| August 25, 2008 | - The Pentagon launched a program that aims to create an artificial brain within the next decade.
| Source:
Wired
|
| May 17, 2008 | - The Pentagon announced that it will build a permanent 40-acre detention complex in Afghanistan to replace crumbling Bagram prison. “This place,“ explained a military official regarding Bagram, ”was not made to keep people there indefinitely.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 31, 2008 | -
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an offensive against the Mahdi Army, a large Shia militia allied with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in the oil-rich southern port city of Basra. Senator John McCain called the offensive “a sign of the strength of [Maliki's] government,” President George W. Bush said it was “a positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation,” and a Pentagon spokesman called it “a by-product of the success of the surge.” The offensive, dubbed the Charge of the Knights, erupted into six days of heavy fighting that spread across southern Iraq and to Sadr City, a Baghdad slum where three million Shia live. After a stern ultimatum failed to bring peace, Maliki offered cash rewards to militiamen who turned in their weapons. Forty Iraqi policemen were reported to have given their weapons for free to Mahdi Army officers.
| Source 1:
New York Daily News
Source 2:
Times UK
Source 3:
NYT
Source 4:
CSM
Source 5:
NYT
Source 6:
LAT
Source 7:
LAT
Source 8:
WP
Source 9:
NYT
Source 10:
NYT
|
| March 25, 2008 | - The Pentagon announced that it had accidentally shipped four fuses for nuclear warheads to Taiwan.
| Source:
WP
|
| March 4, 2008 | - The U.S. Navy fired missiles into southern Somalia, targeting what the Pentagon called a “known Al Qaeda
terrorist.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 4, 2008 | - The Pentagon said that nine Iraqi civilians had been killed in a strike intended for militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
| Source:
U.S. Says It Accidentally Killed 9 Iraqi Civilians
|
| November 24, 2007 | -
Pentagon officials announced that 5,000 U.S. troops would withdraw from Iraq next month.
| Source:
U.S. to reduce Iraq troop levels by 5,000
|
| August 22, 2007 | - The Pentagon announced it would close Talon, the database created after September 11 to monitor and store information about security threats and peace activists.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 16, 2007 | - It was reported that a South Carolina small-parts supplier run by twin sisters had cheated the Pentagon out of $20.5 million in shipping costs; two 19-cent washers sent to an Army base in Texas, for instance, incurred a $998,798 charge.
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| July 20, 2007 | - The Pentagon accused Senator Hillary Clinton of reinforcing “enemy propaganda” when she asked whether the Bush Administration had an exit plan for the Iraq war.
| Source:
The Financial Times via MSNBC.com
|
| July 2, 2007 | - A military judge rejected the Pentagon's request to reinstate previously dismissed charges against a Guantánamo prisoner who was arrested when he was 15 years old.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| June 14, 2007 | - Two reports--one by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the other by the Pentagon--concluded that despite the increased U.S. military presence in Iraq, and despite a drop in violence in Baghdad and Anbar province, the overall level of violence has not decreased but instead has become more evenly distributed throughout the country.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| May 24, 2007 | - The Defense Department released a how-to guide recovered from an “Al Qaeda
torture chamber” near Baghdad. The manual illustrates interrogation techniques such as “eye removal,” “drilling hands,” and “blowtorch to the skin,” and was found along with whips, wire cutters, pliers, handcuffs, hammers, electric drills, screwdrivers, meat cleavers, and a person suspended from the safe-house ceiling.
| Source 1:
FOX News
Source 2:
The Smoking Gun
|
| May 18, 2007 | - The Defense Department said that it was cutting off soldiers' access to YouTube and MySpace because the military wanted to “get ahead of the problem before it became a problem.”
