2001 to 2012
After September 11
Warrantless surveillance and the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, Kelo, and the 2008 bailouts.
Key facts
- The president authorized warrantless collection on Americans on October 4, 2001, three weeks before the Patriot Act was signed.
- The Iraq Survey Group found no weapons of mass destruction. The Senate Intelligence Committee said the case for war was not supported by the intelligence.
- On October 13, 2008, nine bank executives were given $125 billion at one meeting, with no conditions on mortgages or pay.
Timeline
58 events, oldest first
- 2001January 20, 2001Congress, Elections & Speech
Clinton pardons Marc Rich among 140 on his last day
A fugitive for 17 years; the Justice Department review skipped.
- October 4, 2001Surveillance & Privacy
President authorizes warrantless collection on Americans
Drafted by the vice president's lawyer, kept in his safe, renewed every 45 days.
- October 26, 2001Surveillance & Privacy
The Patriot Act signed six weeks after the September 11 attacks
It expanded the government's ability to collect information on Americans. Most of those powers remain in place.
- 2002October 10 and 11, 2002CIA, War & Covert Operations
Congress authorizes war on Iraq, 296 to 133 and 77 to 23
On statements the Senate later found unsupported by the intelligence.
- 2003August 22, 2003Police, Courts & Prisons
Texas pardons 35 people convicted in Tulia on one undercover officer's word
No drugs, weapons, or cash were seized in any of the arrests.
- 2004February 17, 2004Police, Courts & Prisons
Texas executes Cameron Todd Willingham for an arson later shown to be no arson
He said he was an innocent man, convicted of a crime he did not commit.
- March 11, 2004Surveillance & Privacy
Program reauthorized over the Justice Department's objection
Signed by the White House counsel after the attorney general refused from his hospital bed. The internet collection was stopped eight days later and resumed under a court order in July.
- September 17, 2004Wall Street & Banking
FBI: mortgage fraud has the potential to be an epidemic
As much impact as the S&L crisis, which produced more than 800 convictions.
- October 6, 2004CIA, War & Covert Operations
Iraq Survey Group: no weapons of mass destruction
The programs had been destroyed by the mid 1990s.
- October 6, 2004Police, Courts & Prisons
Texas frees Ernest Willis from death row the same year it executes Willingham
The same fire science; the prosecutor said he simply did not do the crime.
- 2005April 20, 2005Wall Street & Banking
Bankruptcy law tightened at the card industry's request
A means test, and private student loans made nondischargeable.
- June 23, 2005Housing & Private Equity
Kelo: homes may be taken for a private developer
5 to 4. The land stood empty for nearly twenty years.
- November 30, 2005CIA, War & Covert Operations
NSA releases its historian's finding that the second Tonkin attack never happened
Held for four years; officials feared comparisons with Iraq.
- December 16, 2005Surveillance & Privacy
New York Times reveals the NSA program after holding the story a year
The president confirmed a part of it the next day. The leak investigation that followed raided the homes of the people who had objected inside the agency.
- 20062006Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Google opens its first data center in The Dalles, Oregon
Negotiated through Design LLC with a 15 year property tax exemption and nondisclosure agreements for local officials. The tax break expired in 2022.
- December 20, 2006Taxes & Government Spending
Congress makes the Postal Service prefund retiree health at more than $5 billion a year, without a recorded vote
A burden no other agency carries.
- 20072007Surveillance & Privacy
Hemisphere begins: AT&T employees run call record searches for police
Records back to 1987, four billion a day, paid for by the White House drug office.
- May 10, 2007Health, Food & Regulators
Purdue pleads guilty to misbranding OxyContin
$634.5 million; no prison; sales continue.
- August 21, 2007CIA, War & Covert Operations
CIA inspector general's 9/11 accountability report released in summary
Completed in June 2005 and held for two years.
- 2008June 5, 2008CIA, War & Covert Operations
Senate Intelligence Committee: the nation was led into war under false pretenses
10 to 5. Statements not substantiated, contradicted, or never confirmed.
