26 Corrupt Bargains Shaped American Politics
In American political history, “corrupt bargain” refers to three controversial moments when critics accused Congress or the president of violating the clearly expected legal or democratic course. The first came after the 1824 presidential election, when the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson, and Adams then made Henry Clay his secretary of state. The term later attached to the Compromise of 1877, which helped settle the disputed 1876 election for Rutherford B. Hayes, and to President Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal. In each case, opponents used the phrase to suggest that political insiders traded power, protection, or office while shielding corruption from normal accountability.
27. On August 1, 1946, Athens, Tennessee, erupted into the Battle of Athens after World War II veterans challenged a corrupt local political machine accused of police brutality, fee-grabbing, and election fraud. Returning veterans formed a nonpartisan GI ticket, promised that votes would be counted as cast, and watched the polls after years of rigged local politics. Violence broke out after deputies blocked Black farmer Tom Gillespie from voting, shot him in the back, beat GI poll watcher Bob Hairrell, and took ballot boxes to the county jail. Armed veterans besieged the jail and recovered the ballots, and the count made decorated veteran Knox Henry the sheriff of McMinn County.
28. Under American president Warren G. Harding, Scottish-American official Charles R. Forbes became the first director of the Veterans’ Bureau in 1921 and controlled a huge agency meant to help World War I veterans. Forbes turned the bureau into a corruption scandal, embezzling about $2 million through hospital construction deals, stolen supplies, bribes, and contractor kickbacks. When Harding learned in January 1923 that Forbes had ignored orders to stop selling hospital supplies, he summoned him to the White House and allegedly grabbed him by the throat while demanding his resignation. Forbes resigned in February 1923, and a later fraud conviction sent him to prison.
29. In 1998 and 2001, Ohio’s Bureau of Workers’ Compensation gave Republican fundraiser and rare coin dealer Tom Noe a total of $50 million in state funds to invest in rare coins. The investment became the Coingate corruption scandal after investigators found missing money, falsified records, and state funds diverted for Noe’s personal use. In 2006, a jury convicted Noe of 29 felony counts, including theft, money laundering, forgery, and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity. He received an 18-year prison sentence and was ordered to pay restitution for millions missing from the rare-coin fund.
30. In 1941, American senator Harry S. Truman began leading the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program after finding waste, profiteering, and corruption in U.S. war production. The Truman Committee held hundreds of hearings, exposed bad contracts, corrected inefficiency, and saved an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion in military spending. That was several times the roughly $2 billion cost of the Manhattan Project. Truman’s success made him nationally known and became a major factor in Democrats choosing him as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vice president in 1944.
31 Chris Hansen Exposed Hidden Corruption
Before To Catch a Predator, American television journalist Chris Hansen worked as an NBC and Dateline NBC correspondent on undercover investigations into corruption, exploitation, and national security failures. His earlier reporting used hidden cameras to examine forced child labor in India, airport-security weaknesses, and overseas trafficking networks. After the September 11 attacks, Hansen also reported on terrorism-related investigations and alleged links between U.S.-based actors and extremist networks. The work made him known for exposing corruption and criminal systems before he became widely associated with predator-sting reporting.
32. China uses prison tours as an anti-corruption warning for officials, senior state-owned enterprise managers, and sometimes their families. Senior officials from the visit prisons because the Communist Party’s Central Commission considers their posts “high-risk.” During the tours, imprisoned former officials talk about how corruption ruined their careers and hurt their families. Up to 2014, nearly 340,000 officials had visited Beijing Prison since the anti-corruption education tours began in 2008.
33. In April 2011, residents of Cherán town in Mexico rose up after crime, illegal logging, and political corruption overwhelmed the community. Locals blockaded the town, drove out armed loggers, expelled the mayor, police, and political parties, and began guarding entrances and nearby forests themselves. Cherán later built a self-governing system under Indigenous uses and customs, with a community council and local patrols instead of conventional party politics. Electioneering remains banned inside the town, and the community has since become known for public services, recycling, reforestation, and protecting its forests.
34. Peruvian politician Susana Higuchi was married to Alberto Fujimori, the authoritarian president of Peru from 1990 to 2000, before she publicly accused his government of corruption. In 1994, while Fujimori still held office, she denounced him as corrupt and dictatorial after alleging that his relatives had misused Japanese-donated clothing meant for poor Peruvians. Fujimori responded by stripping her of the title of first lady and naming their daughter, Keiko Fujimori, in her place. Higuchi later divorced him, joined the opposition, and won election to the Peruvian Congress in 2000.
35. Peru has jailed so many former presidents for corruption, abuse, or political crimes that the country turned Barbadillo, a former police academy site on the outskirts of Lima, into a special prison for ex-leaders. Alberto Fujimori became its first presidential inmate after courts convicted him of human rights abuses from his 1990s rule. By 2023, Pedro Castillo and Alejandro Toledo had also been held there as Peru’s corruption scandals and political turmoil filled the compound’s few cells.
36 Piracy’s Golden Age Fed Corruption
The Golden Age of Piracy, which ran roughly from the 1650s to the 1730s, grew out of expanding ocean trade, weaker European naval patrols, and corruption in overseas colonies. European empires shipped more valuable cargo across huge Atlantic and Indian Ocean routes, creating rich targets that local authorities could not always protect. After major wars ended, many unemployed sailors turned to piracy while reduced navies left fewer warships available to hunt them. Corrupt colonial officials then made the problem worse by tolerating pirates, trading with them, or accepting bribes while pirate havens grew in places such as the Caribbean.
37. Economist Kenneth Rogoff has argued that phasing out high-denomination banknotes can make crime and corruption harder by increasing the bulk of illegal cash. Large bills let criminals, tax evaders, and corrupt officials move and store huge sums discreetly, while smaller notes require more space, weight, handling, and risk for the same value.
38. After the 1980 Irpinia earthquake devastated southern Italy, the government created a massive rebuilding fund that eventually reached about US$40 billion. Corruption, political patronage, and organized crime swallowed much of the money, and reports later estimated that only about one-quarter of the funds went to actual reconstruction. Politicians and the Camorra diverted contracts and relief spending, turning disaster recovery into one of Italy’s most notorious corruption scandals.
39. In the 1490s, Italian Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola became a powerful preacher in Renaissance Florence by denouncing clerical corruption, despotic rule, aristocratic luxury, and the exploitation of the poor. After King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494, Florentines expelled the ruling Medici and set up a republic that operated largely under Savonarola’s influence. He pushed an extreme moral reform campaign, using youth processions and the “Bonfires of the Vanities” to destroy secular art, luxury goods, games, and other objects he condemned as corrupting the city. His power collapsed in 1498, when Church and civil authorities arrested, hanged, and burned him in Florence’s main square.
40. In 1986, the FBI and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation launched Operation Rocky Top to uncover political corruption tied to illegal charity bingo in the Tennessee state government. First-year Republican state representative Randy McNally joined the investigation after a bingo lobbyist offered him bribes and boasted about bribing other lawmakers. McNally wore a wire, gained the trust of lobbyists and insiders, and helped expose a scheme that used bogus charities to get bingo licenses and funnel money back to legislators. The investigation produced more than 50 convictions, sent several politicians to prison, and led Tennessee to tighten rules on political contributions and lobbying.
41 Forgettable Presidents Faced Gilded Corruption
After the Civil War and into the 1890s, several American presidents became known as the “forgettable presidents” because their administrations looked weak beside the corruption and turmoil of the Gilded Age. Andrew Johnson was impeached and survived removal by one Senate vote, while Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency suffered from scandals involving aides and officials who stole public money. Rutherford B. Hayes entered office after the disputed 1876 election, which many critics called fraudulent, and James A. Garfield was assassinated after only four months. Chester A. Arthur then signed civil service reform after Garfield’s murder, but his own party denied him renomination in 1884.
42. In 2008 and 2009, New York City police officer Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded his fellow NYPD officers and supervisors for 17 months while working in Brooklyn’s 81st Precinct. His recordings captured supervisors tying ticket, stop-and-frisk, and arrest numbers to discipline, even though state law barred illegal quotas. The tapes also documented illegal arrests and claims that serious crimes were downgraded, ignored, or kept out of the system to protect crime statistics. After the recordings became public, the scandal led to several removals and four investigations of the NYPD.
43. In 2011, a jailed man named Anthony Brown helped the FBI investigate corruption and brutality inside the Los Angeles County jail system. After sheriff’s officials discovered he was an informant, deputies moved him between facilities, held him under false names, isolated him, and watched him around the clock to keep FBI handlers from finding him. The wider corruption probe included allegations of deputy brutality, illegal obstruction, and staged “gladiator-style” fights between inmates. Federal prosecutors later charged several officials from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in the obstruction case.
44. In 2006, American Supreme Court Justice Allen Loughry published “Don’t Buy Another Vote, I Won’t Pay for a Landslide,” a book about the history of political corruption in West Virginia. Twelve years later, while serving on the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Loughry became part of a corruption scandal over court spending, state property, and misuse of public resources. In October 2018, a federal jury convicted him of 11 counts, including wire fraud, mail fraud, witness tampering, and lying to the FBI, and sentenced him to 24 months in prison.
45. In 1972, American investigative columnist Jack Anderson became the target of an assassination plot after years of exposing political corruption, including stories that enraged Richard Nixon and his allies. Nixon White House operatives G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt discussed ways to kill or incapacitate Anderson, including poison and a plan involving LSD on his car’s steering wheel. The plot never moved forward because the Watergate break-in soon exposed the same circle of operatives.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 Boss Tweed Feared Nast Cartoons
In the 1870s, American political boss William “Boss” Tweed controlled New York City’s Tammany Hall machine while corruption scandals surrounded his allies and city contracts. German-born American cartoonist Thomas Nast attacked Tweed in Harper’s Weekly, drawing him as the public face of political corruption. Tweed reportedly told aides to stop the pictures because many of his constituents could not read, but they could see the cartoons. The visual campaign helped turn public opinion against Tweed, who was arrested in 1871, later escaped prison, and was recaptured after someone recognized him from Nast’s cartoons.
47. In 2007, economists Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel studied unpaid parking tickets by United Nations diplomats in Manhattan as a real-world measure of corruption when enforcement was weak. Until November 2002, diplomatic immunity largely protected UN diplomats from punishment for unpaid parking violations, and diplomats accumulated more than 150,000 unpaid tickets worth over $18 million. The study found that diplomats from high-corruption countries collected significantly more unpaid violations than diplomats from low-corruption countries. After New York City gained the power to strip diplomatic plates from repeat violators in 2002, unpaid violations dropped sharply.
48. German SS judge Georg Konrad Morgen investigated corruption and unauthorized murder inside Nazi concentration and extermination camps during World War II. In July 1943, Heinrich Himmler assigned him to examine SS corruption in the camps, and Morgen’s inquiries soon led to cases involving theft, brutality, and killings by camp officials. Over about two years, he investigated hundreds of SS personnel and prosecuted figures such as Buchenwald commandant Karl Otto Koch for corruption and murder outside officially authorized Nazi policy. Morgen later said he investigated more than 800 people before Himmler ordered him to stop.
49. In the 1980s, Operation Greylord exposed deep corruption inside the Cook County court system in the Chicago area. Federal investigators targeted judges, lawyers, police officers, court clerks, and a state legislator who took bribes, fixed cases, protected criminals, and profited from racketeering and other crimes. The investigation indicted 92 people and became famous for using the first listening device ever placed inside a judge’s chambers. By the end, dozens of officials and insiders had been convicted.
50. South Korea’s former presidents have faced such a long pattern of coups, assassinations, impeachment, imprisonment, and corruption scandals that the trend became known as the “Blue House curse.” Syngman Rhee (1948–1960) fled into exile after election fraud protests, Park Chung-hee (1963–1979) was assassinated, and military rulers Chun Doo-hwan (1980–1988) and Roh Tae-woo (1988–1993) later went to prison for corruption, mutiny, and related crimes. In the democratic era, Roh Moo-hyun (2003–2008) died by suicide during a bribery investigation, while Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013) and Park Geun-hye (2013–2017) were both imprisoned for corruption. The pattern made South Korea’s presidency infamous for leaders who often left office only to face disgrace, prosecution, or worse.
RE: Fact #50 (Blue House Curse Haunted Presidents) – So, looking at how it goes: 1. President 1 leaves. 2. President 2 is elected and charges the first for corruption. 3. President 2 leaves. 4. President 3 is elected, charges the second for corruption, and pardons the first. And it just keeps going like that.
RE: Fact #43 (LA Deputies Hid FBI Informant) – How can they waterboard someone because their relative bombed a station on the other side of the world, put it on TV, and yet when our own prisons here are staging gladiator-style battles between inmates, nobody says a word?
RE: Fact #19 (Nasser Pocketed CIA Bribe Money) – “I’m playing both sides so that I always come out on top.” – Gamal Abdel Nasser
[Let’s pull up our bootstraps, oil up a couple of asses, and do a little plowing of our own]💪🏻 – Gamal Abdel Nasser, probably
RE: Fact #33 (Cheran Expelled Crime And Corruption) – Pine smugglers? That’s definitely not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of items being trafficked by a mafia.
“Nice forest you’ve got here, it’d be a shame if anything were “to happen” to it.”
“Tell Marco that Juan ‘sleeps with the pine straw.’ He’ll know what that means.”
RE: Fact #50 (Blue House Curse Haunted Presidents) – I think you could link almost any president in the world to corruption if you looked hard enough. That seems to be part of the job’s appeal. I suspect most people enter politics with idealistic goals, but after a while, they just stay for the money and influence.
RE: Fact #2 (Plebeians Abandoned Rome’s Corrupt Elites) – This is how the Plebs secured, among other things, the tribunate positions that allowed them to elect officials with the power to veto motions in the Senate or Public Assembly. They also got legal transparency through the publication of the 12 tablets in the forum. Most importantly, they managed to abolish the legal distinction between Plebian and Patrician classes, which allowed Plebs to run for election and reach the highest positions in the Cursus Honorum.
I’m just waiting for the modern-day Gracchi brothers to show up.
I am no expert, but everything I have read suggests the Patricians were only placating the Plebians for show while retaining most of the power. It was better than nothing, but they were never actually made equals.
RE: Fact #17 (Scipio Africanus Rejected Ungrateful Rome) – He’s probably my favorite general. He goes to modern-day Spain at 27, beats all of Hannibal’s brothers, and is the only volunteer to face the Carthaginians on their home turf. He even convinced Hannibal’s own cavalry to switch sides. When Rome wouldn’t give him a full army, he raised his own and just went to Africa to handle it himself.
RE: Fact #18 (Guy Kieffer Vanished Investigating Cocoa) – People ignore it, but most luxury goods like coffee, chocolate, and electronics involve slavery. Even “fair trade” labels aren’t regulated by anyone with real authority, much like how vitamins and supplements aren’t FDA-approved. How can you be sure the private org testing those products is legitimate? Most people don’t actually care enough to give up their phones or coffee to help stop slavery.
I think just “giving up” products isn’t the fix. If we stop buying from one brand, the slaves just get moved to another. There’s no easy fix because this is deeply tied to local economies and long-standing practices. We need sustainable, long-term solutions. Consumers should definitely try to find ethical brands, but that’s incredibly time-consuming and hard to verify. Real change requires legislation and corporate accountability. As long as slavery is profitable, it won’t stop just because a few people boycott coffee.
We could pass laws to stop companies from importing goods made with slave labor. Nestlé managed to dodge that in court by claiming the U.S. has no jurisdiction over what happens abroad, even though U.S. companies are the ones pulling the strings. To hell with Nestlé.
RE: Fact #25 (Jackson’s Corruption Hunt Found Theft) – It seems like every 19th-century American government was comically corrupt until we finally outlawed political appointments for the civil service.
RE: Fact #20 (Washington Won Election With Alcohol) – That still happens in smaller places. I live five hours from the city in a town of about 2, 500 people. Up until about 20 years ago, candidates for mayor would walk around the poorer neighborhoods and retirement homes with cases of beer to buy votes. Funny.
RE: Fact #14 (Suez Canal’s Marlboro Bribe Culture) – Egyptian culture leans heavily on bartering and scamming. You should check out some Cairo travel reviews on YouTube.
The whole region is the same. A good life hack for tourists is to act like you’re personally offended as soon as you hear the first price. They rely on Westerners being conflict-averse and polite. Even when they drop the price by half, they’re still making a huge profit, even if they put on a show about how you’re hurting their family. It’s just the standard routine.
RE: Fact #2 (Plebeians Abandoned Rome’s Corrupt Elites) – The modern equivalent is a general strike, and we are long overdue for one.
Last time we tried, manufacturing got shipped down to Mexico or out to China. The elites will always make sure they get theirs.
RE: Fact #47 (Diplomats Turned Parking Into Corruption) – It’s almost like the corrupt powers of the world are just used to being above the law. What a shocker.
RE: Fact #30 (Truman Committee Exposed War Profiteering) – It is wild to think that Harry Truman had zero clue the Manhattan Project existed until after Roosevelt passed away in 1945. I really wonder what his internal reaction was when he found out they were pouring a billion dollars into a bomb he didn’t even know was possible.
According to David McCullough’s biography, Truman actually stumbled onto the Manhattan Project funding during his investigation. When he asked General Marshall about it, Marshall basically shut him down by saying, “I can’t tell you what it’s for, but we need it.” Truman held Marshall in such high regard that he just said, “Okay, ” and dropped the subject.
RE: Fact #28 (Forbes Looted Veterans Bureau Funds) – Harding is a fascinating contradiction. He had one of the worst presidencies ever, but if he had surrounded himself with a different administration, he might have actually had a positive legacy.
He was a puppet from the start. He never would have sniffed the office without his handlers behind him.
RE: Fact #36 (Piracy’s Golden Age Fed Corruption) – I think the abysmal working conditions for sailors at the time were a huge, underrated factor. It wasn’t unusual for a captain to feed his crew rancid food, and if guys died, it just meant less mouths to feed and less pay to hand out. Since the cargo was worth way more than the crew’s lives, and the crew knew it, it isn’t surprising that they’d mutiny and sign up with people willing to look past their pasts. Some of these pirate ships essentially turned into worker co-ops, though the vibe really depended on the individual crew.
RE: Fact #14 (Suez Canal’s Marlboro Bribe Culture) – I’ve been there. It’s basically a tradition for the pilots to board and expect a few cartons of cigarettes. That said, the pilots are genuinely incompetent. It seems like they land these jobs through connections rather than actual skill.
And they insist on riding the ship even when they’re clearly out of their depth. They don’t even use radar; they just pilot by “feeling.” I’m 90% sure that’s how that whole grounding incident happened.
I went through twice during my time in the Navy. The “pilot” just sat in the captain’s stateroom the whole trip. We were explicitly told not to talk to him because he’d just start asking for handouts, and we already had a protocol in place.
It’s a total racket. I remember watching our captain shake his head in disbelief at the orders the pilot was shouting. It was pure incompetence; I don’t even think the guy knew the difference between port and starboard. I had completely put that experience out of my mind.
RE: Fact #37 (Large Banknotes Help Hide Corruption) – If we had $1000 bills, some jerk would inevitably walk into my store to buy a $2 keychain and expect me to break the bill.
Technically, we still do. The U.S. stopped printing $500 and $1000 bills in 1934. They are still technically legal tender, but collectors pay way more than face value for them now.
RE: Fact #8 (Dante’s Corruption Exile Created Masterpiece) – Fun fact: The Divine Comedy was originally just titled The Comedy because back then, stories only fell into two categories: tragedies and comedies. This is why theater is represented by the ‘Sock and Buskin’ masks, where the sock represents comedy and the buskin represents tragedy. When Giovanni Boccaccio read it, he called Dante ‘divinely inspired, ‘ which is how the author was described. The title eventually changed to Divina Commedia, with the first published use in 1555 by Gabriel Giolito. However, the word ‘Divine’ originally referred to the author himself rather than the work.
