By Allan Lengel
For AOL News
WASHINGTON – Just weeks before government scientist Bruce Ivins’ suicide, a grand jury was convening on the third floor of the federal courthouse, near the U.S. Capitol, looking into the 2001 anthrax murders. Things weren’t looking good for Ivins, the only suspect in [...]

A Los Angeles Times report stirred up a lot of angry reader comments about an FBI agent shooting his gun at men who were trying to steal beer. The problem was: there was no beer and the real story appeared to be far more serious than reported. Here’s a detailed account.

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

The [...]

By Allan Lengel
For AOL News

WASHINGTON — From one vantage point, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Jay Dobyns still worries about the Hells Angels coming after him. From another, it’s his employer he’s more concerned about.
Dobyns infiltrated the Hells Angels from 2001 to 2003 in Arizona [...]

By Allan Lengel
For AOL News
WASHINGTON — All U.S. mail — about a billion pieces every 36 hours — passes through a sophisticated biohazard detection system at about 270 processing centers around the country. The U.S. Postal Service says no item with anthrax or any other dangerous substance has passed through the screening since it was [...]

By Allan Lengel
For AOl News

WASHINGTON – Plastic surgery is not just for the vain at heart. Recent cases show that criminals still use flesh-altering procedures to try to dodge the law. But it doesn’t always help.
Just in the past two weeks, drug traffickers from Detroit and Phoenix whose fingerprints had [...]

By Allan Lengel
For  AOL News
WASHINGTON — The Inept Criminal is by now a well-established and extensively chronicled archetype, with whole Web sites devoted to the misadventures of dumb, stupid and just plain crazy law-breakers. But law enforcement has its own share of bunglers, and Sphere believes they deserve attention, too. Herewith, a sampling of some [...]

DENVER– Inside the cavernous Colorado Convention Center here at the recent International Chiefs of Police Annual Conference, veteran agent James M. Cavanaugh, an affable and personable man, who heads the ATF’s Nashville Division, took time out to talk to ticklethewire.com editor Allan Lengel.
Cavanaugh, whose territory includes Tennessee and Alabama, touched on such subjects as hate groups [...]

George Torres/la city beat photo

By Jeffrey Anderson
For ticklethewire.com
The defense lawyer for accused racketeer George Torres smelled blood. Torres, a self-made grocery store magnate and suspected drug kingpin, who was both feared and revered in the barrios of South Los Angeles, was on trial in federal court.
Prosecution witnesses were lined up waiting to testify that he [...]