- September 15, 2008Wall Street & Banking
Lehman Brothers allowed to fail
Payments between banks stopped. Two days later the same officials rescued AIG with more than $180 billion and paid its counterparties in full.
- October 13, 2008Wall Street & Banking
Nine bank chief executives given $125 billion in public capital at a single meeting
No mortgage modifications, pay limits, bonus limits, or regulatory changes were required. The chairman of Wells Fargo said he did not want the money and was told his bank would be declared capital-deficient if he refused.
- 2009February 6, 2009Health, Food & Regulators
Gates: our foundation first started up focused on reproductive health; population growth the biggest problem
And that the way to slow it is to keep children alive.
- May 7, 2009Wall Street & Banking
Stress tests find the 19 largest banks sound
The financial sector returned to profitability soon after. It was one of the few sectors that did, and the bailouts became a source of public anger from both the left and the right.
- July 24, 2009Wall Street & Banking
Federal minimum wage set at $7.25, where it remains
Prices have risen 55 percent since.
- September 2, 2009Health, Food & Regulators
Pfizer pays $2.3 billion; a subsidiary pleads guilty; the largest criminal fine in U.S. history
For selling Bextra for uses the FDA had refused.
- September 30, 2009Police, Courts & Prisons
Two days before it can hear the report, Texas replaces three members of the forensic panel
The Innocence Project called it the Saturday night massacre.
- 2010February 18, 2010Health, Food & Regulators
Gates at TED: 6.8 billion people, lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent
The next sentence: but there, we see an increase of about 1.3.
- March 2010Taxes & Government Spending
Ferguson finance director: ticket writing must ramp up
Fines and fees more than doubled by 2015.
- April 14, 2010Surveillance & Privacy
Thomas Drake indicted under the Espionage Act
For documents that were unclassified until after they were seized. The case collapsed before trial in 2011.
- July 21, 2010Wall Street & Banking
Dodd-Frank signed with a promise of no more taxpayer bailouts
Proposals to break up the largest banks had been removed from the bill. The financial industry then spent more than $320 million lobbying on the rules, and the Volcker Rule grew from 10 pages to nearly 300.
- 2010Health, Food & Regulators
Heart disease and Parkinson's added to the Agent Orange list
Nearly forty years after the last flight.
- October 1, 2010Health, Food & Regulators
Two cabinet secretaries apologize for the Guatemala experiments; Obama calls Guatemala's president
We are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health.
- December 1, 2010Wall Street & Banking
Under a new law, the Fed posts 21,000 emergency transactions and says it lost nothing
It reported $19.9 billion earned on the broad programs.
- December 2, 2010Health, Food & Regulators
Decade of Vaccines council: Chan, Fauci, Lake, Phumaphi, Yamada
A federal official and a private foundation set the agenda together.
- December 14, 2010CIA, War & Covert Operations
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry killed; two Fast and Furious rifles at the scene
Bought under ATF surveillance eleven months earlier.
- 2011January 21, 2011Police, Courts & Prisons
Chicago police commander Jon Burge sentenced for lying about torturing suspects
More than 100 Black men said he or his officers tortured them.
- January 27, 2011Wall Street & Banking
Crisis commission: the crisis was avoidable; lenders knew borrowers could not pay
A systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics.
- February 4, 2011CIA, War & Covert Operations
Justice Department tells Senator Grassley guns were not allowed to walk
Withdrawn December 2, 2011.
- March 21, 2011Wall Street & Banking
Supreme Court lets stand the order making the Fed name the banks it lent to
The borrowers had been secret since 2008.
- April 25, 2011Congress, Elections & Speech
Hawaii's director of health makes an exception to state policy and issues the President two certified copies of his original 1961 birth certificate
She wrote that she witnessed the copying and attests to the authenticity of the copies. The White House posted an image of one two days later.
- July 21, 2011Wall Street & Banking
GAO audit: $16.1 trillion in emergency loans counting every rollover, $1.14 trillion adjusted for term
The largest users were the largest banks.