| Source:
Wired.com
|
| April 28, 2007 | - Former CIA Director George Tenet published a book accusing the Bush Administration of taking his phrase “slam dunk”—referring to intelligence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction—out of context in order to justify a war that the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense had resolved to wage before September 11, 2001. Tenet complained that the White House and the Pentagon made him their scapegoat when the Iraqi arsenal turned out to be imaginary. A group of former intelligence officers sent Tenet a letter calling him “the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community,” reminding him that he had often lied to the public at the administration's behest, and encouraging him to return his Medal of Freedom and donate half his royalties to wounded veterans and the families of dead soldiers.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
TPM
|
| April 13, 2007 | - Former Deputy Secretary of Defense and current World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz apologized to colleagues for arranging a salary increase and promotion for a Bank associate who was also his ex-girlfriend and faced booing, catcalls, and demands for his resignation.
| Source 1:
IHT
Source 2:
NYT
|
| April 11, 2007 | - The U.S. Defense Department extended troops' tours of duty from 12 to 15 months.
| Source:
BBC
|
| March 19, 2007 | - The Pentagon announced that another Guantánamo detainee, Walid Mohammad bin Attash, confessed to planning the 1998 bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the bombing of the American warship U.S.S. Cole in 2000.
| Source:
BBC
|
| March 2, 2007 | - The Defense Department selected a winner in its nuclear warhead design competition.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 23, 2007 | - After widespread opposition from residents of Utah and Nevada, the Pentagon canceled its plan to test a large non-nuclear bomb as part of Operation Divine Strake.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| February 16, 2007 | -
Congress approved the Defense Department's request to spend $18 million to convert, in preparation for a post-Castro Cuba, a U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo into a shelter that could house 500,000 fleeing Cubans.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| February 4, 2007 | - The U.S. military announced that insurgents had shot down four helicopters in the past two weeks in Iraq,.
| Source:
Al Jazeera
|
| January 25, 2007 | - The U.S. military gave a public demonstration of a new non-lethal heat-ray gun known as the Active Denial System.
| Source:
BBC
|
| December 8, 2006 | - Robert Gates was approved by the Senate to replace Donald Rumsfeld as the new secretary of defense; senators described themselves as “very pleased,” “very impressed,” “very enthusiastic,” “very grateful,” and “very happy” with the confirmation. Rumsfeld gave an emotional farewell speech to Pentagon employees, and had to wipe his nose.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
New York Times
|
| October 22, 2006 | - The mid-month tally for U.S. troops killed in Iraq was 79, making October the deadliest month this year for American soldiers.
| Source:
AP via WBOC
|
| September 28, 2006 | - The U.S. military, short of buglers who can play taps at military funerals, was waiting for an order of 700 automated $500 digital bugles.
| Source:
The St. Petersburg Times
|
| September 25, 2006 | -
Congress was about to go into recess; bills passed in the final days included a provision to allocate $70 billion to the Pentagon for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a clause that will allow the president to define enemy combatants at his discretion; the bill also legalized torture and suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 23, 2006 | - In the basement of the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld unleashed his deadly squash drop shot.
| Source:
New York times
|
| September 1, 2006 | - The Pentagon announced that civilian casualties in Iraq had increased recently by more than fifty percent, and death squads were said to be torturing and killing as many as 1,800 people per month.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 1, 2006 | - U.S. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld quoted Georges Clemenceau, who said, “War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 15, 2006 | - It was reported that U.S. military recruiting violations rose in 2005, as did the number of troops discharged for homosexuality.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 11, 2006 | - The Pentagon issued a memo acknowledging that all prisoners in U.S. military custody were entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.
| Source:
The Financial Times
|
| June 21, 2006 | - The Pentagon classified homosexuality as a mental defect akin to retardation.
