Fbi

"FBI Turns Down Hundreds of Ex-Agents Offering Help" (Nov. 6) indicated that the FBI was turning down offers of help in the current crisis from retired agents while the CIA welcomes such aid. A couple of important points got lost. First, the FBI has brought back, under contract, retired agents with specialized expertise and has another sizable pool of retired agents who are already under contract and have all the necessary security clearances. They are being used as needed. Second, unlike the CIA, the FBI receives enormous assistance from state and local officers.

It's interesting to observe the political storm revolving around the ATF and the Justice Department regarding the happenings at Waco, yet not hear one complaint to date about a former Fountain Valley police officer charged with bank robbery being gunned down by FBI agents in a Mission Viejo shopping complex ("Ex-O.C. Police Officer Shot to Death by FBI," July 25). According to the press reports that I have read, serious questions are raised about how the incident occurred. Why did the confrontation have to take place next to a McDonald's restaurant, which is heavily visited by children?

Mickey Mantle's family was unaware the FBI kept a dossier on the baseball great showing he was threatened by gamblers and blackmailed for having an affair with a woman. "They were dumbfounded the FBI would be looking into Mickey back in the mid-1950s," family lawyer Wayne Miller of Dallas said Monday. "They knew no reason why the FBI should be following them. Merlyn [Mantle's wife] had no idea it was going on at that time."

The FBI is offering a reward up to $50,000 and using a variety of social media platforms in a quest for information it hopes will lead to the arrest of a Massachusetts man charged with helping international terrorists. Being sought is Ahmad Abousamra, a dual U.S. and Syrian citizen, who authorities believe may be living in Aleppo, Syria, with at least one child, a daughter, and an extended family. He uses several aliases. Abousamra, 31, fled the United States in 2006, shortly after being interviewed by the FBI. He was indicted in 2009, charged with conspiracy to provide material support or resources to Al Qaeda.

Re "Agent Faults FBI on 9/11," March 21 I am angered and frightened by FBI Special Agent Harry Samit's testimony, under oath. The picture he painted is one of gross incompetence by many of the very agencies that are charged with the responsibility of preventing another act of terrorism within the United States. It appears that too many people in positions of management are more interested in communicating in ways that protect their jobs rather than the citizens they are hired to serve.

WASHINGTON -- Accused Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told FBI investigators that he and his brother were operating alone and did not receive assistance from outside terrorist groups, officials said Tuesday. A team of federal agents peppered the 19-year-old with questions about the Boston Marathon bombing plot on Monday shortly before a federal magistrate read the charges against him and gave him the “Miranda warning" informing him of his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

BlueToad, a digital publishing company in Florida, said a stolen list of 1 million Apple device IDs came from its computers, not the FBI's as an Internet hacker group has claimed. The company's CEO and president, Paul DeHart, said BlueToad took a look at the stolen data that had been posted online, compared it with the company's data and found that there was a "significant match. " "At that point we knew conclusively that it was our data that'd been compromised," he said in a phone interview, adding that the company was the victim of a cyber attack a week and a half ago. DeHart said BlueToad develops apps for magazine, newspaper and book publishers.  "For now we'd like to avoid disclosing any of our clients," he said.

The story of Wilkinson is starkly chilling in its exposure of FBI paranoia and arrogance. The bureau over a period of decades used a variety of illegal methods to harass him and his patriotic political activities. That this could happen under a number of different Presidents as recently as the 1970s is an astounding indictment of our individual and collective political maturity. We are not as free nor as brave as we think. Thank you, Mr. Wilkinson, for your persistence and your patriotism.

What a worthy report on FBI shenanigans in our state capital ("The G-Man, the Shrimp Scam and Sacramento's Big Sting," by Mark Gladstone and Paul Jacobs, Dec. 11)! It's clear that the taxpayer's crime-fighting dollar is being shortchanged when FBI Special Agent James J. Wedick Jr. opts out of fighting dangerous street crime and/or armed bank robbers so that he can instead dream up schemes to entrap public officials. It's sure a lot safer for Wedick than fighting crime. We know that our public officials are not all choirboys and choirgirls, and we don't need an $80,000-a-year agent- provocateur to tell us that.