Tag: corruption

Seymour Hersh: the CIA Knows Ukrainian Officials Are Skimming US Aid

On Wednesday, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report on Substack that alleged the CIA was aware of widespread corruption in Ukraine and the embezzlement of US aid.

The report said the Ukrainian government has been using US taxpayer money to purchase diesel from Russia to fuel its military. Hersh said Zelensky “has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments.”

Hersh said according to one estimate by CIA analysts, at least $400 million in funds were embezzled last year. Sources told Hersh that Ukrainian officials are also “competing” to set up front companies for export contracts to private arms dealers around the world.

The issue of corruption was raised during a meeting between CIA Director William Burns and Zelensky in January. An intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting told Hersh that Burns delivered a stunning message to Zelensky.

Hersh wrote: “The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because ‘he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.’”

During the meeting, Burns presented Zelensky with a list of 35 generals and senior government officials whose corruption was known to the CIA. Zelensky responded by dismissing 10 officials who were engaged in flagrant corruption. “The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” the intelligence official said.

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Annals of the Covert World: the Secret Life of Shampoo

Veterans of the CIA’s Phoenix Program always seem to make soft landings with a golden parachute: a lifetime guarantee of gainful employment. CounterPunch reported on the ascent into the Congress of Robert Simmons, a Phoenix veteran and adept at torture. Then there’s the case of former senator Bob Kerrey, who commanded a Phoenix operation in the Mekong delta that featured throat-slitting and the assassination of elderly men and women and children. Now comes word that Phoenix veterans are also highly sought after by the upper echelons of the corporate world.

In early September, Procter and Gamble, the Cincinnati-based conglomerate, fessed up to hiring Phoenix operatives to infiltrate its chief rival Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch cosmetics giants. It was all about the secrets of shampoo, specifically the top-selling Salon Selectives and Finesse. It seems both of those Unilever brands had taken a big bite out of the market share once dominated by a shelf of P&G products, including Wash & Go, Head & Shoulders, Pantene and Vidal Sassoon. Also at stake was the planned sale of Clairol, which was on the auction block with both companies in an intense bidding struggle. One former P&G executive said that the companies were engaged in a decades-long dirty war, which had become “a death struggle to incrementally gain share”.

The operation was launched in June of 2000, when P&G contracted with the Phoenix Consulting Group of Huntsville, Alabama, a corporate espionage firm set up by Phoenix veteran John Nolan and fellow CIA officers. P&G also set up a secret wing inside its own security department. The operations were run out of a secret office known as The Ranch, and featured safe houses, off-shore bank accounts, dumpster diving and informants.

Nolan and his operatives were apparently able to secure more than 80 internal Unilever documents that detailed the company’s shampoo marketing strategy for the next two years. The documents were returned to the company after word of the operation leaked out to a reporter at Fortune magazine. P&G apologized for the operation, saying it had “violated our strict business guidelines regarding our business policies.” The company also fired two executives in the firm’s security sector.

But few take these actions as anything more than the defensive maneuvers of a company caught doing something shady and in full damage control mode. Indeed, P&G is well-known for its paranoia and obsessive concerns about corporate secrecy. Its security officers are known inside the company as “Proctoids”. In the past, P&G has shadowed employees on their business trips to see if they chatted to fellow travelers (and Unilever agents?) about company business, snooped in on company phone lines and tracked computer traffic. A few years ago P&G executives became enraged by a series of critical articles about the company by Wall Street Journal reporter Alecia Swasy and retaliated by hitting her with grand jury subpoenas and putting her under 24-hour surveillance.

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The US Could Use Some Separation Of Media And State

The US State Department’s spokesperson Ned Price is being replaced by a man named Matthew Miller. Like Price, Miller has had extensive prior involvement in both the US government and the mass media; Price is a former CIA officer and Obama administration National Security Council staffer who for years worked as an NBC News analyst, while Miller has previously had roles in both the Obama and Biden administrations and spent years as an analyst for MSNBC.

Like every high-level government spokesperson, Miller’s job will be to spin the nefarious things the US empire does in a positive light and deflect inconvenient questions with weasel-worded non-answers. Which also happens to be essentially the same job as the propagandists in the mainstream media.