- August 11, 2011Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
BART turns off cell service to stop a protest
Service was cut in the downtown San Francisco stations for several hours. The agency said there is a constitutional right to safety.
- September 13, 2011Health, Food & Regulators
Presidential commission: gross violations of ethics, known to the researchers at the time
The men thought that they were above the rules.
- October 3, 2011Surveillance & Privacy
Secret court: the third substantial misrepresentation in less than three years
56,000 domestic communications a year; declassified August 21, 2013.
- October 19, 2011Wall Street & Banking
Second audit: the New York Fed's chairman held Goldman stock while it became a bank the Fed regulates
He resigned in May 2009 after buying more.
- November 2011Wall Street & Banking
Jefferson County, Alabama files the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history
The county had entered interest rate swaps with JP Morgan on $3 billion of sewer debt. Federal prosecutors found $3 million in payments routed through a local adviser. JP Morgan settled with the SEC for $25 million and was ordered to forgive $697 million in fees.
- 2012January 25, 2012Wall Street & Banking
Federal Reserve adopts 2 percent inflation as its goal
A policy that the dollar lose half its value every 35 years.
- March 21, 2012Police, Courts & Prisons
Supreme Court: plea bargaining is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system, it is the criminal justice system
97 percent of federal convictions and 94 percent of state convictions are guilty pleas.
- April 4, 2012Congress, Elections & Speech
STOCK Act signed after passing 96 to 3 and 417 to 2
Disclosure within 45 days; $200 for filing late.
- May 15, 2012Police, Courts & Prisons
Columbia Law School reconstructs the DeLuna case and concludes Texas executed an innocent man
One uncertain eyewitness, no physical evidence, the scene washed away.
- June 13, 2012Health, Food & Regulators
Court dismisses the victims' suit: the United States is immune
This Court is powerless to provide any redress to the plaintiffs.
- August 7, 2012Health, Food & Regulators
Pfizer settles bribery charges in eight countries for about $60 million
Points and bonus programs for foreign officials.
- August 21, 2012Housing & Private Equity
Sony granted a patent on commercials the viewer has to interact with to end
U.S. Patent 8,246,454, filed October 23, 2009. Examples in the patent include saying the brand name into the television's microphone and throwing a virtual pickle at a burger. The patent has not been used.
- August 30, 2012CIA, War & Covert Operations
Justice Department closes the CIA interrogation investigations with no charge
101 cases reviewed; two deaths investigated; evidence found insufficient.
- September 19, 2012CIA, War & Covert Operations
Inspector general: 2,000 guns watched, 100 seized, 14 officials referred
No official charged.
- December 11, 2012Wall Street & Banking
HSBC admits laundering for cartels and pays $1.92 billion; no charge
Breuer: you look at the collateral consequences.
- 2005 to 2012Housing & Private Equity
IRS seizes more than $242 million in structuring cases
More than 2,500 people; 91 percent with no other alleged crime.
