By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Trial started Monday in EL PASO for an FBI agent charged with illegally selling about 50 guns for more than $118,000 without a license, the El Paso Times reported. FBI Agent John Thomas Shipley, 40, faces six counts of selling firearms without a license from 2005 to 2008. The paper reported…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com During his colorful career with ATF, which spanned more than three decades, James Cavanaugh found himself in the thick of some of nation’s biggest cases: The D.C. sniper murders, the Unabomber, white supremacist Eric Rudolph, church burnings and the deadly shootout at the Branch Davidian in Waco, Tex. involving leader David…
By Allan Lengel For AOL News WASHINGTON — A Justice Department document asks the simple question: Why Go Undercover on Facebook, MySpace, etc.? Then it goes on to explain: “Communicate with suspects/targets” … “gain access to non-public info” … “map social relationships/networks.” The document, part of a Justice Department PowerPoint presentation, demonstrates how some federal…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Sometimes law enforcement wishes not everyone got along. USA Today reports that rival prison gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia “are brokering unusual criminal alliances outside prison to assist Mexican drug cartel operations in the U.S. and Mexico.” Inside the prisons, the paper reported, the groups…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com William J. Drum, a highly regarded “take-no-prisoners” Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives agent in Philadelphia for 20 years, died last week at age 85, the Philadelphia Daily News reported. Drum started with ATF in 1960 and retired in 1980, the paper reported. He also worked as an investigator in…
Prof. Amy Bishop/university photo By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com It’s hard to think of a biology teacher as a dangerous person. Boring? Long winded? Possibly. But dangerous? Well, not only did biology professor Amy Bishop allegedly kill three colleagues and wound three more in a shooting rampage at the University of Alabama in Huntsville on Friday,…
By Allan Lengel For AOL News WASHINGTON — From one vantage point, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Jay Dobyns still worries about the Hells Angels coming after him. From another, it’s his employer he’s more concerned about. Dobyns infiltrated the Hells Angels from 2001 to 2003 in Arizona and wrote a New…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Los Angeles has opened a new office in Imperial, Calif., to focus on Project Gunrunner, which targets illegal trafficking of arms to Mexico. The ATF said the office, located in the Southern California desert, will include special agents, industry operations investigators and…
