By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com A federal judge temporarily blocked the Justice Department from correcting a court filing that undercut the FBI’s conclusion that Army researcher Bruce Ivins was responsible for the anthrax letter attacks in 2001, PBS Frontline, McClatchy and ProPublica reported in a joint story. U.S. District Judge Daniel Hurley of West Palm Beach,…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com A former special agent with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division in Dallas was indicted Wednesday in Louisiana for allegedly lying about having an affair with an FBI agent he was working with, the Justice Department announced. Keith Phillips, 61, of Kent, Tex. was charged with obstruction of justice and…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The mystery surrounding the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X may remain just that — a mystery. The New York Times reports that the Justice Department has declined to reinvestigate the assassination. It said the statute of limitations had expired on any federal laws that might apply. “Although the Justice Department recognizes…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The decades-long legal case against accused Nazi John Demjanjuk won’t go away. The Cleveland Jewish News is reporting that his defense attorneys on Tuesday filed a motion accusing the Justice Department of withholding evidence and fraud. At the key of accusations is a 1985 FBI memo questioning the authenticity of a…
By Mike Wiser, PBS FRONTLINE, Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers, and Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI’s case against Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of mailing the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and terrorized Congress a decade ago. Shortly after Ivins committed…
By Josh Gerstein Politico WASHINGTON — The unfolding scandal over a gunrunning investigation allegedly botched by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could do what years of criticism of the long-beleaguered agency never quite accomplished — result in its demise. That, at least, is the view of some former ATF employees and advocates…
By Joel Rosenblatt Bloomberg Large-scale growers, sellers and distributors of marijuana may be prosecuted in states that have passed laws permitting medical use of the drug, according to a Justice Department memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The June 29 memo, from Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole to U.S. attorneys, says a 2009 memo issued…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The FBI has gotten plenty pats on the back for capturing Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, who had been on the run for 16 years and was a long-time snitch for the bureau. But the capture has dredged up plenty of old wounds — the fact that the FBI protected Bulger…
