Government Misconduct

The federal government illegally seized confidential drug test results of dozens of Major League Baseball players and must now return the records, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. "This was an obvious case of deliberate overreaching by the government in an effort to seize data" it was not entitled to have, Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for an 11-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. During an investigation of illegal steroid sales by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a private lab in Northern California known as BALCO, the government sought the results of confidential drug tests of 10 players, including former San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

The secret CIA program to assassinate top Al Qaeda leaders was outsourced in 2004 to Blackwater USA, the private security contractor whose operations in Iraq prompted intense scrutiny, according to two former intelligence officials familiar with the events. The North Carolina-based company was given operational responsibility for targeting suspected terrorist commanders and was awarded millions of dollars for training and weaponry, but the program was canceled before any missions were conducted, the two officials said.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich touched off his first term with a note of defiance Wednesday, promising to vigorously pursue misconduct by public officials, restructure the office to spend less money on outside counsel and possibly even keep an eye on the L.A. Police Department.

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.

The news editor at Sri Lanka's investigative Sunday Leader newspaper was driving to work in January when she ran into a traffic jam a few hundred yards from the office. Naturally, she investigated. Almost immediately, she saw the body of her boss, friend and editor in chief, Lasantha Wickrematunge, being loaded into a white van near his battered, bloodstained car. Witnesses later reported that several gunmen on motorcycles had carried out the attack.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to launch an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation programs under President George W. Bush, setting the stage for a sweeping examination of some of most secretive and controversial operations in recent agency history.

Alaska Atty. Gen. Talis Colberg, who defended Gov. Sarah Palin's administration in the "Troopergate" abuse-of-power investigation, resigned Tuesday in what he said was the "best interest" of the state. The move came less than a week after an acrimonious showdown with the Legislature, which found the governor's husband and nine state employees, including several top administration aides, in contempt over their delay in responding to subpoenas in the investigation.

A former Border Patrol officer said Thursday that constant demands to meet monthly arrest quotas led agents in the Inland Empire to cruise streets, bus stops and even medical clinics looking for illegal immigrants.

Interior Department officials ignored key scientific findings when they limited water flows in the Grand Canyon to optimize generation of electric power there, risking damage to the ecology of the spectacular landmark, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post. A Jan. 15 memo written by Grand Canyon National Park Supt. Steve Martin suggests that the department produced a flawed environmental assessment to defend its actions against environmentalists.

Even by the standards of politics in Southeast Los Angeles County, where investigations of politicians are common, Bell Gardens City Councilman Mario Beltran seemed particularly adept at finding himself in the cross hairs of detectives, prosecutors and even federal agents. For the last 2 1/2 years, the 31-year-old politician had seemed to skate on the edge: In 2006, Beltran was found unconscious on the floor of a downtown L.A. hotel frequented by prostitutes.