Eideard

During an open book exam on agent guidelines covering domestic investigations, “a significant number of FBI employees engaged in some form of cheating or improper conduct,” a Justice Department report has found.

The Office of Inspector General found agents and analysts broke rules by consulting with others about the exam, using and sharing answer sheets and in some instances even using a computer system flaw to reveal the correct answers to questions.

The test was open book, but FBI employees were required to take it on their own and the last question specifically asked each test-taker to certify he or she did not consult other people in arriving at answers.

In some instances, FBI officials became suspicious when employees finished the exam in less than 20 minutes when most employees needed an hour and a half or more…

The report did not give names of employees who are alleged to have cheated, but it said among those are several top level officials at the Washington field office including the assistant director in charge there. The assistant director at the time was Joseph Persichini, who retired before the investigation and disciplinary decisions were finalized.

According to the report, three other top officials in the Washington office acted improperly, including the legal adviser…

The test was only about civil liberties and whether or not agents understood that freedoms, privacy and other rights should not be violated.

Nothing important.

“We don’t need no stinking accountants!”

The FBI has focused its anti-corruption efforts on the U.S.-Mexico border, a top official told a Senate committee.

Kevin L. Perkins, assistant director of the criminal investigative division, testified before a subcommittee of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He said 120 of the 700 agents involved in anti-corruption investigations are assigned to the Southwest border.

Perkins said those agents, working with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, are getting results. In 2009 he said there were more than 100 arrests and 130 state and federal criminal cases.

In one case, Perkins said, agents determined a border inspector had sought the job in order to make money from drug trafficking. The inspector was sentenced to 22 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to import more than 2,000 pounds of marijuana.

After another investigation, government employees working for 12 state, federal and local agencies were charged with drug trafficking, he said, with 84 guilty pleas so far.

Take a nice profitable crime operation like drug-running, it’s to be expected that bribery and corruption of the “good guys” will follow.

In today’s dollars, that would be more like $30,000. Don’t forget, I’m an old cranky geek.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein says she wants answers about a Central Intelligence Agency policy that allows the agency’s employees to moonlight for private companies.

The CIA policy — first reported by POLITICO’s Eamon Javers in a story drawn from a forthcoming book — is also being reviewed by staff members of the House Intelligence Committee, spokeswoman Courtney Littig said.

CIA spokesman George Little on Monday defended the policy, saying that employees’ requests to work for private companies are considered on a case-by-case basis. “The agency reviews requests for outside employment using yardsticks of legality, propriety and, of course, security,” Little said. “There’s a rigorous process to all this — one that’s been in place for decades…”

But longtime agency watchers said they were shocked to learn that agents are allowed to work for private firms — and that the practice raises a number of serious concerns, including the possibility that moonlighting agents will have conflicts of interests.

“I’m surprised, and I think it looks bad,” said law professor John Radsan, a former CIA employee who has written extensively about internal checks on the intelligence community. “Ideally, [agents] should be fully employed, their loyalty should be fully to the government, and they should be looking to make their careers there.”

An FBI official said Monday that the bureau has strict limits on outside work by its employees. “Our agents are prohibited from outside employment, period,” said the official, who asked not to be named…

Feinstein, a California Democrat, has focused on the CIA’s use of contractors before and hammered CIA Director Leon Panetta on the issue during his confirmation hearings last year. The number of CIA contractors doubled between 2001 and 2006, Feinstein said then. Panetta said the situation was bad for morale and that the agency had a “responsibility” to do more intelligence work in-house.

That’s what he said. It appears he’s done nothing about it.

After years of government ethics standards being worth less than the paper they’re printed on, I don’t feel reassured by claims of a “rigorous process”. There’s another process that’s been in place much longer. It’s corruption and cronyism.

TSA agent John Enright, left, returns Steven Frischling’s laptop

The document, which two bloggers published within minutes of each other Dec. 27, was sent by TSA to airlines and airports around the world and described temporary new requirements for screening passengers through Dec. 30, including conducting “pat-downs” of legs and torsos. The document, which was not classified, was posted by numerous bloggers. Information from it was also published on some airline websites.

“They’re saying it’s a security document but it was sent to every airport and airline,” says Steven Frischling, one of the bloggers. “It was sent to Islamabad, to Riyadh and to Nigeria. So they’re looking for information about a security document sent to 10,000-plus people internationally. You can’t have a right to expect privacy after that…”

Frischling, a freelance travel writer and photographer in Connecticut who writes a blog for the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, said the two agents who visited him arrived around 7 p.m. Tuesday, were armed and threatened him with a criminal search warrant if he didn’t provide the name of his source. They also threatened to get him fired from his KLM job and indicated they could get him designated a security risk, which would make it difficult for him to travel and do his job…

When they pulled a subpoena from their briefcase and told him he was legally required to provide the information they requested, he said he needed to contact a lawyer. The agents said they’d sit outside his house until he gave them the information they wanted.

Frischling says he received the document anonymously from someone using a Gmail account and determined, after speaking with an attorney, that he might as well cooperate with the agents since he had little information about the source and there was no federal shield law to protect him.

RTFA. Much would be hilarious excepting for the topic, fear-ridden bureaucrats ready to wipe out an ordinary citizen who believes an informed public makes better decisions.

They screwed up his laptop, they dashed to WalMart to buy a standalone hard drive – which they couldn’t get to work, and on and on.

Some ex-CIA operatives on the front lines during the Bush-era war on terror are reported highly critical of planned U.S. Senate probes into their activities.

Some say the investigations smack of politics and hypocrisy, that congressional leaders knew all along what was going on and that questionable tactics wouldn’t have been used without explicit legal guidance from the Bush administration, Time magazine reported.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., confirmed Thursday that her Senate Intelligence Committee will investigate the CIA’s interrogation and detention programs under the Bush administration.

A former senior CIA official was quoted by Time as saying Feinstein’s investigation would have a “chilling effect on people who are asked to do risky things for this administration.”

Another said staff members will wonder why they are singled out for carrying out Bush administration policies “while those who made those policies are busy writing their memoirs.”

“We were only obeying orders” is the name of the defense. Google “Nuremberg Trials” if you wish to know how successful that was – after World War 2.

Obama is working at being a nice guy – you’ll probably get off with a slap on the wrist, anyway. Next case?