Stories (20)
- 2001 to 2011Top Secret America: The Post-9/11 Intelligence Complex of 1,900 Private ContractorsWithin a week of the attacks the president signed a finding that let the CIA capture, interrogate, and kill anywhere in the world. Congress wrote a blank check. Ten years later two reporters counted close to a million people with top secret clearances, 1,900 private companies, and 17,000 locations, with no public accounting of what it cost or whether it worked. The next president kept nearly all of it.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 2001 to 2013Stellar Wind: How the White House Ordered Warrantless NSA Wiretapping in October 2001On October 4, 2001 the president authorized the NSA to collect Americans' phone and internet records without a warrant. The order was drafted by the vice president's lawyer and kept in his safe. NSA employees who objected were told to stop asking questions, the Justice Department nearly resigned over it in 2004, the New York Times held the story for a year, and the people who talked were raided and one was charged under the Espionage Act. Congress made most of it legal in 2008.Surveillance & Privacy
- October 26, 2001The 2001 USA PATRIOT Act and Section 215 Bulk Phone Record CollectionThe USA PATRIOT Act was introduced on October 23, 2001, passed the House the next day 357 to 66, passed the Senate the day after that 98 to 1, and was signed on October 26, six weeks after the attacks. Most members had not read its 342 pages. Section 215, written for business records, was later used to collect the phone records of every American.Surveillance & Privacy
- 1991 to 2014The 2004 Execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas on Junk Arson ScienceCameron Todd Willingham was executed by Texas on February 17, 2004 for setting the 1991 fire that killed his three young daughters. The case for arson was a list of "indicators" that two fire investigators read off the burned house, and a jailhouse informant who said Willingham confessed. Before the execution, a fire scientist told the state the arson findings had no scientific basis, and the state executed him anyway. A later report commissioned by the Texas Forensic Science Commission found the original investigation was "hardly consistent with a scientific mind-set and is more characteristic of mystics or psychics." Two days before the commission was to hear that report in 2009, the governor replaced three of its members and the hearing was canceled. The informant later recanted. The same year Willingham was executed, another Texas man was freed from death row after the same kind of fire science was discredited. No court or governor has ever cleared Willingham.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 2005 to 2026Kelo v. New London: Eminent Domain to Seize Private Homes for Corporations and PipelinesIn 2005 the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that a city could take homes from their owners and give the land to a private developer because the new use would pay more taxes. The homes in New London were demolished, the developer never built, Pfizer left, and the lot stood empty for nearly twenty years. Forty seven states changed their laws in response. The power has since moved to pipelines and power lines, where a federal certificate lets a private company condemn land across state lines, and where Congress in 2023 ordered one pipeline approved and barred the courts from reviewing it.Housing & Private Equity
- 1995 to 2026Purdue Pharma, the FDA's OxyContin Label, DEA Production Quotas, and 806,000 Opioid DeathsIn 1995 the Food and Drug Administration approved OxyContin with a label saying its slow release was believed to reduce the abuse liability of the drug, a claim the agency later admitted it had no data for. The company pleaded guilty in 2007 to marketing it as less addictive than it was, and again in 2020 to defrauding the government and paying kickbacks. Between 2002 and 2013 the Drug Enforcement Administration raised the amount of oxycodone that could legally be made in the country by more than 400 percent while the deaths rose, and did not cut it until 2017. About 806,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2023. In April 2026 a federal judge, sentencing the company, told the victims that their government had failed them.Health, Food & Regulators
- 2002 to 2021What Official Senate and Inspector General Reports Found on the Iraq and Afghanistan WarsCongress authorized the invasion of Iraq in October 2002 by votes of 296 to 133 and 77 to 23. In October 2004 the government's own weapons inspectors reported that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and had not had any since the 1990s. In June 2008 the Senate Intelligence Committee found, 10 to 5, that the administration's statements about Iraq's weapons and its ties to al Qaeda were not supported by the intelligence, and its chairman said the nation had been led into war under false pretenses. In August 2021 the inspector general for Afghanistan reported that after $145 billion in reconstruction and $837 billion in war spending the government had never understood the country, and quoted the general who oversaw the war from the White House under two presidents: we didn't know what we were doing. Brown University's count of the dead from direct violence in the wars that followed September 11 is more than 940,000, of whom more than 432,000 were civilians.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 1994 to 2011How Credit Default Swaps and Deregulation Caused the 2008 Financial CrisisIn June 1994 a group of young JP Morgan bankers at a resort in Boca Raton worked out how to sell the risk of a loan separately from the loan. The idea was meant to make banking safer. It let banks hold less capital, it was kept out of regulation by Congress and the Federal Reserve, and applied to mortgages it produced the machine that failed in 2008 and cost Americans $11 trillion.Wall Street & Banking