| Source:
AP via MSNBC via Daily Rotten
|
| June 20, 2006 | - There were discrepancies between the lie detection tests of U.S. security agencies. “The CIA doesn't respect the NSA's polygraph and the NSA doesn't respect the CIA's polygraph,” said Tara Wilk, a computer engineer with Defense Department clearance.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 20, 2006 | -
Donald Rumsfeld called it “strange” that he was required to give sworn testimony to the Pentagon's inspector general about $30 billion in mismanaged government contracts.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 17, 2006 | - The Israeli military absolved itself of responsibility for the deaths of seven members of the picnicking Ghalia family from explosions on a beach in Gaza. An Israeli committee admitted that Israeli forces fired six shells on and around the beach, but found that a mine planted by Hamas (or possibly a buried shell) had, by coincidence, exploded and killed the family at around the same time as the shelling. A former Pentagon battlefield analyst said that the shrapnel and craters he found at the scene of the explosion were consistent with shelling by Israelis, as were the wounds suffered by survivors.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| June 15, 2006 | - The Pentagon announced the 2,500th American death in Iraq. “It's a number,” said White House press secretary Tony Snow.
| Source:
Toronto Star
|
| June 15, 2006 | - At least 52 United States agencies were mining data about U.S. citizens, searching for criminals, terrorists, and potential military recruits.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| June 5, 2006 | - It was reported that the Pentagon has decided to remove a reference to Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions from a new edition of the Army Field Manual on interrogation. That article bans torture and cruel treatment as well as “outrages on personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” The change, which would reverse decades of military policy, follows President Bush's declaration in 2002 that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to “unlawful combatants” such as terrorists.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| May 18, 2006 | - American troops were using lasers to "dazzle" Iraqi drivers who do not stop at checkpoints; if used properly, said a Pentagon spokesman, the laser light will not blind its target.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| May 16, 2006 | - A patent was filed for a Pentagon-funded "controllable launcher for propelling a payload" that can shoot SWAT teams onto the roofs of tall buildings.
| Source:
The Register
|
| May 13, 2006 | -
President George W. Bush proposed sending in the National Guard to patrol the Mexican border.
| Source:
ChinaView.cn
|
| May 5, 2006 | -
CIA Director Porter Goss resigned, as did Goss appointee Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the executive director of the CIA; Foggo is under investigation for his relationship to two defense contractors who allegedly bribed former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Pentagon officials.
| Source 1:
AP via Breitbart.com
Source 2:
UPI
Source 3:
ABC News
|
| April 10, 2006 | - It was revealed that the U.S. military had mounted a propaganda campaign, targeting Iraq and the United States, intended to make Abu Muab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader (or possibly former leader) of Al Qaeda in Iraq, appear more powerful than he is. One document describing the campaign was called “Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response.”
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| April 9, 2006 | - The U.S. military announced that 1,313 Iraqi civilians had been killed in the sectarian violence of March. "Civil war," said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, "has almost started among Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, and those who are coming from Asia."
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
Chron.com
|
| April 3, 2006 | - In Iraq
a suicide bomber killed 50 people and a car bomb killed 10 people. At least 15 U.S. troops were also killed. Hostage Jill Carroll was freed.
| Source 1:
CNN.com
Source 2:
CNN.com
|
| March 8, 2006 | - A Pentagon-funded medical consortium, researching techniques to regenerate body parts, was hoping to create a working finger within five years.
| Source:
The Charlotte Observer
|
| March 3, 2006 | - The Pentagon released the names of the inmates at Guantánamo Bay as part of 5,000 pages of hearing transcripts; one man, Abdur Sayed Rahman, a Pakistani chicken farmer, was apparently held because his name was similar to that of Taliban deputy minister Abdur Zahid Rahman.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| March 1, 2006 | -
Scientists, some funded by the U.S. military, continued their research into controlling the brains of monkeys and sharks. "We believe," said a researcher at the University of Washington, Seattle, "we are the first to record neural activity from a monkey doing a somersault."
