1975 to 2000
Investigations and deregulation
The Church Committee, the secret surveillance court, Iran-Contra and its pardons, Waco, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
Key facts
- The Church Committee found 500,000 FBI files on Americans. Congress was asked for a law against assassination and did not pass one.
- In 1978 Congress created a secret court for surveillance warrants. It hears only the government.
- Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999. In 2000 swaps were exempted from regulation.
Timeline
48 events, oldest first
- 1975November 20, 1975CIA, War & Covert Operations
Church Committee: assassination should be rejected as a tool of foreign policy
Congress asked for a statute; none passed.
- 1976February 18, 1976CIA, War & Covert Operations
Executive order bans political assassination
Carried into Executive Order 12333 in 1981; an order, not a law.
- April 21, 1976Surveillance & Privacy
United States v. Miller: your bank records are the bank's
The ruling behind 48.7 million reports a year.
- April 26, 1976CIA, War & Covert Operations
Church Committee reports on the CIA's journalists, books, and files on Americans
About 50 journalists, well over 1,000 books, the CHAOS program, and the FBI's COINTELPRO.
- April 26, 1976Surveillance & Privacy
Church Committee: 500,000 FBI files, 26,000 on a round up list
Too many people have been spied upon by too many government agencies.
- September 19, 1976CIA, War & Covert Operations
An Iranian F-4 loses its instruments and its weapons panel closing on an object over Tehran; the DIA rates the report confirmed and of major significance
The defense attaché's report of September 23; visual sightings confirmed by radar, electromagnetic effects on three aircraft.
- 1977August 3, 1977CIA, War & Covert Operations
Senate hearing: 149 subprojects, 80 institutions, unwitting subjects
Reconstructed from the invoices.
- 1978January 18, 1978Police, Courts & Prisons
Supreme Court: a prosecutor may threaten a life sentence to make a defendant take a plea
Paul Hayes turned down five years for an $88.30 check and got life.
- 1978Surveillance & Privacy
Congress creates a secret court for surveillance warrants
Eleven judges, one party, closed proceedings.
- December 18, 1978Wall Street & Banking
Marquette: a bank's home state sets the interest rate for every customer
State usury laws stop protecting residents from out of state lenders.
- 19791979Police, Courts & Prisons
Kent State settled for $675,000 and a statement of regret
Less than $52,000 for each person shot.
- November 14, 1979Congress, Elections & Speech
Iran emergency declared; still in effect in 2026
The oldest of 52.
- 19811980 to 1981Wall Street & Banking
South Dakota passes Citibank's bill in a day; Citibank moves to Sioux Falls
Delaware follows the next year with Chase, Manufacturers Hanover, and Chemical.
- January 13, 1981CIA, War & Covert Operations
An Air Force deputy base commander reports unexplained lights and a metallic triangular object in Rendlesham Forest
Three depressions, radiation readings, a red light that broke into five white objects; no explanation offered.
- August 5, 1981Wall Street & Banking
11,345 air traffic controllers fired
Major strikes fall from 145 that year to 30 in 2025.
- 19821982Taxes & Government Spending
SEC adopts Rule 10b-18, a safe harbor for companies buying their own stock
S&P 500 buybacks reached $942.5 billion in 2024.
- 1983February 24, 1983Housing & Private Equity
Commission: race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership
No military necessity for the 1942 removal.
- April 20, 1983Taxes & Government Spending
Social Security amendments: higher taxes, taxed benefits, retirement at 67
To build a reserve that was lent to the Treasury and spent.
- 19841984Health, Food & Regulators
Dioxin act: one disease recognized from Agent Orange, chloracne
The CDC study abandoned in 1987 without a finding.
- 1985August 1953 to February 1987Health, Food & Regulators
Camp Lejeune wells shut, five years after the solvents were found
TCE at 280 times today's limit.
- 1986November 1986CIA, War & Covert Operations
Iran-Contra revealed; officials deceive Congress and withhold documents
The independent counsel's findings.
- 1987March 5, 1987CIA, War & Covert Operations
The FAA releases its file on Japan Air Lines flight 1628 and says it is unable to confirm the event
The second radar target a split return from the 747; no further investigation.
- 1988August 10, 1988Housing & Private Equity
Civil Liberties Act: an apology and $20,000 each
82,250 payments, more than $1.6 billion, from 1990.
- 1989December 7, 1989Police, Courts & Prisons
Texas executes Carlos DeLuna for a murder another man kept confessing to
Prosecutors had called that man a phantom; the police knew he was real.
- 1990October 1990Health, Food & Regulators
Radiation Exposure Compensation Act
Allowed to expire June 2024; restored July 2025.
