Grimm started working as an F.B.I. agent in 1995. His “most notable case,” as he described it to Van Susteren, was called Wooden Nickel, and it began in 2002. Working out of a corner office in the World Financial Center, Grimm adopted the persona of Michael Garibaldi—nicknamed Mikey Suits, for his impeccable dress—a Mob-connected stock and currency trader who ran a hedge fund called Centurion Consulting. The main investigation concerned a company that was suspected of illegally manipulating currency markets. Some months into the case, the F.B.I. added a further target: Albert Santoro, a thirty-one-year-old lawyer from Queens, who had recently come into contact with a man named Josef von Habsburg, one of the Bureau’s more colorful—and complicated—paid informants.

When the head of Fox News moved to Garrison, New York, he bougt a little newspaper and tried to instill his own brand of American values. Guess what happened next?

In their zeal to tout their faith in the public square, conservatives in Oklahoma may have unwittingly opened the door to a wide range of religious groups, including Satanists who are seeking to put their own statue next to a Ten Commandments monument outside the statehouse. "We believe that all monuments should be in good taste and consistent with community standards," Greaves wrote in letter to state officials. "Our proposed monument, as an homage to the historic/literary Satan, will certainly abide by these guidelines." Greaves said one potential design involves a pentagram, a satanic symbol, while another is meant to be an interactive display for children. The Republican state representative Mike Ritze, who spearheaded the push for the Ten Commandments monument and whose family helped pay the $10,000 for its construction, declined to comment on the Satanic Temple's effort, but Greaves credited Ritze for opening the door to his group's proposal. "He's helping a satanic agenda grow more than any of us possibly could," Greaves said. "You don't walk around and see too many satanic temples around, but when you open the door to public spaces for us, that's when you're going to see us."

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill travels to Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries where the United States has taken military action. In Afghanistan, he investigates a night raid conducted by the Joint Special Operations Command. He also investigates the U.S. assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. The documentary also shares testimonies from CIA agents, Special Forces operators, military generals, and warlords backed by the United States. Dirty Wars premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2013. The film competed in the U.S. documentary section, and it won the Cinematography award.

A crack epidemic was raging in Philadelphia in 1989 when Hallam Hurt, then chair of neonatology at Albert Einstein Medical Center on North Broad Street, began a study to evaluate the effects of in-utero cocaine exposure on babies. In maternity wards in Philadelphia and elsewhere, caregivers were seeing more mothers hooked on cheap, smokable crack cocaine. A 1989 study in Philadelphia found that nearly one in six newborns at city hospitals had mothers who tested positive for cocaine. Some social workers predicted a lost generation - kids with a host of learning and emotional deficits who would overwhelm school systems and not be able to hold a job or form meaningful relationships. The "crack baby" image became symbolic of bad mothering, and some cocaine-using mothers had their babies taken from them or, in a few cases, were arrested. The researchers consistently found no significant differences between the cocaine-exposed children and the controls. At age 4, for instance, the average IQ of the cocaine-exposed children was 79.0 and the average IQ for the nonexposed children was 81.9. Both numbers are well below the average of 90 to 109 for U.S. children in the same age group. When it came to school readiness at age 6, about 25 percent of children in each group scored in the abnormal range on tests for math and letter and word recognition. As the children grew, the researchers did many evaluations to tease out environmental factors that could be affecting their development. On the upside, they found that children being raised in a nurturing home - measured by such factors as caregiver warmth and affection and language stimulation - were doing better than kids in a less nurturing home. On the downside, they found that 81 percent of the children had seen someone arrested; 74 percent had heard gunshots; 35 percent had seen someone get shot; and 19 percent had seen a dead body outside - and the kids were only 7 years old at the time.

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.