I own the edition published by Olschki in Florence for the 600th anniversary, number 43 if I remember correctly. It is a pretty impressive book.
RE: Fact #49 (Greylord Exposed Chicago Court Corruption) – That was back in the 80s, and sadly, we still have a long way to go to fix the corruption here.
RE: Fact #29 (Tom Noe’s Rare Coin Scandal) – I don’t know who’s more to blame here. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to let a guy invest $50 million of state money into rare coins?
Remember that governments are massive. Some background: in 1996, the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature changed the rules so the state didn’t have to keep its money in bonds. That opened the door for people like Tom Noe, a big GOP fundraiser and coin dealer, to manage state funds. Since the state had so much cash, they wanted to earn returns, and some people claimed they could help with that. Noe got $50 million, and he just stole it. It’s classic corruption.
RE: Fact #4 (Ximen Bao Drowned River Scam) – At the ceremony, Ximen Bao met them at the river. The elder, the local official, and the shamaness’s disciple were there. Ximen Bao claimed the maiden wasn’t pretty enough, so he told his soldiers to throw the shamaness into the river to report the delay to the River God. After a while, he asked why she was taking so long, then tossed the disciples in one by one. When they didn’t return, he suggested the inspector and the local power-brokers go in to fetch them, but they all knelt and begged for mercy. The people of Ye were terrified, and nobody ever brought up finding a bride for the River God again.
RE: Fact #39 (Savonarola Burned Florence’s Corrupt Luxury) – Not exactly a shocker, is it?
RE: Fact #13 (Band Aid Relief Fueled Corruption) – I was in the class of 1987 and needed a research topic for a paper, so I tried to verify if those famine relief songs actually accomplished their goal. After digging through weeks of reporting, I landed on the same conclusion: the only real result was that a lot of people in the West got to feel better about themselves.
RE: Fact #9 (Sisamnes Sat On Corruption’s Skin) – Just imagine going to bed knowing you have to go skin a guy alive when you wake up because someone ordered you to do it.
‘F— yeah, I love flay Fridays!’ The person who says that is the guy who already applied for the torturer job in the first place.
Imagine showing up to work and your seat is upholstered with the remains of your predecessor, who happened to be your father.
RE: Fact #26 (Corrupt Bargains Shaped American Politics) – You missed every time a president has used an executive order to deploy troops without a formal declaration of war.
Presidents get away with that because of Congressional AUMFs. Congress basically passed the buck on war powers. The problem is that recent presidents have interpreted those authorizations so broadly that they use them for almost anything. It’s not technically illegal, but it’s definitely a result of Congress shirking its responsibilities.
RE: Fact #13 (Band Aid Relief Fueled Corruption) – Meanwhile, back in the 1960s: [Biafra Airlift] >By 1968, a year after the Nigerian Civil War began, a blockade by the military meant massive numbers of children were starving to death. Reports by 1969 indicated over 1, 000 children were dying each day. An official declared, “Starvation is a legitimate weapon of war, and we have every intention of using it.” >The international community, including the UN and most governments, mostly stayed silent, calling it an internal affair. U Thant, the UN Secretary General, refused to back the airlift. >President Lyndon Johnson even complained to the State Department about having to “get those … babies off my TV set, ” while using a slur. Despite that, the U.S. started funding relief. By 1969, the U.S. had sold eight C-97 military cargo planes to JCA and reportedly provided 49% of all aid. >At least 29 relief crew members were killed in 10 different incidents during the airlift. >The existence of the airlift proved how much public opinion and civilian action can drive change. Later relief efforts in places like Ethiopia, Somalia, or Yugoslavia never saw that same level of public response.
RE: Fact #28 (Forbes Looted Veterans Bureau Funds) – The Ohio Gang has earned their own spot in the Hall of Presidential Corruption, right across from Grant’s buddies. Both of them were decent men, but they were terrible at picking the right people for the job.
Grant could have been a legendary president just like he was a general, if he’d only been allowed to appoint horses to his cabinet instead of people.
It really destroys a president’s legacy when they’re such a poor judge of character, doesn’t it?
RE: Fact #36 (Piracy’s Golden Age Fed Corruption) – That’s cool, but I always felt like the golden age of piracy was more like 2010 to 2016.
RE: Fact #27 (Athens Veterans Fought Ballot Corruption) – I wonder if this event inspired the system of veteran-based government in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.
RE: Fact #11 (FIFA’s Corruption Film Flopped Spectacularly) – Yes, that is triple digits. The movie is estimated to have lost $26.8 million worldwide.
RE: Fact #1 (Mobutu’s Stolen Zaire Aid Fortune) – There were several African countries where the General of the Army was handed the entire monthly payroll. He would skim what he thought he was worth and then hand the remainder to his subordinates. This continued down the line until the money was gone. By the time it reached field officers, let alone enlisted soldiers, there was nothing left. Eventually, entire companies of soldiers would just take over roads and charge tolls so they could actually get paid.
RE: Fact #3 (Hu Yaobang’s Reformist Corruption Clash) – It is good to know that there was a politician in China who was a decent, honorable public servant, genuinely loved and respected by his people. Decent politicians actually do exist.
