Michael Grimm

GOP Rep Michael Grimm: I'd Be 'Very Stupid' To Take Cash Near FBI Building

Ryan J. Reilly | February 3, 2012, 4:25PM

House Speaker John Boehner said Friday that he was "not familiar with the details" of the unfolding campaign finance scandal involving Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY). Let's bring him up to speed.

The New York Times reported this week that Grimm worked closely with Ofer Biton (a top aide to the orthodox Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto) back in 2009 to recruit the rabbi's followers to donate to Grimm's campaign. Together, they collected more than $500,000 for his campaign, helping convince Republican leaders Grimm was a viable candidate.

Now Biton is now under investigation by the FBI, which just happens to be Grimm's former employer. Grimm himself is accused of accepting a cash donation of $5,000 "near the FBI building" and three followers of the rabbi told the New York Times that Grimm or Biton said they would find ways for the campaign to accept donations over the legal limit.

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Islamophobia

Muslim Woman: School Said I Was A Terrorist In Retaliation For Sexual Harassment Complaint

Jillian Rayfield | January 19, 2012, 4:51PM

University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, CT

A Muslim woman is suing the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut for allegedly expelling her and telling the FBI that she was a terrorist, she says in retaliation for a sexual harassment complaint she made against a fellow student.

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Bomb Threats

'Letters From Osama': Chicago Man Accused Of Mailing Fake Nuclear Bomb Threats Signed By Al-Qaeda Leader

Jillian Rayfield | January 6, 2012, 5:46PM

A Chicago man was charged with mailing fake nuclear bomb threats all around the country and signing them "Osama Bin Laden," according to federal officials.

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National Defense Authorization Act

Obama Administration Pushes Back On Liberal Criticism Over NDAA's 'Indefinite Detention'

Ryan J. Reilly | January 6, 2012, 9:30AM

President Barack Obama and Senior Adviser David Axelrod

The Obama administration thinks many in the liberal blogosphere are mistaken in their belief that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by the president on New Year's Eve authorizes the indefinite detention of citizens captured on U.S. soil.

Many progressive and libertarians have argued that the NDAA codifies the president's ability to detain a U.S. citizen captured on American soil until the war on terrorism is declared over. The administration believes that the NDAA doesn't specifically allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens, but concedes that it doesn't specifically ban the practice either.

A senior administration official maintained in an interview with TPM that the NDAA "changes nothing" about the legal question of whether the government could allow for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens captured in the United States.

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FBI

Obama To Basically Ignore Congress' Terrorists-In-Military-Custody Mandate

Ryan J. Reilly | January 5, 2012, 5:44AM

Federal law enforcement officials had been worried about the "uncertainty" that a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would create for agents dealing with a terrorist attack because of the plethora of qualifiers that would send a terrorist suspect into military custody. But the signing statement issued by President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve appears to indicate that it should be business as usual as the administration develops implementation rules for the new provisions over the next 60 days.

Officials like FBI Director Robert Mueller had worried that Section 1022 of the NDAA "lacks clarity" about how law enforcement officials should handle a suspected terrorist at the time of arrest. That section required individuals who weren't citizens or lawful U.S. residents who have had ties to al-Qaeda, the Taliban or "associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners" to be placed into the military system -- facts that could be difficult to determine right off the bat ("They don't wear al-Qaeda hats," one law enforcement official official told TPM.)

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Amish

12 Indicted On Hate Crimes Charges For Hair Cutting Assaults Led By Break-Off Amish Group

Ryan J. Reilly | December 20, 2011, 5:21PM

Johnny Mullet, Lester Mullet, Daniel Mullet, Levi Miller and Eli Miller wait to make their pleas in Holmes County Municipal Court in Millersburg, Ohio. October 19, 2011. (AP Photo)

A federal grand jury in Ohio returned a seven-count indictment on Tuesday that charges 10 men and two women with federal crimes related to what the feds say were religiously motivated attacks of rival Amish factions.

Several members of the Mullet breakaway clan -- Samuel Mullet Sr., Johnny S. Mullet, Daniel S. Mullet, Levi F. Miller, Eli M. Miller, Emanuel Schrock and Lester S. Mullet -- were arrested by the FBI in late November. Tuesday's grand jury indictment includes charges against Lester Miller, Raymond Miller, Freeman Burkholder, Anna Miller and Linda Shrock.

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Kevin Harpham

White Supremacist Harpham Gets 32 Years For Failed MLK Parade Bomb Attack

Ryan J. Reilly | December 20, 2011, 4:05PM

Kevin Harpham, the white supremacist who admitted to plotting a racially-motivated attack on a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Washington in January 2011, as was sentenced to 32 years in federal prison on Tuesday.

Harpham, the Justice Department announced, will serve the rest of his life under court supervision. He pleaded guilty to two counts of a superseding indictment that charged him with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction as well as a hate crimes charge.

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National Defense Authorization Act

So You Think You've Arrested A Terrorist: TPM's Incomplete Guide To Detainee Custody Under The NDAA

Ryan J. Reilly | December 20, 2011, 11:20AM

President Barack Obama's decision not to veto the National Defense Authorization Act over controversial and unclear provisions regarding the handling of certain kinds of terror suspects will leave law enforcement officials scrambling to rewrite the rules for how they respond to suspected terrorist incidents.

Once the bill is signed into law, the Obama administration will have 60 days to redraw rules on how everything will be implemented and try to clear up what the White House called the "uncertainty" that the law "will create for our counterterrorism professionals."

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Robert Mueller

Obama Enrages Civil Liberties Groups By Dropping Detainee Veto Threat

Ryan J. Reilly | December 14, 2011, 6:03PM

President Barack Obama

Despite concerns from the law enforcement community that provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act that direct terrorism suspects into the military system could hamper national security, the White House said Wednesday that President Barack Obama would not veto the legislation.

Claiming credit for last minute changes to the legislation, White House spokesman Jay Carney said in statement that the administration had "succeeded in prompting the authors of the detainee provisions to make several important changes, including the removal of problematic provisions" after "intensive engagement" by administration officials and Obama himself.

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Congress

Mueller: Congress' Terror Detainee Deal Would Create 'Uncertainty' During Arrests

Ryan J. Reilly | December 14, 2011, 12:15PM

As of Tuesday, the federal government wasn't quite ready to render a verdict on the compromise reached by members of Congress on a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act which guides terrorist suspects into the military justice system. But FBI Director Robert Mueller indicated Wednesday that the administration still has concerns, though it's still unclear if the White House will make good on a previous veto threat.

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Indefinite Detentions

Civil Liberties Advocates See Political Shackles In Revised Detention Bill

Ryan J. Reilly | December 13, 2011, 2:47PM

President Barack Obama

The Obama administration is continuing to review a compromise struck between the House and Senate on the National Defense Authorization Act that congressional leaders believe solves the issues over the detention of terrorism suspects that caused the White House to issue a veto threat. But civil liberties groups have already given the proposal their assessment, and they don't like what they see.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) announced the changes Monday night, saying that the conference report "provides a number of additional assurances that there will be no interference with civilian interrogations or other law enforcement activities." A Justice Department spokesman told TPM they were still assessing the compromise, while a White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Civil liberties groups, on the other hand, contend the changes aren't enough. Take this language, added to the bill last night:

'Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect the existing criminal enforcement and national security authorities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or any other domestic law enforcement agency with regard to a covered person, regardless of whether such covered person is held in military custody.'

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FBI

FBI Tries To Reassure Muslims It's Taking Training Material Issue Seriously

Ryan J. Reilly | December 7, 2011, 3:47PM

FBI Agents

FBI representatives met once again with Muslim and Arab-American leaders at Bureau headquarters on Monday to update them on the progress they have made to rid their counterterrorism training programs of anti-Muslim material.

One participant described the meeting, organized by FBI's Community Relations Division, as "lengthy and positive."

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FBI

Muslim Officials Want Answers From FBI Over Data Collection During Outreach Efforts

Ryan J. Reilly | December 1, 2011, 5:45PM

The American Civil Liberties Union charged Thursday that the FBI is using the "guise" of "community outreach" to the Muslim community to "collect and illegally store intelligence information on Americans' political and religious beliefs" in violation of the Privacy Act.

Bureau officials counter that the latest batch of documents obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act are just standard internal reports intended to help manage the FBI's resources and make sure agents are following protocol.

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Rezwan Ferdaus

Judge: It Doesn't Matter If The Remote Controlled Plane Plot Would Have Worked

Ryan J. Reilly | November 28, 2011, 1:32PM

The plot Rezwan Ferdaus allegedly developed to fly remote controlled planes carrying C-4 explosives into the Pentagon and the dome of the Capitol might have been far-fetched, but a federal judge has ruled he's still a danger to the community and agreed to the government's request to detain him.

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New York City

Lieberman Wants Google To Let Users Flag 'Terrorist Content' On Blogging Platform

Ryan J. Reilly | November 22, 2011, 3:08PM

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT)

When he wasn't smoking pot with the New York Police Department's confidential informant or trying to manually cut off the tip of his penis, "lone wolf" terror suspect Jose Pimentel was running a jihadist website on Google's Blogger platform.

Now Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) wants Google to implement a policy explicitly banning terrorist material on their Blogger servers and set up a YouTube-style "flag" system to bring such material to Google's attention.

TPM obtained a letter sent by Lieberman, chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, to Google CEO Larry Page on Tuesday calling for him to make some changes to their policy.

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Jose Pimentel

'Lone Wolf' Terror Suspect Pimentel Got High With NYPD Informant, Tried To Circumcise Himself

Ryan J. Reilly | November 21, 2011, 11:07PM

Jose Pimentel, the "lone wolf" arrested in the terror sting run by the New York Police Department, smoked marijuana with the NYPD's cooperating informant in the case, an official familiar with the sting tells TPM.

An official with the local prosecutor's office said they were personally unaware of the marijuana detail on Monday afternoon. The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment. The marijuana detail was also reported by the New York Times on Monday night.

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FBI

FBI Was Concerned NYPD's 'Lone Wolf' Case Raised Issues Of Entrapment

Ryan J. Reilly | November 21, 2011, 3:35PM

Jose Pimentel wasn't exactly hiding.

The 27-year-old accused of plotting to attack New York with pipe bombs was operating a website that espoused his beliefs in committing terror against the U.S. and was relatively well known in law enforcement circles.

Federal authorities passed on the case -- with one source telling TPM on Sunday night that the FBI passed several times, and an official telling the Associated Press on Monday that Pimentel "didn't have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own." That's leaving observers wondering what exactly the feds didn't like about the case and setting up another squabble in the long-running turf war between the New York Police Department and the FBI.

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Jose Pimentel

Feds Passed On NYC 'Lone-Wolf' Terror Case

Ryan J. Reilly | November 21, 2011, 9:37AM

Updated: 11:43AM

Federal authorities take terrorism cases pretty seriously, even when those plots are pretty far fetched. So when the FBI declines to take a case handed to them on a platter by local authorities -- on multiple occasions -- it suggests something isn't quite right.

Sources familiar with the case against Jose Pimentel -- accused of planning an attack with pipe bombs -- told TPM Sunday night that federal law enforcement declined several times to take the case out of local authorities' hands. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal also report that the FBI passed because of issues with the case, setting up the rare occurrence of a local district attorney handling a terrorism prosecution case.

At a press conference at City Hall on Sunday night -- featuring a video of police blowing up a car to show television viewers what could have happened -- NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly suggested that the Justice Department was aware of the case. Despite the fact that his investigators had been on Pimentel for two years, he said they had to act without the feds because the case, involving a bomb constructed out of a clock, elbow piping and Christmas lights game provided by the NYPD's source, came together quickly at the end.

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FBI

Holder: Anti-Muslim Training At FBI, DOJ Can 'Undermine' Outreach Efforts

Ryan J. Reilly | November 8, 2011, 1:20PM

Anti-Muslim training materials used by FBI and Justice Department personnel are "inconsistent" with DOJ's Muslim outreach efforts and can undermine such relationships, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday.

Positions expressed in the materials -- including that all Muslims are likely terrorist sympathizers and that the Prophet Muhammad was a "cult leader" -- "do not reflect the views of the Justice Department and the FBI," Holder said.

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J. Edgar Hoover

Hoover Worried 'Lice-Covered Ferret' Journalist Would Report He Was Gay

Ryan J. Reilly | November 7, 2011, 10:51AM

Former FBI officials are worried that a new film is going to leave people thinking that former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was gay. Decades ago, Hoover himself worried a Pulitzer prize winning journalist would report it.

The Los Angeles Times got a hold of the FBI file on former reporter Jack Nelson through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, revealing that Hoover was pretty panicked that Nelson was going to report he was "homosexual."

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Eric Cantor

TN Man Arrested For Threatening Cantor's Family

Ryan J. Reilly | November 3, 2011, 6:26PM

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)

Glendon Swift, a 62-year-old Tennessee resident, was arrested by the FBI late yesterday for allegedly threatening Rep. Eric Cantor and his family.

The FBI says Swift left two "screaming, profanity-laden" voicemail messages with Cantor's Virginia office on Oct. 27 and threatened Cantor, his daughter and his wife.

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Mansour Arbabsiar

MUGSHOT: Manssor Arbabsiar, Arrested In Plot To Kill Saudi Ambassador

Ryan J. Reilly | November 3, 2011, 4:45PM

TPM has obtained the mugshot the U.S. Marshal's Service took of Manssor Arbabsiar, the Iranian-American car dealer from Texas accused of trying to hire a man he thought was affiliated with a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

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FBI

FBI Calling In West Point To Help Crackdown On Anti-Muslim Counterterrorism Training

Ryan J. Reilly | November 3, 2011, 2:40PM

In an effort to stomp out anti-Muslim counterterrorism training at the the FBI, the bureau is calling in reinforcements.

Spencer Ackerman reports over at Wired that the FBI is turning to the Army's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, a request that "represents a frank admission from the FBI that it requires outside help to reform."

The bureau, Ackerman reports, reached out to Bill Braniff, a retired Army captain who directs Practitioner Education at West Point. He "spent much of October in meetings at Bureau Headquarters in Washington D.C. designing what a source familiar with the process describes as 'guidelines for objectionable material' to exclude from agent training." He continues:

In its eight-year history, the CTC has built a reputation as a non-ideological haven for rigorous, data-driven counterterrorism research. It compiled perhaps the most thorough profile ever of the foreign fighters that flocked to Iraq, based on captured military documents. Its monthly newsletter, the CTC Sentinel, is widely read in counterterrorism circles. Not only does CTC teach the Army's cadets at West Point, who will have to distinguish between Muslim civilians and insurgents in warzones, it consults for state and local police -- and the FBI.

An FBI official told TPM that the Army's role in the review is a bit "overstated." In a statement provided by the bureau, the FBI said a "core review team included FBI and non-FBI personnel with academic training in areas of Islamic studies and Arab history" which "established guidelines to provide concrete enterprise-wide guidance on the training of counterterrorism and countering violent extremism topics."

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Georgia

Feds: Four Members Of Georgia 'Fringe Militia Group' Plotted Biological Attack On Citizens, Government Officials

Ryan J. Reilly | November 2, 2011, 6:30AM

Four Georgia men who belonged to a "fringe militia group" were arrested by FBI agents on Tuesday and charged with plotting an attack against U.S. citizens and federal employees using the biological toxin ricin.

Authorities say 73-year-old Frederick Thomas of Cleveland; 67-year-old Dan Roberts; 65-year-old Ray H. Adams; and 68-year-old Samuel J. Crump, all of Toccoa, Ga. began meeting in March 2011 as part of a covert group that called itself, well, the "covert group."

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Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid

Accused Syrian Spy Says Feds Botched Interpretation, Used Google Translate

Ryan J. Reilly | October 28, 2011, 1:30PM

Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid With Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad

Late update: A federal judge ruled Soueid should be detained.

Federal authorities botched a translation of a conversation between accused Syrian spy Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid and his wife and even used Google Translate for some interpretations, his lawyers claimed in a court filing.

Lawyer Haytham Faraj said the government "is attempting to peddle an argument about aliases intended to make Mr. Soueid appear to be deceptive, dangerous and a flight risk." The U.S. government, Faraj continued, "has demonstrated a serious deficit in its ability to translate recorded conversations from Arabic into English."

"Mr. Soueid's name in Arabic is spelled and written as so: 'سويد هيثم أنس محمد' It is read from right to left. The script representing the Arabic name above was prepared using Google translator by simply typing the words Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid," Faraj wrote.

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FBI

FBI Report Labels Insane Clown Posse Fans Potential Gang Threat

Jillian Rayfield | October 28, 2011, 10:42AM

F*cking Juggalos, how do they work?

The FBI thinks that fans of the rap group Insane Clown Posse are a potential gang threat, Spencer Ackerman of Wired reports.

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Amish

Amish Haircutting Mob Now Under Investigation By The FBI

Jillian Rayfield | October 27, 2011, 10:44AM