Reverend Pat Robertson said, "Hugo Chavez thinks we're trying to assassinate him. I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it." It was 2005 and Robertson was channeling the frustration of George Bush's State Department. Despite Bush's providing intelligence, funds and even a note of congratulations to the crew who kidnapped Chavez (we'll get there), Hugo remained in office, reelected and wildly popular. But why the Bush regime's hate, hate, HATE of the President of Venezuela? Reverend Pat wasn't coy about the answer: It's the oil. "This is a dangerous enemy to our South controlling a huge pool of oil." A really BIG pool of oil. Indeed, according to Guy Caruso, former chief of oil intelligence for the CIA, Venezuela hold a recoverable reserve of 1.36 trillion barrels, that is, a whole lot more than Saudi Arabia. If we didn't kill Chavez, we'd have to do an "Iraq" on his nation. So the Reverend suggests, "We don't need another $200 billion war….It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with." Chavez himself told me he was stunned by Bush's attacks: Chavez had been quite chummy with Bush Senior and with Bill Clinton. So what made Chavez suddenly "a dangerous enemy"? Here's the answer you won't find in The New York Times.

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, will announce Tuesday a plan to hire every veteran who wants a job, provided that the veterans have left the military in the previous year and did not receive a dishonorable discharge. Company officials said they believe the program, which will officially begin on Memorial Day — May 27 this year — will lead to the hiring of more than 100,000 people in the next five years, the length of the commitment.  “Let’s be clear: Hiring a veteran can be one of the best decisions any of us can make,” Mr. Simon will say in his keynote speech to the National Retail Federation, according to prepared text. “These are leaders with discipline, training and a passion for service.”

The Obama White House's extreme fixation on secrecy is shaped by a bizarre paradox. One the one hand, the current administration has prosecuted double the number of whistleblowers – government employees who leak classified information showing high-level official wrongdoing – than all previous administrations combined. But at the very same time that they invoke broad secrecy claims to shield their conduct from outside scrutiny, it is Obama officials themselves who have continuously and quite selectively leaked information about these same programs to the US media. Indeed, the high publicity-value New York Times scoops of the past two weeks about covert national security programs have come substantially from Obama aides themselves.

You know what else has changed? You and I – to our shame. Entraptment is illegal  – but the question of whether law enforcement set up a legal sting or illegal entrapment is for a jury to decide. Entrapment was why juries acquitted the defendants in the Camden, VVAW, and Harrisburg cases. "How stupid did those people in Washington think we were?" a Harrisburg juror told a reporter. The feds don’t have to worry about folks like that any more. Not a single "terrorism" indictment has been thrown out for entrapment since 9/11 – not the Liberty City goofballs supposedly planning to blow up the Sears Tower who had no weapons and refused them with offered; not the Newburgh, New York outfit whose numbers included a schizophrenic who saved his own urine in bottles. (Even the judge who sentenced them said "the government made them terrorists.")

As Republican lawmakers have pushed ever more intrusive and expansive uterus-related legislation, some of their colleagues across the aisle have fired back with intentionally and equally ridiculous counterproposals. From mandatory rectal exams for guys seeking Viagra to prohibitions on sperm-stifling vasectomies, most of these male-only provisions have, unsurprisingly, flopped. But they've scored big as symbolic gestures, spotlighting the inherent sexism of laws that regulate only lady parts.

A former U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist has come forward with a startling tale of how a substance known as “pink slime” has been embedded in about 70 percent of ground beef sold in the U.S. — a topic ABC News investigated for a segment Wednesday night. “Pink slime” is largely made up of connective tissue that used to be reserved only for dog foods. It was not classified as “meat” because it was largely seen as unfit for human consumption. It also contains ammonia, which is used to kill off bacteria so people who eat it do not get sick.  But in the early 90s, former undersecretary of agriculture Joann Smith decided that it was meat, allowing it to enter the human food chain. When she left her post in 1993, she immediately took a job with Beef Products, Inc. on their board of directors.

Professional sports leagues in the United States have long relied on high schools to help cultivate the country’s best athletes. Rosters in Major League Baseball, the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. are filled with former scholastic stars, many of whom hold tightly to their quintessentially American memories of homecoming, letterman jackets and games played under the Friday night lights. But for the organization charged with producing soccer players who can compete with the world’s best, that system has been deemed inadequate. The United States Soccer Federation announced a new policy recently that will uncouple high school soccer and the training of top youth players, a move that is unique among major team sports in this country and, some believe, is indicative of a trend in the way the United States develops elite athletes. The shift by the federation applies to its top boys teams around the country, requiring players on those teams — known as Development Academy teams — to participate in a nearly year-round season and, by extension, forcing them and their soccer moms and dads to choose between playing for their club and playing for their school. The move has stirred a fierce debate among players, coaches and parents from California to Connecticut.

