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FBI Under Pressure to Explain Drone Use, as Obama Names New Director

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

As President Obama nominates a new FBI director, the bureau is coming under rising pressure from lawmakers to explain the limits of its recently disclosed drone fleet.

Civil liberties-minded senators on both sides of the aisle have fired off sharply worded letters and statements in recent days criticizing the FBI for deploying surveillance drones without clear guidance on how to protect privacy rights.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the latest to scrutinize the bureau, sending a letter on Thursday to outgoing Director Robert Mueller asking a string of questions about his agency’s drone use.

“I am disturbed by the revelation that the FBI has unilaterally decided to begin using drone surveillance technology without a governance policy, and thus without the requisite assurances that the constitutional rights of Americans are being protected,” Paul wrote.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senator Rand Paul: We Can’t Trust the Fed’s Clandestine Services (+video)

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Senator Rand Paul appeared on Sirius XM Patriot 125 and, in a wide-ranging interview with Mike Church, hammered the National Intelligence Director James Clapper for lying to Congress. Paul contends that that creates trust issues regarding anything the clandestine services tell Americans:

You know, in March of this year, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper came to the Senate and he was asked directly by Senator Wyden, “Are you collecting data on American citizens,” and he said, “No.” And interestingly, he’d been prepped for the questions. Senator Wyden’s office called him in advance and said, “We’re going to ask you are you collecting data on Americans.” So wasn’t not like he fumbled around and kind of gave a wrong answer, he just decided to lie.

When he was caught in the lie he said well I said the least untruthful thing I could think of. Well, that does make us a little bit skeptical of what they’re saying.

Rand Paul then goes on to explain that Clapper excused his lie, arguing that the truth was classified.

Senator Paul makes it clear that he supports the efforts the feds undertake to protect Americans from terrorists, but that he is concerned about the potential of the enormous power of the federal government being wielded against innocent U.S. citizens.

He also discusses drones and the FBI Director’s admission that they are presently being used for surveillance of the American citizens:

Director Admits FBI Using Drones For Surveillance in the US

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged Wednesday that the bureau has a limited number of drones that it uses for surveillance on U.S. soil.

The practice, however limited, could raise further concern about government snooping amid the ongoing controversy over the administration’s phone- and Internet-tracking programs.

Mueller addressed the matter during a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill, under questioning from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Asked if the FBI has drones, Mueller said, “Yes, and for surveillance.”

He later said they are deployed on U.S. soil, but clarified they are used in a “very, very minimal way and very seldom.”

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Director Should Hand in His Badge Now!

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

It’s not just that government collects so much data on Americans that bothers me.

It’s what the government does and doesn’t do with the data that makes it worse.

Take, for example, the feisty interchange between Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, and FBI Director Robert Mueller last week.

Gohmert was grilling Mueller over the FBI’s abject failure at preventing the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing by neglecting to investigate their mosque, founded by Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was convicted of supporting terrorism. He also pointed out the FBI had a tip from Russia that one of the Tsarnaev brothers had been radicalized in a visit to Chechnya prior to the attack…

Mueller accused Gohmert of not having his facts straight, for which he should be cited for contempt of Congress. It is Mueller who didn’t have his facts straight – even admitting he didn’t know about who founded the mosque…

I don’t know what’s scarier – the fact that government collects information from every American surreptitiously or that it uses all the wrong criteria in figuring out who really represents a threat to the safety and security of our country and citizenry.

Read more from this story HERE.

Explosive Exchange: Rep. Louie Gohmert Confronts FBI Director on Failure to Investigate Mosque that Boston Bombers Attended (+video)

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Things got seriously tense during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday when Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and FBI Director Robert Mueller battled over the efficiency of the FBI’s investigation into the Boston bombers prior to the April 15 terrorist attack.

Surprisingly, Mueller claimed he wasn’t aware that the mosque that the Boston bombing suspects attended, the Islamic Society of Boston, was founded by a convicted supporter of terrorism.

Due to this and other reasons, Gohmert argued not enough was done to prevent the attack as the suspects’ radical Islamic ties were overlooked.

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Hasn’t Contacted a Single Tea Party Group in IRS Probe, Groups Say

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Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty

There is no evidence that the FBI has contacted a single tea party group in its criminal investigation of the Internal Revenue Service, according to the groups the IRS abused.

“We have not been contacted by any federal investigative agency and, to date, none of our clients have been contacted or interviewed by the FBI,” Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice told The Daily Caller on Thursday. The ACLJ has filed suit against the IRS on behalf of 25 conservative groups, with additional groups being added in the next couple weeks, according to a spokesman…

Tea Party Patriots — a group with thousands of local chapters — “has not been contacted by the FBI” either, according to Jameson Cunningham, the group’s spokesman.

The revelation suggests that the FBI is in no hurry to get to the bottom of the scandal, despite the Obama administration’s promise to investigate the IRS’s multi-year abuse of conservative groups…

Attorney General Eric Holder promised in mid-May that the FBI would get to the bottom of the IRS’s behavior by opening a criminal investigation.

