FBI Shuts Down Illegal Drug and Murder-For-Hire Website

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. law enforcement authorities have shut down “Silk Road,” an anonymous Internet marketplace for illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine and criminal activities such as murder for hire, and arrested its alleged owner.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday it arrested Silk Road owner, Ross William Ulbricht, 29, known online as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to court filings.

Ulbricht, who holds an advanced degree in chemical engineering, appeared in federal court on Wednesday and a bail hearing was set for Friday.

His lawyer Brandon LeBlanc, a public defender, declined to comment.

Federal prosecutors in New York charged Ulbricht with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, the filing said.

“Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today,” FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said in the criminal complaint.

The site was used by “several thousand drug dealers” to sell “hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs,” he said.

The site, which has operated since early 2011, also offered tutorials on hacking ATM machines, contact lists for black market connections and counterfeiters, and guns and hit men for sale, according to the charges.

More than 900,000 registered users of the site bought and sold drugs using the digital currency Bitcoin. In recent media reports about the growing popularity of Bitcoin, the Silk Road website has emerged as part of a darker side to the use of digital currencies.

Via: WFB

Continue Reading.....

WASHINGTON NAVY YARD OPENING 3 DAYS AFTER MASSACRE

(AP) Washington Navy Yard opening 3 days after massacre
By BRIAN WITTE
Associated Press
WASHINGTON

The Washington Navy Yard began returning to nearly normal operations three days after it was the scene of a mass shooting in which a gunman killed 12 people.

The Navy installation re-opened at 6 a.m. Thursday. Traffic was blocked from reaching the main gate for a time because a tractor-trailer tried to make a U-turn, and its load shifted.

Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Sarah Flaherty said Thursday will be a regular work day, except for Building 197, where the shootings occurred, and the base gym. She says the gym is being used as a staging area for the FBI to investigate Monday's rampage in which former Navy reservist Aaron Alexis gunned down 12 people before being killed by police.

Employees retuning to work Thursday said they still felt unsettled about what happened.

"It's a little surreal I guess," said Brooke Roberts, an engineer who works across the street from the building where the shooting happened.

"You don't think this sort of thing can happen to you at your workplace, so you're just not prepared for it, regardless," he said as he walked by a blocked off gate he is accustomed to using to enter the Navy Yard. He described himself as feeling "still unsettled," noting the blocked off entrance.

"It's still not quite normal, and it probably won't be for some time," Roberts said.

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading....

Obama renews call for Congress to act on background checks

In the wake of the shooting at a Washington naval facility that left 13 dead, President Barack Obama renewed his call for Congress to pass background check reforms to keep guns out of the hands of those who would do harm.

“The fact that we do not have a firm enough background-check system is something that makes us more vulnerable to these kinds of mass shootings,” he said in an interview with Telemundo, adding that “ultimately this is something that Congress is going to have to act on.”

Obama defended giving an address on the economy – which contained more than one barb about legislative gridlock, aimed mostly at Republican lawmakers – even as the manhunt for the shooter was still underway just a few miles from the White House.

“I think that everybody understands that the minute something like this happens, I'm in touch with the F.B.I., I'm in touch with my national security team, we're making sure that all the assets are out there for us to deal with this as well as we can,” he said, noting that he did address the shooting and offer prayers for the victims at the beginning of his Monday speech.

Via: NBC News

Continue Reading....

One year later, families have few answers on Benghazi attack

WASHINGTON –  On the one-year anniversary of the brutal terror attacks in Benghazi, the 

families of the four murdered Americans are still no closer to the truth about what happened to their loved ones than they were 12 months ago.

Five House panels and an internal investigation later, no one has been arrested, no one has been fired or held accountable, and the communication between the families of the victims and the State Department and White House has become almost non-existent.

“When I was there in Washington, when this first started, the FBI had me in a room to tell me what they were doing,” Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, one of the Americans killed in the terror attacks, told Fox News.

Smith says President Obama, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the FBI promised her that finding out who killed her son Sean, an information specialist working in Benghazi, would be a top priority.

But it’s a commitment Smith says the president hasn’t kept.

Via: Fox News Politics

Continue Reading....

New $100 bills stolen en route to Fed facility

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Unknown thieves stole a "large amount" of newly-designed $100 bills bound for a Federal Reserve facility in New Jersey on Thursday, the FBI said.

Frank Burton, Jr., spokesman for the FBI's Philadelphia division, said the theft occurred at some point between when the shipment of bills landed at the Philadelphia airport on a commercial flight from Dallas at 10:20 Thursday morning, and when the shipment reached its New Jersey destination around 2:00 p.m., when the courier service transporting the bills reported some missing.

Via:CNN Money

Continue Reading...

Issa Calls For Classified Briefing On Libya Intel

Fresh off his hearing on security deficiencies at the U.S. mission in Libya, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday called for a classified briefing on what the Obama administration knew — and when — about the causes of Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi.

“Right now, what we've agreed to, [ranking member Elijah] Cummings [(D-Md.)] and I, is formally asking for a classified briefing so that a lot of what wasn't discussed here, the committee would have knowledge of,” Issa told reporters. “And of course that's not an open hearing.”

He said it would be modeled on Tuesday's hearing for the Republican chairmen of committees of jurisdiction over intelligence and foreign affairs, and should include Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the FBI. Asked if he would invite the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, Issa said “not necessarily.”

Republicans on Issa's committee have been chomping at the bit to go after Rice, who told five Sunday shows five days after the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans that initial intelligence suggested an anti-Islam video posted to YouTube had caused the violence. The administration later said the attack was an act of terrorism.

Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) all told The Hill they think the committee’s next move should be to request Rice to testify before the panel.

“President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and Ambassador Rice have a lot of questions to answer,” said Chaffetz, the chairman of the committee's panel on national security. Chaffetz said it was up to Issa to decide whether to request her for another hearing, but that he’d “love to hear from her sooner rather than later because she’s got a lot to explain.”

Issa himself told The Hill that “someone in Congress will cover some of these ambiguities.”

Via: The Hill

Continue Reading...