By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

This story may not come as much of a shocker.

A book by Gary J. Byrne, a former Secret Service officer in the uniform division, claims President Bill Clinton often snuck away from his wife at the White House to cozy up with “well-known and lesser-known mistresses,” and that a Secret Service officer in the motorcade was nearly killed in a crash during one secret escape, writes Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner.

Byrne, in a book,  Secrets of the Secret Service: The History and Uncertain Future of the U.S. Secret Service, writes that Clinton demanded a tiny motorcade to secretly dash around Washington unnoticed, ordering that the cars try to obey laws like stopped lights.

The agency knew why the victims were kidnapped in 2010 by the Zetas drug cartel from a Holiday Inn in Mexico, but it did nothing to investigate or help. The victims’ friends and relatives now wonder why

By Ginger Thompson
ProPublica

At about 2 a.m. on April 21, 2010, a convoy of gunmen working for the Zetas drug cartel, one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, rolled into Monterrey, Mexico, a wealthy, bustling city considered that country’s commercial capital. With brazen efficiency, they set up roadblocks at all major thoroughfares, then sent a convoy of sport utility vehicles downtown, encircling a Holiday Inn.

The heavily armed men, some wearing ski masks, swarmed into the hotel’s lobby and rushed directly to the fifth floor, bursting into every room and rousting the guests from their beds. The gunmen questioned the guests, then separated four of them from the rest: a marketing executive at an eyewear company, a chemical engineer for a cosmetics manufacturer, a shoe salesman expecting his first child, and a college professor who was the mother of two.

Then the four were loaded, along with the hotel’s receptionist, into the gunmen’s vehicles and driven away. None of the hostages has been seen since. All are presumed dead.

For years, their relatives and friends begged for answers. Why were their loved ones — ordinary middle-class Mexicans with no known criminal ties—targeted in this spasm of drug violence? The marketing executive’s family futilely negotiated and paid a ransom before the Zetas cut off contact.

“We could never figure out why they were taken. What made them so important?” said David Anabitarte, the marketing executive’s supervisor and one of his best friends. “It was hard to accept what had happened because it never made any sense.”

Mexican authorities initially insinuated that the victims had brought on their own demise, adding insult to grief. The college professor, they alleged, may have been involved in a romantic relationship with one of the Zetas’ rivals. And they speculated that the marketing executive, who had managed to lift his family into the upper middle class, might have had some connection to the drug trade. Without any credible explanations for why the Zetas would move military-style through a major metropolitan city to kidnap random guests at a budget hotel, some of the people close to the victims began to believe that too.

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

It’s been nearly 25 years since ATF engaged in battle at the Branch Davidians compound in Waco.

“I remember it being a cold day,” Robert Edler, a retired ATF agent, tells ABC News. He’s describing the morning of Feb. 28, 1993 near Waco, Texas.

“I recall stepping out of the truck, and almost immediately I started hearing pops,” said Elder. “You know, ‘Pop pop pop.’”

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

An FBI agent shot and wounded a man during a confrontation Monday in the Sun Valley neighborhood in Los Angeles, KABC reports.

The shooting occurred while executing a search warrant around 5:40 a.m. in the 10300 block of Horse Haven Street. The identity of the person shot was not immediately disclosed.

The agent discharged the gun during an altercation with the person.

President Trump, via White House

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Political allies of President Donald Trump are working hard to prove a bias on the part of the Justice Department when it comes the Trump-Russia investigation.

In recent weeks, GOP congressional investigators have publicly and privately questioned senior Justice Department and FBI leaders about interactions with reporters covering the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, hoping to expose any leaks by law enforcement to help put an anti-Trump spin on the case, Kyle Cheney of Politico reports.

“There are a number of other inappropriate communications that have transpired between the FBI/DOJ and media outlets that have not been disclosed,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a top House conservative and member of the Oversight Committee, according to Politico.