Oh the hiding places people find for cash.

As the Justice Department argued that former U.S. government scientist Stewart Nozette should remain in jail while he awaits trial on espionage charges, juicy new details emerged about the sting operation leading to his arrest for passing top secret information to an individual he thought was an Israeli intelligence officer but really was the FBI.

Nozette was arrested at the famous Mayflower Hotel in Washington on Oct. 19 but before FBI agents put the cuffs on him, the Justice Department said that he went to the bathroom in the suite and stashed $10,000 in the toilet’s upper tank. (The money was later recovered so don’t bother booking the room.)

The money was meant as a down payment on some $2 million Nozette demanded for handing over details about a classified program that the United States had spent $1 billion to develop and deploy, according to the Justice Department.

Nozette allegedly also sought from the undercover FBI employee an Israeli passport with an alias and he opened a safe deposit box in California in which he stashed three computer drives, eight videotapes, 55 gold South African Krugerrand coins worth roughly $50,000, and $30,000 in savings bonds, the government said. (The Justice Department has said that Israel had no involvement in the attempted espionage.)

Earlier this year a jury convicted a former congressman, William Jefferson of Louisiana, in a corruption case that included $90,000 hidden in a freezer.

To bolster the government’s case to keep Nozette under lock and key until his trial, the Justice Department said its investigation “has revealed that Nozette is a person of means,” noting that he owns several residential properties across the country including a $2 million house in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and a $550,000 vacation home in Merritt Island, Florida.

“No treaty allows the United States to compel the extradition of an individual charged with espionage,” the government’s filing said.

Nozette has held a number of senior government positions and even helped with the development of a radar experiment that helped in the discovery of water ice on the south pole of the moon, the government said. He also worked at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and held special security clearance.

In January 2009, Nozette pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion charges, paying $265,000 in restitution.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jamal Saidi

It was just yesterday that the Justice Department’s Inspector General Glenn Fine issued a scathing report about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation was behind in its efforts to translate foreign language documents and audio recordings in terrorism and criminal investigations.

And now a day later, it became public that an ongoing investigation apparently has been impacted by those troubles — a plot by two men to attack a newspaper in Denmark over its publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed including one in which he is wearing a turban with a bomb in it.

U.S. authorities arrested the two Chicago area men earlier this month and unsealed the complaints against them on Tuesday that detailed how they communicated over email and by telephone to develop the plot.

In those documents, however, an FBI agent acknowledged that the translations from Urdu to English had not yet been finalized (and some of them dated back to late 2008).

“While translators have attempted to transcribe the foreign language conversations accurately, to the extent that quotations from these communications are included, these are preliminary, not final translations,” the affidavits said.

The Justice Department inspector general report said that the FBI had lost 3 percent of its translators since 2005, falling to 1,298, and it was taking an average of 19 months to hire new ones. Additionally, millions of foreign language electronic files have gone unread and scores of hours of recorded conversations had not been heard, including some involving top priority terrorism cases.

While the authorities stressed that an attack was not imminent in the Danish case, it provided a glimpse into the real-time challenges the FBI is facing when suspects speak a foreign language.

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- Reuters/Lars Helsinghof (Muslims prayed at the Town Hall Square in Copenhagen after a Danish newspaper apologized for publishing cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed.)

The Obamas may be on vacation this week, but the news hasn’t taken a break.

The Justice Department is expected to release a report Monday disclosing details of prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the CIA’s inspector general but never before made public. According to published reports, the department has recommended re-opening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases.

A review of the cases threatens to weigh down the Obama administration, which is already involved in deeply partisan battles over healthcare and climate change legislation.

The healthcare reform debate rages on, with Republicans pushing a healthcare bill of rights for seniors and Democrats threatening to use congressional procedure to bypass the need for 60 votes to pass healthcare legislation in the Senate.

Today is also the last day for car buyers to take advantage of the popular “Cash for clunkers,” as the program’s $3 billion budget runs out of gas.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (view of Martha’s Vineyard from Air Force One)

Barack Obama and Joe Biden head to the Midwest today.

The Chinese Gitmo detainees are heading to paradise.

No, they’re not winging to heaven to enjoy the company of 72 virgins. The Uighurs, as they’re known, are being resettled in various beachy, tropical locales as the Obama administration seeks to empty the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison.

The United States has struggled for months to find a home for the Chinese Muslims, who were scooped up in 2001 during the invasion of Afghanistan. The Uighurs had no beef with the U.S., their lawyers say, but were instead part of an independence movement in China’s far west.

China wanted them to face the music back home, but it sounds like they’ll be facing the music of Jimmy Buffett instead. The Pacific Island nation of Palau agreed to take on all 17 detainees yesterday; today the Justice Department said four have already been resettled in Bermuda.

Six other Uighurs were sent to Albania in 2006, a former Communist state better known for pyramid schemes and bunkers than beaches. Evidently, good things come to those who wait.

photo credit: REUTERS/Tim Wimborne (footprints on an Australian beach — not where the Uighurs are going, but possibly what they’ll be experiencing).

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DENVER - Maybe it’s his background teaching constitutional law.

If elected president, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office.

Those that don’t pass muster will be overturned, he said.

During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama — a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School — was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.

“I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,” said Obama

Other goals for his first 100 days: work out a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq; make progress on alternative energy plans and launch legislation to reform the health care system.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking (Obama talks to students during a visit to a school in Thornton, CO) 

WASHINGTON - As Democrats go to the polls on Tuesday to pick between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as their presidential nominee, the Bush administration said on Monday they will be keeping a close eye on the voting.
 
Citing previous allegations that the city of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, had violated voting rights laws, the Bush administration’s Justice Department announced it would monitor the primary contest.

A year ago, the city settled with the government over the allegations, agreeing to provide additional Spanish-speaking poll officials, to give additional training for election workers, and to ensure better access for disabled voters, among other things.
 
“Philadelphia has an obligation to provide all election information, ballots and voting assistance information in Spanish pursuant to Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act,” the department said. “The monitors will gather information concerning compliance with this requirement and other federal voting rights statutes.”
 
The Justice Department said it had almost 1,600 monitors watching 119 elections in 24 states during the 2006 election year.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Bradley Bower (Obama at a rally outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia)