NightBlogger

MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
Former President Gerald Ford secretly advised the FBI that two of his fellow members on the Warren Commission doubted the FBI’s conclusion that John F. Kennedy was shot from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository in Dallas, according to newly released records from Mr. Ford’s FBI files. “Two members of the commission brought up the fact that they still were not convinced that the President had been shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas Book Depository,” Mr. DeLoach wrote. “These members failed to understand the trajectory of the slugs that killed the President. He stated he felt this point would be discussed further but, of course, would represent no problem.” There was no explanation of what Mr. Ford meant by “no problem.” More

Daily Herald
Families of men believed to be victims of the Smiley Face serial killers are gathering signatures to pressure the FBI to investigate the string of deaths and working to raise money so a private investigation may continue. “The goal is to make sure there’s not another family that will go through what we want through,” said Bill Szostak, who founded the Smiley Face Victims Investigation fund after his son, Josh, 21, was found drowned this spring in the Hudson River in New York. Elgin resident Stephany Welzien also plans to help. Her 21-year-old son Brian, disappeared on Jan. 1, 2000 in downtown Chicago and was later found in Lake Michigan.

“Somehow they do need to get the FBI involved,” said Welzien, who doesn’t believe her son accidentally fell in the icy waters. “That’s a lot more manpower. They can cover a lot of territory.” Two private detectives believe a serial killer or killers have been preying on young, college men who usually visiting an area and are out late at night after parties or visiting a bar. The men turn up in a river or lake, with authorities usually ruling their drowning deaths accidents. But the detectives determined in May that Chris Jenkins, a 21-year-old student at the University of Minnesota who disappeared on Halloween 2002, was abducted and tortured in a cargo van before being dumped in the Mississippi River.

His case was reclassified as a homicide. The detectives, Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, also found “smiley faces” spray-painted at points where each man went into the water in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio. They believe Brian Welzien was targeted; Chicago police have ruled his death accidental and have refused to discuss the case. Gannon began investigating these deaths in 1997, but now he’s out of money. That’s where Szostak comes in. He hopes to raise money so Gannon and Duarte can continue. He want to use the petitions to pressure lawmakers to get the FBI involved. Tax-deductible donations can be made at www.smileyfacevictimsfund.com. Petitions also may be downloaded there.

Szostak hopes to have signatures by mid-September and then make a large announcement in New York with other families in mid-October. “The way the game is played, it puts it closer to election time,” he said. “I want to make a statement. I want a lot of family members there. I want a lot of signatures.” So far, Szostak has raised about $1,000 - which covered the cost of applying for official not-for-profit status. “Obviously, the more (money) you bring in, the more you can do,” Bill said. “(Gannon and Duarte) are not ones to stay in five-star hotels and eat in five-star restaurants. They want to stretch the money as far as they can go.” More

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday that it had improperly obtained the phone records of reporters for The New York Times and The Washington Post in the newspapers’ Indonesia bureaus in 2004. Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., disclosed the episode in a phone call to Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, and apologized for it. He also spoke with Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor of The Washington Post, to apologize. F.B.I. officials said the incident came to light as part of the continuing review by the Justice Department inspector general’s office into the bureau’s improper collection of telephone records through “emergency” records demands issued to phone providers. More

The FBI removed computer records from the C. Burr Artz Library this week, a library official confirmed Saturday. Darrell Batson, director of Frederick County Public Libraries, said two FBI employees came to the downtown Frederick library either Wednesday or Thursday. The agents removed two public computers from the library’s second floor. They told him they were taking the units back to their office in Washington, D.C., Batson said. More

Ivins is the third scientist who the government has accused of being the Anthrax killer. First the Egyptian scientist, Dr. Ayaad Assaad, was framed. When that frame-up fell apart, they tried to frame Stephen Hatfill. Now, a couple of weeks after the frame-up against Hatfill unravelled, they are claiming that Ivins is the guy. No wonder the former Senate Majority leader - who was himself mailed anthrax - said “he did not know if the investigation involving Ivins ‘is just another false track and a real diversion of where they need to be. We don’t know, and they aren’t telling us.’ ” More

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL
Author Bill Greider explains to Moyers that the magic of the “free market” is coming to a close.

“This is a really perilous moment.” That’s how one top financier and former treasury official described our economic crisis on the NewsHour this week. Our banking system, he said, “is in worse shape than at any point since the 1930s. We’ve never seen such large losses so fast.”

As he was speaking, California’s big IndyMac Bank went down with a crash, the second worst collapse in U.S. history and sent thousands of depositors out looking for their money. The FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, took over as reports circulated that the FBI is investigating IndyMac for mortgage fraud. Analysts are predicting that as many as 150 of the 7,500 banks in America may fail over the next 18 months, and one analyst even said that number might double over the next 3 years. More

The FBI, responding to the subprime loan crisis that has rocked Wall Street and led to the worst housing slump since the Great Depression, has 21 corporate fraud probes of investment banks, hedge funds and mortgage companies. It also has more than 1,400 pending mortgage fraud cases looking at individuals such as brokers, appraisers and borrowers. People familiar with the probe have said that among the other companies under FBI scrutiny is Countrywide Financial Corp., the largest U.S. mortgage lender. Countrywide was taken over by Bank of America Corp. on July 1. Last month, two former Bear Stearns Cos. investment managers, whose hedge funds’ collapse helped ignite the subprime meltdown, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, New York. Both men have said they will fight the charges. More

WASHINGTON — Failed lender IndyMac Bank is among nearly two dozen banks under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for possible mortgage fraud, U.S. officials said. The big Pasadena, Calif., bank was seized by regulators last week, the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. It specialized in home loans to borrowers who lacked full documentation for their income or assets and have a higher default rate than other loans. The IndyMac investigation began shortly before the bank was seized last week, a law-enforcement official said. In a statement Wednesday, the FBI said the number of banks under investigation for mortgage fraud is now 21.

“We receive information from a variety of sources on a daily basis, and we have an obligation to review each allegation on its merits,” the bureau said. “Given the volatility of today’s subprime market, we have seen an increase in subprime-related complaints.” Few major lenders under investigation have been identified. One of them is Countrywide Financial, once IndyMac’s parent company, which has since been acquired by Bank of America Corp. Countrywide has said it isn’t aware of an investigation. More

Source: WASHINGTON (AP) — The AP has learned that the FBI is investigating now-defunct IndyMac banks for possible fraud.

Source: Kstp.com
It’s been two months since we aired the Smiley Face Killer investigation and questions from people around the world keep coming. I’ve received news clippings, pictures and letters from people all over the country and emails from interested folks in Canada and Europe. The Canadian emails are actually quite frequent. There are many people there who have wondered about a string of drownings that have a lot in common with the U.S. cases. Because of the attention our investigation got in the States, many amateur sleuths are hard at work in Canada.

The FBI still, to my understanding, is not launching a new investigation into the drownings of 40 college male students. The parents of the drowning victims have teamed up and are circulating a petition. This has only been distributed by the families for the last week and one father has already collected over 8,000 signatures! Steve Jenkins in the Twin Cities has received several petitions signed by strangers sent to his house. The families plan to spend the summer collecting the signatures hoping a groundswell of support could sway the FBI.

A couple cases of interest:

TOMMY BOOTH:

He’s the young man who was found drowned in a creek behind a bar in Ridley Township, PA earlier this year. The Detectives working the case in PA feel his death may not be an accident. The Medical Examiner has done new tests to see if foul play was involved. His mother is anxiously waiting for results.

BRANDON SWANSON:

There is no reason to include him in this case except that so many of you have emailed me about his case. Since his body hasn’t been recovered and the Police aren’t sure what happened to him, his disappearance is still a mystery. Swanson went missing in western MN earlier this summer. Extensive searches have been done and there has been no sign of him. The searching is now focusing on a nearby creek.

Go here for more info on Smiley Face Killers

· Unemployed truck driver fools entire community
· Wrongly arrested citizens threaten lawsuits

When Bill Jakob, a federal officer specialising in drug enforcement, offered his services to a tiny town in Missouri that was struggling with a wave of methamphetamine use, the local officials couldn’t believe their luck. Here was a man who was the image of the tough but reliable FBI agent - stocky build, close-cropped hair, military boots and trousers and a determination to get results. He came sporting a badge, federal ID and a gun at his side.

He said he would not cost the local community of Gerald a penny - he was a gift from the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington to help the town clean up its drug problems. As an added incentive, he arrived in town driving an unmarked police car, equipped with siren and police radio, that he promised to leave behind him when the job was done.

There was only one problem: “Sergeant Bill”, as he came quickly to be known by the 1,200 townspeople of Gerald, was not a federal agent, and never had been. He was in fact unemployed, a former truck driver with a criminal record who had fallen into debt and filed for bankruptcy. More

NPR
The FBI showed up on the doorstep of Bear Stearns executive Matthew Tannin on a Friday night early last fall. Agents wanted to talk to him about possibly providing some evidence against his boss at Bear Stearns, hedge fund manager Ralph Cioffi. Tannin’s response was brief, “Talk to my lawyer.”

By that time, the Securities and Exchange Commission already had been combing through Bear Stearns’ e-mails and financial records for months in connection with an investigation the agency launched soon after two high-profile funds run by Cioffi collapsed in June 2007. The funds had a lot of exposure to bonds backed by subprime mortgages, and when that market crashed so did the funds. Bear Stearns, in the words of two officials involved in the case, was in “super-cooperative mode” with law enforcement officials. For those months, the big question was whether the SEC would refer what seemed like a regulatory case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York for criminal proceedings. Eventually it did, leading to the most high-profile arrests linked to the subprime mortgage crisis to date. More

BBC
The FBI says it has arrested 406 property market players as part of its crackdown on mortgage fraud. The arrests include estate agents and loan originators, who help homebuyers to take out loans. Reported mortgage fraud has soared in the past year, with the most common type being mis-statement of assets. Earlier in the day, two former Bear Stearns managers in New York were arrested following the collapse of a fund linked to sub-prime mortgages. They are the first executives facing criminal charges following the crisis. More

WASHINGTON — A U.S. congressman said Wednesday the FBI has found that four of his government computers have been hacked by sources working out of China. Representative Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, said that similar incidents — also originating from China — have taken place on computers of other members of the House and at least one House committee.

