By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — A controversial ATF gun-walking program apparently concerned an Arizona gun dealer, who like many others, had been encouraged by ATF to keep selling weapons to straw purchasers, all with the hopes agents would trace them to the higher levels of the Mexican drug cartels. Problem was some of those…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com There are endless reminders of the cat-and-mouse game that goes on along the Southwest border of the U.S. The latest: Border Patrol agents and the Nogales Police Department arrested two people last week trying to smuggle more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana through a drainage tunnel at the Mexico-Arizona border, KVOA…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Proceedings in the case against Arizona mass shooter Jared Loughner will take place in Tucson instead of Phoenix, a judge ruled on Monday, the Arizona Republic reported. However, U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns noted that the ruling didn’t nix the defendant’s right to move for a change of venue in…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.) is voicing concern that guns purchased in an ATF sting in Arizona may have been used by bandits in a gunfight that resulted in the death in December of border patrol agent Brian Terry near the border town of Nogales, the Arizona Republic reported. Grassley…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Smugglers never seem to run out of ways to get drugs into the U.S. The latest: U.S. authorities tipped off Mexicans officials that some smugglers were using a catapult to launch marijuana packages from Mexico into the U.S. The Associated Press reported that National Guard troops in Arizona spotted the catapult…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com More is spilling out about Arizona shooter Jared Loughner in the weeks before he went on a shooting spree that would stun the country. The Washington Post’s Sari Horwitz reports that weeks and days before the shooting, Loughner surfed the Internet on his computer “in what investigators believe was an effort…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — It’s certainly not the first government boondoggle and it certainly won’t be the last. Nonetheless, it appears it was waste of time and money. The Department of Homeland Security on Friday decided to cut off the ambitious, problem-plagued billion-dollar program SBInet to build a high-tech fence along the Arizona…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Days after the tragic shooting in Arizona, hundreds of FBI agents are tracing the steps of shooter Jared Loughner, trying to figure out motive, a timeline leading up to the incident and who he had been in contact with, NPR radio reports. NPR reported that inside the bureau the investigation is…
