Steve Neavling

After eight years of using BlackBerrys, the more than 17,000 employees at Immigration and Customs Enforcement are making the switch to the iPhone, the New York Times reports.

The $2.1 million contract with Apple suggests that law enforcement no longer considers BlackBerrys to be more secure, New York Times reported.

In fact, Apple has surpassed BlackBerrys in cutting-edge technology, federal government officials said in making the switch.

ICE said it had “evolving mobile law enforcement business requirements that require the use of more capable and dynamic mobile technology.”

fbi photo

 The FBI is investigating allegations of a hate crime after a 20-year-old black woman said she was set on fire by three men who scrawled KKK and a racial slur on her car in Louisiana, the Associated Press reports.

More than half of Sharmeka Moffitt’s body was covered in burns – some third degree – when police responded to her 911 call Sunday night, Louisiana State Police said.

Moffitt was in critical condition late Monday after she said men doused her in flammable liquid and set her on fire at a park, the AP reported.

Police found KKK and a racial slur on her car.

Moffitt said the three men were wearing white hoods or hats, but she couldn’t describe their race, the AP reported.

No suspects have been identified.

Steve Neavling

 As part of the Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks, a former CIA officer is expected to plead guilty today to a single charge of disclosing the identity of an undercover CIA operative, the Washington Post reports.

John C. Kiriakou faces up to 30 years in prison for leaking sensitive national defense information to the media.

Kiriakou’s plea is part of an agreement with the Justice Department to drop four other charges.

Kiriakou was charged with violating a 1970s law that makes it illegal to divulge the identities of U.S. intelligence operatives. He would become only the second person convicted of violating that law.

“The government will say that any guilty plea is a win, and the defense will say they were forced into a corner,” said Steven Aftergood, an expert on classification issues with the Federation of American Scientists. “In some sense, they will both be right.”

Steve Neavling

The grieving wife of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent who was killed by a drunk driver in Arizona wrote a book about losing her husband, the Associated Press reports.

The book, “Crazy Courage: A Young Widow’s Survival Guide,” is a guide for widows of fallen officers.

“I heard myself sobbing uncontrollably, but only for a brief moment,” Samantha Gallagher wrote about hearing news of the death of her husband, Michael Gallagher. “It was a cry of hysteria, of helplessness. I remember hearing the sobs and it didn’t sound like me. It was like I was hearing someone else.”

Gallagher was 32 in September 2010 when he was driving on a reservation road for work. A drunken driver, Angela Mata, lost control of her car and killed Gallagher. She was sentenced to five years in prison last year, the AP wrote.

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Some of the ex-CIA man’s most fervent supporters claim the government is persecuting a patriot who helped expose CIA water boarding and the other “enhanced interrogation techniques” many people equate with torture.

The Justice Department begs to differ, of course. It argues the case is simple: Kiriakou “repeatedly” disclosed classified information and the names of covert CIA employees to journalists.

To read more clickhere.

 Steve Neavling

Journalist and author Seth Rosenfeld spent a lot of time and money digging up FBI records since the mid-1980s, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The FBI’s refusal to turn over records turned out to be costly after a judge ruled last week that the bureau owed Rosenfeld nearly a half million dollars in attorney fees for violating the Freedom of Information Act in 1990 and 2007.

Rosenfeld, a tough critic of the bureau, was seeking records on the FBI’s covert operations at the University of California Berkeley and its odd relationship with President Ronald Reagan.

Rosenfeld recently published his book, “Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power.”

The FBI said it had planned to turn over the information but was slow in doing so, the Chronicle reported.

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