- March to October 2008The October 2008 Bank Bailout: $125 Billion Handed to Nine Wall Street Banks with No Strings AttachedIn 2008 the government rescued Bear Stearns, let Lehman Brothers fail, then rescued AIG and paid the banks' claims against it in full. On October 13 the heads of the nine largest banks were called to the Treasury, handed $125 billion, and told they could not leave until they signed. The terms required nothing of them.Wall Street & Banking
- November 2008 to July 2010Obama, Timothy Geithner, and the 2009 Decision Not to Break Up the Big BanksIn 2009 President Obama had to choose between breaking up the banks that caused the crisis and nursing them back to health. He chose Timothy Geithner's plan. On March 27 he told thirteen bank chief executives he was all that stood between them and the pitchforks, then offered to help. Records later pried loose by Bloomberg showed the banks had borrowed $1.2 trillion from the Federal Reserve in a single day.Wall Street & Banking
- 1999 to 2026Bill Gates on Population, Vaccine Funding, BioNTech Stock, and the World Health OrganizationFive widely circulated clips of Bill and Melinda Gates speaking about population growth, set beside the full recordings they were cut from. The 6.8 billion sentence is from a 2010 talk on carbon dioxide, and the next sentence in the recording is that population still goes up. The institute the narrator calls the Institute for Population Control is the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins, founded in 1999 with $20 million, and its founding director was Laurie Zabin, not Dr. Zaven. What is true is that Gates did say his foundation began with reproductive health because he thought population growth was the biggest problem poor countries face, that he did say the death panel line, and that his foundation has put $4.1 billion into Gavi, more into the World Health Organization in 2024 and 2025 than the United States government, $560 million into contraception, $55 million into BioNTech the year before the pandemic, and a $1 per dose deal with Pfizer.Health, Food & Regulators
- July 21, 2010The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and Its 2018 RollbackOn July 21, 2010 the president signed the 848 page Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and said there would be no more tax funded bailouts, period. The law created a consumer bureau, a council to watch the largest firms, and a way to wind one down. It did not break up the banks, its rules were written under lobbying, and in 2018 Congress raised the threshold for close oversight from $50 billion to $250 billion.Wall Street & Banking
- 1972 to 2022Mass Exonerations After Police Framing Scandals in Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Tulia, TexasOfficial misconduct is the second most common thread in wrongful convictions, present in about 61 percent of them and higher in murder cases. Sometimes it is one officer or one unit, and when the pattern is finally exposed the convictions fall in bunches. In Chicago, a police commander named Jon Burge oversaw the torture of more than 100 Black men to get confessions; he was fired, later convicted in federal court of lying about it, and the city paid reparations. A Chicago sergeant, Ronald Watts, ran an extortion ring and planted drugs on people who would not pay, and 188 of them have had their convictions thrown out. The Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart scandal produced about 170 exonerations. A Baltimore police unit was convicted of robbing residents and planting evidence, and nearly 800 cases were dropped. In Tulia, Texas, one undercover officer's word put dozens of people in prison until the governor pardoned them.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 2008 to 2016The Barack Obama Birth Certificate Claims Checked Against Hawaii Records and Court RulingsBarack Obama's birth certificate says he was born on August 4, 1961 at Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu. The claim that he was born in Kenya spread in anonymous emails and blog posts in 2008. Hawaii's director of health said that year and the next that she had seen his original birth record. In April 2011, at his request, the state made an exception to its policy and issued two certified copies of the 1961 certificate, and the new director wrote that she had witnessed the copying and attested to the authenticity of the copies. Sheriff Joe Arpaio's volunteer posse in Arizona said in 2012 and 2016 that the White House's image of the certificate was a forgery. It named no document examiner in 2016, and no law enforcement agency took up its findings. Courts and election boards decided dozens of challenges to his eligibility, and none ruled for the challengers. In 2016 Donald Trump said, "President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period."Congress, Elections & Speech
