence in health professionals and damaged military readiness. The report said that “the vaccine ... did not stop transmission and therefore making the jabs mandatory was ineffective at stopping the spread of Covid. The report also suggested that the “more likely” origin of the coronavirus pandemic was a lab leak. “Since the Select Subcommittee commenced its work ... more and more senior intelligence officials, politicians, science editors, and scientists increasingly have endorsed the hypothesis that Covid-19 emerged as the result of a laboratory or research related accident,” it said. Mr Biden’s administration introduced several vaccine mandates from 2021 for members of the armed forces, federal workers, healthcare workers, and businesses with more than 100 employees. Many state and local governments, along with private employers, followed suit. Some 8,000 members of the armed services were discharged as a result of the vaccine mandate. Only 43 rejoined when this was rescinded. The report argued that vaccine mandates appeared to “fly in the face of decades of scientific research”, by not making an exception for those who had acquired immunity by having previously been infected.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID vaccines and government corruption.
The Department of Defense (DoD) has failed for the last 33 years to pass a financial audit. With assets that are approximated at $3.8 trillion probably maybe ... the DoD is surpassed by only JPMorgan/Chase and its $4.2 trillion as the largest U.S. entity when ranked by assets. According to a General Accountability Office (GAO) report last year, “DOD financial management has been on our High-Risk List since 1995. DOD’s spending makes up about half of the federal government’s discretionary spending. Its physical assets comprise almost 68 percent of the federal government’s physical assets. DOD has not yet received an audit opinion on its annual department-wide financial statements. It has been unable to accurately account for and report on its spending or physical assets.” The DoD’s Number 2 largest supplier, Raytheon and the Government’s Number 31 largest supplier, Dell, both agreed to pay millions to resolve Department of Justice (DoJ) investigations this past October and November. The DoJ reported that Raytheon agreed to pay more than $950 million to resolve the government’s investigations into a major government fraud scheme involving defective pricing on certain government contracts and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and its implementing regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
A final congressional report on COVID-19 released Monday has determined the virus likely emerged from a lab accident in China and that the U.S. government perpetrated “misinformation” by incorrectly calling the lab leak theory a “conspiracy.” The House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s COVID-19 panel, controlled by Republicans, issued its 520-page report two years after its investigation began. The report affirmed ... that a “lab-related incident” involving gain-of-function research in Wuhan is the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report specifically calls out Anthony Fauci ... saying that he pushed back on the lab leak theory and “prompted” a research report called “The Proximal Origin” that was used to discredit it. “Although Dr. Fauci believed the lab-leak theory to be a conspiracy theory at the start of the pandemic, it now appears that his position is that he does have an open mind about the origin of the virus—so long as it does not implicate EcoHealth Alliance, and by extension himself and NIAID. Understandably, as he signed off on the EcoHealth Alliance grant,” the report stated. The massive report also examined the effectiveness and consequences of masks and mask mandates and stated that they were ineffective at controlling the spread of COVID-19. Prolonged lockdowns caused immeasurable harm to not only the American economy but also to the mental and physical health of Americans, with a particularly negative effect on younger citizens.
Note: Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and biotech dangers.
The Department of Justice secretly launched a grand jury investigation into a US nonprofit that steered American taxpayer funding to the Chinese lab suspected of leaking the COVID-19 virus and causing the global pandemic. Scientific experts and former federal officials have suggested that EcoHealth Alliance’s grants to the China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) funded gain-of-function research that could have led to a lab leak — but records requests have repeatedly been blocked by the National Institutes of Health. The details of the apparent federal investigation of EcoHealth Alliance remain secret — and members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which released [a] 520-page report on the origins of and response to the pandemic, have declined to talk about it, citing concerns about interfering in any potential DOJ investigation. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other agencies awarded millions of dollars’ worth of grants to the now-suspended public health nonprofit — including a $4 million NIH project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” More than $1.4 million dollars flowed from NIH and USAID to the WIV for that project, which the agency’s principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak later acknowledged was gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses modified with SARS and MERS viruses to become 10,000 times more infectious.
Note: Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and biotech dangers.
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.
