Scandal

Real scandals, hearings, and cover-ups from U.S. history. We stick to what records support and name our sources.

Readers search for: American political scandals history · forgotten U.S. political controversies.

8 stories with citations. Watch videos · Shorts

• Love Canal: When a Suburb Was Built on 20,000 Tons of Toxic Waste

  Families reported burns and birth defects; President Carter ordered an emergency evacuation.

• Hanford: The Secret Plutonium Plant That Poisoned the Pacific Northwest

  Downwinders later learned the government knew about radioactive releases — and said little for decades.

• The Business Plot: Did Wall Street Try to Install a Fascist Dictator in 1934?

  A retired general told Congress that financiers asked him to lead 500,000 veterans against FDR.

• The Tuskegee Study: When the U.S. Government Lied to Black Men for 40 Years

  Researchers watched syphilis progress without treatment — long after penicillin existed.

• Teapot Dome: When Cabinet Secretaries Sold Navy Oil Reserves

  Secret leases, private yachts, and the bribery scandal that defined 1920s Washington corruption.

• The Black Sox Scandal: Eight Players Accused of Throwing the 1919 World Series

  Gamblers met star pitchers, and America’s pastime faced its greatest corruption crisis.

• The Great Moon Hoax: When a New York Newspaper Convinced America the Moon Had Bat-People

  In 1835, the New York Sun published a series claiming astronomers had found winged humanoids on the Moon. Thousands believed it — including scientists.

• Operation Midnight Climax: The CIA Brothels Where Agents Drugged Unwitting Americans with LSD

  From 1954 to 1963, the CIA ran a network of safe houses in San Francisco and New York where prostitutes lured men — and agents dosed them with LSD through one-way mirrors.