“Whitey” Bulger arrest mugshots released after years as a fugitive
The U.S. Marshals Service on Monday released the mugshots of long-sought fugitive James “Whitey” Bulger and his girlfriend Catherine Greig after they were arrested in California on June 22. They were released after Reuters filed a Freedom of Information request.
Bulger and his companion had been on the lam for years and he is facing charges for 19 alleged murders from the 1970s and 1980s when he ran the Winter Hill Gang in Boston. The 81-year-old Bulger has pleaded not guilty.
He fled in late 1994 after receiving a tip from a corrupt FBI agent that federal charges were pending. Greig followed a short time later and has been charged with harboring Bulger. Some initial photos emerged after his arrest but here are the official U.S. Marshals Service mugshots.
“Deceased” bin Laden opens up slot on FBI’s 10 most wanted list
The FBI’s list of “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” has a new opening now that Osama bin Laden is dead.
The bureau wasted no time at all slapping the word “Deceased” in big white letters on a red background at the bottom of his photograph less than 12 hours after President Barack Obama announced to the world during a dramatic late-night statement.
The al Qaeda leader, killed in a U.S. helicopter raid on a mansion compound near the Pakistani capital Islamabad, was among those on the “Most Wanted Terrorists” list when then-President George W. Bush went to FBI headquarters for its unveiling after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Bin Laden already had been on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list and the U.S. government had offered a reward of up to $25 million for information leading to his capture. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declined to say whether any of the reward would be paid out.
He was added in 1999 after the al Qaeda bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and in Kenya a year earlier. Bin Laden has been the only person on both lists, which appear on the FBI’s Web site.
An FBI spokesman said bin Laden will be replaced. FBI field offices will submit possible candidates to headquarters for the fugitives list, a process in which FBI Director Robert Mueller gives final approval.
Here’s the FBI’s criteria:
FBI releases files on ex-Senator Stevens, little on corruption case
The FBI released some of its expansive files on former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens who died last year in a plane crash, offering tidbits about threats against him, accusations of corruption and some correspondence he had with the FBI.
There was very little in the thousands of pages about the federal corruption investigation into Stevens beyond press clippings and court filings previously made public. The senator was initially convicted by a jury in October 2008 but the case was later dropped after a federal judge found that federal prosecutors withheld critical evidence from Stevens’ defense team.
Still, there were a few interesting tidbits, including details of contacts with foreign officials, several threats against him and also his work dating back to the 1950s when was a federal prosecutor in Alaska.
One FBI note talks about allegations that an attorney made a contribution to the Alaska Republican Party but it was allegedly illegally directed to Stevens’ re-election campaign and later the attorney received an appointment to be a federal judge with the senator’s support.
Another memo talked about an allegation that the former owner of the Fairbanks Daily News Miner who died and gave Stevens a $400,000 yacht in his will in exchange for his past help winning federal funds for projects in the city. The files do not offer details of investigations into the allegations. Stevens was never charged in those incidents.
One interesting document in Stevens’ FBI file included correspondence about the senator’s contacts with a diplomat from the Chinese Embassy in 1982, Ji Chaozhu, and the FBI’s request for advance notice of meetings in the future. (page 334 in this file)
“As you know, your letter is very helpful to us in fulfilling our counterintelligence responsibilities,” then FBI Director William Webster said in a letter to Stevens. “Edward J. O’Malley, Assistant Director of our Intelligence Division, has suggested to me that if you have an opportunity to do so, similar notification of future meetings you may have with officials of the People’s Republic of China would be of interest.”
As ghostwriter of Ji Chaozhu’s autobiography, “The Man on Mao’s Right,” I was fascinated to find that the FBI had to ask Sen. Stevens to keep the Bureau in the loop on Mr. Ji’s contacts with the Senator. I always thought the relationship, which Ji described as quite sincere and useful to both sides, was a classic case of odd bedfellows: the conservative and the communist breaking bread instead of heads. Ji was a product of America as well as China, having spent most of his youth until Harvard here, then returning to China out of a sense of duty. I hope more details of the US interest in this relationship turns up. I had always wanted to interview Sen. Stevens about it but never got the chance. — Foster Winans
GASP! Russia spying on the United States
There’s gambling in Vegas (sharp intake of breath)… Tea grows in China (eyes widen)… Russia spies on the United States (hand over heart stagger backward).