During an April flight over the Greenland Ice Sheet, NASA scientist Chad Greene [detected] a secret military base. After taking radar images of the ice, Greene was surprised to see what was shortly thereafter confirmed to be Camp Century—a 65-year-old Cold War United States military base buried 100 feet deep in the massive ice sheet. Built in secret between June of 1959 and October of 1960 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Camp Century—also known as “the city under the ice”—was comprised of 21 underground tunnels spanning 9,800 feet. The U.S. and Denmark signed the Defense of Greenland agreement in 1951 “to negotiate arrangements under which armed forces of the parties to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization may make use of facilities in Greenland in defense of Greenland and the rest of the North Atlantic Treaty area,” according to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. This allowed the U.S. to build bases in Greenland. While operating at the base, scientists made major geological breakthroughs. But that research was just a cover-up. Camp Century itself was not a secret. The Army even made a promotional video for the project. The scientific research angle, as significant as the discoveries were, was merely a front for a major U.S. nuclear weapon strategy of which the Danish government wasn’t even aware. Known as “Project Iceworm,” the plan was for Camp Century to house ballistic missiles under the Greenland ice.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
Technology companies are having some early success selling artificial intelligence tools to police departments. Axon, widely recognized for its Taser devices and body cameras, was among the first companies to introduce AI specifically for the most common police task: report writing. Its tool, Draft One, generates police narratives directly from Axon’s bodycam audio. Currently, the AI is being piloted by 75 officers across several police departments. “The hours saved comes out to about 45 hours per police officer per month,” said Sergeant Robert Younger of the Fort Collins Police Department, an early adopter of the tool. Cassandra Burke Robertson, director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, has reservations about AI in police reporting, especially when it comes to accuracy. “Generative AI programs are essentially predictive text tools. They can generate plausible text quickly, but the most plausible explanation is often not the correct explanation, especially in criminal investigations,” she said. In the courtroom, AI-generated police reports could introduce additional complications, especially when they rely solely on video footage rather than officer dictation. New Jersey-based lawyer Adam Rosenblum said “hallucinations” — instances when AI generates inaccurate or false information — that could distort context are another issue. Courts might need new standards ... before allowing the reports into evidence.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and police corruption.
For years, the late Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) published an annual report on government waste, appropriately titled “The Wastebook.” Coburn and his staff catalogued billions of dollars in dubious spending, ranging from the ridiculous (like a $1 million grant to study romance novels) to the outrageous (like $65 million in hurricane relief that was spent on tourism advertisements). Last year ... the Government Accountability Office released a report revealing that 17 out of 24 federal agencies are utilizing less than 25 percent of their office space. Not one of the agencies used even half the office space it occupied, topping out at 49 percent. Federal agencies spend about $2 billion every year to operate and maintain these buildings, plus an additional $5 billion per year to lease office buildings. By selling underutilized properties and consolidating operations, the federal government could generate hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in revenue, in addition to reducing the expense of maintaining property and buildings that are barely being used. Between 2010 and 2023, the federal government saved an estimated $600 billion simply by implementing GAO recommendations, some of which are as simple and common-sense as improved documentation and monitoring to prevent overpayments. Another promising way of reducing federal spending would be to cut redundancy. Multiple federal agencies are concurrently working on the same issues — in some cases, literally dozens of federal agencies are all working independently on the same problem.
Note: GAO estimates that the federal government Federal Government loses an estimated $233 billion to $521 billion annually to fraud and waste. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government waste.
With the misinformation category being weaponized across the political spectrum, we took a look at how invested government has become in studying and “combatting” it using your tax dollars. That research can provide the intellectual ammunition to censor people online. Since 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has spent $267 million on research grants with the term “misinformation” in the proposal. Of course, the Covid pandemic was the driving force behind so much of the misinformation debate. There is robust documentation by now proving that the Biden-Harris administration worked closely with social media companies to censor content deemed “misinformation,” which often included cases where people simply questioned or disagreed with the Administration’s COVID policies. In February the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a scathing report against the National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding grants supporting tools and processes that censor online speech. The report said, “the purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others.” $13 million was spent on the censorious technologies profiled in the report.
Note: Read the full article on Substack to uncover all the misinformation contracts with government agencies, universities, nonprofits, and defense contractors. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and government 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.
The Pentagon announced late last week that it failed its seventh consecutive audit. As with its past failures to achieve a clean audit, the U.S. Defense Department attempted to cast the 2024 results in a positive light, with the Pentagon’s chief financial officer declaring in a statement that “momentum is on our side.” The Pentagon is the largest U.S. federal agency and is responsible for roughly half of the government’s annual discretionary spending, with its yearly budget approaching $1 trillion despite long-standing concerns about the department’s inability to account for vast sums of money approved by lawmakers and presidents from both major parties. The latest financial assessment published Friday by the Defense Department’s inspector general office estimates that the Pentagon has $4.1 trillion in assets. It is the only major federal agency that has never passed a clean audit, as required by law. Since the department’s first failed audit in 2018, Congress has authorized trillions of dollars in additional military spending. According to the Costs of War Project, more than half of the department’s annual budget “is now spent on military contractors” that are notorious for overbilling. Lawmakers have long cited the Pentagon’s failure to pass a clean audit as evidence of the department’s pervasive waste and fraud. The Pentagon buried a 2015 report identifying $125 billion in administrative waste out of concern that the findings would be used as a justification “to slash the defense budget.”
