The Wall Street Journal's Evan Perez and Siobhan Gorman report: The head of a new elite terrorism-interrogation program said Thursday that it will take several more months to establish teams that could question high-profile suspects. The teams are part of an overhaul of counterterrorism policy and have become an issue in ...

The Washington Post's Carrie Johnson relays a Justice Dept. inspector general report that finds between 2002 and 2006 the FBI violated privacy laws 700 times in obtaining phone records. In the process, more than 3,500 phone numbers were gathered improperly, often gathered under the pretext of phony terror threats. This sounds like a big deal -- or at least larger than either FBI or Congress are making it out to be. FBI Director Robert Mueller seems proud of the fact that the FBI has gone almost four years not illegally obtaining phone records, though Mueller promised the agency would look into disciplinary action for some employees. Vermont Democrat Pat Leahy, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a champion of preserving civil liberties during the "war on terror," said the report shows that Congress must eliminate the FBI's power to send letters to phone companies  requesting information on calls.

The Washington Post's John Solomon and Carrie Johnson break the news that the FBI collected more than 2,000 phone records between 2002 and 2006 without having a proper subpoena for the records. A Justice Dept. Inspector General report is supposed to come out later this month that concluded the ...

A great example of the connection between solid reporting and improvements in government can be found in the Washington Post's initial reporting on the alleged effort by Umar Abdulmutallab to incinerate himself aboard AA 253 in an attempt to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people.  Three top Post reporters ...

The Washington Post's Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson report that White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan will review what federal agencies could have done to prevent the Ford Hood massacre. The FBI and Pentagon are faulted for not sharing sketchy e-mails with military personnel that were sent by ...

[caption id="attachment_5489" align="alignleft" width="135" caption="Todd Tiahrt"][/caption] In a story this summer on youth homicides in Chicago, I reported that the obscure "Tiahrt amendment" Congress passed in 2003 has made the job of tracking gun buyers -- and possible murderers -- much harder for the federal government. Yesterday, in a Washington Post op-ed, Michael Bloomberg and former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean assert that "Tiahrt" was a factor in the Fort Hood murders allegedly committed by Army Major Nidal Hasan: During the Clinton administration, the FBI had access to records of gun background checks for up to 180 days. But in 2003, Congress began requiring that the records be destroyed within 24 hours. This requirement, one of the many restrictions on gun data sponsored by Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), meant that Hasan's investigators were blocked from searching records to determine whether he or other terrorist suspects had purchased guns. When Hasan walked out of Guns Galore in Killeen, Tex., the FBI had only 24 hours to recognize and flag the record -- and then it was gone, forever. As former FBI agent Brad Garrett has said, "The piece of information about the gun could have been critical. One of the problems is that the law sometimes restricts you in what you can do."

The BIG federal-local story this weekend in Illinois was the Chicago Tribune reporting that Barack Obama has considered a proposal to ship Guantanamo detainees to the almost entirely unused Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Illinois. The center has sat vacant since it was built for $1.2 billion in 2001 and it could now be used as a maximum security facility that would A.) help solve Obama's problem of closing Guantanamo and B.) create 2,000 or so local jobs for an economically bleak town. Illinois Republicans, though, immediately criticized the plan, warning of doomsday terrorist scenarios where resettled Guantanamo detainees blow up Chicago skyscrapers.

Here is a somewhat overlooked legacy of the "war on terror" -- The Washington Post's Walter Pincus reported this weekend that FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that everyday 1,600 new names are added to the terrorist watchlist -- and 600 names are removed. Overall, there ...

Despite the teen-on-teen homicide of Chicago's Derrion Albert,  Chicago is, in fact, not more violent than ever. reports the Chicago Tribune's Annie Sweeney: Homicides continued to decline this year in Chicago through September, including homicides of school-age children, according to Police Department statistics. Homicides fell 11 percent through the first nine ...

The New York Times' James McKinley and Julia Preston report on a flaw in post-9/11 national security: the threat posed by people who overstay their tourist visas, which typically last for six months. Of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., 40 percent are here ...