SHOCKING, SHOCKING, SHOCKING! (Get out the hanky and smelling salts).
Well, hold on a minute… it’s not exactly Robert Hanssen is it? The former FBI agent was charged with selling U.S. secrets to the former Soviet Union and then Russia and is now serving a life prison sentence in what was seen as a huge intelligence disaster – Russia penetrated the FBI.
In this spy story, a multi-year U.S. investigation into the “illegals” program nabbed 10 “alleged secret agents” in the United States and charged them with conspiring to act as unlawful agents of Russia. A charge that carries a 5-year prison sentence.
Covert Russian agents assumed false identities living in the United States on long-term, deep-cover assignments, to gather information on the United States and recruit sources to infiltrate U.S. policy-making circles. There was a drop site under a bridge, a newspaper hiding $5000, and code words like “Excuse me, but haven’t we met in California last summer?”
The information the FBI says the Russians were seeking – U.S. policy on Internet use by terrorists, U.S. policies on Central Asia, U.S. position on Iran’s nuclear program. Doesn’t sound like heavy lifting. The suspects were also accused of gathering information on high-penetration nuclear warhead research programs and background on CIA job applicants.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, said U.S. police were “out of control.”
Well it should certainly come as no surprise to anyone.
It should never be forgotten that Russia has always regarded us as an enemy and does everything they can to make our objectives more costly, including directly providing material aid, advice, and intel to our enemies in the current Middle East conflicts. This particular (rather amateurish) attempt at espionage may be laughable, but it’s only part of a much larger, ongoing effort that has some very unfunny consequences for us.
The Liberals always used to mock us conservatives for our “paranoia” in seeing Russian spies everywhere. Whenever a case like this comes to light, all they can manage to do is mumble some inane, vacuous sophistry like “everybody spies on everybody”.
Whatever current mask their government has on, with their lip sevice to democratic ideals and their phoney ‘elections’, Russia remains the same imperialist aggressor they have always been- and their anti-US policy remains unchanged.
Same old Russia.
FBI gives Osama bin Laden shave and a haircut
UPDATE: After the aged Osama bin Laden photos were posted on U.S. government websites, a Spanish politician said his photograph was used to compose one of the images and he was considering taking legal action. Read about the latest twist here.
Everyone gets older, even the most wanted terrorism suspect.
So more than 8 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI has used digital forensic techniques to figure out what al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden might look like now.
In one new picture, bin Laden has a closely-cropped beard and short, stylish grey hair — a far cry from the photo that has been on the most wanted terrorism website of a man with a long, bushy, dark beard.
Another depiction is of bin Laden with a white headdress, long salt-and-pepper beard and a face with more hollows and sunken eyes.
“Using sophisticated digital enhancement techniques, forensic artists at the FBI’s laboratory in Quantico, Virginia have ‘age progressed’ old photos of 18 terrorist suspects listed on the State Department’s Rewards for Justice website,” a joint statement from the two agencies said.
“Federal investigators hope these updated images will enable the public to better identify these wanted suspects.”
There are two possible appearences for Bin Laden.
1. An old man with sunken eyes who survives by hiding in remote caves for the rest of his life, or
2. An old man who died several years ago from organ failure.
FBI latest computer overhaul has more glitches
The FBI’s trouble-plagued, long-running effort to put in place a new computer system has hit a few more glitches.
An audit report Tuesday by the Justice Department’s inspector general said the latest phase of the project for a fully electronic case management system will take three months longer than last expected and will cost $155 million — $18 million more than what had been budgeted.
It identified several new areas of concern with the overall progress of the so-called Sentinel project and with implementation of the project’s second phase.
There have been problems with the FBI’s computer systems dating back more than a decade and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks led FBI Director Robert Mueller to try to accelerate efforts for a massive upgrade.
In 2006, the FBI awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin to develop the system in four phases. The FBI came up with the project after problems caused it to scrap an earlier system.
The FBI’s estimate of Sentinel’s overall cost has not increased from about $450 million since the last inspector general audit nearly a year ago.
But the overall project completion date has been pushed back to September of 2010, three months later than what the FBI previously estimated and nine months later than what was originally planned, according to the audit.
This is a very good move to Update FBI computers.. Its bit costlybut its OK..