- 2007 to 2015The 2011 GAO Audit of the Federal Reserve: $16.1 Trillion in Rollover Loans to Wall Street and Foreign BanksIn 2010 Congress ordered the first outside audit of the emergency lending the Federal Reserve did during the 2008 crisis. The Government Accountability Office reported in July 2011 that the loans across the broad programs added up to $16.1 trillion, and the office explained in the same report that this number sums a loan every time it was rolled over, so an overnight loan renewed for a month counts thirty times; adjusted for how long the money was actually out, the figure was $1.14 trillion. The largest users were the biggest banks, and more than half the money in two programs went to the American arms of foreign banks. The public learned the borrowers' names only after a news agency won a Freedom of Information Act suit and a new law forced the release of 21,000 transactions. A second audit found that the chairman of the New York Fed sat on its board while he held and bought stock in Goldman Sachs as it became a bank the Fed regulates. The Fed says it lost nothing and earned about $20 billion on the programs.Wall Street & Banking
- 1946 to 2024The 1946–1948 US Public Health Service Experiments That Deliberately Infected 1,308 Guatemalans with SyphilisFrom 1946 to 1948 the United States Public Health Service, paid for in part by a grant from the National Institute of Health and run under the Surgeon General, deliberately infected people in Guatemala with syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid to study the diseases. A 2011 presidential commission, working from the lead doctor's own records, found that 1,308 prisoners, soldiers, and psychiatric patients were intentionally exposed, that only 678 were documented as receiving any treatment, and that at least 83 subjects died, though the records do not settle whether the experiments killed them. The government kept the work quiet at the time and it stayed hidden until a historian found the papers in a university archive. In 2010 the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Health and Human Services apologized and the President telephoned Guatemala's president to do the same. The courts held the government immune and the private defendants not liable. No compensation ever reached the subjects or their families.Health, Food & Regulators
- 1996 to 2012How Wall Street Sold Toxic Derivatives to Cities, Counties, and European GovernmentsAfter 2008 the banks kept paying themselves. Part four of FRONTLINE's series follows the derivatives business out of New York and into the places that bought what it sold: a town outside Rome, Jefferson County, Alabama, which went bankrupt after JP Morgan's banker paid bribes, and Greece, whose books Goldman Sachs helped dress for the eurozone. Bad swaps cost American taxpayers $20 billion in five years.Wall Street & Banking
- 1963 to 2026The Trial Penalty: How Threatening Longer Sentences Forces 98% of Federal Defendants to Plead GuiltyThe Constitution promises a trial by jury, and almost no one gets one. In 2025, 97.7 percent of people convicted in federal court pleaded guilty; in state courts the figure is about 94 percent. The Supreme Court has said plainly that plea bargaining "is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system." It works because the government can make the price of a trial ruinous: in the case that made this legal, a man was offered five years for a forged check worth $88.30 and, when he turned it down, was sentenced to life. Defense lawyers found that people who go to trial can receive sentences three to eight times longer than those who plead. Innocent people sign too. About one in seven people later proved innocent had pleaded guilty, and most defendants held in jail before trial cannot make bail, which is its own pressure to take the deal and go home.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 2009 to 2012Sony's Patent on TV Commercials That Only Stop When You Say the Brand NameIn 2009 Sony applied for a patent on television commercials that stop only when the viewer does something: says the brand name into the TV's microphone, throws a virtual pickle at a burger, or drives a delivery car through a course. The patent was granted in 2012. It has not been used, and Sony owns it.Housing & Private Equity
- 2006 to 2012ATF Operation Fast and Furious: 2,000 Guns Allowed Into Cartel Hands and the Killing of Agent Brian TerryFrom 2009 to 2011 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives watched straw buyers in Arizona purchase more than 2,000 firearms for about $1.5 million in cash and seized about a hundred of them, letting the rest go to see where they went. Two of them were found on December 14, 2010 where a Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, had been shot dead. The Justice Department told a senator in writing that the bureau did not let guns walk, and withdrew the letter ten months later. Its inspector general found inadequate attention to public safety, found that the same thing had been done in 2006 and 2007 with more than 400 guns, and referred 14 officials for discipline. No official was charged.CIA, War & Covert Operations