What was the most covered-up story of 2009?

WND editors join with readers to determine the year's top 10

Posted: December 30, 2009
8:44 pm Eastern
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Overwhelming evidence Fort Hood mass murderer was an Islamic terrorist who considered himself part of a greater plan to bring the U.S. under Saudi-style Islamic law tops the list of the 10 most "spiked" or underreported stories of the last year, according to an annual WND survey.

At the end of each year, news organizations typically present their retrospective replays of what they consider to have been the top news stories in the previous 12 months.

WND's editors, however, have long considered it far more newsworthy to publicize the most important unreported or underreported news events of the year – to highlight perhaps for one last time major news stories that were undeservedly "spiked" by the establishment press.

WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah has sponsored "Operation Spike" every year since 1988, and since founding WorldNetDaily in May 1997, he has continued the annual tradition.

Here, with our readers' help, are WorldNetDaily editors' picks for the 10 most underreported stories of 2009:

1. Overwhelming evidence the Fort Hood mass murderer was an Islamic terrorist acting as part of a larger, radical Islamic movement bent on infiltrating, subverting and ultimately conquering the U.S.

Conventional wisdom holds that Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan "self-radicalized" without any help from the Muslim establishment before shooting 46 fellow soldiers and security guards and murdering 13 of them at Fort Hood.

However, as WND reported, the Maryland mosque where Hasan worshiped before his transfer to Fort Hood preaches violent jihad and the ultimate supremacy of Islam over the world. Among many other connections, Hasan communicated frequently by e-mail with Anwar Al-Awlaki, the former imam at the controversial Virginia mosque where the FBI claims he had a close relationship with two of the 9/11 hijackers.

Hasan reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("Allah is greatest") – the standard pre-terror invocation – just before massacring his fellow soldiers. In response, Al-Awlaki praised Hasan as a "hero."

Indeed, the advanced state of radical Islamic infiltration of the U.S. – including the U.S. government – was dramatically exposed during 2009 with the release of the book "Muslim Mafia," based in part on a daring six-month undercover operation in which three young investigators pretended to convert to Islam and became interns at the notorious Council on American-Islamic Relations, ferreting out 12,000 pages of smoking-gun internal documents.

As a result, the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus has called for multiple investigations of CAIR, the supposedly "moderate" Muslim civil rights organization now exposed as a key front for Islamic terrorism in the United States. Yet despite new revelations that CAIR is part of the Muslim Brotherhood – infamous parent organization of Hamas and al-Qaida – and despite the Justice Department and FBI branding CAIR an terror-funding "co-conspirator" in the largest such case in U.S. history, the establishment press largely ignores CAIR's proven ties to terrorism and its major role in the movement to transform America into an Islamic nation under shariah law.

To bring the point home, WND reported on a newly released video showing Muslim women at a compound in New York state practicing throat-slitting techniques and assault weapons attacks.

The jihad training compound is one of at least 35 established mostly in the northeastern corridor of the United States by the terrorist group Jamaat ul-Fuqra.

2. The Tea Party movement, including the 9/12 Washington, D.C., rally

It began in February with a CNBC analyst on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange responding to President Obama's proposed $275 billion deficit-financed homeowner bailout plan and other massive spending measures with a call for a new "tea party."

The establishment media virtually ignored and vastly underreported the numbers of protesters, made denigrating, and even lewd remarks, calling them "teabaggers" on MSNBC and CNN, and pretending the movement is a Republican scheme.

On Independence Day, more than 2,000 tea parties from coast to coast attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters – perhaps the largest July 4 political event in the nation since the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence.

Just one day after President Obama tried to recapture the initiative in the health-care debate with a speech to a joint session of Congress, thousands of taxpayers stormed Washington, D.C., in a three-day event.

3. The "Climategate" leaked e-mails and the devastating, smoking-gun proof they offer of corrupt and grossly politicized junk science

E-mails hacked from a server at a key global-warming research center in Britain showed scientists discussing how to "trick" data to "hide the decline" of global temperatures and suppress the voices of colleagues who are not on board with their global-warming agenda.

The revelations provided solid evidence for skeptics who long have believed the supposedly certain science behind "climate change" is fueled more by ideology and greed than objective scientific fact.

4. Obama's constitutional eligibility to be president

WorldNetDaily was ridiculed for months by both the establishment press and even much of the "mainstream conservative" press for pursuing the story, but it eventually became "legitimate" when Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs and increasing numbers of congressmen admitted publicly what polls say much of America has known privately all along: Barack Obama is hiding something, and investigating that is the responsibility of a free press.

WND has reported dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen" and his persistent refusal to release documents that would easily resolve the issue.

Obama has spent at least $1.7 million to ward off all requests for his documentation in addition to the work done by U.S. attorneys on his behalf. The ultimate question unaddressed to date: Is Obama a natural born citizen, and, if so, why hasn't documentation been released to prove it?

WND also has reported that documentation under seal by Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records.

Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking: "Where's the birth certificate?"

The campaign followed a petition drive that has collected hundreds of thousands of signatures of those demanding proof of Obama's constitutional eligibility to serve as president.

5. The true impact on Americans of Obama's health care agenda

Rationing, long wait periods, denial of needed treatment, eventual destruction of private insurance and a complete government takeover that, among other things, would stifle new medical innovation are among the virtually ignored impacts of the massive health-care overhaul Democrats have pushed in Congress.

