By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — The FBI has a backlog of 3,211 forensic DNA cases, which would take two years to eliminate if there was no new staff or new cases, according to a report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General. “The forensic DNA case backlog at the FBI Laboratory can have significant effects,”…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — The good news is that the FBI “has taken appropriate steps to prepare to respond to a potential” weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attack, according to a just released Justice Department’s Inspector General report. Now the bad news: “We concluded that the Department of Justice as a whole and…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — In what really comes as no surprise, the FBI has doubled the number of agents assigned to counterterrorism since 2001. Jeff Stein of Spy Talk, a blog for the Washington Post, reports that Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported in fiscal 2009 “the FBI used 26 percent…
Maybe it’s asking too much, but you’d expect that an agency called Homeland Security would have more secure web sites. The federal government still needs to do much more to safeguard its computers from hackers. By Alice Lipowicz Federal Computer Week The Homeland Security Department’s most popular Web sites appear to be vulnerable to hackers…
The report says the FBI made some improvements during the course of the audit, but there were still important improvements that needed to be made. The upside is in the past week the FBI has looked pretty good busting up suspected terrorist plots in Texas, Illinois and N.Y. By Fox News The FBI unit tasked…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON – A 29-year-old special agent with the D.C. Inspector General’s Office collapsed and died Wednesday in suburban Virginia while taking a FBI physical stress test to become an agent, according to sources familiar with the incident. Lloyd Hodge, who had been an investigator with the D.C. Inspector General’s Office for…
The FBI issued a statement Wednesday saying it has implemented measures to address all 16 recommendations by the Inspector General “which are all now resolved” and it remains “committed to improving our watchlist policy and practices”. The Inspector General Report saw it differently by concluding: “Nevertheless, the FBI’s own review and our work in this…
U.S. Atty. Laurie Magid It’s never good, even if just for perception sake, when the Justice Department is investigating a U.S. Attorney. The question here is whether interim U.S. Atty. Laurie Magid went beyond the boundaries of a federal employee. By Emilie Lounsberry and George Anastasia Philadelphia Inquirer PHILADELPHIA — A $250-a-person fund-raiser held at…