- 1991February 1991Health, Food & Regulators
Agent Orange Act: presumption of service connection
Twenty years after the last flight.
- 19921992Surveillance & Privacy
DEA begins bulk collection of calls from the US to foreign countries
As many as 116 countries; ended 2013; never given a full legal review.
- August 22, 1992Police, Courts & Prisons
FBI sniper kills Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge
Rules of engagement later found unconstitutional; $3.1 million paid.
- December 24, 1992Congress, Elections & Speech
Bush pardons six Iran-Contra defendants
Weinberger's trial was twelve days away. Walsh: the cover-up has now been completed.
- December 24, 1992CIA, War & Covert Operations
Six Iran-Contra pardons twelve days before Weinberger's trial
Walsh: the cover-up has now been completed.
- 1993February 28, 1993Police, Courts & Prisons
ATF raids Waco knowing surprise is lost; four agents and six Davidians die
Treasury: some agents lied and their lies became the public explanation.
- April 19, 1993Police, Courts & Prisons
Waco fire kills about 80 after the FBI's tear gas assault
Pyrotechnic rounds denied until August 1999.
- November 17, 1993Congress, Elections & Speech
House passes NAFTA, 234 to 200
In effect January 1, 1994.
- 19941994Surveillance & Privacy
Congress orders the carriers to build wiretap capability into their networks
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.
- 1995July 28, 1995CIA, War & Covert Operations
GAO finds the Roswell field's outgoing messages for 1946 to 1949 were destroyed without a record of who did it or under what authority
The search Rep. Steven Schiff asked for; the Air Force's own reports found a Mogul balloon and, later, test dummies.
- October 3, 1995Health, Food & Regulators
Radiation experiments committee: nearly 4,000 experiments, secrecy to avoid liability
Apology and compensation recommended.
- December 1995Health, Food & Regulators
FDA approves OxyContin with an abuse claim it had no data for
The sentence the sales campaign was built on.
- 1996June 3, 1996Wall Street & Banking
Smiley v. Citibank: late fees are interest
Fees follow the bank's home state law.
- 19971997CIA, War & Covert Operations
The CIA writes that over half of the UFO reports of the late 1950s and 1960s were its own U-2 and OXCART flights, covered by misleading Air Force explanations
Gerald Haines in Studies in Intelligence: ice crystals and temperature inversions.
- August 15, 1997Police, Courts & Prisons
No prosecution of the officials who approved the Ruby Ridge rules
One conviction, for destroying the after action critique.
- October 1997Health, Food & Regulators
National Cancer Institute publishes the fallout study, six years late
11,300 to 212,000 thyroid cancers.
- 19981998Congress, Elections & Speech
Student loans made permanently nondischargeable
Extended to private loans in 2005.
- 1999April 28, 1999CIA, War & Covert Operations
House ties 213 to 213 on the Kosovo air war; bombing continues
78 days without authorization.
- November 12, 1999Wall Street & Banking
Gramm-Leach-Bliley signed, repealing the separation of banking and securities
Passed the Senate 90 to 8 and the House 362 to 57 a year after Citicorp and Travelers merged in anticipation of it.
- 2000January 2000CIA, War & Covert Operations
CIA learns a hijacker holds a U.S. visa and does not tell the FBI
The report an FBI agent drafted at the agency's bin Laden unit was held. Mihdhar and Hazmi arrived in Los Angeles on January 15.
- July 21, 2000Police, Courts & Prisons
Danforth: the government did not start the Waco fire, and hid the pyrotechnic rounds for six years
2 million documents, 900 witnesses.
- October 10, 2000Congress, Elections & Speech
Permanent normal trade relations with China signed
House 237 to 197; Senate 83 to 15; 2.0 to 2.4 million jobs lost to the import competition that followed, by the economists' count.
- December 21, 2000Wall Street & Banking
Commodity Futures Modernization Act signed, exempting swaps from regulation
Its 262 pages were attached to the year end spending bill and passed both houses in a day without debate on the derivatives provisions.