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| February 6, 2006 | - The Bush Administration submitted a $2.77 trillion budget to Congress calling for a 7 percent increase in Pentagon spending and a $36 billion cut to the growth of Medicare spending. The Administration is expected to ask for an additional $120 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 2, 2006 | - It was revealed that Pentagon contractors had hired Iraqi
Sunni clerics to help them develop propaganda campaigns.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 15, 2005 | - Leaked Pentagon documents showed that the U.S. military was routinely collecting intelligence on antiwar groups and putting it into a database. The Pentagon also launched 1-800-CALL-SPY, a hotline that allows U.S. citizens to report suspicious activity directly to the military.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| December 4, 2005 | - Two women told a reporter that Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the California
Congressman who resigned after he was found to have accepted bribes from defense contractors, once changed into pajama bottoms and a turtleneck sweater and offered the women champagne by the light of a lava lamp.
| Source 1:
Newsweek
Source 2:
KTLA
|
| November 29, 2005 | - In New York City, a defense contractor named David H. Brooks rented out two floors of the Rainbow Room for his daughter Elizabeth's bat mitzvah. Tom Petty, Kenny G, and members of Aerosmith performed, as did 50 Cent. The total cost of the party was reported as $10 million. “Go shorty,” rapped 50 Cent, “it's your bat mitzvah, we gonna party like it's your bat mitzvah.”
| Source:
New York Daily News
|
| November 24, 2005 | - The Netherlands threatened to withdraw its support for U.S. military missions if the United States continued to refuse to acknowledge its network of secret Eastern European prisons. “The U.S. should stop hiding,” said Netherlands Foreign Minister Ben Bot. “It will all come out sooner or later.”
| Source:
Al Jazeera
|
| November 18, 2005 | - The Pentagon revealed that since September 11, 2001, it has detained more than 80,000 prisoners at facilities around the world.
| Source:
Guardian Unlimited
|
| November 16, 2005 | - After repeated denials, the Pentagon finally admitted to using white phosphorus during the 2004 attack on Fallujah. “It is an incendiary weapon,” explained a spokesman.
| Source:
Common Dreams
|
| October 20, 2005 | - A Pentagon study found that 28 percent of U.S. troops returning from Iraq require medical or mental health treatment; nearly 20,000 returning soldiers reported nightmares.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| October 13, 2005 | - George W. Bush held, via satellite, a public meeting with soldiers in Tikrit, Iraq. The White House denied the event was scripted, though video footage was released showing a Defense Department official coaching the soldiers before the interview, and one of the soldiers was later revealed to be a public-affairs officer.
| Source 1:
The Village Voice
Source 2:
AP
Source 3:
The White House
|
| October 6, 2005 | - The U.S. Senate passed a $440 billion defense-spending bill; the bill includes an amendment that places limits on the torture of military prisoners. President George W. Bush promised to veto the bill if it was passed containing the amendment.
| Source:
USNews.com
|
| September 12, 2005 | -
Chuck E. Cheese restaurants were showing Defense Department footage. "We support what our troops are doing over there," said a Chuck E. Cheese representative. "Helping kids."
| Source:
New York
|
| September 9, 2005 | - The Pentagon held a "Freedom Walk." Walkers were forced to register online ahead of time, to march along a fenced-in route, and to listen to Clint Black perform his song "Iraq and Roll."
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| August 28, 2005 | - The Pentagon called for 1,500 more troops to be sent to Iraq for the referendum.
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| August 4, 2005 | - The Pentagon was teaching scientists how to write screenplays.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| July 23, 2005 | - The Pentagon was stalling to avoid the release of more photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison. The videos are said to show young boys shrieking as they are anally
raped.
| Source:
Editor & Publisher
|
| July 22, 2005 | - The Pentagon asked Congress to allow people up to age forty-two to enlist in the military.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 24, 2005 | - It was revealed that the Defense Department, in violation of the federal Privacy Act, has been building a database of thirty million sixteen- to twenty-five-year-olds. “If you don't want conscription,” said the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, “you have to give the Department of Defense, the military services, an avenue to contact young people.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| April 11, 2005 | - Senior American defense officials noted several positive developments in Iraq: only thirty-six American soldiers, they said, died there this March; attacks on allied forces were down to thirty or forty a day; and by early 2006, only 105,000 American soldiers may be needed in the country.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 24, 2005 | - The Pentagon refused to let a soldier's mother photograph her dead son's casket as it returned from Iraq.
