Tag: secrecy

Democrats file impeachment articles against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday filed articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, leveling serious criticisms of his handling of the Pentagon and the U.S. attacks on Iran.

As Republicans control the House, this move is unlikely to have an effect in 2026. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., introduced the resolution, which says Hegseth has “demonstrated a willful disregard for the Constitution, abused the powers of his office and acted in a manner grossly incompatible with the rule of law,” CBS News reported.

The six articles of impeachment cite offenses including waging unauthorized war in Iran and reckless endangerment of U.S. service members, as well as breaking the laws of armed conflict and targeting civilians. Civilian casualties in Iran have included more than 160 people killed in an attack on a girls school in February.

They further accuse Hegseth of mishandling sensitive military information, which refers to his use of a Signal group chat on his personal phone to share information on a military operation in Yemen last year.

The resolution also says Hegseth obstructed congressional oversight by withholding information on military operations and abused his power by using it for political retribution.

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Federal Reserve Stonewalls DOJ Prosecutors Investigating Headquarters Construction: Report

Federal prosecutors made a surprise visit Tuesday to the construction site of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters renovation project.

Workers at the site refused to admit them, saying they did not have clearance in advance of the visit, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The $2.5 billion project has been under review by the administration, and the prosecutors came from the office of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.

“Any construction project that has cost overruns of almost 80 percent over the original construction budget deserves some serious review,” Pirro said in a statement.

“And these people are in charge of monetary policy in the United States?” she asked.

Robert Hur, an attorney representing the Fed, said prosecutors Carlton Davis and Steven Vandervelden appeared “without prior notice” and sought a tour to check the work’s progress.

President Donald Trump has praised Pirro “for having the courage” to investigate the Fed.

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Obama-Appointed Judge DISMISSES DOJ Lawsuit to Obtain Massachusetts’ Unredacted Voter Rolls

Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin has dismissed the Trump DOJ’s lawsuit demanding the Commonwealth’s full, unredacted statewide voter registration list.

The case, United States v. William Francis Galvin, was part of the Department of Justice’s aggressive nationwide crackdown to force states to turn over their voter rolls under Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to root out dead voters, non-citizens illegally registered, duplicates, and other irregularities that threaten the integrity of our elections.

But in Massachusetts, Democrat Secretary of State William Francis Galvin refused to hand over the data. The DOJ sued. And now, an Obama judge has let him off the hook on a technicality.

According to the 13-page order issued Thursday, Judge Sorokin ruled that the DOJ’s demand letter failed to include a proper “statement of the basis” for requesting the records, as required by the 1960 law.

The judge wrote that the Attorney General’s August 14, 2025, letter stated the purpose (to check compliance with NVRA and HAVA list maintenance rules) but offered zero factual basis, no specific concerns, no anomalies, no complaints, just a blanket demand for Massachusetts’ entire computerized voter list.

The court slammed the demand as “facially deficient” and tossed the entire complaint and motion to compel. Motions to dismiss from Galvin and intervenors were declared moot.

This marks the fourth loss for the DOJ, with zero wins, out of 30 active cases.

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Ninth Scientist Linked to U.S. Secrets Confirmed Dead Under Highly Suspicious Circumstances — Disturbing Pattern of Deaths and Disappearances Among U.S. Space Program Experts Raises Alarming Questions

A troubling pattern is once again drawing renewed scrutiny after the death of yet another scientist tied to America’s most sensitive space and defense programs.

Michael David Hicks, a longtime research scientist at NASA’s prestigious Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), died on July 30, 2023, at just 59 years old, according to the Daily Mail.

Hicks was known in scientific circles for his work connected to advanced research initiatives, many of which intersect with highly classified aerospace and defense projects.

But nearly three years later, basic questions surrounding his death remain unanswered.

