Homeland Security
Lax oversight in the Salt Lake City FBI office could be detrimental to national security.
After nearly a yearlong investigation, including interviews with FBI informants, Lori Prichard and Kelly Just report on the corruption inside the SLC FBI offices. These whistleblowers were interviewed as part of a yearlong investigation by KSL News, which was able to corroborate much of what each source reported by conducting individual interviews without the knowledge…
Read MoreThe New Mafia
The Daily investigates the increasing number of Mexican drug cartels in American suburbs. The team was led by reporter Josh Bernstein and “spent six months traveling” through Mexico to document how the “drug cartels are becoming ‘The New Mafia’ in America.” Smugglers bring illegal immigrants into the country and hold them in “drop houses,” which…
Read MoreU.S. has approved billions in business with blacklisted countries
Despite sanctions and trade embargoes, over the past decade the United States government has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, an examination by Jo Becker of The New York Times has found. Nearly 10,000 licenses for deals involving such countries…
Read MoreThai Workers Victims of Human Trafficking In Utah
Lee Davidson reported how Thai workers recruited to work on Utah pig and chicken farms were victims of human trafficking. Read “A Story of Modern Slavery in Utah.”
Read MorePost series reveals national security system too large to manage
The Washington Post’s “Top Secret America” series investigates the U.S. national security and intelligence system that is “so big, so complex and so hard to manage, no one really knows if it’s fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping its citizens safe.” The project, nearly two years in the making, includes detailed interactive graphics and maps.
Read MoreNominee’s links to TSA contractors raise ethics concerns
Last week, President Obama nominated Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding to head the Transportation Security Administration, but Harding’s ties to several TSA contractors via Harding Security, a firm he founded in 2003, have raised ethics concerns. “A review of Harding Security’s business activities by CongressDaily showed that of 21 companies listed on the firm’s…
Read MoreQuestionable individuals retain U.S. pilots licenses
Analysis of a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) database made available to ABCNews.com showed that “a notorious drug kingpin, a convicted arms trafficker and several other individuals linked to aviation-connected crimes continue to hold FAA pilots licenses,” according to a report by Eric Longabardi and Joseph Rhee. The findings raise questions in the efforts of the…
Read MoreConvenience store owners targeted by U.S. attorney’s office
Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.) reports that documents obtained by the paper show “the U.S. attorney’s office in Oxford targeted convenience store operators in north Mississippi, many of Middle Eastern descent, despite a lack of any connection to terrorism.” While no links to terrorism were found, the “Convenience Store Initiative” netted other criminal…
Read MoreHomeland security funds wasted across California
G.W. Schulz of California Watch found widespread waste and mismanagement of homeland security grants awarded to agencies throughout the state of California. Schulz reviewed thousands of pages of documents from state monitoring reports and found scores of problems and questionable purchases.
Read MoreHarsh policing tactics employed during RNC assessed
G.W. Schulz of the Center for Investigative Reporting investigated the policing tactics used during Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. last year. “Officials took unprecedented advantage of new laws to halt potential subversives before they attack. But the effort resulted in heavy-handed tactics, according to interviews and documents obtained by the Center for Investigative…
Read More