There was also a letter to the government signed by former leaders of the party urging them not to use the “people’s” army against the people.
RE: Fact #27 (Athens Veterans Fought Ballot Corruption) – This is such a low-profile story in US history, almost like it’s intentional so people don’t get the idea that they can actually stand up to their government.
And yet, we have a whole national holiday celebrating an event where we successfully overthrew a government.
RE: Fact #19 (Nasser Pocketed CIA Bribe Money) – Rumor has it that Cairo Tower was built using that bribe money as a massive middle finger.
RE: Fact #15 (ABSCAM Caught Congress Selling Influence) – Here are the officials convicted of bribery and conspiracy in 1981: Senator Harrison A. Williams, Representatives Frank Thompson, John Jenrette, Raymond Lederer, Michael “Ozzie” Myers, John M. Murphy, and Richard Kelly. Plus five others, including: Angelo Errichetti (Mayor of Camden, NJ), George X. Schwartz (Philadelphia City Council President), Harry Jannotti and Louis Johanson (Philadelphia City Councilmen), and an INS inspector. One Republican, and the rest were Democrats.
RE: Fact #1 (Mobutu’s Stolen Zaire Aid Fortune) – Some choice quotes from Mobutu: “”When I need one million, I ask my private secretary. He calls the Prime Minister asking for two million. The Prime Minister asks the Finance Minister for three million who in turn calls the Governor of the Central Bank demanding 4 million. In the end I get my million.”” “”Dictatorship is necessary to ensure stability and progress.”” “”I am the father of the nation; my word is law.”” “”I will rule until the end of time.””
RE: Fact #30 (Truman Committee Exposed War Profiteering) – It is worth noting that it wasn’t just Truman leading the charge; the committee reached a unanimous decision every single time. I’m torn on whether the massive savings or the level of teamwork is the more impressive part.
RE: Fact #42 (Schoolcraft Recorded NYPD Quota Corruption) – It seems like CompStat is the main reason police corruption is so bad. The system is built on tracking numbers for everything, arrests, citations, tickets, and expecting those numbers to increase every year. Officers are basically pressured to pump up their stats, and when a serious crime like rape occurs, they’re incentivized to downgrade it just to make the crime rate look lower.
“Making robberies into larcenies. Making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and majors become colonels. I’ve been here before.”
RE: Fact #27 (Athens Veterans Fought Ballot Corruption) – These kinds of stories are exactly why the debate over gun ownership isn’t going anywhere.
RE: Fact #7 (Daphne Galizia’s Final Corruption Warning) – She reported on government corruption, money-laundering allegations, nepotism, patronage, links between Malta’s online gambling industry and organized crime, and payments from the Government of Azerbaijan. Throughout her career, she was constantly harassed and threatened for her work and opinions. This is not a complete list, but here it goes: 1. Her front door was set on fire in 1996. 2. The family dog had its throat slit and was left on her doorstep. 3. Years later, her neighbor’s car was burned, likely in a botched attack. 4. In 2006, two stacks of tires were doused with gasoline and set on fire next to her family home. Paul Caruana Galizia stopped the fire from spreading when he woke his parents, who were sleeping inside. 5. After she started her blog, her terrier Zulu was poisoned and her collie Rufus was shot. Death threats were an almost daily occurrence, arriving through phone calls, letters, notes, text messages, emails, and comments on her blog. Her writing also led to numerous legal battles; by her death, she was dealing with 42 different libel suits. Even so, she never backed down and kept reporting until her death.
Not sure why it is called an accidental death; that sounds pretty intentional.
RE: Fact #40 (Rocky Top Exposed Tennessee Corruption) – In New York, when Governor Cuomo’s corruption investigation started pointing toward his office, he just shut the whole thing down.
RE: Fact #45 (Nixon Operatives Targeted Jack Anderson) – The only thing that kept Richard Nixon from ruling as a dictator for life was that he wasn’t a team player, and his paranoia led him to make enemies within his own party before he could fully marginalize them. American history is chillingly fragile. Our luck is going to run out eventually.
RE: Fact #8 (Dante’s Corruption Exile Created Masterpiece) – I remember hearing that when Dante wrote the Inferno, he was essentially kissing up to the ruling class in Florence by dropping his enemies into hell, but by the time it was released, the people he had put in hell had gained power and were not impressed. That is just off-the-cuff history I picked up about 30 years ago, though, so it might be a myth.
I have an annotated copy of The Divine Comedy. Half of the notes explained who the political figures were and why Dante included them. Imagine if someone wrote a fantasy version of the Watergate scandal and you were reading it in the year 2672.
To quote Blue from Overly Sarcastic Productions summarizing the man: ‘…The Medieval Italian poet who told several popes to go to hell, and then followed through with a detailed description of their fiery eternal torment.’
RE: Fact #1 (Mobutu’s Stolen Zaire Aid Fortune) – People like this are why Africa has received over 50 Marshall-style plans and still ends up in the same position.
RE: Fact #12 (Sopranos Permit Denial Backfired Badly) – This and the intervention for Chrissy are my favorites just because of how much chaos happens in such a short amount of time.
