Congressional leaders breathed new life into the U.S. Patriot Act and a related law, and agreed Thursday to extend by four years several statutes that have give the FBI expanded surveillance powers, the New York Times reported.

The Times reported that the agreement “allows investigators to get “roving wiretap” court orders allowing them to follow terrorism suspects who switch phone numbers or providers; to get orders allowing them to seize “any tangible things” relevant to a security investigation, like a business’s customer records; and to get national-security wiretap orders against noncitizen suspects who are not believed to be connected to any foreign power.”

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Federal prosecutors in Arkansas convicted a man Thursday of hate crimes, the first time a conviction was won at trial for violations of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was enacted in October 2009, the Justice Department said.

Frankie Maybee, 20, of Green Forest, Ark., was convicted of five counts of committing a federal hate crime and one count of conspiring to commit a federal hate crime. Co-defendant Sean Popejoy, 19, of Green Forest, pleaded guilty in the case guilty in the case on Monday.

Authorities charged that Maybee and Popejoy last June threatened and injured five Hispanic men. The men  pursued the victims in a truck, and when they caught up,  Popejoy leaned outside of the front passenger window and waived a tire wrench at the victims, and continued to threaten and hurl racial epithets at the victims, authorities said.

Maybee, driving his truck, rammed into the victims’ car repeatedly, which caused the victims’ car to cross the opposite lane of traffic, go off the road, crash into a tree and ignite, authorities said. As a result, the victims were injured.

“The defendants targeted five men because they were Hispanic, and today’s verdict shows that the Justice Department is committed to vigorously prosecuting individuals who perform acts of hate because of someone’s race or national origin,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.

“We will continue to use the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and every other tool in our law enforcement arsenal, to identify and prosecute hate crimes whenever they occur.”

Authorities may soon want to rename ATF’s controversial “Operation Fast and Furious” gun program “Operation Very Big Headache.”

The latest: CBS reports that DEA agents recently confiscated a stash of assault rifles in the Phoenix area linked to the operation, which encouraged gun dealers to sell to straw purchasers — all with the hopes of tracing the weapons to the Mexican cartels. CBS reported that sources said they believed the suspects intended to take the guns to Mexico.

CBS, citing unnamed sources, reported that  DEA agents stopped two suspects on  April 13   and found two giant garbage cans full of dozens of AK-47 type weapons wrapped in cellophane. A trace of the first weapon found that a suspect in the “Fast and Furious” case purchased it in Nov. 2009, CBS reported.

Station KPHO reported that DEA has refused to give up the weapons to ATF. An ATF spokesman told the station the agencies are cooperating.

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Now that an elite American special-operations unit has ended the life of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda’s charismatic leader and founder, the world’s most lethal and geographically dispersed terrorist organization is entering a new, uncertain direction.

Although this momentous event occurred after the publication of Garrett M. Graff’s important book “The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror,” we can be certain of one fact that runs through its pages: Our nation’s counterterrorism capability is sound and robust, exemplified domestically, although with an increasing overseas presence, by the nation’s top law enforcement agency, the FBI.

“The Threat Matrix” – the name of the daily compilation of actual or rumored threats to the American homeland and Americans overseas – is a prodigious volume, covering the FBI’s involvement in counterterrorism over the past 90 years. Mr. Graff, the editor of Washingtonian magazine, spent more than two years researching the FBI, including interviewing hundreds of people associated with the agency, such as Director Robert Mueller and current and former top officials and special agents, many of whom are discussed in the book.

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Robert Mueller III/fbi photo

When President Obama announced plans to have FBI Dir. Robert S. Mueller III stay on two years beyond his 10-year term, the FBI Agents Association quickly issued a very positive statement even though some of its members were not very happy.

Nonetheless, some of the unhappiness seems to be coming out.

The Washington Post reports some agents are angry that Mueller, who imposed term limits on hundreds of supervisors, is getting an extension himself. They find some hypocrisy in the whole matter, the Post reported.

President Obama has said that he wants Mueller to stay on past his 10-year term, which expires in September, to provide some stability and continuity. Congress will have to pass some type of legislation to keep Mueller on because the law states the FBI director should serve no more than 10 years.

“We understand the desire for stability,’’ Konrad Motyka, president of the FBI Agents Association told the Post. “But people are saying, ‘What about my stability?’ It’s ironic that this desire for stability did not apply to supervisors within the FBI.’’

Konrad Motyka/ticklethewire.com photo

The policy that has so irritated agents surfaced after Sept. 11, 2001. It requires FBI supervisors to move on after seven years and compete for another managerial post, retire or get demoted at the same field office with a pay decrease, the Post reported.

The FBI has defended the policy, saying it has resulted in strong managers being brought in to various posts, the paper reported.

“People are up in arms about this,’’ one agent, who likened the news to “a shot in the kneecaps,” told the Post.

“We have lost valuable experience,’’ the agent said. “I’ve seen people, some really significant contributors to this organization and to this country, who are questioning their self-worth now and who are basically bitter.’’

The Post reported that Mueller did not seek the 2-year extension, but agreed to go along with it.

Though Mueller has enforced the term limits on supervisors, he has also given extensions to a number of agents who have reached the mandatory retirement age of 57.

The announcement of the proposed two-year extension for Mueller, has been met with mixed reaction within the bureau, ranging from ecstatic to mad to mixed.

Some say he’s been a great leader.  But others want him to go.  They say he’s drifted too far from the core mission of the agency and doesn’t relate to, or truly understand the mindset of the street agents.

Mueller, 66, started on the job  just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, forcing him to retool the agency to focus more on terrorism.

To read more of the Washington Post story click here.

By Allan Lengel

Former Mississippi U.S. Attorney H.M. Ray, whose 20- year reign included the 1960s civil rights era, and who served under five presidents, died at age 86, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported.

Ray was appointed by President Kennedy to the Jackson, Miss. office, and resigned right after Ronald Reagan became president in 1981.

“We were very close. He was a great boss,” former assistant U.S. attorney John Hailman of Oxford, Miss. told the Commercial Appeal.  “Mainly, he insisted that we do the right thing. He was very courageous about taking unpopular stances, and he always backed us up.”

Some of his higher profile cases included the prosecution of  four men linked to the shooting deaths of two people during rioting over the entrance of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962, the paper reported. The men were not convicted.

Ray also served in the state House from 1948 to 1951. After resigning as U.S. Attorney,  he went off to  practice law with the Wise, Carter, Child & Caraway firm in Jackson. He then went to work for then-state Atty. Gen. Mike Moore, the Commercial Appeal reported.

“He was quite a mentor for me, and I learned a lot from him. He was a great lawyer and an even better person,”  Moore told the paper.