Department Of Justice U S

Back in the heady '70s, when alleged drug baron Charles "Little Nut" Miller was living in Jamaica's slums, he was Cecil Connor, a political enforcer. That was more than a decade before the U.S. government indicted him, then protected him as a key federal witness who helped put two gang leaders in prison for life, only to have him emerge nearly a decade later as one of Washington's worst nightmares. Today, Miller is the target of one of the U.S.

The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department. The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department's 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp.

In his farewell speech in the Great Hall of the Justice Department nearly two years ago, James B. Comey, the outgoing deputy attorney general, paid tribute to the work of the department on his watch, and the "reservoir of trust and credibility" its thousands of employees had built up with the public over the years. "It doesn't make me worry about leaving," he said, "because this institution ... was in great shape when I got here and will be in great shape when I'm gone."

The Justice Department prosecutor appointed this week to examine the CIA's interrogation program will revisit long-dormant abuse cases involving the agency's civilian contractors, bringing new attention to a little-known but controversial element of the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Civilian contractors used by the CIA at secret overseas facilities were accused of detainee abuses and deaths in a series of cases in the years following the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but only one was ever prosecuted.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions. Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases.

A former U.S. attorney general called for a federal investigation into the death of an investigative reporter who had been looking at alleged Justice Department corruption. Joseph D. Casolaro, 44, of Fairfax, Va., was found dead Saturday in his Martinsburg, W.Va., hotel room, with his wrists slashed. Casolaro had warned friends and family that his investigation could threaten his life.

Eight Ivy League universities agreed Wednesday not to conspire in determining financial aid for students after the Justice Department charged them with antitrust violations in their assistance programs. But the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the ninth school named in the unprecedented government action, refused to sign the consent decree that would settle the civil suit and will go to trial.

The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 surveillance efforts went beyond the widely publicized warrantless wiretapping program, a government report disclosed Friday, encompassing additional secretive activities that created "unprecedented" spying powers. The report also raised new questions about how the Bush White House kept key Justice Department officials in the dark as it launched the surveillance program.

Gizelle Studevent was a 13-year-old eighth-grader at prestigious La Jolla Country Day School when the harassment began. She returned from a basketball tournament to find an unsigned note in her suitcase: Addressed to "Senorita," it mocked the girl's skills on the court and suggested she go home to Mexico. Over more than two years, an anonymous band of bullies tormented Gizelle. Their acts grew increasingly cruel -- on the Internet, in notes and around school. Finally, she transferred.

washington -- The Justice Department is putting the final touches on regulations that could give Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales important new sway over death penalty cases in California and other states, including the power to shorten the time that death row inmates have to appeal convictions to federal courts.

In a quiet event during an otherwise well-publicized visit to Los Angeles this week, U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Jr. reached out to local Muslim American youths, calling on them to work with the government to fight violent extremism and pledging that the Justice Department would reinvigorate enforcement of civil rights and work to advance religious freedom.

The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 surveillance efforts went beyond the widely publicized warrantless wiretapping program, a government report disclosed Friday, encompassing additional secretive activities that created "unprecedented" spying powers. The report also raised new questions about how the Bush White House kept key Justice Department officials in the dark as it launched the surveillance program.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions. Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases.

Karl Rove will be interviewed today as part of a criminal investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys under President George W. Bush, two sources say. Rove, a former senior aide to Bush, will be questioned by Connecticut prosecutor Nora Dannehy, who in September was named to examine whether former Justice Department and White House officials lied or obstructed justice in connection with the dismissal of federal prosecutors in 2006. Robert Luskin, a lawyer for Rove, declined to comment.

Rep. Jane Harman denied Monday that she had contacted the Justice Department to seek leniency for employees of a pro-Israeli lobbying organization under investigation for espionage. The Venice Democrat also said that she has never been told that she was involved in the FBI's probe of former officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

In the annals of capital partisanship, their names are boldfaced: the candidates for America's highest civil rights post who never got confirmed. During the last Democratic administration, conservatives succeeded in blocking Senate approval of Lani Guinier and Bill Lann Lee to head the civil rights division at the Justice Department. Now they're gearing up to put Thomas Perez, a Maryland lawyer and President Obama's nominee for the job, through the grinder.

Just weeks after President Bush was inaugurated for a second term in January 2005, his White House and the Justice Department had pretty much settled on a plan to "push out" some of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys. But which ones? D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, came up with a checklist. He rated each of the prosecutors with criteria that appeared to value political allegiance as much as job performance. He recommended retaining "strong U.S. attorneys who have .

On a quiet cul-de-sac overlooking the Pacific where personal paradises sell for millions, homeowners are digesting an unsettling lesson: Fat wallets make for strange bedfellows. And moneyed neighborhoods don't get much stranger than Malibu's tree-lined Zumirez Drive. On the upside, sunsets and city lights sparkle across the water on summer evenings. Homeowners can ride golf carts down to their private beach.

Thomas Perez is Maryland's highest-ranking Latino, but his selection as the nation's leading civil rights enforcer has provoked sharp criticism from some Latino civil rights advocates. The criticism isn't directed at Perez, the state's secretary of labor and a first-generation Dominican American, or his qualifications.

For the last eight years, the Justice Department and the Bush administration were relatively quiet on the issue of race, its place within the social fabric of America and the enforcement of civil rights. But on Wednesday, Eric H. Holder Jr.