Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The FBI closely monitored Nelson Mandela after the Cold War ended, fearing that the South American president was a national security risk, according to documents obtained by Al Jazeera. The records show concerns among the U.S. that Mandela was a possible communist threat after he was released from prison, even as President…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com New documents reveal more about the FBI’s cell phone surveillance group, which has the technology to listen to anyone’s calls, Slate reports. The surveillance method was revealed in new documents received by the civil rights group, Electronic Privacy Information Center, using the Freedom of Information Act. The technology, most commonly referred to…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com In the six hours before radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki entered the Pentagon for a luncheon in February 2002, he was being tracked by the FBI’s elite surveillance unit, Fox News reports. Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show the bureau’s Special Surveillance Group trailed al-Awlaki, who was killed by…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A Tennessee death row inmate has been denied access to FBI records that he says would overturn his 1998 conviction for the murder of a Memphis motel clerk, the Associated Press reports. A federal appeals court reaffirmed the FBI’s right to redact information under the Freedom of Information Act. The redacted records,…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A log of complaints against Secret Service employees shows a variety of misconduct, including an allegation that an agent was intoxicated while he was supposed to be protecting a foreign leader, Bloomberg News reports. The federal government released the 229-page log this weekend in response to a Freedom of Information Act by…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The FBI kept a file on the late outspoken writer Christopher Hitchens, the website Historiographic Anarchy reports. The website reported that the FBI released through the Freedom of Information Act, 19 pages on Hitchens, some which show he was the subject of an FBI Foreign Counterintelligence probe. He died in December…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com After five years of legal wrangling, a federal judge in California ruled Thursday that the FBI must pay the legal fees of Muslim activist groups that sued the agency over a Freedom of Information Act case. U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney, in a written ruling, said his decision was not based…
