The suspect, who was killed in a shootout, was added to two terrorism watch lists last year after Russia requested the FBI investigate Tsarnaev.

Turns out, Russia provided the wrong name and date of birth to the CIA, ABC News reported.

Steve Neavling

Trying to determine whether his former lover mishandled classified information, FBI agents questioned former CIA Director David Petraeus at his home in the northern Virginia late last week, Reuters reports.

The FBI launched an investigation last year after it was discovered Petraeus had an extra-marital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, whose handling of classified information is under question.

Agents have already seized materials from Broadwell’s home in North Carolina, Reuters reported.

According to Reuters, Petraeus and Broadwell deny mishandling classified information.

By Boston Globe

What, exactly, would critics want the FBI to have done differently? The agency is coming in for a lot of second-guessing in Congress for its handling of the inquiry into the extramarital affair between former CIA director David H. Petraeus and biographer Paula Broadwell. The bizarre case, involving anonymous e-mails, catty rivalries on the Tampa social scene, and a cast of deeply immature people, has no immediate precedent. Although the facts are still coming out, it seems the Department of Justice handled the investigation about as well as it could have.

To some, the agency never should have gotten involved at all. Sex between consenting adults is legal, romantic rivalries are none of law enforcement’s business, and FBI snooping into private affairs creates an uncomfortable echo of the abuses of the J. Edgar Hoover era. The questionable role played by an FBI agent who had sent a shirtless photo to a woman involved in the case only makes the agency’s involvement more awkward. Still, when the FBI became aware of a prominent national security figure involved in secretive escapades, it had an obligation to ensure that no sensitive information was compromised.

To read more click here.

Steve Neavling

The ever-evolving investigation into CIA Director David Petraeus’ extramarital affair has expanded to the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, who is accused of inappropriate communication with the woman at the center of the scandal, Reuters reports.

The FBI uncovered up to 30,000 pages of communication, mostly e-mails, between Allen and Jill Kelley, who is a family friend of Petraeus and the impetus of the investigation.

The nature of the communication is unclear.

Asked whether it included classified information, a senior U.S. Defense official would only say, “”We are concerned about inappropriate communications. We are not going to speculate as to what is contained in these documents.”

The Defense Department’s Inspector General is investigating.

Steve Levin

In 2004, the then-US Attorney for the District of Maryland famously wrote in a leaked email that he wanted three front-page indictments by November of that year. Though open to interpretation, the impression left by the poorly-drafted missive is that prosecutors should seek headlines rather than justice.

Let’s give credit to the prosecutors involved in the Petraeus/ Broadwell affair, er, matter for their exercise of sound discretion.

Assuming the accuracy of the news reports, Paula Broadwell potentially subjected herself to indictment for any number of federal crimes. In his paper entitled Computer and Internet Crime, G. Patrick Black, a federal defender in Texas, analyzes a number of cyberstalking statutes. As Black writes:

Under 18 U.S.C. 875(c), it is a federal crime to transmit any communication in interstate or foreign commerce containing a threat to injure the person of another. Section 875(c) applies to any communication actually transmitted in interstate or foreign commerce – thus it includes threats transmitted in interstate or foreign commerce via the telephone, e-mail, beepers, or the Internet. Title 18 U.S.C. 875 is not an all-purpose anti-cyberstalking statute.

First, it applies only to communications of actual threats. Thus, it would not apply in a situation where a cyberstalker engaged in a pattern of conduct intended to harass or annoy another (absent some threat). Also, it is not clear that it would apply to situations where a person harasses or terrorizes another by posting messages on a bulletin board or in a chat room encouraging others to harass or annoy another person.

Read more »

Steve Neavling

 As part of the Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks, a former CIA officer is expected to plead guilty today to a single charge of disclosing the identity of an undercover CIA operative, the Washington Post reports.

John C. Kiriakou faces up to 30 years in prison for leaking sensitive national defense information to the media.

Kiriakou’s plea is part of an agreement with the Justice Department to drop four other charges.

Kiriakou was charged with violating a 1970s law that makes it illegal to divulge the identities of U.S. intelligence operatives. He would become only the second person convicted of violating that law.

“The government will say that any guilty plea is a win, and the defense will say they were forced into a corner,” said Steven Aftergood, an expert on classification issues with the Federation of American Scientists. “In some sense, they will both be right.”

Some of the ex-CIA man’s most fervent supporters claim the government is persecuting a patriot who helped expose CIA water boarding and the other “enhanced interrogation techniques” many people equate with torture.

The Justice Department begs to differ, of course. It argues the case is simple: Kiriakou “repeatedly” disclosed classified information and the names of covert CIA employees to journalists.

To read more clickhere.

U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s and fought against legislation protecting black people, received secret FBI records about the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the Associated Press reports.

Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who died in June 2010, suspected Communists and others were beginning to infiltrate the civil rights movement.

Turns out, the CIA leaked the documents to Byrd, prompting a feud between the two federal agencies, the AP reported.

Although Byrd caught heat form the FBI for obtaining the records, he was an outspoken supporter of the agency’s long-time director, J. Edgar Hoover, according to the AP.