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Steve Neavling

The FBI is accusing two men of conspiring and training to fight alongside terrorists in Syria or Yemen, the News & Observer reports.

The charges were the result of a one-year undercover investigation into the actions of Marsalis Brown, 21, and Akba Jihad Jordan, whose age was not disclosed in court records.

The suspects told undercover agents that they supported terrorism.

According to the FBI, Jordan wanted to commit violent acts in the U.S. or abroad. Brown had more specific plans and was arrested at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Wednesday en route to Turkey, where he’d then travel to Syria, investigators said.

James Comey

FBI Director James Comey sought to assure agents and local law enforcement that the bureau plans to increase staff, training and resources in what will be a much less frugal 2014.

The Times-Picayune reports that Comey, during his visit to the bureau’s New Orleans Field Office on Thursday, said the beefed-up budget will mean a stronger focus on violent crimes, terrorism, human trafficking, cyber crimes and public corruption.

“As of six weeks ago, the FBI became adequately funded again,” Comey said. “We’re going to invest in the personnel, training and technology we need to face the challenges before us.”

The good news came in January when Congress passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill.

“We had been forced to eliminate over 2,000 positions because of the budget Armageddon of the last 18 months,” he said. “I plan to fill those positions again and then some, ranging from field agents to (support personnel). We also need to resume investing in new technology and training after those things came to a halt.

“We got an enormous budget increase, which I think is something the FBI deserved. We need to explain to the taxpayers how we’re going to spend that money, and I’m going to do that.”

Steve Neavling

Weiss Russell, a former cop convicted two years ago of illegally accessing an FBI database and sharing it with the subject of an investigation, managed to land a job at the IRS.

The Washington Times reports Mohammad Weiss Rasool, or as the IRS knows him, Wiess Russell, was sentenced to two years of probation after being convicted of accessing the FBI’s National Crime Information Center Database in 2008.

Rasool was running license plate numbers for a friend, who happened to be the subject of a terrorism investigation, the Times wrote.

Now critics want to know how Russell managed to get a job at an agency that handles so much private information.

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Jr.

Attorney General Eric Holder and former FBI Director Robert Mueller are among senior Justice Department officials who billed taxpayers a combined $7.8 million to use federal aircraft for hundreds of personal trips, the Washington Post reports.

The report by Congress’ nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, which was released Thursday, comes less than three months after Holder came under fire for his use of the FBI jet.

Attorneys general have access to Defense Department aircraft for business and personal travel, the Post wrote.

Darrell Issa

Saying the ATF “dangerously mismanaged” a program aimed at gunning guns off the street, Rep. Darrell Issa is subpoenaing the agency for more information.

Issa chairs the House Oversight and Government reform Committee, which is investigating the ATF’s blundered storefront operations.

Issa criticized the ATF for showing a “complete lack of cooperation.”

“I have no choice today but to issue the enclosed subpoena,” he wrote to ATF Director B. Todd Jones. “… The time for hollow promises is over.”

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