From classified documents to shocking revelations, brave individuals have risked everything to expose dark government secrets. Join us as we examine the most chilling and controversial claims made by those who dared to speak out against institutional wrongdoing, cover-ups, and human rights violations.
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00:00I remember looking up at a sergeant as we lay after about the 15th of these incidents
00:05and saying, do you ever feel like the redcoats?
00:09Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the most shocking revelations made by government insiders.
00:14Ignorance is blessed, they say, but to actually know what they were doing, you can't stand by and let that happen.
00:21Mass NSA surveillance post 9-11.
00:23You used to be able to just drive up to an airport, get out of your car, basically get a ticket and get on board.
00:30That dramatically changed after 9-11.
00:33When a national emergency occurs, no one thinks that the pitfalls will land directly on the affected citizens.
00:39After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the Protect America Act was passed,
00:44giving organizations like the NSA permission to track Americans and foreigners alike without warrant.
00:50This quickly led to the creation of PRISM, a program dedicated to collecting natives' web data.
00:55There is no question that the president and I and others in government have actually learned of some things that have been happening in many ways on an automatic pilot.
01:07And yes, in some cases, it has reached too far inappropriately.
01:11In 2013, it was exposed by Edward Snowden, a former NSA employee, and quickly became a national story.
01:18He not only revealed exactly how it worked, but what exactly it stole.
01:22From searching through people's private messages, to spying on World of Warcraft players,
01:26it made it clear just how far the government was willing to go to stop potential terrorists.
01:32A sense of, why did you decide to do what you've done?
01:34So, for me, it all comes down to state power against the people's ability to meaningfully oppose that power.
01:41And I'm sitting there every day getting paid to design methods to amplify that state power.
01:52NSA tracking American citizens pre-9-11.
01:55If these private people were holding a conversation and used key words that is in the computer's dictionary,
02:02then that individual would become a target.
02:04Yes, all you have to do is key the computer and you are now a target.
02:08Although the Snowden revelations put modern US government surveillance in the spotlight,
02:13it wasn't the first time it had happened.
02:15In the 1960s, the Cold War prompted officials to create Echelon,
02:19a program to observe the USSR and its allies.
02:22This spiraled into something much larger and was soon being used to collect global satellite data.
02:27The network was even capable of accessing phone calls and other forms of correspondence.
02:32Everyone eavesdrops on everyone else, so no one can denounce their neighbor.
02:36It was Perry Felwock, an NSA analyst, who came forward about the tracking stations placed around the world.
02:42His leaks led to the Church Committee being passed in 1973,
02:46which ensured that American citizens wouldn't be spied on.
02:49Unfortunately, that was amended less than 30 years later following 9-11 and hasn't been fixed since.
02:55The advantage for the USA is not necessarily being able to eavesdrop on the whole world,
03:00but rather to make other countries dependent while encouraging them never to attempt to develop their own system.
03:06The Sand Creek Massacre.
03:08The Southern Cheyenne lost perhaps half of their population.
03:12So Bent's Fort became a place of sadness where too many deaths occurred.
03:18Whistleblowers aren't a modern concept.
03:21They've existed throughout history, even in some countries' adolescence.
03:25During the American Frontier Wars in 1864, Captain Silas Sowell and his men were ordered to carry out a gruesome attack against a peaceful Native American encampment.
03:36Sowell not only refused to take part in it, but heavily insulted anyone who would.
03:40Sowell's company of First Colorado veterans refused to fire a shot.
03:44Though the Sand Creek Massacre still unfortunately took place, and led to the violent deaths of hundreds of innocent people,
03:51Sowell refused to stand by.
03:53He appeared in court to testify during an investigation of the act,
03:56which eventually led to the offending Colonel resigning from his position.
04:00His good deed wasn't without sacrifice, as he was assassinated only two months later.
04:05And so they returned to Denver as heroes.
04:12And their parade through Denver was about two miles long.
04:17Business leaders planning a coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
04:21Who in the hell has done all the bleeding for this country and for this law and this Constitution anyhow, the two fellows?
04:28What could have been a disastrous moment in American history was stopped by one man's convictions.
04:33President Franklin Roosevelt was an economically progressive president, something that immediately unsettled businessmen nationwide.
04:40The purpose, as I've told you, sir, is to lead this nation properly in this time of economic crisis.
04:46There's a cripple in the White House.
04:48Roosevelt is weak.
04:50We'd like you to speak on behalf of the veterans and new leadership.
04:54This led to the business plot being created, a coup that would overturn the election results and instate Smedley Butler as the de facto leader.
05:02It was Butler himself who ended up coming forward about the insidious plan, even revealing that his attempt would be bankrolled and padded with 500,000 former U.S. soldiers.
05:12His efforts were met with denials from those who were accused, leading to a heated debate that was encouraged by the media.
05:18Though no proof had been shown, the committee in charge of investigating the claims has insisted they're true.
05:24They assumed that he would be anathema to some of the governmental changes that were going on, and they assumed that he would keep a secret.
05:37And they were wrong.
05:39CIA's involvement in Indonesian killings of 1965 and 66.
05:44And the most important part of the story, no, not the first event in the tale, is the U.S.-backed mass murder of approximately one million innocent civilians in Indonesia in 1965.
05:57Some accusations are quelled before they can even reach a national audience.
06:01This was the case for Ralph McGehee, a past officer for the CIA who came forward about several of their alleged transgressions.
06:08One such claim made in 1981 purported that they had been involved in a series of mass killings in Indonesia throughout the 1960s, leading to the deaths of at least 500,000 accused communists.
06:21I feel that I am doing what I should be doing.
06:24And in that sense, I'm happy.
