I think the most comprehensive coverage of this story has been by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.

Christian Science Monitor asks: How did Ivins keep his security clearance??

FBI director Robert Mueller is meeting with Senator Leahy this afternoon to brief him on the case.

John Amato at C&L is covering the story and promises to keep posting about it.

Here we go with those pesky scientists again….

From the Washington Post:

The FBI eventually focused on Ivins, whom federal prosecutors were planning to indict when he committed suicide last week. In interviews yesterday, knowledgeable officials asserted that Ivins had the skills and access to equipment needed to turn anthrax bacteria into an ultra-fine powder that could be used as a lethal weapon. Court documents and tapes also reveal a therapist’s deep concern that Ivins, 62, was homicidal and obsessed with the notion of revenge.

Yet, colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time.

“I really don’t think he’s the guy. I say to the FBI, ‘Show me your evidence,’ ” said Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, on the grounds of the sprawling Army fort in Frederick. “A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons.”

Mining public records…….. like your phone, email, credit cards……. what country is this again??

The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.

Currently, FBI agents need reasons — such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials say, would let agents open terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, are deemed suspicious.

More at the Detroit Free Press

It’s gotten to where the mention of ’subpoena’ means nothing any more. But that may change. It will be interesting to see how Attorney General Mukasey reacts to the request.

From Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (via TPM):

Oversight Committee Subpoenas Justice Department for Plame Documents

Today, the Oversight Committee issued a subpoena to Attorney General Mukasey compelling the production of FBI interview reports of Vice President Cheney and President Bush and other documents regarding the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.

So what…….another hearing, more testimony, no consequences.

The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday.

Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the privacy breach by FBI agents and lawyers occurred a year before the bureau enacted sweeping new reforms to prevent future lapses.

Details on the abuses will be outlined in the coming days in a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The report is a follow-up to an audit by the inspector general a year ago that found the FBI demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances between 2003 and 2005.

Mueller, noting senators’ concerns about Americans’ civil and privacy rights, said the new report “will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March.” The similarities, he said, are because the time period of the two studies “predates the reforms we now have in place.”

More at AOL News

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does-and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty’six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

“We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,” says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.

Full article at Progressive Magazine

Have we officially became a nation of bed-wetters or what?

Enlarging and maintaining a biometric database on U.S. citizens is “important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in.”

Kind of a moot argument, isn’t it? I mean since terrorism will always be ongoing from here on out, won’t those same children be located in far off countries, armed, fighting them over there so that we don’t have to here?

The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.

But it’s an issue that raises major privacy concerns — what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans.

The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information — from palm prints to eye scans.

The FBI is reviewing the latest videotape released by al-Qaida. In the recording, U.S.-born Adam Gadahn, spokesman for the terrorist network, “urged its fighters to attack President Bush when he visits the Middle East later this week.”

Has Mr. Johndroe been in a coma since 2003? Would someone mind bringing him up to speed on Bush’s Iraq debacle? Lots of people get upset when you illegally invade their country, kill their neighbors and bring about ruin on a grand scale. And for what? It’s been established that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. They do, however, have those massive oil fields that US oil companies drool over at the prospect of controlling. And don’t these same companies control Bush and Cheney?

I can see how people would be pissed.

The Bush administration, (you know, the people that put CORRUPTION in the word corruption.), are siding with the Justice Department in their attempt to have the SCOTUS toss out a lower court ruling that, ultimately, will hinder investigations into corruption cases within Congress. Specifically, the request arrives from the FBI investigations of disgraced democrat, William Jefferson, of Louisiana.

Gives one pause, doesn’t it? I mean, what if the conservative-leaning, GOP-butt-licking SCOTUS sides with the lower court on this? For the aforementioned cases, and any new charges of corruption that might (or rather, probably will) arise in the near future, would these participants be more likely to “wriggle off the hook”? Something to ponder.

High court asked to review Congress raid

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to toss out a lower court ruling that says the FBI was wrong to raid Democratic Rep. William Jefferson’s office, a decision the Bush administration argues will hinder corruption investigations of Congress.

In an appeal filed this week, government lawyers said that only the nation’s highest court can decide whether the 18-hour raid was an unconstitutional breach of congressional authority or a proper tactic in a lengthy corruption inquiry.

“Only this court can resolve this important question,” the Justice Department wrote in its 28-page appeal, filed Wednesday. “Until it does so, investigations of corruption in the nation’s capital and elsewhere will be seriously and perhaps even fatally stymied.”

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation’s telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

It’s a “comprehensive wiretap system that intercepts wire-line phones, cellular phones, SMS and push-to-talk systems,” says Steven Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor and longtime surveillance expert.

DCSNet is a suite of software that collects, sifts and stores phone numbers, phone calls and text messages. The system directly connects FBI wiretapping outposts around the country to a far-reaching private communications network.

Many of the details of the system and its full capabilities were redacted from the documents acquired by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but they show that DCSNet includes at least three collection components, each running on Windows-based computers.

The $10 million DCS-3000 client, also known as Red Hook, handles pen-registers and trap-and-traces, a type of surveillance that collects signaling information — primarily the numbers dialed from a telephone — but no communications content. (Pen registers record outgoing calls; trap-and-traces record incoming calls.)

DCS-6000, known as Digital Storm, captures and collects the content of phone calls and text messages for full wiretap orders.

A third, classified system, called DCS-5000, is used for wiretaps targeting spies or terrorists.

More at Wired