| Source:
The Barre Montpelier Times Argus
|
| March 16, 2005 | - The Pentagon admitted that many of the prisoners who have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 were victims of criminal homicide.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 13, 2005 | - Twenty U.S. federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, were found to have prepared hundreds of video news releases favorable to the government, many of which were inserted into local television news broadcasts without attribution.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 11, 2005 | - A study showed that the Pentagon was not to blame for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 20, 2005 | - The U.S. military increased its bonuses to encourage reenlistment.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| February 17, 2005 | - The Pentagon allocated $127 billion to build a robot army. Some of the robots will look and walk like humans, some will hover in the air, and some will make their own choices during battle. “The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions,” said a representative from the U.S. Joint Forces Research Center.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 10, 2005 | - The Pentagon was considering whether to fund special, El Salvador-style Iraqi death squads.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| December 30, 2004 | - The Pentagon was considering cutting back on new weapons programs,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 19, 2004 | - The Pentagon announced it wanted to spend more time spying.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 11, 2004 | - Two days later the Pentagon asked a contractor to speed up its production of armored Humvees.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 30, 2004 | - The Pentagon extended the Iraq tours of 6,500 soldiers.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 28, 2004 | - Four British citizens who were held without charges in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, filed suit against Donald Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, and claimed that they were tortured while in custody. The Pentagon responded that the men were "enemy combatants" and thus had no right to sue.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 28, 2004 | - A federal judge ordered the Defense Department to stop giving troops the anthrax vaccine and said that the Food and Drug Administration broke its own rules by approving it.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| October 1, 2004 | - The Army
lowered its standards in an attempt to attract more recruits.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 24, 2004 | - An expert panel appointed by the Pentagon concluded that the United States lacks the troops to maintain its current military commitments, and
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 19, 2004 | - The Pentagon announced that it will issue microwave pain guns to its forces in Iraq.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| August 29, 2004 | - The FBI was still investigating a possible Israeli mole in the Pentagon.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| July 8, 2004 | - The Pentagon announced the creation of military review panels to allow prisoners at Guantánamo Bay to challenge their detentions, though they will not be permitted to have lawyers present, nor will the hearings be public; critics said that the Pentagon's plan falls short of the standard set by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the prisoners have a right to an independent hearing.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| June 25, 2004 | - "My understanding of this issue," said General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "is that the CPA orders cannot be repealed or modified until Iraq's permanent government is in place to enact legislation."
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| June 1, 2004 | - The Pentagon denied that a new "non-lethal" ray gun that fires millimeter-wave electromagnetic energy, which penetrates the skin and instantly heats water molecules to 130 degrees, might be used as a torture device. No one has been able to stand the pain caused by the weapon, known as the "Active Denial System," for more than 3 seconds.
| Source:
Sacramento Bee
|
| May 18, 2004 | - The Pentagon finally decided to stop paying Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress $335,000 per month.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 15, 2004 | - It was reported that the Abu Ghraib torture fiasco was a product of a covert Pentagon operation — a so-called special-access program, authorized by Donald Rumsfeld and run by his undersecretary Stephen Cambone — that applied unconventional interrogation techniques developed for use in Afghanistan to the situation in Iraq.
| Source:
New Yorker
|
| May 6, 2004 | - The Pentagon was thinking about setting up a new office to plan postwar operations for future wars.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 13, 2004 | - The North American Aerospace Defense Command admitted that in April 2001 it rejected a training scenario in which foreign terrorists were to hijack a commercial airplane and try to crash it into the Pentagon; the scenario was considered unrealistic.
| Source:
Navy Times
|
| March 21, 2004 | - The Pentagon dropped charges against Capt. James Yee, a former chaplain at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who was accused of being a Muslim spy.
| Source:
Straights Times
|
| March 18, 2004 | - The Pentagon was withholding a $300 million payment for Halliburton until auditors make sure that the government was not overcharged.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| March 11, 2004 | - The Pentagon was still paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi National Congress, the exile group that provided much of the discredited intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 26, 2004 | -
Pentagon officials said that Guantánamo detainees who are found innocent might still be kept in detention indefinitely if they are deemed a security risk.
| Source:
BBC
|
| February 22, 2004 | - An internal Pentagon report warned that global climate change will soon lead to drought, famine, and widespread warfare as countries begin to fight over scarce water, food, and energy supplies. Climate change, the report argues, "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern."
| Source:
Observer
|
| February 18, 2004 | - "Heads should roll," said Richard Perle, of the Defense Policy Board, "not in a punitive or vindictive way. But when you discover you have an organization that doesn't get it right time after time, you change the organization, including the people . . . . I would start with the head."
| Source:
Christian Science Monitor
|
| January 22, 2004 | - An expert panel that was asked to review a Pentagon-funded Internet voting system declared that the system was fundamentally flawed. "Using a voting system based on the Internet," said one of the experts, "poses a serious and unacceptable risk for election fraud." The Pentagon nonetheless said that it "stands by" the program, which will be used in several primaries this year. "We feel it's right on," said a spokesman, "and we're going to use it."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 9, 2004 | - General Wesley Clark was wearing argyle sweaters at campaign appearances in an attempt to appeal to women voters. The retired general told a reporter that some women have "an impression that the armed forces is a male-dominated, hierarchical, authoritarian institution."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 12, 2003 | - The Pentagon accused Halliburton, which recently removed its name from outside its corporate headquarters in Houston, of overcharging for gasoline in Iraq.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 4, 2003 | -
Australia resolved to join the American missile-defense program, a decision that pleased the Pentagon and President Bush but puzzled many Australians who wondered from whose missiles the expensive system was supposed to protect them.
| Source:
Sydney Morning Herald
|
| December 3, 2003 | - The Pentagon decided to permit Yaser Hamdi, an American citizen who has been held as an enemy combatant for two years, to have access to his lawyer, though officials continued to insist that Hamdi has no constitutional right to an attorney.
| Source:
Ft. Worth Star Telegram
|
| October 23, 2003 | - The Pentagon was planning to spend $335 million on high-tech solutions to the guerrilla war; the measures include electronic jamming devices, tethered blimps with digital cameras, and other "rapid-reaction/new solution" technologies.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 9, 2003 | - The federal commission investigating the September 11 attacks complained that the Justice Department and the Pentagon were not cooperating.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 30, 2003 | - The Defense Department was said to be in favor of a massive covert operation to overthrow the Iranian government.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| May 28, 2003 | - The Pentagon discovered 200 vials of anthrax and other bacteria among 2,000 tons of hazardous waste on an Army base about 50 miles from Washington, D.C.
| Source:
Times of London
|
| May 2, 2003 | - The Bush Administration proposed giving the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon the power to issue "administrative subpoenas" for personal and financial information on American citizens without court approval.
Attorney General John Ashcroft revealed that the Justice Department used secret warrants 1,228 times last year.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 11, 2001 | - The Pentagon performed another rigged test of its antimissile system; this time the “kill vehicle” actually struck its target, which was emitting a homing beacon.
| |
| November 20, 2001 | -
Pentagon officials were still trying to decide on a new color for food-aid packages; the current yellow color matches the one used for cluster bombs.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - The Air Force was planning to deploy more of its Predator surveillance drones in Afghanistan even though an internal Pentagon report recently concluded that the drone doesn't perform well at night or in cold or rainy weather.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, asked about the massacre, said: “I cannot deal with that particular village.” General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that United States forces would change the color of the yellow food packets being dropped from the air. “It is unfortunate that the cluster bombs — the unexploded ones — are the same color as the food packets,” he said, but he couldn't say when the change would take place “because there are many in the pipeline.” Human Rights Watch called on the Pentagon to stop using cluster bombs, each of which contains 202 soda-sized yellow bomblets, because “they have proven to be a serious and long-lasting threat to civilians, soldiers, peacekeepers, and even clearance experts.”