06:25I am not happy in a sense that no amount of criticism of the agency, no amount of revelation of his dirty deeds, no amount of exposure of the weaknesses of the agency has weakened the CIA.
06:41He even considered it to be a prototype for an American-supported 1973 coup in Chile.
06:46The leak was heavily censored by the CIA, resulting in a legal battle between NEM, McGehee, and the ACLU.
06:53While the former was ultimately victorious, his allegations were a small look into the extent of the government's foreign interference.
07:00The truth about the Vietnam War.
07:15I have learned in the Marine Corps that to know what's happening, you have to be up at the front line.
07:20Even when it was ongoing, many considered the war in Vietnam to be senseless.
07:24And this reveal only strengthened that position.
07:27The Pentagon Papers, copied and originally circulated by Daniel Ellsberg in the early 1970s, made it clear just how far the government was willing to go in order to ensure victory.
07:38I can no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public.
07:43Dr. Ellsberg, you're concerned about the possibility of going to prison today?
07:47We're having a prison.
07:48Wouldn't you go to prison to tell such a story?
07:50It leaked everything, from the insidious goals of the United States, to the bombings and raids they carried out that had never once been reported on.
07:58It even exposed several planned attacks that hadn't come to fruition, and a coup that had, leading to the assassination of President Diem, and the reinstatement of an American-approved choice.
08:08The publication spanned several presidential administrations, exposing them in a way they had never been before.
08:14Ellsberg was tense, but composed. His attorneys protested the government request for $100,000 bail. Ellsberg himself assured the court he would appear whenever and wherever asked.
08:24Torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
08:27If they hear strange voices in the speech, they don't let us from the end.
08:34If they leave two or three, or if they leave one, they let him sit in the morning.
08:41Unfortunately, not all that served do so with good intentions.
08:45During the Iraq War, the army remodeled a former prison run by Saddam Hussein into one for their own purposes.
08:51They then proceeded to imprison anyone they felt would pose a threat to themselves or the country as a whole.
08:57They were then given clearance to interrogate through any means possible, including acts of torture.
09:02There is no such thing as a little bit of torture.
09:09The prisoners at Abu Ghraib were put through physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, which was even photographed by the perpetrators.
09:17Some even depicted soldiers posing next to a corpse.
09:20These images were first brought to light by Joe Darby in 2004, whose good deed was rewarded with doxing and constant threats from his own countrymen.
09:30Once they were brought in, once this investigation began, were they removed from the base?
09:34No. They still had their weapons. They still had unlimited access to the facility and me. The whole time. For almost a month.
09:43War crimes and human rights violations in the Middle East.
09:46US Army video filmed in 2007 showed a group of men, almost all unarmed, being gunned down in a Baghdad street by an American Apache helicopter.
09:57While technically a crime, what Chelsea Manning did shone a light on war crimes committed by her own country.
10:03In 2009, she received access to a plethora of classified information, and quickly found evidence of war crimes being committed in the Middle East.
10:11The files, which were then sent to WikiLeaks, contained damning evidence, ranging from footage of a deadly 2007 airstrike carried out in Baghdad,
10:20to the revelation of countless civilians being murdered by United States troops.
10:25There was no correct option. There was only the least incorrect one. Either way, I would have been screwing somebody over.
10:34These leaks ultimately led to her arrest and imprisonment, and she was even looking at a potential death sentence for aiding the enemy.
10:41With her sentence eventually being commuted in 2017.
10:44While controversial, her act has led to some people seeing the military in a new light.
10:49I'm just somebody who figured out what was going on, and then once I thought about it, I'm like, ah, now I can't unthink it.
11:01My Lai massacre cover-up.
11:03People were getting killed and wounded, and we weren't receiving any fire.
11:10Just, you know, it didn't make sense. There was too many casualties there.
11:14The country's goals surrounding the Vietnam War haven't been the only things to be exposed.
11:19One event carried out by the United States government has gone on to live in infamy to this day.
11:24The horrific My Lai massacre.
11:26Perpetrated in 1968, hundreds of Vietnamese citizens were rounded up and slaughtered with a wide array of weapons.
11:33As a professional soldier, I had been taught to carry out the orders, and in no time it ever cost my mind to disobey or to refuse to carry out an order that was issued by my superiors.
11:49One soldier, Hugh Thompson Jr., attempted to stop this act and even reported it, only for it to be covered up and explained away as an accident.
11:57It wasn't until 1969, when Ronald Rittenhoward came forward with everything he'd been told about the mass killings,
12:04namely, that they had been planned and ordered by commanding officers, that the truth began to be reported.
12:09I wanted to see action taken. I wanted to see the people who are responsible arrested.
12:15I think that the people who are primarily responsible have not been arrested.
12:20I think the people who are being arrested now are merely the pawns of the game.
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12:37There are some studies so vile it's hard to believe they took place.
12:58Yet, from 1932 to 1972, Tuskegee University used the guise of free medical care to leave hundreds of African American men infected with syphilis.
13:09The afflicted participants were never told of their diagnosis, leaving them in the dark while they were treated with toxic materials.
13:16The scientists involved even prevented the men from receiving actual care.
13:28When Peter Buxton first learned of this in 1965, he tried to report it, only to be brushed aside.
13:34He finally leaked what he knew in 1972, immediately making headlines across the nation.
13:40It was only then that the experiment was finally called off, but the damage done caused generational trauma that's still felt today.
13:47We'll give them aspirin and tonic and vitamins, things they've never had before.
13:53I guarantee you they'll feel much, much better.
13:57Until they don't.
13:59Which whistleblower do you think exposed the most shocking leak? Let us know in the comments below.
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