TickleTheWire.com
TickleTheWire.com, which was founded in 2008, features federal law enforcement news from around the country. The site includes reports from newspapers and wire services including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, the Associated Press, New York Daily News and Los Angeles Times. It also includes original reporting from top-notch journalists. The targeted audience is the more than 300,000 people in federal law enforcement as well as the media, private attorneys, academics and the general public. The name for the site, ticklethewire.com, comes from a law enforcement term, which means to create a situation that will encourage targets of a probe to talk on a wiretapped phone. TickleTheWire.com welcomes suggestions for news stories or comments at lengela@ticklethewire.com
ALLAN LENGEL, Editor & Founder
The editor of TickleTheWire.com is Allan Lengel, a veteran journalist who has covered law enforcement at major publications including the Washington Post and the Detroit News. He also served as an intern under the late investigative columnist Jack Anderson and was an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland and the co-founder of the online publication, Deadline Detroit. Over the years, Lengel has covered major events including the 9-11 attacks, the Congressman William Jefferson investigation, the Chandra Levy probe, the anthrax attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing. He is a member of IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors).
ADVISORY BOARD
Kehrt Reyher, Strategy & Business Development: Kehrt Reyher is founder of HempToday and co-founder of The Nakło Foundation , which works for economic development through small-scale farming of industrial hemp in south-central Poland. Reyher is the founder and past President, CEO and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of VFP Communications, a Warsaw-based B2B media company. A former European Bureau Chief for Smart Grid Today, he previously worked in the USA at The Providence Journal and The Detroit News. Reyher and his wife Marzenna manage a bed & breakfast in the Polish village of Naklo.
Ethan Mayers, Editorial Content & Business Strategy: Ethan Mayers is the founder of the FutureProof Agency, a New York company that specializes in innovation and technology. He has been involved in a number of startups around the globe. He previously had a successful TV career that included stops at ESPN, University of Tennessee and Voom, Ethan took advantage of his work in research and analysis to consult for several companies, including M & A Media Group, Ogilvy Healthworld and Sixth Gear Solutions Corp., a boutique finance firm initially funded by Lehman Brothers and Warburg Pincus for $1 billion.
Terence Samuel, Editorial Content & Strategy: Terence Samuel is the executive editor of NPR. Before that, he was political editor for the Washington Post, deputy editor of The Root, a Washington Post owned daily on-line magazine that provides thought provoking commentary from a black perspective; senior editor and chief congressional correspondent at U.S. News and World Report and the New York-based national correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He has also served as the director of news programming at AOL Black Voices and was a political columnist for the online edition of The American Prospect. He has appeared on news shows including PBS’s Washington Week, Hardball on MSNBC, CNN International and Fox News.
John C. Moore, High-Tech Security, Law Enforcement: John C. Moore is a senior consultant for Prospect Federal Consulting in Arlington, Va. He previously worked for the U.S. Secret Service for 33 years at posts including deputy Assistant Director where he managed former presidential details, the Dignitary Protective Division, and the Special Operations Division. As part of the Director’s Executive Staff, Moore was involved in long range and strategic planning. He managed and provided oversight for all Secret Service Protective Operations Special Projects. He also served as Special Agent in Charge in the Technical Security Division of the US Secret Service and was responsible for all Secret Service Technical Security and Counter Measures programs deployed at the White House Complex and other key designated protective sites.
Eric London, Editorial Content, Strategy: Eric London is a senior principal and managing director of TSD Communications in Washington.He brings wide-ranging communications and policy experience from his work in the public and non-profit sectors. He has worked for many TSD clients including Google and XM Satellite Radio. Before arriving at TSD, he served as the Director of the Office of Public Affairs of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission where he managed press for several major matters before the agency including the AOL/Time Warner merger regulatory review and investigations into marketing of violent material by the record, video game, and movie industry for youth audiences. Before that, he served as Deputy Communications Director to House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt and wrote the widely praised speech the Congressman delivered on the day of the impeachment vote in the House – a speech Vice-President Al Gore called the finest speech he had heard in the House in his 22 years in Washington.
Eric Starkman, Editorial Content and Strategy: Eric Starkman operates a blog, Starkman Approved, that provides insightful and hard-hitting commentary on politics, the auto industry, media and health care. Previously, he was the president and founder of Starkman & Associates, a full-service public and investor relations firm on Madison Avenue in New York that exceled at providing high-level financial, corporate, and crisis communications counseling and marketing services to companies of all sizes and sectors. Previously, he worked more than 15 years as a reporter and editor at major newspapers in the U.S. and Canada, including the Wall Street Journal, The Toronto Star, The Montreal Gazette, The Detroit News, and the American Banker. Prior to launching his own pr firm, he oversaw the corporate communications practices at established agencies in the New York area, including Morgen-Walke Associates. He worked earlier as a copywriter at W.B. Doner & Co., a Michigan-based advertising agency.
Michael Binstein, Editorial Content, Business Development: Michael Binstein is the chief executive of Binny’s Beverage Depot, a liquor store retailer with 45 superstores in the Chicagoland area. The chain, which has aggressively added a number of stores since Mr. Binstein took over the family business in 1995, also sells high-end gourmet products and cigars. Before taking over the family business, he worked as an investigative reporter for columnist Jack Anderson. He eventually co-authored the syndicated column. He is also the co-author of the book “Trust Me: Charles Keating and the Missing Billions’.
Buddy Fenster , Business Development and Editorial Content – Buddy Fenster has had extensive experience in the meat and health care industry. For several years, he helped operate the family business, Utica Packing, Michigan’s second largest pig slaughterhouse, which generated annual sales of $250 million and distributed its product to grocers nationwide. He later became co-owner of ANR Packing, a wholesale producer and nationwide distributor of smoked meat products.
Kingston Pierce, Editorial Content and Strategy – J. Kingston Piece is a veteran journalist, popular historian, and book critic based in the Pacific Northwest. He has served as an editor at Oregon, Washington, and Seattle magazines; written more than half a dozen non-fiction books, including the PBS-TV companion volume America’s Historic Trails with Tom Bodett (KQED Books, 1997), Eccentric Seattle (WSU Press, 2003), and two photographic histories, San Francisco: Yesterday and Today and Seattle: Yesterday and Today (Publications International, 2009); and worked as the writer and on-air host of a popular Seattle cable-TV series called Eccentric Seattle. Pierce is currently the editor of The Rap Sheet (http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/), an Anthony Award-nominated crime-fiction blog, and the senior editor of January Magazine (http://www.januarymagazine.com), an online literary journal.