Stories (15)
- 1960 to 1975The 1975 Church Committee Report on CIA Plots to Assassinate Foreign LeadersIn 1975 a Senate committee established from the government's own records that officers of the United States had plotted to kill the leader of Cuba from 1960 to 1965, using American organized crime figures among others, and had sent poison to the Congo to kill Patrice Lumumba, and had been involved with the people who killed the leaders of the Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, and Chile's army. It found that no foreign leader died as a direct result of a plot the United States began. It also found that the chain of command was so ambiguous that it is difficult to be certain at what levels assassination activity was known and authorized, which was the point of the arrangement. It said assassination should be rejected as a tool of foreign policy and asked for a law. Congress never passed one.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 1953 to 1977CIA Project MKULTRA: Unwitting LSD Experiments, the Death of Frank Olson, and Destroyed RecordsFrom 1953 to 1964 the CIA ran a program of research into drugs and behavioral modification that gave LSD and other substances to Americans who did not know they were taking them. It ran 149 subprojects through 80 institutions, 44 of them colleges and universities, 12 of them hospitals, and three of them prisons, using 185 outside researchers, many of whom did not know who was paying. In 1953 a scientist from the Army's laboratory at Fort Detrick, Frank Olson, was given LSD without his knowledge at a meeting the agency convened and died about a week later in a fall from a New York hotel window. In 1973 the director of the CIA ordered the program's records destroyed. What Congress learned in 1977 came from seven boxes of financial records the destruction had missed.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 1978 to 2026How Supreme Court Rulings Ended State Usury Caps and Enabled 22% Credit Card InterestIn 1978 the Supreme Court ruled that a national bank could charge every customer in the country the interest rate of the state where the bank sat. In 1980 South Dakota repealed its cap in a day at Citibank's request, and the bank moved its card operation there. In 1996 the court said late fees count as interest too. The average rate on a credit card carrying a balance was 22.15 percent in the second quarter of 2026, and households owed $18.8 trillion. In 2025 the government's consumer agency joined the banks in asking a judge to throw out its own cap on late fees.Wall Street & Banking
- 1979 to 2026Why Worker Pay Stopped Tracking Productivity After 1979 While CEO Pay Rose 1,000%From the end of 1979 to the start of 2026 the output of an hour of American work rose 93.2 percent and the pay of the typical worker for that hour rose 33.7 percent, by the Economic Policy Institute's count from government data. Chief executives of the largest companies were paid 21 times a typical worker in 1965 and 281 times in 2024. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since July 24, 2009, and prices have risen 55 percent since. One worker in ten belongs to a union, down from one in five in 1983.Wall Street & Banking
- 1983 to 2026The 1983 Social Security Tax Hike and How the Treasury Spent the $2.9 Trillion SurplusIn 1983 Congress raised the payroll tax, taxed Social Security benefits for the first time at income thresholds it has never adjusted for inflation, delayed a cost of living increase, and raised the retirement age to 67, so that the workers of the 1980s and 1990s would pay in more than the program paid out and build a reserve for their own retirement. They did, for nearly forty years. By law every dollar of it was lent to the Treasury, and the cash, in the Social Security Administration's words, goes into the general fund and is indistinguishable from other cash in the general fund. The government spent it. It owes its trust funds, Social Security's among them, $7.7 trillion, and paying that back means taxing or borrowing the same money again. The reserve has been shrinking since 2021 and is projected to be gone in 2032.Taxes & Government Spending
- 1975 to 1989Former CIA Task Force Chief John Stockwell on Covert Wars, Coups, and PerjuryJohn Stockwell ran the CIA's Angola task force in 1975, quit, wrote a book in 1978, and was sued by the agency, which took the book's royalties. In a lecture at American University in 1989 he went through MKUltra, the Church Committee's findings on journalists and books, COINTELPRO, the drug trade in every theater the agency worked in, and the perjury he took part in over Angola. He asked his audience not to take his word for any of it and gave them the books to read. He died in June 2026 at 88.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 1983 to 1989The 1989 Texas Execution of Carlos DeLuna After Police Ignored the Real KillerCarlos DeLuna was executed by Texas on December 7, 1989 for the stabbing of a gas station clerk, Wanda Lopez, in Corpus Christi. He said from the start that another man did it, a man named Carlos Hernandez, and prosecutors told the jury that Hernandez was a "phantom" who might not even exist. Hernandez was real, was known to the same police, had a record of knife attacks, and told people for years that he was the one who killed Wanda Lopez and that his namesake had taken the blame. A team at Columbia Law School spent years reconstructing the case and concluded DeLuna was innocent: the conviction rested on a single nighttime eyewitness who later said he was only partly sure, there was no physical evidence tying DeLuna to the bloody scene, and the crime scene was washed down within two hours. DeLuna was never exonerated. He had already been executed.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 1962 to 2022Agent Orange in Vietnam: 19 Million Gallons Sprayed and Fifty Years of Delayed VA BenefitsBetween 1962 and 1971 the Air Force sprayed about 19 million gallons of herbicide over Vietnam, 11 million of it Agent Orange. For twenty years afterward the Department of Veterans Affairs recognized one disease, a skin condition, as connected to it, and the government's own study of the exposure was abandoned in 1987 without a finding. Congress forced a presumption of service connection in 1991. The list of diseases the government now presumes Agent Orange caused runs to nineteen, including eight cancers, and the sailors who served on ships off the coast were not covered until 2019. Veterans who served in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Guam were added in 2022.Health, Food & Regulators
