All Blog Posts from Investigative Round-Up

The NY Times:
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials. (read the article)

LA Times:
As a New York money manager and investment banker at four Wall Street firms, Charles E. F. Millard never reached superstar status. But he was treated like one when he arrived in Washington in May 2007, to run the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the federal agency that oversees $50 billion in retirement funds. (read the article)

The Washington Times:
During the worst economic downturn in decades, the federal program that provides free legal help to impoverished Americans has spent tax dollars on a decorative natural-stone wall, no-bid contracts for consultants, alcohol for a congressional party and more than 100 casino hotel rooms that were never occupied, government documents show. (read the article)

Congressional Quarterly’s SpyTalk:
The White House beat a strategic retreat last week on its ideas for a new multiagency interrogation unit, giving its task force another two months to come up with a plan everybody can live with.

But if initial reactions are any guide, the White House faces an uphill fight in creating an organization that can satisfy military, intelligence and law enforcement needs at once.
(read the article)

Congressional Quarterly:
It took only a couple months and about 100 CIA operatives and Special Forces troops, supported by U.S. air power, to chase the Taliban out of Kabul in 2001.
(read the article)

AP:
Two federal agencies are being faulted for not coordinating their efforts against border gunrunners, a failure one lawmaker says made it easier for Mexican drug cartels to smuggle illegal weapons from the United States.
(Read the article)

Reuters:
Russian reconnaissance has registered a fall in activity around North Korea nuclear sites in recent days, state-run Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported on Monday, citing a senior military source.
(Read the article)

Washington Post:
Surveillance cameras in stores, on traffic lights, over ATMs and in subway stations can track our every move. Every swipe of a credit card, every click of the computer keyboard leaves a trace of our movements, our purchases, our preferences. Our Social Security numbers, personal information, taxes and bill-paying histories are logged in databases and easily cross-referenced by law enforcement officials as well as advertisers. In our information-rich society, it would seem, disappearing would be close to impossible.
(Read the article)

Washington Times:
Body-armor manufacturers are raising concerns that a Pentagon decision to move armor testing from private labs to an Army research center will increase costs and slow the availability of lifesaving equipment as thousands of additional U.S. troops head to Afghanistan.
(Read the article)

AFP:
Intelligence agencies have information that North Korea has assembled several nuclear warheads for its medium-range Rodong missiles capable of targeting Japan, an analyst said Tuesday.
(Read the article)