By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com It’s off to prison for ex-FBI agent Carlos Ortiz Jr. who threatened to harm his estranged wife — an FBI analyst — and the head of the Dallas FBI. Chief U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater in Dallas on Friday sentenced Carlos, 49, to two years in prison after he pleaded…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — President Obama is pleading ignorance about a controversial ATF operation that let gun traffickers pass on the goods so agents could track them to the higher levels of the Mexican cartels. The President, in an interview with Univision that he and Attorney Gen. Eric Holder Jr. ever authorized the…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — The Justice Department won a legal battle against one of its own. A D.C. federal judge on Thursday dismissed a whistleblower lawsuit by ex-Detroit federal prosecutor Richard Convertino against the Justice Department. The lawsuit alleged that the Justice leaked damaging information about an internal Justice probe into Convertino. U.S….
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Signs of Clint Eastwood’s upcoming film on J. Edgar Hoover should be popping up in Washington this weekend. The Washington Post’s Reliable Source column reports that the film will shoot scenes on Saturday and Sunday involving Leonardo DiCaprio, who will play the big guy, J. Edgar Hoover. That’s all…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Like the JFK assassination, the mystery and the persistent questions about anthrax killings in 2001, won’t go away. The latest is a detailed article in the magazine WIRED, by Noah Shactman, who writes that scientists involved in helping the FBI crack the deadly mystery still have lingering doubts and questions about…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Imprisoned ex-Boston FBI agent John Connolly, who was convicted of helping some mobsters murder a South Florida gambling exec, is getting some support from some former colleagues. The Associated Press reports that more than 100 ex- FBI agents, including the one whose undercover work inspired the movie “Donnie Brasco,” have filed…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com It may have been a minor oversight the time — but the misstep could have prevented the rape of an 8-year-old girl. Tom Jackman of the Washington Post reports that immigration authorities failed to enter in a national data base the fingerprints of Salvador Portillo-Saravia before they deported him to El…
By Sally Jenkins Washington Post Columnist Barry Bonds is a lot of things, leading off with obnoxious, but he doesn’t meet my definition of a criminal. There is a growing school of legal thought that says we have a dangerous tendency to “overcriminalize,” using criminal law to try to solve every single social problem in…