A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors — from selling real estate and dusting crops, to monitoring oil spills and wildlife, even shooting Hollywood films. Local police and emergency services will also be freer to send up their own drones. But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information. Safety concerns like midair collisions and property damage on the ground are also an issue.

There are few areas of greater disappointment for liberal supporters of President Barack Obama than his policies on civil liberties. From the failure to close Guantanamo Bay and his ramped up drone war to the continued reliance on indefinite detention, military commissions for accused terrorists, and the recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that potentially allows for the killing of American citizens without due process, Obama's presidency, or so the argument goes, has been one broken promise after another. Yet, none of this seems to be having any effect on Obama's political standing -- even among Democrats. The results of a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll provide compelling evidence of how little a price Obama has paid for these policies. According to the poll, 70 percent of respondents support the president's decision to keep Guantanamo Bay open. Indeed, backing for Gitmo is actually higher today than it was in 2003. Among the president's political base, 53 percent who self-identify as liberal Democrats -- and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats -- are also supportive.

Iran over its nuclear program have come and gone for years. In recent weeks such talk has intensified, though it's still anybody's guess as to whether Israel or the United States might openly carry out military action any time soon. But most experts agree on one thing: A covert war with Iran has already been raging for years. Details are often murky, but the conflict has been punctuated with brazen assassinations, exploding missile sites, crippling cyberattacks, and a litany of arrests and spying allegations on all sides. Below is a timeline of major developments in the war—or at least the ones that are publicly known.

The U.S. military has been after self-guided bullets for years. Now, government researchers have finally made it happen: a bullet that can navigate itself a full mile before successfully nailing its target. Each self-guided bullet is around 4 inches in length. At the tip is an optical sensor, that can detect a laser beam being shone on a far-off target. Actuators inside the bullet get intel from the bullet’s sensor, and then “steer tiny fins that guide the bullet to the target.” The bullet can self-correct its navigational path 30 times a second, all while flying more than twice the speed of sound.

The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the private emails of staff doctors and scientists who alleged the agency was approving medical devices that posed a danger to patients, according to federal court documents. In a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Washington, six current and former FDA employees also claim the agency sought to repress warnings about potential corruption in device reviews by retaliating against whistleblowers who passed information to Congress and the news media.

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” ... According to RT, the website “Fast Company” reports that the NOC Monitoring Initiative has been in play since at least early-2010 and that the data is being shared with both private sector businesses and international third parties.

On Wednesday, citing "a sick culture of deputy-on-inmate hyper-violence [that] has been flourishing for decades in the darkness of the L.A. County Jails," the ACLU sued the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department seeking better training for deputies, and better oversight, investigation, and discipline in cases involving prisoner mistreatment. The suit draws on information published in a report released last September by the ACLU's National Prison Project and Southern California branch. The report showed a pattern of brutal abuses carried out by what the report calls a "savage gang" of deputies who oversee the prisoners. "Like members of street gangs, these deputies sport tattoos to signal their gang membership," the lawsuit alleges. "They beat up inmates to gain prestige among their peers, and 'earn their ink' by breaking inmates' bones." According to eyewitnesses, deputies have punched, kicked, and beaten prisoners to the point that they required surgery or hospitalization; humiliated them with sexual and racial epithets; thrown them in solitary confinement for no reason; and set them up for assault and rape by other prisoners.

The World of Charlie Company is an Emmy-award winning documentary produced by CBS News in 1970 that shows what the effects of fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia were like for a collection of U.S. soldiers. "It showed GI's close to mutiny, balking at orders that seemed to them unreasonable. This was something never seen on television before". The documentary was made by John Laurence, reporter for CBS from 1965.

A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. ... A spate of stories in 2007 and 2008, including a report by ABC News and a New Yorker article, suggested that the United States was offering covert support to Jundallah. The issue has now returned to the spotlight with the string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and has outraged serving and retired intelligence officers who fear that Israeli operations are endangering American lives.

A Tribune analysis shows Taser use has jumped fivefold in the city since 2008 and suburban agencies that were surveyed were on pace to double their use, as departments equipped more officers with the devices. Chicago police were deploying Tasers at a rate of more than twice a day in 2011.