In journalism school you are taught that there’s supposed to be a sharp line between government and the press; journalists are meant to hold the government to account, and there’s an obvious conflict of interest there if they’re also friends with government officials or are looking to the government as a potential future employer. But at the highest levels of the world’s most powerful government and the world’s most influential media platforms the line between media and state is effectively nonexistent; people flow seamlessly between roles in the media and roles in the government depending on who’s in office.

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NYPD officers brag about milking overtime, call detainees names in accidental recording

Jonathan Wohl’s arrest last September was about as routine as they come.

The 35-year-old construction worker was staging a one-man protest against his union, recording himself on his phone as he stood in the lobby of the Midtown offices of Laborers Local 79. When security asked him to leave, he refused and the building called the cops.

In a strange twist of technological fate, Wohl’s phone, which was at that point in the possession of the police, kept on recording.

For nearly eight hours, as Wohl paced around a holding cell in the Midtown South precinct, his phone picked up conversations among dozens of cops who did not appear to know they were being recorded.

The tape, which was reviewed by Gothamist, offers a rare window into the daily work of a police officer behind closed doors – and the ways that a number of recent criminal justice reforms have changed the way officers process arrests and collect overtime.

In contrast to comments from top NYPD officials, who have spent years lobbying against bail reform, rank-and-file officers offered another perspective, suggesting the additional paperwork required by the new law had been a boon to their paychecks.

“Bail reform sucks. But it’s also one of the best things that’s ever happened, too,” Wohl’s arresting officer, Shaun Enright, said to a coworker in the recording. “God is great, bro.”

The NYPD declined to make Enright available for comment on this story and declined to comment as an agency. The Police Benevolent Association, the union representing rank-and-file police officers, did not respond to a request for comment.

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AOC says she may draft Clarence Thomas impeachment article if no one else does

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., renewed her calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be impeached after a report detailed the justice’s close relationship with a billionaire Republican donor — going so far as to say she will introduce articles of impeachment herself.

In comments made on the “Lever Time” podcast Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez said Thomas’ position on the court is an “emergency” and a “crisis,” and reiterated her full support for removing him. 

When asked if she would introduce the articles of impeachment herself, the New York lawmaker said she would step up if no one else does. 

“Congress is out of session for the next week. And so that does give Democrats some time to strategize, and the way I feel about it is that, I do think articles need to be introduced,” said Ocasio-Cortez. 

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Former Hawaii Lawmaker Gets 2 Years in Corruption Case That Led to Release of Sewage Into State Waters

A former Hawaii lawmaker was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison in a federal corruption case that’s drawn attention to a perennial problem in the islands: the tens of thousands of cesspools that release 50 million gallons of raw sewage into the state’s pristine waters every day.

Cesspools — in-ground pits that collect sewage from houses and buildings not connected to city services for gradual release into the environment — are at the center of the criminal case against former Democratic state Rep. Ty Cullen. He has admitted to taking bribes of cash and gambling chips in exchange for influencing legislation to reduce Hawaii’s widespread use of cesspools.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Oki Mollway said she gave Cullen a sentence at the shortest end of the term recommended by prosecutors because he had cooperated extensively with investigators. Yet she didn’t go as low as the 15 months requested by his defense attorney because of the serious nature of his crimes.

“This was a grievous breach of public trust on your part. It appears to have been motivated by greed, and it stretched out over a number of years,” Mollway told Cullen. “I am very concerned that this was not a momentary lapse of judgement.”

Cullen told the judge he took full responsibility for and was ashamed of his actions.

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Michigan Republican admits to taking bribes while overseeing state medical cannabis board

A former Michigan House speaker was indicted along with two lobbyists and a medical marijuana business owner as part of a bribery scheme.

Rick Johnson, the Republican former House speaker and chairman of the state medical marijuana licensing board from 2017 to 2019, was charged with accepting bribes, while registered lobbyists Brian Pierce and Vincent Brown were charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and John Dalaly, who had sought a business license, was charged with payment of bribes, reported the Detroit Free Press.

