Cover Up // Current

McCain Cover Up? Navy Refusing To Release Info About Possible Fatality In Car Crash Involving McCain

Vanity Fair and the National Security News Service have used the Freedom of Information Act to attempt to get information from the... more

tallygirl
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Mexican Government Covers Up Murder of Journalist

The cover-up is part of a horrid tradition where impunity is cemented into the fabric of the law. On October 27, 2006, Brad... more

Apocalipstick
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Jamaica cracks down on sand thieves

Jamacain police are cracking down to find the thieves gulity for stealing hundreds of tons of sand from a beach on the northern... more

nazbags
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Friendly fire in Iraq -- and a coverup | Salon News

Helmet-cam footage from Ramadi, Iraq (12-min. edited version). Warning: Contains graphic violence and profanity.

Once a cop, always a cop. Asked if she wanted to see a graphic battle video showing her son Albert bleeding to death, Jean Feggins, retired from the Philadelphia Police Department, said yes.

"Listen, I've moved dead bodies of people I don't even know," she told me, as she sat on a brown couch in the den of her West Philadelphia row house. "I need to know everything. Because he is not a stranger. That's my baby. That's my child."

When Pfc. Albert Nelson died in Iraq in 2006, the Army first told Feggins that he might have been killed by friendly fire, and then that it was enemy mortars. She says she never believed the Army's explanation. "I always felt like they were lying to me," she said. "I could never prove it."

"I would ask the casualty officer what was going on. I'd be told they are still working on the report," she said. "They were still doing their investigation. What could I do? It's the U.S. military. I had no control."

She did not know that there was a video of his death until I contacted her recently. Salon has obtained evidence -- including a graphic, 52-and-a-half minute video -- suggesting that friendly fire from an American tank killed two U.S. soldiers in Ramadi, Iraq, in late 2006, and that the Army ignored the video and other persuasive data in order to rule that the deaths were due to enemy action. Feggins watched the video with me in her den.

Shot from the perspective of the soldiers taking fire from what they clearly believe is an American tank, the footage shows how Pfc. Albert Nelson and Pfc. Roger Suarez-Gonzalez died. It also records soldiers trying to save Nelson's life, and the sound of a platoon sergeant attempting to report over a radio that the casualties were due to friendly fire. He then seems to be overruled by a superior officer who insists it was an enemy mortar attack. Troops from Nelson's unit interviewed by Salon, including three soldiers there that day, blamed friendly fire from a U.S. tank for the deaths. "A tank shot us," said a soldier. "That is what happened."

An Army investigation, however, found the deaths were caused by enemy fire. Soldiers from Nelson and Suarez's platoon, based at Fort Carson, Colo., described what they felt was pressure from above to accept this official story despite evidence to the contrary -- including the video, which has circulated widely. Jean Feggins, after watching the video, said it was more evidence that the Army had misled her about the circumstances of her son's death. The Army told Feggins that her son had died instantly, while the video shows a painfully protracted attempt to get Nelson to a field hospital before he bled to death.

...

The only reason there is a video of what happened in Ramadi is because Sgt. 1st Class Jack Robison, who was there that day, wanted to record a firefight. The video, which is all from the point of view of Robison's helmet camera, begins immediately before the shell's impact. It records the explosion, the effort to help the wounded -- in bloody detail -- and long patches of conversation in which the soldiers present describe how they were shot by an American tank.

(more at the link)Helmet-cam footage from Ramadi, Iraq (12-min. edited version). Warning: Contains graphic violence and profanity. Once a cop,... more

khaosworks
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5 responses

1 month ago

LA TRAGEDIA DEL 911 ANTICIPATA SEI MESI DA UNA SERIE TV!

LA TRAGEDIA DEL 911 ANTICIPATA SEI MESI DA UNA SERIE TV! Il 4 Marzo 2001 (potete verificare la data ovunque) andò in... more

innovari
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1 response

1 month ago

Congress decides it is worth risking depression

It is just over three score years and ten since the Great Depression. Judged by its rejection of the plan put forward by Hank... more

vincius
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1 response

1 month ago

China dairy accused of cover-up

A dairy at the centre of China's growing scandal over contaminated milk was first made aware of problems nine months before... more

contactkatrinaford
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1 month ago

Media obstruction in Galveston

And fear of Internet gossip should not prohibit responsible journalism. The ABC News affiliate in Houston carried a video of investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino confronting Texas governor Rick Perry about temporary “no-fly” zones for TV helicopters over parts of the Bolivar peninsula and west Galveston, the hardest hit areas. Later in the video, Dolcefino tells the ABC anchors:

After Katrina, we were able to go to Waveland, Mississippi, and Gulfport, and Biloxi, and places that were devastated, where there were, sadly, bodies on the road. Now that’s a horrible thing to see and a horrible thing to show, but people who live there, who have friends there, who have relatives there, have a fundamental right to know that stuff. They have a fundamental right to know, not just from the words of a politician or public official, but from the news media, which are independent of government and have also the responsibility of trying to help the public evaluate response…

