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The federal government won a conviction against a third friend of the Tsarnaev brothers, the accused Boston Marathon bombers. The successful prosecution of Robel Phillipos for making false statements to the FBI demonstrated the agency’s most effective investigative weapon, and showed that cracks in the case are no impediment to a conviction.
On May 18, 2015, President Obama made a surprising announcement: he ordered the federal government to reverse its standing practice of providing American police departments with surplus weapons and vehicles from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. Given declining confidence in police after a seemingly constant recent stream of fatalities involving black suspects, this newfound caution with heavy provisioning is understandable. But questions about the wisdom of militarizing police are not new. WhoWhatWhy first wrote about the issue in February, 2014.
It’s been five years since the Boston Marathon bombing. Nevertheless, the federal government continues to withhold most of its official records about the primary perpetrator of that heinous attack.
There’s a rush to judgment about who shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. That’s clearly dangerous with Ukraine a flashpoint in what appears to be turning into a new Cold War. Here are some things to think about as we try to separate fact from speculation and even outright fiction.
Headlines—Greenwald explains how Ed Snowden got to him; the ugly truth about Dallas’s paper on 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination; establishment to fact-check establishment pundits; Patriot Act Author now hates his handiwork; new movie fiction on Boston bombing; permanent climate change mid-century; some blunt talk about failed drug policy
WhoWhatWhy’s Russ Baker joins Guillermo Jimenez of Traces of Reality Radio to analyze the killing of Ibragim Todashev by FBI Agent Aaron McFarlane and other strange elements of the official story about the Boston Marathon Bombing.
Here’s a repost of one of our most popular—and explosive—pieces of original reporting for your enjoyment: WhoWhatWhy Editor-in-Chief Russ Baker’s scoop about how the FBI knew for a decade about connections between powerful Saudi interests and the 9/11 hijackers, and lied about it in the name of national security.
In new court filings, the FBI has tacitly admitted that it knows about ties between members of the Saudi royal family and 9/11 hijackers, that it lied about not knowing, and that no one should learn more about this — for reasons of “national security.”
Portland, Oregon, may seem like an unlikely site for a stand against the FBI-led counterterrorism task forces that have spread to more than 100 cities since 9/11. Yet the city, which prides itself on odd-man-out independence, is now voting on whether it will rejoin the feds. The question they’re considering is an important one: whether cities or states get any protection from the federally-funded operations, or are just losing their independence to a national mandate.
NOW LIVE ON WhoWhatWhy The ISIS Truth We Hide From by Bob Hennelly Is it possible that American foreign policy, rather than exporting democracy and building nations, has in fact been fomenting terrorism and destroying countries? Bob Hennelly examines the disturbing evidence. Boston Bombing Trial Finally Gets A Date For Opening Statements by The WhoWhatWhy […]
Last month, we reported startling new evidence that answered the questions, What did the FBI know about accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev — and when did it know it? Now the public is asking the same questions about Omar Mateen. For an in-depth look at how the FBI interacts with prospective informants, please see the story below. Published two years ago, it is still highly relevant.
One of the things that sets WhoWhatWhy apart from other news sites is that nearly all of our articles come with their own artwork. These “panoramas” offer a visual representation of what the stories are about. Here are some of our favorites from 2017.