A “very damning” report by the Defense Department’s inspector general depicts a Pentagon that purposely manipulated intelligence in an effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

At the center of the prewar intelligence controversy was the work of a small number of Pentagon officials from Douglas Feith’s office and the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who reviewed CIA intelligence analyses and put together their own report.

Kenneth Lay, who was awaiting sentencing after being convicted in one of the most high profile business fraud trials in history, died Wednesday at the age of 64.

During the last four years, a court-appointed special prosecutor has spent more than $5 million investigating a police torture ring that terrorized nearly 200 Black men on Chicago’s South Side during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

But the report has still not seen the light of day–kept under wraps by the efforts of some of the city’s most powerful politicians.

Enron Corp. employees who lost their jobs or saw their life savings wiped out in the energy trader’s spectacular collapse found bittersweet relief in the convictions of former chief executives Kenneth Lay and Jefferey Skilling.

The President has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.