“When I came in to open one morning, there you were with your head half in the toilet. Your hair was in the toilet water… disgusting.”
RE: Fact #33 (Cheran Expelled Crime And Corruption) – 599 murders in four months is a crazy high number for a state with 4.5 million people. For context, Norway had 29 murders for the entire year when their population was around 5.1 million.
RE: Fact #40 (Rocky Top Exposed Tennessee Corruption) – I’m looking forward to seeing Operation Don’t Mess With Texas, Operation Peach Pit, and Operation Best Dakota.
RE: Fact #43 (LA Deputies Hid FBI Informant) – The only good thing I get from this is that the FBI was actually investigating the corruption. It’s been way too easy lately to just label the whole government as corrupt.
RE: Fact #12 (Sopranos Permit Denial Backfired Badly) – That is my favorite episode, and it was directed by Steve Buscemi. Tony Soprano: [on the phone] It’s a bad connection, so I’m talking fast! The guy you’re looking for is an ex-commando! He killed sixteen Chechen rebels single-handed! Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: Get the f— out of here. Tony Soprano: Yeah. Nice, huh? He was with the Interior Ministry. The guy’s like a Russian Green Beret. He cannot come back and tell this story. You understand? Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: I hear you. [hangs up] You’re not gonna believe this. He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. The guy was an interior decorator. Christopher Moltisanti: His house looked like sh*t.
I always wondered why that episode felt so much better than the other good ones. Old Steve at it again.
RE: Fact #19 (Nasser Pocketed CIA Bribe Money) – It also mentions they tried to ruin the Indonesian president by faking a porn video of him with a prostitute, but that didn’t work out.
Pretty sure that was Russia. It wasn’t a fake tape, but a real one. When the KGB tried to blackmail him with it, he just said, ‘Lmao, no one cares, can I have a copy?’
Funny enough, both the CIA and KGB tried that. The KGB had an actual sex tape and threatened him with it. He didn’t care at all and even asked for a copy to share with his country to show off his prowess. The CIA then tried to fake a porno, but it only made him look better. Sukarno: Soviets, inform Indonesia. I have mated with a woman! KGB agent: Uhhggghh…
RE: Fact #38 (Irpinia Earthquake Relief Fed Mafia) – The exact same thing happened with all the funding meant for small business Covid relief in the U.S.
RE: Fact #21 (Heshen Stole A Dynasty’s Fortune) – I bet he lived an incredibly lavish life for the late 18th century in China.
“2, 790 rooms in his estates, 12, 000 acres of land, 10 bank branches, 10 pawnbroker branches, 58, 000 taels of pure gold, 100 large gold ingots, 56, 600 medium silver ingots, 5, 830, 000 small silver ingots, 58, 000 foreign silver dollars, 1, 500, 000 copper coins, 300 kilograms of top-quality Jilin ginseng, 1, 200 jade charms, 230 pearl bracelets, 10 large pearls, 10 large rubies, and dozens of solid gold or silver place settings. He also had 14, 300 bolts of fine silk, 20, 000 sheets of fine sheep-fur wool, 550 fox hides, 850 raccoon dog hides, 56, 000 sheep and cattle hides, 7, 000 sets of fine clothing, 361, 000 bronze and tin vessels, 100, 000 porcelain vessels from famous masters, 24 solid-gold beds, and 460 high-quality European clocks.”
RE: Fact #40 (Rocky Top Exposed Tennessee Corruption) – I always imagine state governments freak out whenever the feds decide to stick their noses into how things are being run. Also, 1986 really wasn’t that long ago.
I doubt many people on factrepublic were even born yet in 1986. Most of us seem to be in our mid-to-late 20s, so that feels like ancient history to the majority of us.
RE: Fact #25 (Jackson’s Corruption Hunt Found Theft) – Oh good. My ancestor and namesake actually did something worthwhile besides the Trail of Tears.
RE: Fact #18 (Guy Kieffer Vanished Investigating Cocoa) – People complain that journalists just write clickbait or ask softball questions, yet nobody wants to pay for real investigative work or seems to care when something like this happens.
His friend, the Canadian journalist Carol Off, was blacklisted from the cocoa industry for digging into his death. She said, “We knew that he wouldn’t be found alive because he knew too much… I realized that he had gone to some extremely dark and dangerous places in pursuit of the story of cocoa.” It turned out the former president’s brother-in-law, who was his security chief, was eventually arrested by the French for the murder after the President himself was jailed for war crimes in 2011. The first lady was also imprisoned for crimes against humanity. They all essentially used slush funds to become billionaires.
RE: Fact #17 (Scipio Africanus Rejected Ungrateful Rome) – His exile was self-imposed because he didn’t want to go through another trial. He famously burned his campaign account books out of anger, but his prosecutors made a mistake by scheduling his trial on the anniversary of the Battle of Zama, which led to his acquittal. He ended up leaving the city to avoid the risk of a retrial on a day that might go less favorably.
RE: Fact #31 (Chris Hansen Exposed Hidden Corruption) – He has also faced charges for fraud and stole money from a Kickstarter campaign, along with a bunch of other shady stuff.
He was a legitimate, respected journalist until his problems with infidelity and alcohol took over, and he managed to burn through all his credibility.