A spokesman for Wolf said the four computers in his office were being used by staff members working on human rights issues and that the hacking began in August 2006. Wolf is a long-time critic of the Chinese government’s human rights record. The congressman suggested the problem probably goes further. “If it’s been done in the House, don’t you think that they’re doing the same thing in the Senate?” he asked. More

The technique is called a “roving bug,” and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him. The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published…by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He ruled that the “roving bug” was legal because federal wiretapping law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations that take place near a suspect’s cell phone. More

WASHINGTON (AP) - A House committee chairman said Tuesday he is seeking more documents from the CIA leak probe because of significant disclosures to the FBI by Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff and new details about Cheney’s role in the scandal in a book by a former White House press secretary.

The request to the Justice Department by Rep. Henry Waxman follows a review of edited FBI reports and publication of a book by President Bush’s former spokesman Scott McClellan, who has said he was misled by others, possibly including Cheney, about the role of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in leaking CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

Waxman, D-Calif., sent a letter to the Justice Department after learning that Libby, Cheney’s former top aide, told the FBI that it’s possible he was instructed by Cheney to disseminate information to the press about Plame, the wife of Bush administration war critic Joseph Wilson. More

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Kristi Piehl
Kaaltv.com
A second congressman has called on the FBI to take another look at the case of the so-called ‘Smiley-Face’ killers after a 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS investigation revealed new details about the case late last month. “It has come to my attention that recent press reports indicate new evidence linking the drowning deaths of a large number of college-aged men across the country,” Rep. Michael R. McNulty, D-NY, wrote in a letter to the FBI earlier this month.

“I am aware that the FBI investigated this matter previously, but it appears that some of these cases may be linked. In light of this new evidence, I respectfully request that the FBI re-open its investigation.” McNulty is the second member of congress to contact the FBI regarding the case. At the beginning of May, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., R-Wisconsin, made a similar request of the FBI after seeing our investigation on the national news. Read more
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Mark Frauenfelder
Boingboing.net
A BB reader says: “FBI tries to convince man to infiltrate vegan potluck events to look for terrorists in Minneapolis/St. Paul, site for the 2008 Republican National Committee Convention this summer.”

[University of Minnesota sophomore Paul] Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for [U of M Police Sgt. Erik] Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.

“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

Carroll would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered.

“I’ll pass,” said Carroll.

MSNBC/AP
FBI agents raised concerns about U.S. interrogators mistreating terror detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay during the three years after Sept. 11 but in some cases were slow to report it, an upcoming Justice Department report concludes.

Additionally, in a few isolated cases, FBI agents did not immediately withdraw when they witnessed harsh treatment of detainees who were being questioned, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the report.

The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine is expected to be released Tuesday after more than three years in the making. It is certain to fuel debate over whether the Bush administration knowingly allowed the use of interrogation tactics widely defined as illegal forms of torture. Read more

James Vicini
Mortgage fraud is an escalating problem in the United States, the FBI said on Tuesday in a report that cited the subprime lending crisis as a key contributing factor.

The FBI said it received 46,717 “suspicious activity reports” from financial institutions related to mortgage fraud last year, compared with 35,617 in fiscal 2006 and just 6,936 in fiscal 2003. The government’s fiscal year begins on October 1.

The total dollar loss attributed to mortgage fraud is unknown. But 7 percent of the suspicious activity reports filed in 2007 indicated a specific dollar loss exceeding $813 million, the FBI said. Read more

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William Fisher
IPSnews
In one of the more ironic episodes of the George W. Bush administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week raided the office and home of the senior official in charge of protecting federal whistleblowers on suspicion of whistleblower retaliation within his own agency — while he was investigating possible criminal acts within the White House.

Since 2005, Scott Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel, has been under investigation by the inspector general of the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM), at the behest of the President’s Office of Management and Budget.

OPM’s investigation centres on charges that Bloch retaliated against whistleblowers who complained they were transferred out of Washington for political reasons because they disagreed with Bloch’s policies. Read more

FBI agents investigating government watchdog Scott Bloch have subpoenaed any records that would reveal whether concerns about the 2004 elections prompted him to clear Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of ethics violations. Bloch, the U.S. special counsel who investigates federal employee whistleblower complaints, found no merit to allegations that Rice, then President Bush’s national security adviser, timed some of her trips to boost Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. Read more

washington post

The FBI has withdrawn a secret administrative order seeking the name, address and online activity of a patron of The Internet Archive after the San Francisco-based digital library filed suit to block the action.

It is one of only three known instances in which the FBI has backed off from such a data demand, known as a “national security letter,” or NSL, which is not subject to judicial approval and whose recipient is barred from disclosing the order’s existence. NSLs are served on phone companies, Internet service providers and other electronic communications service providers, but because of the gag order provision, the public has little way to know about them. Read more