Steve Neavling

 The FBI is investigating the death of a Mexican resident who was allegedly shot over the Rio Grande River by a U.S. Border Patrol agent, the Associated Press reports.

The 29-year-old man was killed Saturday by a single bullet over the border from Brownsville, Texas.

A spokesman for the Border Patrol said two agents shot into Mexico after the man threw rocks at them. Firing a gun to “neutralize” rock attacks is an acceptable use of force, the spokesman, Enrique Mendiola told Reuters.

“A rock could be considered a lethal weapon and we are going to respond. Agents have been very badly injured by rock attacks,” Mendiola said. “Our agents are highly trained and regardless of where the threat is coming from, our agent is going to respond to neutralize it.”

Steve Neavling

 The FBI has promoted an expert on public corruption as the new Special Agent in Charge of the New Orleans Division, feds announced Monday, reports Examiner.com.

Michael J. Anderson worked public corruption cases in the Miami Division before being promoted to special agent in the Public Corruption Unit of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division.

Among Anderson’s past duties was investigating Hurricane Katrina-related corruption.

Anderson also served at headquarters as the chief of the Employee’s Services Section of the FBI’s Human Resources Division.

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Steve Neavling

The FBI is helping investigating a cache of explosives found under a bridge in Orange County Monday, the LA Times reports.

People working on a drain ditch found a backpack full of grenades, blasting caps and fuse igniters.

If ignited, the explosive would have caused “major structural damage to the bridge,” Orange County Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino told the LA Times.

“It was a dangerous situation,” he said.

It’s unclear whether the explosives were rigged to detonate.

Robert J. Nieves is a partner in the firm BERG Associates. He retired from DEA in 1995 as the chief of international operations.

istock photo

As chief of major investigations in the 1990s, I managed DEA’s highly sensitive undercover operations targeting the Medellin and Cali cartels. We routinely coordinated with our colleagues in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and enjoyed great success. Agent safety always was paramount in our discussions, and we were successful, in large part, because we followed procedures for the review of sensitive undercover operations.

Before commencing a sensitive operation, the field office had to prepare an operations plan detailing the activities it intended to pursue and the goals of the operation. Once the op plan was received, it was vetted in DEA headquarters to include coordination with any foreign office impacted by the proposal, the U.S. Embassy and host-nation counterparts.

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