- 1985 to 1994The Iran-Contra Affair: Illegal Arms Sales, Shredded Documents, and the 1992 Christmas Eve PardonsIn 1985 and 1986 the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran, which the government's own policy forbade, and used the money to arm the contras in Nicaragua, which Congress had forbidden by law. When it came out in November 1986, officials of the administration deliberately deceived the Congress and the public about what they had known and done, and withheld the documents that showed it. An independent counsel spent seven years on it. Fourteen people were charged and eleven convicted; the two most senior convictions were overturned because Congress had immunized their testimony; and on December 24, 1992 the president pardoned six of the rest, twelve days before the former defense secretary's trial. The counsel's conclusion was that the cover-up had been completed by the pardon.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 1992 to 2000Ruby Ridge (1992) and Waco (1993): Federal Rules of Engagement, Tear Gas Fires, and Cover-UpsIn August 1992 federal marshals went to arrest Randy Weaver on a gun charge after a probation officer had sent him the wrong court date. His fourteen year old son and a deputy marshal were killed in the first exchange, and the next day an FBI sniper, under rules that said agents can and should shoot any armed adult male, killed Weaver's wife as she stood in her doorway holding their baby. The Justice Department's own review found the rules did not meet the Constitution. Weaver was acquitted of everything but missing the court date. Six months later, in Waco, the ATF raided the Branch Davidians knowing it had lost the element of surprise and lied about it afterward, by the Treasury Department's finding; four agents and six Davidians died. Fifty-one days after that the FBI's tear gas assault ended in a fire that killed about 80 people, including children, and the bureau denied for six years that it had fired pyrotechnic rounds that day. The government paid the Weavers $3.1 million. One FBI official was convicted, for destroying a document.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 1951 to 2026Nevada Nuclear Testing Downwinders: Fallout Across 48 States and 49,000 Projected Thyroid CancersBetween 1951 and 1962 the government set off nearly 100 nuclear bombs in the open air in Nevada. The fallout reached every state. Congress ordered a study of the thyroid doses in 1983; the National Cancer Institute finished most of the work by 1991 and published it in 1997, after a newspaper asked why it was still secret. Its estimate is that the tests will cause between 11,300 and 212,000 thyroid cancers, most likely about 49,000. Congress apologized and created a compensation fund in 1990, let it expire in 2024, and restored and expanded it in July 2025. As of September 1, 2026 the Justice Department had approved 52,518 claims and paid $3.43 billion, and had 42,438 new claims waiting.Health, Food & Regulators
- November 12, 1999The 1999 Repeal of Glass-Steagall (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act)For 66 years the Glass-Steagall Act kept the bank that held your deposits separate from the firm that traded securities. In November 1999 Congress repealed that separation by votes of 90 to 8 and 362 to 57, a year after Citicorp and Travelers had merged in anticipation of it. Nine years later the combined banks were too big to fail.Wall Street & Banking
- 2000 to 2025What the CIA Knew About Two 9/11 Hijackers Before the Attacks—and Hid from the FBIIn January 2000 the CIA knew that Khalid al-Mihdhar, an al-Qaeda operative on his way to a meeting in Malaysia, held a visa to enter the United States. An FBI agent assigned to the CIA's bin Laden unit drafted a report to tell his own agency and was told not to send it. Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi lived openly in San Diego for more than a year. A former FBI agent assigned to the unit says the agency was trying to recruit them. The public record shows what was withheld; the reason is still disputed.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 1979 to 2026NAFTA, China Trade Normalization, and the Loss of 7 Million US Manufacturing JobsManufacturing employment in the United States peaked at about 19.6 million in 1979. In July 2026 it was 12.6 million. In between, Congress approved the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and permanent normal trade relations with China in 2000, and economists at MIT and Harvard have since put the jobs lost to Chinese import competition between 1999 and 2011 alone at 2.0 to 2.4 million, in towns where wages and employment stayed depressed for at least a decade. The program that was supposed to retrain the workers who lost those jobs was allowed to lapse on July 1, 2022 and has not certified a worker since.Congress, Elections & Speech
- December 21, 2000The 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act That Deregulated Credit Default SwapsIn 1998 the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposed regulating the private derivatives market. The Treasury secretary, the Fed chairman, and the SEC chairman moved to stop her. In December 2000 Congress attached the Commodity Futures Modernization Act to an 11,000 page spending bill and passed it in a day. It exempted swaps from regulation, and eight years later the swaps took down AIG.Wall Street & Banking