We couldn’t get crews back on Galveston last night and this morning until we complained on the air for about twenty hours. And it’s not because we want to sightsee, guys, it’s because we have the responsibility of telling people… I made it as clear to [Gov. Perry] off camera as I did on camera that this is not going to be tolerated. You know, we hear about disasters in other countries—what was it, Burma, Myanmar—where they won’t let people in to see and you know, this is the state of Texas; this America. And we’re not trying to interfere with rescue and search operations, nor did anyone suggest we would be.
When asked why he thought the government was obstructing access, Dolcefino did not mince words:

I don’t think they want us to see images that may remind people… of the images that we saw in New Orleans. I don’t think they want us to see the images that were seen in Waveland, Mississippi or Gulfport… I think that’s the reality; they do not want us to see yet, until they can control what we see and how we see it. And that is simply, at least in my career, unacceptable. Maybe a lot of reporters won’t say it, but I will. I think they do not want us to see images of potential fatalities that may be on land or on water.
Other reporters didn’t think access was much of a problem. The Houston Chronicle’s Matthew Tresaugue said he wasn’t sure why TV choppers were prohibited from flying last Sunday, but that there were, in fact, reporters in the air. On SEJ’s list-serv he noted that:

The Chronicle had a photographer over Bolivar on Sunday about the same time as the televised confrontation. I flew with a photographer from High Island to Galveston’s west end to Surfside Beach in a Cessna yesterday, and one of our columnists and a photographer got a closer view of the same area from a helicopter. … I think the difference is the television guys wanted to take their helicopters, and we hitched rides. On my flight, I was able to see what I needed and even double back to take second looks. I can’t complain.

There's more..........
And fear of Internet gossip should not prohibit responsible journalism. The ABC News affiliate in Houston carried a video of... more

bansheewail
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53 responses

2 months ago

UK hacker uncovers NASA/US UFO cover up on the QT.

The truth is in there, apparently. I don't doubt NASA has information on UFOs but that doesn't necessarily make them... more

AceHardchester
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0 responses

2 months ago

Is Sarah Palin a Grandma?

Ok readers I really have no idea what to make of this one…. The Daily Kos and several other sites are currently... more

Paulathesurfmom
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8 responses

3 months ago

Poland investigates CIA prisons

Poland's prime minister has requested an investigation into allegations there were secret prisons in the country used by the... more

Mulcahey
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0 responses

3 months ago

US satellite shoot-down was a cover, new evidence shows

When the Pentagon ordered a Navy ship to shoot down a crippled U.S. spy satellite last February, it claimed the operation was... more

Mulcahey
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2 responses

3 months ago

Media banned from reporting on Madrid crash

Media coverage of Wednesday’s deadly plane crash in Madrid has been restricted, raising questions about what officials are... more

Jaeger
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5 responses

3 months ago

Sex workers disappear from Beijing

Where have all the 'money boys' gone?, asks Reuters in its report on the sudden clean-up of Beijing's red light... more

LindseyIndigo
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12 responses

4 months ago

Rape in the military: US Congress charges cover-up

Congress takes on the Department of Defense in the first oversight hearing held this year by the subcommittee on National Security... more

geneonlbk
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15 responses

4 months ago

Anthrax suspect's "suicide" leaves many unanswered questions

The government is trying to bury the 2001 anthrax attack scandal (the anthrax came from a U.S. military base) by claiming that one... more

Vierotchka
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55 responses

4 months ago

Tell Congress to reject the Bush/Mukasey plan to subvert the Constitution!

On July 21st, Bush’s Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, called on Congress to take dramatic steps to subvert the... more

onechance
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26 responses

4 months ago

Raped and Murdered: Then the Army Covered It Up

The Jamie Leigh Jones-Halliburton rape case was horrific, but what happened to PFC Lavena Johnson in Iraq in 2005 was many orders of magnitudes worse.

The parents of the young Missouri woman were told that she died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and her death was ruled a suicide. But her physician father became suspicious after looking at injuries to the body:

After two years of requesting documents, one set of papers provided by the Army included a xerox copy of a CD. Wondering why the xerox copy was in the documents, Dr. Johnson requested the CD itself. With help from his local Congressional representative, the US Army finally complied. When Dr. Johnson viewed the CD, he was shocked to see photographs taken by Army investigators of his daughter's body as it lay where her body had been found, as well as other photographs of her disrobed body taken during the investigation.

The photographs revealed that Lavena, a small woman, barely 5 feet tall and weighing less than 100 pounds, had been struck in the face with a blunt instrument, perhaps a weapon stock. Her nose was broken and her teeth knocked backwards. One elbow was distended. The back of her clothes had debris on them indicating she had been dragged from one location to another. The photographs of her disrobed body showed bruises, scratch marks and teeth imprints on the upper part of her body. The right side of her back as well as her right hand had been burned apparently from a flammable liquid poured on her and then lighted. The photographs of her genital area revealed massive bruising and lacerations. A corrosive liquid had been poured into her genital area, probably to destroy DNA evidence of sexual assault.

Despite the bruises, scratches, teeth imprints and burns on her body, Lavena was found completely dressed in the burning tent. There was a blood trail from outside a contractor's tent to inside the tent. She apparently had been dressed after the attack and her attacker placed her body into the tent and set it on fire.The Jamie Leigh Jones-Halliburton rape case was horrific, but what happened to PFC Lavena Johnson in Iraq in 2005 was many orders... more