Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post continues his coverage of the propaganda campaigns at the heart of the war on terrorism. Al-Queda has turned to the internet to spread its message. “Taking advantage of new technology and mistakes by its adversaries, al-Qaeda’s core leadership has built an increasingly prolific propaganda operation, enabling it to communicate constantly, securely and in numerous languages with loyalists and potential recruits worldwide,” reports Whitlock.

A joint ProPublica-CBS 60 Minutes investigation finds that the U.S.taxpayer-funded news network Al-Hurra is “woefully mismanaged and poorly supervised despite complaints from Congress.” The network was launched in 2004 to, as President Bush put it, “cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda” in the Arab world. As it turns out, it has a very small audience and at times has included anti-Israeli propaganda. The story will air Sunday, June 22 on 60 Minutes with an accompanying series on the ProPublica website.

A report by Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers reveals that the U.S has wrongly imprisoned dozens of men “in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.” The report comes after an 8-month investigation spanning 11 countries on three continents. “Of the 66 detainees whom McClatchy interviewed, the evidence indicates that 34 of them, about 52 percent, had connections with militant groups or activities. At least 23 of those 34, however, were Taliban foot soldiers, conscripts, low-level volunteers or adventure-seekers who knew nothing about global terrorism. Only seven of the 66 were in positions to have had any ties to al Qaida’s leadership, and it isn’t clear that any of them knew any terrorists of consequence.” Included in the report is a database containing information on the 66 detainees interviewed in the investigation.

A report by David Barstow of The New York Times reveals how the Pentagon has used a cadre of retired military officers to “generate favorable news coverage of the [Bush] administration

Dan Eggen and Josh White of The Washington Post report on the recently declassified 2003 Justice Department memo that was responsible for creating the “legal foundation for the Defense Department’s use of aggressive interrogation practices” in the run up to the war in Iraq. The memo suggested that presidential power was nearly unlimited during a time of war and should override laws forbidding torture. The Post provides links to pdfs of the 81-page memo (part 1 & 2).

ABC News’ Brian Ross, working with producers Vic Walter and Eric Longabardi, reports that, despite laws passed after 9/11, thousands of foreign students have been able to enroll in and obtain pilot’s licenses from US flight schools. “Under the new laws, American flight schools are only supposed to provide pilot training to foreign students who have been given a background check by the TSA and have a specific type of visa.” Former FAA inspector Brian McNease said that, in 2005 alone, he found over 8,000 students in the FAA database who obtained their pilot’s license without ever receiving approval. As a result of this investigation, Congress has opened a probe into the failure of the TSA to enforce these laws.

Deborah Sherman of KUSA-Denver looked into U.S. government’s No-Fly List and found thousands of innocent travelers who have trouble getting on airplanes nationwide because they’re misidentified as terrorists. While people snagged by false matches are forced to arrive hours early at airports to be cleared, a new government report found terrorists on the list are still getting on airplanes. Sherman found that a new program to fix those problems, called Secure Flight, has cost taxpayers $200 million so far and may leave participating passengers vulnerable to identity theft.

PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal features Jeremy Scahill, author of a book about Blackwater, a private U.S.-based company that is one of the largest private security contractors in Iraq, where its assignments have included protecting individuals and guarding the U.S. embassy. Scahill’s interview comes in the wake of Congressional hearings after the company’s employees were implicated in the killing of 17 Iraqis. Scahill speaks on these topics, rebutting much of Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s media blitz following the various investigations of that September incident.

The Center for Public Integrity has published “one of the most comprehensive resources on U.S. military aid and assistance in the post-9/11 era. ‘Collateral Damage’ couples the reporting of 10 of the world’s leading investigative journalists on four continents with a powerful database combining U.S. military assistance, foreign lobbying expenditures, and human rights abuses into a single, easily accessible toolkit.”

Michael Fabey of Aerospace Daily and Defense Report writes that the inability of the Pentagon and Canadian defense officials to keep a lid on costs and schedules may have cost them the opportunity to modernize their radar-based air defense system in time to possibly thwart the terrorist from completing their 9/11 attacks.