David Gentile

 A former FBI agent who pursued mobsters is serving as a watchdog over hundreds of millions of dollars used by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission as the agency’s compliance chief, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports.

David A. Gentile is paid $152,000 a year in his new role, which is focused more on overseeing big spending on projects that employee malfaesence.

“While it’s necessary to handle allegations involving (misconduct), I want to turn our attention on more substantive matters — issues that have a substantial impact on the commission’s bottom line,” Gentile, of Laurel Springs, N.J., told the Tribune-Review.

Among those, Gentile said, is ensuring that contracts stay within budget. When they don’t, he investigates.

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The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has drawn attention for its plan to buy up to 24 more drones, despite criticism that the unmanned spy planes have many problems, California Watch reports.

The concerns prompted the Homeland Security inspector general’s office in June to urge CBP to stop buying the drones until authorities have a better handle on the planes’ budget and why they are frequently grounded in inclement weather.

“Yet Customs and Border Protection still wants more of them – up to 24 total – to patrol over land on the northern and southern borders and along coastal regions to help catch drug traffickers and undocumented migrants sneaking into the country, and apparently wants to be ready to buy more drones if and when Congress gives it the green light,” the watchdog group wrote.

A recent Congressional report predicts that the number of drones in the domestic skies could reach 30,000 in the next 20 years, according to California Watch.

 There’s one problem with the plan to buy a new headquarters for the FBI: The federal government might not be able to afford it, reports Federal Times.

Under consideration is trading the current headquarters building in Southwest Washington and swap it for another property.

“The government probably will offer the site in exchange for a new FBI building, rather than as an outright sale,” Bob Peck, former public buildings commissioner at GSA, told the Federal Times.

The current building, however, likely would be leveled to make way for something new because most developers don’t consider the headquarters to be worthy of renovation, the Federal Times reported.

A 2011 estimate by the Government Services Administration placed the cost of a new FBI headquarters at $1.5 billion, compared to $850 million to $1.1 billion to rehab the current building, which still wouldn’t meet security needs, according to the Federal Times.

Selling the current headquarters, the GAO predicts, would bring in $400 million to $600 million.

By Boston Globe

What, exactly, would critics want the FBI to have done differently? The agency is coming in for a lot of second-guessing in Congress for its handling of the inquiry into the extramarital affair between former CIA director David H. Petraeus and biographer Paula Broadwell. The bizarre case, involving anonymous e-mails, catty rivalries on the Tampa social scene, and a cast of deeply immature people, has no immediate precedent. Although the facts are still coming out, it seems the Department of Justice handled the investigation about as well as it could have.

To some, the agency never should have gotten involved at all. Sex between consenting adults is legal, romantic rivalries are none of law enforcement’s business, and FBI snooping into private affairs creates an uncomfortable echo of the abuses of the J. Edgar Hoover era. The questionable role played by an FBI agent who had sent a shirtless photo to a woman involved in the case only makes the agency’s involvement more awkward. Still, when the FBI became aware of a prominent national security figure involved in secretive escapades, it had an obligation to ensure that no sensitive information was compromised.

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