RE: Fact #17 (Scipio Africanus Rejected Ungrateful Rome) – He claimed he was innocent, but from what I’ve read, he likely was guilty. His argument, and the stance of many other Romans, was that this kind of corruption was just standard practice. Everybody did it.
RE: Fact #26 (Corrupt Bargains Shaped American Politics) – >In all cases, Congress or the President acted against the most clearly defined legal course of action at the time, “although in no case were the actions illegal.” That’s a pretty big detail to leave out. The whole idea of a “clearly defined legal course of action” for a presidential pardon is pretty fuzzy to begin with.
RE: Fact #4 (Ximen Bao Drowned River Scam) – I learned about this by reading Shiji, the Records of the Grand Historian. If you are into Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I definitely recommend it. They are great stories.
RE: Fact #7 (Daphne Galizia’s Final Corruption Warning) – Journalism is becoming one of the most dangerous professions in the world.
Journalism has always been one of the most dangerous professions. There is a movie called Kill the Messenger about a real-life reporter facing pressure from all sides, and it is a fascinating watch.
RE: Fact #22 (Kimberley Process Failed Blood Diamonds) – Another fun diamond fact: there is no way to confirm if those companies that claim to turn a loved one’s cremated ashes into a diamond actually do that, or if they just pocket your $4, 000+ and send you a $20 mass-produced stone.
RE: Fact #32 (China Sends Officials To Prison Tours) – We do something similar here. When I started my job with the Navy, I had to watch a full-length feature film that included interviews with people serving time for treason, explaining exactly how they got caught.
RE: Fact #9 (Sisamnes Sat On Corruption’s Skin) – I would imagine in a place where lying is a capital offense, taking a bribe would also result in the death penalty.
Imagine living in a place where a simple execution is getting off easy, and being skinned alive is the punishment for white-collar crime. There is a Hardcore History episode about this called ‘Painfotainment.’
Literally the first thing I thought of when reading your comment was, ‘Oh! Dan Carlin talked about this!’ I am so glad I have an episode lined up for my commute tomorrow.
RE: Fact #26 (Corrupt Bargains Shaped American Politics) – The 1824 election drama only counts as a “corrupt bargain” because it made people angry. Jackson’s supporters expected the House to follow the popular vote, but that isn’t how the Constitution was designed. Those expectations were just misguided. The 1877 Compromise was definitely shady, but it wasn’t illegal. The Republicans won the election, and they just negotiated for votes to kill off Reconstruction. Trading policy for political support isn’t against the rules. The Ford pardon is the real issue because it actually goes against established precedent. If a president can’t pardon themselves from impeachment, most people assume they shouldn’t be able to appoint someone else who will just turn around and do it for them.
RE: Fact #24 (William Lamport Inspired Zorro’s Rebellion) – Yeah, he was actually Irish, which is why Antonio Banderas played him in the movie.
RE: Fact #23 (Grievance Studies Hoax Exposed Corruption) – In other words, everyone just saw what they wanted to see, and nothing actually changed. Even though the hoaxes pointed out a serious issue: some top journals in areas like gender studies can’t distinguish between real research and utter, harmful nonsense. The field seems to rely entirely on the integrity of the authors because it lacks a way to identify quality scholarship. As a result, bad-faith actors and people pushing agendas get a free pass. If you can’t tell garbage from gold, you shouldn’t be in the business of grading gold.
Human nature 101: Priority 1, save your own hide. Priority 2, convince yourself you’re right. Priority 3, convince others you’re right. If number 3 fails, fall back to number 1. These people will never admit to a mistake, not because they’re stupid, but because protecting themselves is always the main goal.
Exactly. And it wasn’t just a ‘bad study’ they managed to get published, it was a chapter of Mein Kampf.
RE: Fact #35 (Peru Built Presidential Prison Cells) – I’m willing to bet this setup is strictly for their own safety. I doubt the general prison population would be very welcoming to a bunch of ex-presidents.
RE: Fact #34 (Susana Higuchi Challenged Fujimori’s Corruption) – I had no idea there were enough Japanese immigrants in Peru that they actually ended up with both a Japanese-descended president and first lady at the same time.
There are actually more people of Japanese descent living in Brazil than in the U.S. There was also a fair amount of Korean and Chinese immigration throughout Latin America and the Caribbean; my own great-grandfather was Chinese-Cuban. Most left around the time of the revolution, but you can still find a Chinatown in Havana. There’s also a significant population of people with Asian heritage in Mexico and Argentina. I recall there’s even a famous Mexican-Uruguayan actress who is of Japanese and Lebanese descent.
There was a surprising wave of immigration from China and Japan to South America during the mid-to-late 1800s. It coincided with the immigration surge in North America, so it makes total sense. I actually had a coworker at a previous job who was Chinese-Peruvian.
RE: Fact #36 (Piracy’s Golden Age Fed Corruption) – No, it was definitely when Gol D. Roger revealed where his treasure was hidden right before he was executed.
RE: Fact #39 (Savonarola Burned Florence’s Corrupt Luxury) – This reads like a slightly grittier version of a Terry Pratchett book.