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.
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.
[Larry] Clay was the law until one day in the fall of 2020, when a teenage girl ... reported that her stepmother sold her to be raped for $100 when she was 17 years old. The buyer, she told the sheriff’s department, wasn’t just anyone — it was Police Chief Larry Clay. While he was in uniform and on duty. The first time, against his department-issued vehicle. The second, inside a police office. Clay, 55, and the stepmother, 27, were both charged with sex trafficking of a minor. When law enforcement officers are charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse, they usually avoid trials. The Post examined the cases of 1,800 of these officers. The majority of those convicted took plea deals, which frequently allowed them to evade lengthy sentences and public reckonings over their crimes. Other cases quietly fell apart when children said they were too afraid to continue. Sgt. James Pack ... led child sex crimes investigations for the [Fayette County] sheriff’s department. Pack knew that sex trafficking rarely looked like it did in the movies, with strangers abducting kids. Far more often, it involved people who knew each other, one taking advantage of the other’s vulnerabilities. Did selling her stepdaughter strike her, the prosecutor [in Clay's case] asked, as something out of the ordinary? “It was done to me,” [stepmother] Naylor-Legg said. “My mom used to sell me for money or for drugs if we needed something.” “And how old were you at the time?” “It started at 10,” Naylor-Legg answered.
Note: Read more on the Washington Post's investigation into the 1,800 officers charged with sexually abusing children. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
“Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority,” wrote Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in a 1995 ruling affirming Americans’ constitutional right to engage in anonymous political speech. That shield has weakened in recent years due to advances in the surveillance technology available to law enforcement. Everything from social media posts, to metadata about phone calls, to the purchase information collected by data brokers, to location data showing every step taken, is available to law enforcement — often without a warrant. Avoiding all of this tracking would require such extrication from modern social life that it would be virtually impossible for most people. International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers, or Stingrays, impersonate cell phone towers to collect the unique ID of a cell phone’s SIM card. Geofence warrants, also known as reverse location warrants ... lets law enforcement request location data from apps on your phone or tech companies. Data brokers are companies that assemble information about people from a variety of usually public sources. Tons of websites and apps that everyday people use collect information on them, and this information is often sold to third parties who can aggregate or piece together someone’s profile across the sites that are tracking them. Companies like Fog Data Science, LexisNexis, Precisely and Acxiom possess not only data on billions of people, they also ... have information about someone’s political preferences as well as demographic information. Surveillance of social media accounts allows police to gather vast amounts of information about how protests are organized ... frequently utilizing networks of fake accounts. One firm advertised the ability to help police identify “activists and disruptors” at protests.
Note: For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.
In a landmark verdict cheered by human rights defenders around the world, a federal jury in Virginia found a U.S. military contractor liable for the torture of three prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison during the invasion and occupation of Iraq in the early 2000s. The jury ordered CACI Premier Technology to pay each of the three Iraqi plaintiffs $3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million in punitive damages, for a total of $42 million. It is the first time that a civilian contractor has been found legally responsible for abusing Abu Ghraib detainees. The lawsuit against CACI—filed in 2008 by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of Suhail Al Shimari, Asa'ad Al Zuba'e, and Salah Al-Ejaili—alleged that company officials conspired with U.S. military personnel in subjecting the plaintiffs to torture and other crimes. Dozens of Abu Ghraib detainees died in U.S. custody, some of them as a result of being tortured to death. Abu Ghraib prisoners endured torture ranging from rape and being attacked with dogs to being forced to eat pork and renounce Islam. A separate U.S. Army report concluded that most Abu Ghraib prisoners were innocent, with the Red Cross estimating that between 70-90% of inmates there were wrongfully detained. These include women who were held as bargaining chips to induce suspected militants to surrender. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the prison's commanding officer, was demoted. No other high-ranking military officer faced accountability for the abuse.
Note: Learn more about US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. War destroys, yet these powerful real-life stories show that we can heal, reimagine better alternatives, and plant the seeds of a global shift in consciousness to transform our world.
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.
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