FBI discussed advising Saddam Hussein of legal rights, decided no
Much has been made over the past few months by some Republicans in Congress about whether terrorism suspects arrested overseas by U.S. military forces must be read their legal rights and the answer has been largely no.
It turns out that the issue was debated at least as far back as early 2004 when American forces captured ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, according to a document released late Friday night under Freedom of Information Act requests by the American Civil Liberties Union.
A few weeks after the former Iraqi leader was captured hiding in a hole in Tikrit, a memorandum was sent to the FBI’s general counsel, Valerie Caproni, discussing whether Saddam would have to be advised of his legal rights.
The FBI’s counterterrorism division said the primary reason the FBI would be interrogating him would be for “intelligence purposes” rather than for trying him in a U.S. court.
“Significantly, we are aware of no current intent to try Hussein in an United States court,” the memorandum said. “Accordingly, we conclude that the interrogation team is not legally obligated to advise Hussein of his legal rights, which are generally afforded criminal defendants in the United States under Miranda v. Arizona.”
However, the FBI lawyers offered two caveats: if the U.S. government changed its position about trying Saddam in an American court or if the Justice Department or other “political entities with proper authority” who were involved with his interrogation believed he should be advised of his rights.
The memorandum also advised the FBI that Saddam was given “Enemy Prisoner of War” status under the Geneva III Convention which barred any coercion, physical or mental torture to obtain information and required that he be given proper food, water, clothing, showers, sanitary conditions and medical attention while detained.
What rights are they not being informed of? Maybe I’m wrong, but don’t the Miranda rights apply only to prisoners who are going to be tried in the US? Or is this about them not being informed they have the right to food, water, etc?
FBI translation troubles appear in Danish terrorism case
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.
We are many translators living in the US that would be happy to translate for the US government, but the problem is you have to be a US citizen. It is not enough to be a Resident Alien.
I have lived in the US for 15 years, worked as a translator for 20 years and I would be happy to translate for the government, but I can’t, because I am not a US citizen. My native country is fighting side-by-side with the Americans and I care about the US as much as my own country.
Hey, even the FBI gets telemarketing calls
Yep, it’s true. Even the G-men who are trying to track down criminals get calls from those pesky telemarketers.
Buried in a 160-page report by the U.S. Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine was a little nugget that the Federal Bureau of Investigation apparently has been receiving calls from telemarketers on telephone lines set up for wiretaps.
When the FBI gets a court order to tap a phone line, they set up telephone lines that deliver those calls to the authorities. However, it turns out that those phone lines are assigned actual numbers by the phone company.
“It is not uncommon for these lines to ‘receive’ calls from telemarketers and others who use auto-dialers and other automated call technology to place calls,” FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said in a letter to the inspector general.
The issue came up when the inspector general expressed concern that an FBI field office had gone beyond the period in which a court ordered wiretap was authorized, known as an ‘overrun’, or had possibly collected material after a judge had ordered the FBI to stop.
As a public service, here’s the link to the Federal Trade Commission’s Do-Not-Call registry in case the FBI wants to avoid getting those calls in the middle of dinner — or a stakeout.
Hey people!
I hate getting those calls too but to want to murder them???? come on. They probably hate their jobs even more than we hate their calls.
FBI stresses that it gets along with NYPD
When U.S. law enforcement authorities launched a series of raids in New York City that culminated in the arrest of an Afghan-born airport shuttle driver (Najibullah Zazi) for an alleged bombing plot, there was a fair bit of speculation afterward questioning whether the FBI or the New York Police Department bungled the investigation by acting too early.
But at a Senate committee hearing, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller insisted that the two organizations were getting along despite the reports which he said were exaggerated.
“I believe our relations are exceptionally good, as good as they’ve been in a long time,” he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
However, Mueller got a bit heated when he was pressed by Democratic Senator Carl Levin on whether there was a problem and whether he would have done things differently given the chance.
At first Mueller tried to gently dodge the question, noting that in every investigation some steps they take may or may not work out, especially in a fast moving situation like the Zazi case.
But Levin persisted and Mueller’s replies got testier as they talked over each other.
Levin asked if there was something that someone should have done or not done, or any lessons to be learned.
Nice looking couple, kind of like Bonnie an Clyde from the DARK side.