Fed prosecutors plan to get to the naked truth in this case in Ambridge, Pa.

By JOE MANDAK
The Associated Press
PITTSBURGH – Two western Pennsylvania police officers conspired to violate the rights of an indecent exposure suspect when one beat the man and the second officer helped destroy or alter a police department video of the incident, a federal grand jury said.

The four-count indictment unsealed Monday contains few details, but stems from the beating of a man identified as David Baker at the Ambridge police station on Feb. 20. The alleged cover up occurred the next day.

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This is the tail end of the hunt and deportation of Nazis and Nazi collaborators living in the U.S. Most are in their late 80s or 90s.

By Devlin Barrett
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — An 88-year-old Michigan man accused of helping the Nazis during World War II faces deportation after the Justice Department filed court papers seeking to throw him out of the country.

U.S. authorities say John Kalymon, once known as Iwan Kalymon, shot Jews while serving in the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police Force in what is now the city of Lviv, which until 1939 was part of Poland.

The retired auto engineer has been under investigation for years, and in June insisted he did nothing wrong, saying: “I don’t feel guilty.”

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Read Justice Dept. Press Release

There’s certain protocol prosecutors should follow. One is that if you don’t charge someone with a crime, you don’t publicly say they’re really guilty or suggest something to that effect. The U.S. Attorney may have stepped over the line.

U.S. Atty. Greg Fouratt

By Marjorie Childress
The New Mexico Independent
A letter sent by U.S. Attorney Greg Fouratt to defense attorneys involved in a year-long investigation of Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration has been called “stupid” by Joseph diGenova, a former Republican U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

According to the Associated Press, diGenova thinks the letter is a political act and that the U.S. attorney “who wrote it” should be given the boot.

Fouratt – who is also a Republican – said in the letter that the lack of charges shouldn’t be “interpreted as exoneration” and that the “pressure from the governor’s office resulted in the corruption of the procurement process.”

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This is a great technology. In the past, the FBI has not taken full advantage of the media and the latest technology when it comes to catching bank robbers. Often times, the agency has waited until a robber held up more than a dozen banks, and sometimes more than 20, before distributing photos to the media. Why wait?

WHNT News photo

By DUNCAN MANSFIELD
Associated Press Writer
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The brazen bank robber didn’t bother to hide his face as he threatened tellers with a gun in at least 10 heists from Kentucky to the Carolinas to Tennessee.

Now the FBI has named a suspect after bank surveillance photos from holdups dating to May were flashed on electronic billboards across the South. And authorities say the same man is now suspected of robbing an Indiana bank on Friday.

There’s a reason Tom Ridge was not effective as he could have been as our nation’s Homeland Security chief. He was left out of key meetings. He didn’t always get necessary info from the FBI. In his new book, he suggests that the Bush administration may have played politics with the color code alerts like orange. Now he’s backing down. Call it the weenie factor, call it what you like.

By Mimi Hall
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, speaking for the first time about accusations made in his new book, says he did not mean to suggest that other top Bush administration officials were playing politics with the nation’s security before the 2004 presidential election.

“I’m not second-guessing my colleagues,” Ridge said in an interview about The Test of Our Times, which comes out Tuesday and recounts his experiences as head of the nation’s homeland security efforts in the first several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

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By The Boston Globe
Editorial Page
BOSTON — IT DOESN’T require world class investigators to figure out that the jig is up for the FBI in the case of four men framed by federal agents in the 1965 gangland murder of Edward Deegan in Chelsea. This week, a federal appeals court upheld a $101.7 million damage judgment awarded by a lower court.

The size of the 2007 award to the families of Peter Limone, Joseph Salvati, Louis Greco, and Henry Tameleo grabbed the attention of the appellate judges who found it at the “outer edge” of permissible awards.

But the court rightly wasn’t in the mood to split hairs in the wrongful conviction cases that exposed the FBI for deliberately withholding evidence of the four men’s innocence and covering up the injustice. Secret files would later reveal that Joseph “The Animal” Barboza had falsely implicated the four men while protecting one of the true killers, FBI informant Vincent Flemmi. Both men were darlings of the FBI for providing information against the Mafia.

The Justice Department could drag out this travesty by seeking an appeal to the full Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. But it only prolongs the pain of the families.

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Yes, even the mob needs some stimulus money. There are some stimulus programs like home weatherization that have helped such industries as construction and heating and cooling. But they are also ripe for corruption. The FBI has been expecting to see some corrupt practices grow out of these programs.

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
New York Times
Everybody is looking for stimulus money.

From bridge builders to food stamp recipients, from roofers to subway riders, from teachers to housing project residents, people are eager to feel some part of a tidal wave of federal dollars in their lives.

The mob is eager, too.

Federal and state investigators who track organized crime believe that some members have geared up to take advantage of the swift and enormous cash influx – if they have not already – looking, as the old Sicilian expression goes, to wet their beaks.

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OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST

• Bush Shoe Thrower to Be Released (AP)
• Fed Prosecutors Decide Against Dismissing Charges Against Ex-Alaska Lawmakers (AP)
• DHS Issues New Rules on Searches of Laptops at Ports of Entry (Federal News Radio)
• Cheney Sharply Criticizes Obama Admin. for CIA Probe (NY Times)
• Judge Finds Prosecutorial Misconduct in U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald’s Office (Wall Street Journal Law Blog)

Fearless. Uncompromising Ethics. It sounds like the Justice Dept. has picked the right guy to look into the CIA’s alleged torture tactics.

By Jenna Russell and Shelley Murphy
Boston Globe Staff
He is known for his fearlessness and uncompromising ethics and he became a go-to prosecutor for complex and thankless tasks: investigating federal agents, convicting a former governor, probing the CIA’s alleged destruction of evidence.

Now John H. Durham’s steely sense of justice will be tested again with the assignment given to him Monday by the Justice Department – examining the abuse of prisoners held by the Central Intelligence Agency and deciding whether to recommend a full investigation of the interrogators’ tactics.

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