As WND reported, opponents warn the current House bill would make individual private medical insurance illegal and obliterate the market for individual coverage. Experts say the plan would cause private health insurance to "vanish" and create a financial "abyss" for taxpayers.

Some opponents have asked, If government-run health care is such a great idea, why won't members of Congress enroll their own families?

Meanwhile, a poll showed Americans' belief in the current health-care system has risen dramatically in the last year, and support for a socialized solution to a health-care "crisis" has nearly evaporated.

Another survey shows half of all voters in districts where there are competitive races for Congress will not support the incumbent candidate because of Washington's attempt to increase government control of health care.

6. The true impact on the U.S. and world economies of cap-and-trade, should it become law

By President Obama's own estimate, the "cap-and-trade" legislation in the U.S. Congress would cause utility bills to "skyrocket" – his word – for American consumers. It also would have a crushing effect on industry due to onerous new taxes and regulations.

Estimates of the increased costs have ranged from several thousand dollars to $10,000 per family.

Former Vice President Al Gore promised at a conference in Britain that the impending virtual energy tax under the U.S. "cap-and-trade" legislation will bring about "global governance."

As WND reported, the European Union's cap-and-trade exchange is vulnerable to a sophisticated form of corporate extortion in which EU bureaucrats in Brussels are manipulated into paying hundreds of millions of dollars in carbon permit bribes to keep companies from moving jobs to Third World nations.

In an attempt to inject some balance into the cap-and-trade debate, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, asked Congress to consider the opinion of 31,478 scientists, including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s, who agree humans have nothing to do with any "global warming," if such even exists.

7. The true cause of the subprime meltdown that led to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

While the financial crisis last year is credited with giving the election victory to Obama, Democratic congressmen, as well as groups like ACORN, aided by then-attorney Obama, played a major role in the subprime loan debacle.

ACORN has a long history of urging lenders to extend home mortgages to subprime borrowers. In the 1980s, the group pushed charges that the home lending practices of banks amounted to "red-lining" in violation of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act.

In 1994, Obama, a graduate of Harvard Law School then fresh from his Project Vote! experience, represented ACORN in a case in which the organization pressured Citibank to make more loans to marginally qualified African-American applicants "in a race neutral way."

After obtaining a settlement in the Citibank litigation, ACORN used its subsidiary organization ACORN Housing to push the group's radical agenda to acquire mortgages for subprime home buyers under the most favorable terms possible.

The meltdown in subprime home mortgages has been widely seen as a major cause of the current recession that officially began in December 2008.

8. Obama's czars and other radical appointees

WND broke the first major story on Obama's "green" jobs czar Van Jones, a self-described communist, that helped bring down the first high-ranking member of the Obama administration.

In April, WND exposed Cass Sunstein, Obama's nominee for "regulatory czar," as an advocate of a new "Fairness Doctrine" that would regulate the Internet. In May, WND revealed Kevin Jennings, Obama's pick to oversee "safety" in the nation's public schools, is founder of the homosexual-activist group GLSEN, which promotes homosexual clubs in public schools and launched the annual "Day of Silence" celebration of homosexuality.

Among other exposes of Obama's radical czars, WND reported John Holdren, adviser for science and technology, who once predicted an ice age that will kill 1 billion, said abortion can save the planet and believes an adult dog is more 'rational' than a human baby.

However, most of the news media reported very little on the extraordinarily radical and subversive backgrounds of many of Obama's key appointees.

9. The Obama administration pushed for the legally ousted Honduran president to be put back in office and also called for a halt to Jewish residential construction in the Holy Land after the president insisted during the Iran protests that he could not interfere in another country's politics.

Obama backed the ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, after the Honduran military put him on a plane to Costa Rica for allegedly attempting to violate the nation's constitutional limitation of presidential term. Obama also is pressuring Israel to enlarge a freeze on Jewish construction in the West Bank. But when Iranians took to the streets in protest, in what appeared to be the beginning of a major movement, and were brutally repressed by their Islamic dictatorship, Obama backed off, saying he "respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran's affairs."

10. The exposure of ACORN's criminality by a freelance undercover probe and the many criminal charges against the community organizing group tied to President Obama and the Democratic Party

Two young enterprising journalists, Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, went undercover as a pimp and a prostitute to expose a culture of corruption within the federally funded community organization.

Their hidden-camera videos sent shockwaves all the way to Washington, where the U.S. Census Bureau cut ties to ACORN and both houses of Congress took votes to halt funding to the organization.

In a move to block designation of $8.5 billion in economic stimulus funds, Republicans on a House committee released a report calling for a criminal investigation of ACORN.

The report alleged ACORN has evaded taxes, obstructed justice, engaged in self-dealing, and aided and abetted a cover-up of embezzlement by Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke; committed investment fraud, deprived the public of its right to honest services, and engaged in racketeering affecting interstate commerce; committed a conspiracy to defraud the United States by using taxpayer funds for partisan political activities; submitted false filings to the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor, in addition to violating the Fair Labor Standards Act; falsified and concealed facts concerning an illegal transaction between related parties in violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

As WND reported, ACORN owes its origin to a revolutionary strategy developed in the 1960s by Columbia University's professor of social work Richard A. Cloward and his research associate, Frances Fox Piven.

WND has also reported that Barack Obama, as a community organizer in 1992 in Chicago, headed the Chicago operations of Project Vote!, an ACORN effort to register voters nationally. In Chicago, Obama had his biggest impact registering African-American voters on the city's South Side.

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