Jeff Stein

WASHINGTON — David Frum rightly skewered Republicans for saying the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, drugs and guns into the country while proposing a $600 million haircut for Customs and Border Control in the 2012 budget.

But you have to wonder whether today’s A.P. exclusive touting CBP for helping stop “more than 350 people suspected of ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups from boarding U.S.-bound commercial flights since the end of 2009” is an agency scare story to head off the budget cuts.

“The tighter security rules — imposed after the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas 2009 — reveal a security threat that persisted for more than seven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,” the A.P. reported.

No doubt CBP, and other U.S. intelligence agencies have snared a number of suspected terrorists trying to get into this country: al-Qaeda and like-minded operatives wouldn’t be doing their job if they weren’t trying to get in, while our guys wouldn’t be doing theirs if they didn’t catch them.

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WASHINGTON — For roughly 30 years, the FBI kept files on tips and rumors suggesting Adolph Hitler had faked his suicide in a Berlin bunker in 1945 and was hiding somewhere around the world, according to FBI documents available on the agency’s website.

In one of  the many FBI memos, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote on Nov. 13, 1945 to the American Ambassador  in Buenos Aires: “The bureau is in receipt of a report from the Strategic Services Unit of the War Department dated October 23, 1945, concerning the possibility of a “Hitler Hideout” in Argentina.

“One Mrs. Eichorn, reported to be a reputable member of the Argentine society and the properitor of the largest spa hotel in La Falda, Argentina, recently made the following observations:

“That if Hitler should at any time get into difficulty wherein it was necessary for him to find a safe retreat, he would find such safe retreat at her hotel (La Falda) where they had already made the necessary preparations.”

Other FBI memo indicated he might be hiding out in such places as  Denmark or New York.

All that being said, Russian intelligence had information tha on April 29, 1945, Hitler and his female companion Eva Braun killed themselves in the Berlin bunker.

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By Anne-Marie O’Connor and William Booth

SAN LUIS POTOSI, Mexico — On a sunny afternoon last week, when the streets of this mountain mining city were filled with schoolchildren and parents hurrying home from work, gunmen entered a tiny apartment and started firing methodically.

The assassins killed everyone: the family matriarch and her adult son; her daughter and son-in-law, and finally, her 22-month-old granddaughter.

The child was not killed by mistake. Preliminary forensics indicate that the gunmen, unchallenged, pointed a pistol at Scarlett Ramirez and fired.

In Mexico’s brutal drug war, children are increasingly victims, innocents caught in the crossfire, shot dead alongside their parents — and intentionally targeted.

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J. Edgar Hoover/fbi photo

Back in the late 1940s, FBI J. Edgar Hoover had more than communists on his mind.

An FBI memo shows on April 4, 1949, FBI agents in Utah sent an “urgent” cable to the Hoover saying an Army guard at the Ogden Supply Depot, a Logan policeman and a Utah Highway Patrol officer in Mantua, Utah, spotted a UFO over Utah that exploded, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The cable, according to the paper, said the various people, who were miles apart from one another, “saw a silver colored object high up approaching the mountains at Sardine Canyon” that “appeared to explode in a rash of fire. Several residents at Trenton … [reported] seeing what appeared to be two aerial explosions followed by falling object.”

The paper reported that other FBI documents showed the agency considered that UFOs might be legit. The documents were posted on the FBI website.