Robert Mueller/file fbi photo

WASHINGTON — The head of the FBI on Wednesday used a recently thwarted bomb plot to press Congress to extend the agency’s ability to spy on foreigners abroad without a warrant.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told a panel of House lawmakers that some of the surveillance provisions, which are set to expire at the end of the year, are “absolutely essential” to stopping terrorists from attacking the United States.

One of the particular provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows U.S. officials to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant on foreigners living abroad whom they suspect of being engaged in terrorist activities.

Earlier this week, the CIA thwarted a bomb plot hatched by al Qaeda in Yemen that was aimed at exploding a commercial airliner headed to the United States.

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Dean Bryant/fbi

Dean C. Bryant is taking over the St. Louis FBI office.

Bryant, the chief of the Critical Incident Response Group’s Hazardous Devices Operations Section near Quantico, Va., was the senior FBI executive and chairman of the Joint Program Office responsible for coordinating with the interagency and the White House’s National Security Staff.

He started with the FBI in 1991, and was assigned to the Miami division, where he worked public corruption, violent crimes and fugitives.

In 2000, he transferred to the Mobile Field Division’s Monroeville Resident Agency.

In 2003, he was promoted to supervisory special agent in and assigned to the Counterterrorism Division at FBI Headquarters.

He was als deployed to Qatar and Iraq in support of the FBI’s mission.

In 2005,  Bryant became the supervisory senior resident agent of the Springfield and Joplin, Missouri Resident Agencies, which are part of the Kansas City Field Office. He was responsible for FBI investigations of all violations in 32 counties within Missouri and Kansas. During this assignment, Mr. Bryant served as the FBI’s deputy on-scene commander in Iraq in support of the Counterterrorism Division.

In 2008, Byant was promoted to assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, where he supervised the Aviation, Surveillance, and Technical Programs.

After a great deal of deliberation, the FBI has filled the final vacancy in its Ten Most Wanted fugitive list, the agency announced Wednesday,

Adam Christopher Mayes, wanted in connection with the kidnapping last month of a mother, Jo Ann Bain, 31, and her three daughters in Tennessee, has been added to the list, replacing Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, who was captured last year in California along with his girlfriend.

Authorities said bodies of two of the kidnap victims — the mother and the oldest daughter Adrienne, 14, —  were found last week buried behind a mobile home where the Mayes family lived in Guntown, Miss.

The two other daughter, 8 and 12, are still missing.

“We believe Mayes could be anywhere in the United States, and we are extremely concerned for the safety of the girls,” said Aaron Ford, special agent in charge of the FBI Memphis office. “Anyone who has any information about this case, of if you’ve seen Mayes or the girls, please contact your nearest FBI office or the local police immediately.”

Brian Terry

Now all that’s  missing is the president’s signature.

On Tuesday night, the Senate passed legislation that will allow authorities to rename the United States Border Patrol Station in Bisbee, AZ to honor the memory of slain border Agent Brian Terry.

Terry was shot to death while on duty in December 2010.

His slaying raised quite a bit of controversy when it was learned that two weapons found at the scene were sold to straw purchasers as part of a failed ATF Fast and Furious operation.

Rep. Darrell Issa, who sponsored the bill to rename the station after Terry, said in a statement:

“All of Washington mourned with the Terry family when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry gave his life in the line of duty in 2010. Today we stand just as unified for the purpose of honoring and preserving his legacy.

“The unanimous support with which the Brian A. Terry Memorial Act passed the United States Senate is a tribute to Agent Terry’s career of service to our country and to the Border Patrol’s distinguished history of intrepidity and sacrifice for the sake of homeland security.

atf file photo

The combustable combination of  politics and guns continues in the election year.

The Republicans screamed about a failed ATF program — Fast and Furious — that let guns into Mexico.

Now, the House Republicans, who claim President Obama is anti-gun, is trying to cut off funding for a program that requires firearms dealers in border states to report multiple sales of certain rifles that could end up in the hands of the Mexican cartels, the Houston Chronicle reports.

The paper reports that Obama has vowed to veto the House’s plan, which is contained in a larger $51 billion spending package.

“The Obama administration fundamentally dislikes guns, and more importantly it distrusts gun owners,” said Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., author of the de-funding provision, according to the paper. “They also know that a frontal assault on the Second Amendment would be political suicide, so instead they’ve sought to undermine gun rights more subtly.”

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Should Secret Service agents be polygraphed after they join the agency?

Ronald Kessler of Newsmax seems to suggest that.

He writes that agents must take a poloygraph test to get the job. But not after that.

In contrast, he reports that FBI employees are polygraphed every five years, and counterintelligence agents, sometimes more often.

To read the full story click here.

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file photo

At more than 180 U.S. airports, the Transportation Security Administration increasingly relies on full-body scanners. Their electromagnetic waves screen passengers for dense objects — both metallic and non-metallic threats — from guns to homemade plastic explosives.

Kip Hawley was the TSA administrator in 2007, when the agency rolled out these scanners.

He believes an alert transportation security officer at an airport security checkpoint would have caught the latest underwear bomb, which was revealed Monday had been thwarted by the CIA before it came near an airport.

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 OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST

• CIA Unraveled Bomb Plot from Within (Washington Post)
• Officials Say Osceola Hate Group Planned, Trained for Race War (WTVS Orlando)
• Abrehaile Haile: Prominent Member of Seattle East African Immigrant Community Faces Conspiracy Charge for Suspicious Wire Transfers (Seattle Weekly)
• FBI probes substance that sent state worker to hospital (Michigan Daily Tribune)
• FBI: Tennessee Mother, Daughter Dead; 2 Kidnapped Daughters, Suspect at Large (CNN)