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The FBI doesn’t want anyone looking into new evidence of Saudi-9/11 ties. Why? And why would it have the temerity to tell a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to butt out? If you don’t find this alarming, check your pulse.
With the passing of Billy Graham, we can expect all the usual homilies and hagiographies. But there’s another side to the role of such very public “men of God” in America’s cynical politics.
Here, we republish WhoWhatWhy editor Russ Baker’s 1998 Columbia Journalism Review article on the practices of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. See how things have changed (or not) in 13 years….
Blackwater founder Erik Prince wants private contractors to replace the US military in Afghanistan. History shows that might be a bad idea. In the 1980s, in the midst of the Savings and Loan crisis and the Iran-Contra scandal, private connections to the CIA kept turning up like a bad penny.
President Donald Trump’s foes have high hopes for what his tax returns might show. They should scale back their expectations because nothing we know about Trump would indicate that the information the documents contain will be comprehensive or accurate.
What’s not cool? Privacy.
An examination of the dark world of political disinformation and its peril to democracy’s future.
Sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder spent three years in jail without a trial before the charges were dropped—including more than two years in solitary. His experience left him a broken young man. Before he killed himself, he attempted to expose how authorities employed extraordinary pressure to compel confessions of guilt.
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
John West was asked separately by both his parents to help them end their lives. His story tells us a lot about the moral questions surrounding assisted suicide and why it is such a hard topic for families to discuss.
Tony Hayward, the former BP chief whose push for ever greater profits led to lowering safety standards and the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem, is back with a new, smaller venture, and some interesting partners.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has been warning for years that the multi-billion dollar rebuilding effort by the US was awash in waste, fraud and corruption that has helped the Taliban thrive. Why is this kind of issue not at the heart of the 2016 presidential debate?