The files released by the FBI today relating to Michael Jackson don't appear to contain too much new information, but they do reveal the extent to which the feds helped Santa Barbara prosecutors go after him for child molestation.
The FBI has released 333 pages of files on Michael Jackson. We're reading them now and will do a post later this afternoon. But if you want to take a look as well, please let us know what you find.
Chicago thinks it's so fancy with its cartoon-hating Youtube terrorists. Pfft. New Yorkers don't have time for penny ante stuff like that. Nothing less than providing arms to Hezbollah will do for us!
Barack Obama is telling the feds to stop, like, totally freaking out, man, and take it easy on medical marijuana.
Last month, we found out the FBI destroyed a file on Walter Cronkite despite its obligation to retain historically significant records. Gawker has learned that the file involved an extortion investigation. What is it with CBS luminaries and extortion, anyway?
Two years ago, the FBI destroyed documents that "may have" contained information about Walter Cronkite. What documents? We don't know. Why were they destroyed? Good question!
There are many perils to life in Congress: the humidity, town halls yelling... But worst must be when screw-loose ex-staffers go over to the opposition and accuse you of betraying your country to Turkey while having a lesbian affair.
Recent reports about "mock executions" and other incendiary interrogation tactics have given the CIA a bad, bad name. Thus, President Obama and his White House are taking things into their own hands. But what does that mean?
We like to avail ourselves of the Freedom of Information of Act now and again, because sometimes we find FBI memos about how the Green Party is a terrorist organization because we don't get too many libruls here in Georgia.
The idea that Eliot Spitzer's downfall was engineered by the financial industry whose profits he threatened with regulation has made the rounds on the internet for a while. Now Vanity Fair is siccing two investigative reporters on the story.
Just a few weeks ago, the city was supposedly experiencing an unprecedented crime wave. Apparently the NYPD turned things around in no time, since newly released FBI stats show that New York has the lowest crime rate of the 25 largest cities in the country. Of the 261 cities with more than 100,000 residents, New York ranked 246th; violent crime dropped four percent last year and murders were down 21.1 percent. So, you know, enjoy not getting murdered when you go out this evening. [NYP]
New Orleans had 64 killings per 100,000 residents in 2008, far outdistancing its nearest competitor, St. Louis. Baton Rouge came in at No. 7. [New York Times]
The FBI has arrested Orange County financier Danny Pang on money-laundering charges, as his firm, PEMGroup, faces an SEC investigation. It's a classic law-enforcement move, like when Eliot Ness caught Al Capone on tax evasion.
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama made audience members faint on a near-daily basis with his astounding coolness. Now that he's president, he's turning his swoon-inducing powers to federal employees.
The FBI says the Chicago Tribune's Dec. 5 ROD BLAGOJEVICH scandal scoop didn't affect the timing of their Dec. 9 arrest, as had earlier been reported. That dude was so dirty they could just arrest him pretty much whenever, okay? [WSJ]
The national mood demands businessmen in handcuffs. And here's one already: Federal agents have arrested Bernie Madoff, the 70-year-old founder of a Wall Street brokerage, accusing him of bilking $50 billion from investors.
So there won't be so many wealthy bankers as usual at the Miami Art Basel this week. But people can at least expect to see lots of top execs and clients of the fair's sponsor, Swiss banking giant UBS, right? Sadly for already-despondent artists and dealers, it looks like a few of them may be well-advised to stay away, too: The FBI is reportedly heading down to Miami to mount a sting operation to ensnare a certain breed of tax-evader: Those for whom art collecting is a convenient method of surreptitiously moving vast sums of cash around, and if you have an anonymous Swiss bank account, even better!
Have trouble getting to work in New York this morning? That's probably because the FBI issued a memo yesterday warning of a "plausible but unsubstantiated" report that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the subway over the holiday season. Happy Thanksgiving! [AP]
Ehud "The Analyzer" Tenenbaum, who became world-famous when he and a number of fellow Israeli and California teens successfully exploited a vulnerability in Sun Solaris to gain access to computers at Nasa, Andrews Air Force Base and the Department of Defense, is in jail. Earlier this month he was arrested in Montreal on suspicion of having helped defraud credit card companies of $1.8 million. Wired dug up a slickly produced, pretty entertaining video produced by the FBI a year after the intrusion.I happened to be in Tel Aviv when Tenenbaum turned himself in to Israeli authorities on the day he was set to report for compulsory military service — he was treated as something of a national hero, a symbol of Israel's technology prowess, with even then Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu praising him as "damn good." Tenenbaum ended up with probation and community service instead of jail time. So it wasn't with much surprise when I read Tenenbaum's mother calling the arrest a frame-up by the FBI. The truth? The prepaid credit card scam described is a classic modus operandi in Canadian tweaker circles, at least as described in Zero Day Threat. And Tenenbaum certainly had to chops to pull it off, with the cast of fellow suspects who've been released probably participating as mules to make transactions. So once again, I'm betting Canadian dollars to donuts from Tim Horton's on meth.
The Smoking Gun got hold of the FBI's list of jewelry that pixieish actress Anne Hathaway (referred to only as a "girlfriend" or "individual") had to surrender because her ex-boyfriend, holy swindler Raffaello Follieri, bought it for her with his fraudulent proceeds. He was very generous with other people's money! There are a dozen items on the list, which must be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Money is no object when investors are paying unknowingly! The full list, Rolexes and all:
