Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A tenacious reporter who covers urban affairs and the D.C. Council received a troubling email from the U.S. Attorney’s Office: His voice was picked up after agents tapped the cell phones of now-disgraced Councilman Michael Brown, WUSA9 reports. “I’m not going to be surprised if I call someone at some point in…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Few authors write with as much insight into violence and war as William Vollmann. The winner of a National Book Award, Vollmann revealed in a Harper’s essay, “Life as a Terrorist,” that he was suspected of being a terrorist and even the Unabomber because of the content of his fiction, the Washington…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The FBI and NSA monitored all emails and text messages in the Salt Lake City area in 2002 when the city was hosting the Winter Olympics, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Unnamed officials said the two agencies worked with Qwest Communications to intercept communications for nearly six months. Former Sen. Bob Bennett,…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A Mexican national admitted Wednesday that he and two other gunman were involved in the 2009 murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in southern California, CNN reports. Marcos Rodriguez-Perez pleaded guilty to conspiracy, robbery and firearm charges, saying he and two others detained Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas Jr. at gunpoint….
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The parents of an 18-year-old honor student who was shot and killed by plainclothes DEA agents in a state of confusion in southern California were awarded $3 million in a wrongful death lawsuit, the Los Angeles Times reports. U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald ruled that the DEA agents were not negligent in…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Frank Perry, who served 22 years as a special agent for the FBI, was named as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, Triangle Business Journal writes. Gov. Pat McCrory made the appointment after Perry began serving as the department’s interim secretary earlier this month. “Frank Perry has dedicated his…
Alan Stamm ticklethewire.com BIRMINGHAM, Mich. — Elmore Leonard, the acclaimed crime novelist who died Tuesday morning, imagined characters who behave and sound like believable law breakers and law enforcers. His best-known plot stars include Raylan Givens, a deputy U.S. marshal on page and screen. Leonard, who died at 87 in his suburban Detroit home from…
By CHARLIE SAVAGE New York Times WASHINGTON — The federal government is making progress on developing a surveillance system that would pair computers with video cameras to scan crowds and automatically identify people by their faces, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with researchers working on the project. The Department of Homeland Security tested…