“Unfortunately, a small percentage (of public officials) abuse the public trust,” said James Tarasca, special agent in charge of the FBI in Michigan. “Public corruption is a top criminal priority for the FBI. Public corruption erodes confidence and undermines the strength of our democracy.”

James Totten, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan, said a five-year investigation determined that Johnson was the “heart” of the bribery scheme that involved more than $100,000 in cash payments from companies and lobbyists seeking licenses from the board he led.

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Swiss Billionaire Bankrolls Biden Agenda With $63 Million in Dark Money

A Swiss billionaire is evading bans on foreign donations to political candidates and committees by giving tens of millions of dollars to a web of nonprofits to bankroll President Joe Biden’s agenda. 

Hansjörg Wyss, who made billions in the medical device industry, is positioning himself as a megadonor to Democrat-aligned groups despite being forbidden from making political donations as a foreign national. Wyss gave $72 million in 2021 to the Berger Action Fund, which directs money to nonprofits that don’t have to disclose their donors or expenditures. By donating to the fund, Wyss can bypass bans on foreign political financial involvement. 

Wyss created the fund in 2007, and it has donated $339 million to left-leaning groups since 2016, according to the Associated Press. Wyss’s representatives claim the tens of millions go to “issue advocacy,” addressing the environment, for example, and not partisan interests. 

Yet groups that received Wyss’s money have spent heavily backing Biden and Democrats, the AP reported: 

Of the $72.7 million donated in 2021 by Wyss’ Berger Action Fund, $62.7 million went to two groups that were focused on building public support for Biden’s agenda, according to tax documents and a statement from the group.

Since switching his focus to nonprofits, two closely related organizations that play a role in Democratic politics have been among the biggest recipients of Wyss’ money. 

The Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund — two organizations that share the same founder, address and management firm — collectively received $245 million donated by Wyss’ groups since 2016, tax records show… 

Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, said Wyss’s giving must come under “immediate scrutiny.”

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With the Trump Arraignment, Americans Are Seeing the Power of the Local Prosecutor

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has written himself into the history books and future pub trivia questions by becoming the first prosecutor to pursue criminal charges against a former president. Whether his case against Donald Trump is successful or not, Americans nationwide are now seeing the power that local prosecutors wield, sometimes capriciously.

The Manhattan D.A.’s investigation took nearly five years, and both Bragg’s predecessor and the Federal Election Commission declined to file charges on the same evidence. Reason‘s Jacob Sullum wrote in a recent breakdown of the case against Trump that Bragg is “relying on debatable facts, untested legal theories, and allegations that are tawdry but far from earthshaking.” The New York Times somewhat more gently described the meanderings of Bragg’s investigation as a “circuitous and sometimes uncertain road.”

Political opponents of Trump may insist it’s the destination, not the journey, that matters, but Republicans and conservative commentators have lambasted Bragg’s decision to file charges as nakedly political abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called it the “weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda.”

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Twitter Algorithm Reveals Tool For Government Intervention

A researcher claims to have found a tool allowing for government intervention in Twitter’s algorithm, upon Elon Musk’s decision to allow the algorithm to become open sourced to the public.

Breitbart reports that Musk honored his promise on Friday by releasing a portion of Twitter’s recommendation algorithm on the website GitHub, where computer programmers often go to share and collaborate on work dealing with open-source code.

Web developer Steven Tey then claimed to have discovered a particular mechanism within the code that allows the U.S. government to make changes to the website’s algorithm.

“When needed, the government can intervene with the Twitter algorithm. In fact, @TwitterEng (Twitter Engineering) even has a class for it – ‘GovernmentRequested,” Tey tweeted, including a link to the code on GitHub.

Upon purchasing Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk vowed to increase transparency and loosen restrictions on certain speech and accounts that had been imposed by previous leadership. One of his goals was to make the algorithm open source for public viewing; he later said that “our ‘algorithm’ is overly complex & not fully understood internally,” and that “people will discover many silly things, but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re found!”

In addition, Tey discovered that the algorithm takes such factors into account as following-to-follower ratio when determining which users to promote; users with a low number of followers but a high amount of followed accounts would be negatively affected.

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