According to available records, the cause of Hicks’ death has never been publicly disclosed. Even more alarming, there appears to be no publicly available record indicating that an autopsy was ever conducted

The Daily Mail reported:

Hicks, who worked at JPL from 1998 to 2022, was credited with publishing over 80 scientific papers and was part of multiple teams helping NASA understand the physical properties of comets and asteroids.

Specifically, Hicks was involved with the DART Project, NASA’s test to see if humans could deflect dangerous asteroids away from Earth. He also worked on the Deep Space 1 Mission, which tested new spacecraft technology that flew by a comet in 2001.

While there have been no public allegations of foul play, Hicks’ case marks the ninth person with ties to America’s space or nuclear secrets who has died or mysteriously vanished in recent years, which has set off alarm bells among US national security experts.

Moreover, three of these scientists had close ties to Hicks, as all of them worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab or participated in NASA missions there. Monica Reza, JPL’s new Director of the Materials Processing Group, vanished without a trace in June 2025, just months after beginning her tenure at the NASA lab.

Two other men with deep ties to JPL died recently, including a long-time coworker of Hicks, Frank Maiwald, who died in July 2024 at age 61, with even less public acknowledgement of his untimely passing.

Meanwhile, astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, 67, was murdered on the front porch of his home on February 16, 2026. The California Institute of Technology researcher’s work was heavily supported by NASA’s JPL, and Grillmair was personally involved with major space telescope missions led by NASA.

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The biotechnology industry has no right to secrecy

In his column ‘Biosafety Now’, Dr. Simon Wain-Hobson revisits controversial gain-of-function research conducted in 2014, funded by US NIH contract HHSN26620070001, which successfully managed to transfer the H7N1 avian (bird flu) virus from ostriches to ferrets. Once transferred, the virus established itself in the “captive” laboratory ferrets sufficiently to cause airborne transmission to other ferrets without loss of virulence.

H7N1 is as deadly for humans as Ebola, but up until now has been rarely contracted. The implications of a biotechnology research programme which transformed the virus sufficiently to enable airborne transmission between mammals will not be lost on any of our readers. This is just another of the almost pandemics that gain-of-function research regularly creates. As we reported in our article, ‘Government Assurances of Biotech Safety Are Worthless. Here is the Evidence’, exotic gain-of-function experimentation is still continuing around the world to this day, whilst lab escapes are routine. 

However, biotechnology researchers are undaunted by the risks to public health, like Margaret Thatcher, “they are not for changing.” One can only presume that they have confidence that there will be enough body bags to go around when the inevitable next pandemic happens.

The UK Guardian reports that a 51-year-old career criminal, ironically called James Farthing, who won US$167 million in the lottery a year ago, has been arrested three times since for petty theft. He has been unable to change the direction of his life even though he has the material means to do so. “A leopard cannot change its spots.” Nothing could be more true of the mad disregard for risk that has continued on from the pandemic. The NZ Herald records an interview with New Zealand Labour Leader Chris Hipkins, who says he has no regrets that he failed to inform the public of the significant risk of heart disease that teenagers faced following the mRNA covid vaccine. A matter that was flagged by the recent Royal Commission Report. Hipkins excused himself, saying:

“In terms of my conscience, I never communicated medical advice around vaccination. That was always done by relevant health practitioners, including the director-general of health and the director of public health. I did not communicate, at any point, right the way through, that information other than reiterating the high-level messages around making sure you’re making informed decisions and consulting with medical practitioners.”

Of course, the “high-level messaging” that Hipkins is referring to was his constant encouragement for everyone, including school children, to get mRNA vaccines immediately on pain of losing their job or their ability to participate in social activities. If that is not offering medical advice, I don’t know what is. Hipkins appeared before the Royal Commission to answer questions but, incredibly, was allowed to do so in private. 

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NYS bill would force MTA to tell riders about bed bug infestations

They’re itching for the truth.

New York State lawmakers are pushing a bill that would force the MTA to tell riders about bed bug infestation on trains and buses within 24 hours.

The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember William Colton (D-Brooklyn), would set rules to require the MTA to either post a message on its website or send an alert via email or text about any infestation.

“The MTA – for no good reason – has been resistant about alerting its customers when an infestation has been detected,” Colton said in a statement.

“Millions of New Yorkers use our critically important trains and buses regularly,” Colton added. “They should not have to add ‘will I bring home bed bugs?’ to their list of concerns as they go about their daily life.”

A previous version of the bill passed the Assembly but died in the state Senate, according to representatives. The latest legislation made it through the Assembly last month and is now in the hands of the Senate’s Transportation Committee.

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US Satellite Firm Blacks Out Iran War Images Per US Government Request

Planet Labs says it will “indefinitely withhold” satellite visuals of Iran and the wider Middle East war zone after a request from the U.S. government and the Trump administration. In an email to customers, the firm said it is shifting to a “managed distribution” model, releasing imagery only case-by-case for “urgent, mission-critical requirements,” or when release is deemed “in the public interest.” Planet also said it will withhold imagery dating back to March 9, and it expects the policy to remain in effect until the conflict ends.

On March 6, Planet Labs announced a mandatory 96-hour delay on new imagery collected over the Gulf states, arguing that near-real-time pictures could be exploited to “endanger allied, NATO, and civilian personnel.” That measure later expanded into a 14-day delay, described by Planet as an extension of the earlier hold. By March 30, Al Jazeera’s Digital Investigations unit was reporting that independent verification had become harder as commercial providers restricted satellite imagery.

Satellite imagery matters because, unlike press briefings, it can corroborate damage, assess patterns of targeting, and check narratives that would otherwise be accepted on authority. Reporting by the Global Investigative Journalism Network describes how open-source teams used satellite imagery and videos to probe contested incidents during this war, quoting Bellingcat’s head of research warning that a “two-week delay” slows verification and reduces the certainty investigators can reach while events are still developing. It also quotes the Defense Secretary saying, “Open source is not the place to determine what did or did not happen.”

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Congress demands Dept of War release 46 secret UFO videos: ‘You’re gonna see some weird f–king s–t’

Members of Congress are demanding 46 military videos from the Department of War which insiders say offer convincing proof that advanced, non-human craft are operating on Earth.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) requested the long list of explosively titled files on Wednesday, which include 45 previously unreleased military clips.

The presence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena “in and around the sensitive airspaces of US military installations poses a threat to the security of the armed forces and their readiness,” according to the April 1 letter addressed to Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Those with knowledge of the long list of videos — which include titles like “Several UAP in vicinity of Columbus OH airport” and “UFOs in formation over Persian Gulf” — said the clips are shocking.

“You’re gonna see some weird f–king s–t,” a source who has viewed the videos told The Post.

The wildest clips include radar footage from thermal sensors, satellite images, and underwater photos of swarms of Unidentified Submerged Objects, the insider said.

One video shows several USOs going in and out of the water near a highly classified submarine, according to the source.

Some of the clips are in clear, full color, setting them apart from previously released footage. None show alien creatures.

One video on the list, titled “Syrian UAP instant acceleration, 2021,” was released on Feb. 3 by independent journalist Jeremy Corbell.

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Massachusetts Agrees to Delete Data From App It ‘Secretly Installed’ During Pandemic

Massachusetts officials have agreed to delete data from a contact tracing application that people said was installed on their phones without their permission during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under a settlement agreement approved by a federal judge on March 31, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health “shall (a) destroy any Primary Data in the Department’s possession, custody, and control, which the Department, exercising all due diligence, has located and … that was made available to the Department from the COVID Exposure Notification Setting on Android Devices; and (b) certify in writing to Class Counsel that such data has been destroyed and will not be provided to any third party.”

The state’s health commissioner also promised not to have data collecting applications installed on people’s phones without their permission for five years.

The settlement came in a case brought by plaintiffs who said the app in question, known as MassNotify v.3 or Exposure Notification Settings Feature-MA, was “secretly installed” on their phones without their permission.