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Director Dropping the Ball on IRS Investigation, Defends NSA (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

The country’s top investigator seemed to be in the dark Thursday when pressed to provide details of the IRS investigation into the tax agency’s targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, seemed to rattle FBI Director Robert Mueller for not knowing the specifics surrounding the IRS probe.

“You’ve had a month now to investigate,” Jordan said. “This has been the biggest story in the country and you can’t even tell me who the lead investigator is. You can’t tell me the actions the inspector general took which are not typically how investigations are done. You can’t tell me if that’s appropriate or not. This is not speculation. This is what happened.”

Mueller repeatedly declined to answer Jordan’s questions, saying he couldn’t because the investigation was ongoing or that he’d have to get back to the lawmakers with answers.

When Jordan asked again,” Can you tell me who the lead investigator is?” Mueller responded, “Off the top of my head, no.”

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Expert: Quran is ‘Revealed Word of God’

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Photo Credit: WND

The FBI has censored and modified hundreds of pages of materials to satisfy Muslim critics, including a change that was made because an agency “expert” insisted the Quran “is the revealed word of God.”

The details come from Judicial Watch, which obtained documentation of the hundreds of pages of FBI memos, training documents and other paperwork that the agency purged on the demands of Muslims.

“The FBI is rewriting history in order to help al-Qaida,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “This shows that the law enforcement agency is in need of serious top-to-bottom reform.”

Fitton said a lesson learned from the Boston Marathon terrorist attack is that the country is less safe when it allows radical Muslim organizations to tell the FBI how to train its agents and do its job.

“The FBI’s purge of so-called ‘offensive’ material is political correctness run amok, and it puts the nation at risk,” he said. “The Obama administration needs to stop putting the tender sensibilities of radical Islamists above the safety of the American people.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Congressman: Marathon Bombing Preventable with Russian Intel; FBI Fails to Answer Questions About That and Todashev Killing

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Photo Credit: AP

Congressman says Russians believe Boston bombings were preventable

BY Fox News. Russian intelligence officials believe that if U.S. authorities had acted on warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombings could have been prevented, U.S. Rep. William Keating said Saturday after returning from a congressional delegation trip to Russia.

The Massachusetts Democrat, who met with Russian intelligence officials Thursday, said he was provided with details on how U.S. intelligence agents were warned in 2010 that Tsarnaev was preparing to join a terrorist cell in the southern Russian region of Dagestan, the Boston Globe reported.

Keating told reporters at Boston’s Logan International Airport that a top Russian counterintelligence official told the delegation that “if we had the level of information sharing that we do now, then the bombings might have been avoided,” according to the report.

He said he learned that information was sent from Russian officials to the U.S. government about Ibragim Todashev, a friend of Tsarnaev who was killed by an FBI agent in Florida on May 22 while being questioned in the bombing probe, the Boston Globe reported. Read more from this story HERE.

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Keating says Russian officials were forthcoming on bombing suspect

By Wesley Lowery. FBI agents in Boston have yet to provide information about why Tamerlan Tsarnaev was able to move freely in and out of the country after US officials were warned about him, or about the May 22 fatal shooting of one of his friends in Orlando, Representative William R. ­Keating said on Saturday after returning from a trip to Russia to meet with that country’s top intelligence officials.

Keating said officials with the Russian ­Federal Security Service provided details about how they warned US intelligence agents in 2010 that they believed Tsarnaev was preparing to join a terrorist cell in Dagestan, in southern Russia.

After investigating him, FBI officials closed the file on Tsarnaev, who then spent six months in Russia, during which he is believed to have met with known terrorists.

Addressing reporters at Logan International Airport, Keating said he was impressed with what he saw as the forthcoming nature of the Russian intelligence officials. Meanwhile, he said, FBI officials were absent from Capitol Hill hearings about the bombings.

“We had a hearing on homeland security and [the Boston FBI office] were invited,” Keating said. When asked whether agents from the office had shown up, he responded: “No.” Read more from this story HERE.

DNA Tests Reveal Nevada Man Falsely ID’d as Baby Kidnapped in 1964 (+video)

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Photo Credit: Facebook

A Nevada man ID’d by the FBI as the baby who disappeared from a Chicago hospital in 1964 has learned that he wasn’t the kidnapped child and is now on a mission to learn his real name and to find out who his birth parents are…

“I don’t know why, but it really started consuming my thoughts, like ‘who am I?’” he told the station. “. . . it really started consuming my thoughts, like ‘who am I?’”

The story begins in Chicago in 1964, when someone reportedly dressed as a nurse walked out the back door of Michael Reese Hospital with a baby boy named Paul Joseph Fronczak. The FBI looked at 10,000 children during a nationwide manhunt to find the child, the station reported.

More than two years later, a baby was found abandoned in a stroller in Newark, N.J. That child was taken to an orphanage and given the name Scott McKinley.
Later, the FBI decided that the McKinley baby was really the Fronczak child taken in Chicago…

A series of DNA tests revealed that he is not the Fronczak baby who was kidnapped in Chicago, and now Paul Fronczak hopes to find the truth about who he really is, including who his biological parents are.

Read more from this story HERE.