| |
| October 30, 2001 | -
Pentagon officials expressed surprise at the toughness of Taliban soldiers and warned that it would probably be a long war.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - Other Pentagon officials were telling reporters that the Afghan
war will probably just make things worse, that short-term tactical gains may well lead to catastrophic strategic losses.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | - In response to reports of heavy civilian casualties near Darunta, the Pentagon spent millions of dollars buying up exclusive rights to civilian satellite photos of the Afghan bombing zone to prevent the images from falling into the hands of the news media.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | -
Legally, the Pentagon has “shutter control” over civilian satellites to prevent enemies from acquiring sensitive intelligence data, but in this case the images had no strategic value.
| |
| October 9, 2001 | -
Pentagon sources said the plane was hit by a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, apparently by accident, during training exercises with Russia.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | - A professor at the University of New Mexico was in big trouble for joking that “anyone who can blow up the Pentagon gets my vote”; university officials were calling for his resignation.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | -
Terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and damaged the Pentagon using hijacked commercial airliners.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | - One hundred eighty-eight died at the Pentagon.
| |
| September 4, 2001 | - The Pentagon admitted that its missile defense scheme probably would be unable to hit the wobbly, primitive missiles that “rogue states” would be most likely to fire.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - The Pentagon conducted an antimissile test in which an interceptor rocket destroyed a Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile; critics said the test was flawed because it used a shiny round decoy balloon that looked nothing like a missile and thus was unlikely to confuse the interceptor.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - The Pentagon did away with its “two-war” doctrine.
| |
| March 6, 2001 | - The Pentagon announced a new “active denial system” that fires electromagnetic energy at people and creates a burning sensation on the surface of their skin.
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| March 6, 2001 | - The weapon is meant to “influence motivational behavior”; the Pentagon hopes to use the weapon, which Human Rights Watch described as a “high-powered microwave antipersonnel weapon,” for crowd control, instead of tear gas and rubber bullets.
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| February 27, 2001 | - Most of the “smart” bombs dropped on Iraq last week missed their targets, the Pentagon admitted.
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| January 23, 2001 | -
President Clinton ordered the Pentagon to review a study which found that residents of a small Puerto Rican island where the Navy conducts bombing tests have a high rate of a rare heart condition caused by loud noises.
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| January 23, 2001 | - Investigators raided a Marine unit in North Carolina after they received a tip that the unit was falsifying maintenance records on the experimental Osprey airplane to help ensure its approval by the Pentagon.
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| January 2, 2001 | -
President Clinton signed the 1998 Rome Treaty on the International Criminal Court over the objections of the Pentagon and many Republicans, who on this subject do perhaps protest too much.
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| December 12, 2000 | -
Pentagon investigators acknowledged that American troops had massacred unarmed Korean civilians near No Gun Ri at the beginning of the Korean War, but claimed there was no evidence of direct orders from superiors to kill the Koreans, which would constitute a war crime.
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| December 5, 2000 | - The Pentagon was using sweatshop labor in Nicaragua to make uniforms.
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| November 7, 2000 | - Veterans of the Korean War were offered free testing for exposure to Agent Orange after the Pentagon admitted that soldiers applied the toxic herbicide along the Korean border.
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| September 19, 2000 | - There were reports that former CIA director John Deutch, who was recently accused of downloading classified CIA material (including information about covert operations) to his personal, unsecured computer, also violated security rules by downloading classified material when he worked at the Pentagon.
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| September 12, 2000 | - A Pentagon
security gate popped up and wrecked a car carrying the German
defense minister; two years ago the same thing happened to the Japanese defense minister.
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| August 1, 2000 | - The Pentagon mounted an arms show in Philadelphia for the Republican National Convention that will cost at least $100,000.
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| August 1, 2000 | - The Defense Department proposed a new debit-card program for low-income troops who qualify for food stamps.
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