American Institute of Economic Research senior fellow Robert Wright, who lives in Massachusetts, said the app was downloaded onto his Android phone around July 1, 2021, without his knowledge. Johnny Kula, a New Hampshire resident who travels to Massachusetts on a daily basis for work, also said he discovered the app on his phone around the same time, and that it was back on the phone later in 2021 after he uninstalled it.

The plaintiffs’ claims echoed reviews from app store users complaining they had not downloaded the app, but it appeared on their phones. The app, which allowed people to say they had tested positive for COVID-19, and alerted others who had recently been close in location to those people, was downloaded more than one million times, according to court filings. Similar applications were developed by at least 24 other states.

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The FBI’s FOIA Blacklist

The Freedom of Information Act was designed to empower citizens to hold their government accountable. But evidence suggests the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has quietly adopted a practice that turns that principle on its head: labeling some of the people who file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests as “vexsome.”

In effect, the agency has created a FOIA-specific blacklist. Yet when asked, it denies having done so.

The FBI has maintained what it calls a list of “vexsome” FOIA filers for years. The label itself is odd — the proper term would be “vexatious” — but the implication is clear enough. Certain individuals and organizations who file frequent records requests are flagged internally as troublesome.

That practice is deeply at odds with the very text of the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA exists because the late Representative John Moss (D-CA) spent 10 years encountering delays, evasions, and outright refusals by federal agencies and departments to give him information he needed for oversight purposes. Moss understood that many citizens and watchdog groups asked the same kind of persistent questions of executive branch officials as he did, but they lacked a statutory basis to force such information disclosures. It’s why Moss worked so hard to get FOIA into law. Investigative journalists, transparency organizations and researchers often file dozens — sometimes hundreds — of requests in pursuit of public records. The law anticipates and protects that behavior.

There is nothing in the FOIA statute authorizing federal agencies to maintain lists of “vexatious” requesters or to single out particular citizens for special scrutiny because they use the law frequently. The statute’s presumption is exactly the opposite: that access to government records belongs to the public, and that agencies must justify withholding them.

Yet internal records obtained through FOIA requests by transparency researcher John Greenewald, who runs the document archive The Black Vault, show that the FBI has indeed categorized certain requesters in this way.

The Cato Institute learned this firsthand when the FBI labeled it a “vexsome” FOIA requester during the previous administration. More recently, when I filed a FOIA request seeking records explaining how the FBI defines or uses that designation, the Bureau responded that it could find no records responsive to the request — even though records labeling individuals or groups as “vexsome” were previously available to Greenewald.

The FBI cannot both maintain a category of “vexatious” requesters and simultaneously claim no records exist describing how that category is used. That’s why Cato has filed a new FOIA lawsuit to force the FBI to produce the records at issue.

The deeper problem is what such labeling represents. FOIA was enacted in 1966 to prevent federal agencies from deciding which members of the public deserve access to government information. Congress deliberately structured the law so that requests are judged by their legal merits — not by who submits them or how often they do so. Indeed, the statute has been updated multiple times over the past 60 years in response to agency or department tactics designed to evade the statutes’ very purpose.

Once agencies begin categorizing requesters as nuisances or troublemakers, they create a de facto enemies list composed of the very taxpayers and citizens they are sworn to serve. A system meant to promote transparency risks becoming one in which the government quietly tracks and stigmatizes those who seek to hold it accountable for its conduct — or misconduct.

Agency and department heads routinely claim that FOIA is administratively burdensome — yet they never ask Congress for line-item appropriations to ensure processing is quick and efficient. Agencies process hundreds of thousands of requests each year — and in tens of thousands of cases invoke one or more of FOIA’s nine exemptions to keep information secret that in most cases should never have been withheld in the first place. Those tactics alone force requesters to retain lawyers capable of litigating through the delays, obfuscations, and denials. The FBI’s “vexsome FOIA filer” program takes this bureaucratic game to a whole new level.

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