On a bridge outside Berlin one gloomy morning 50 years ago Friday stood Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of a CIA spy plane that was shot down over the Russian Ural mountains. He had waited 21 months for this moment. He had survived a plane crash, weeks of harsh interrogation and the brutal conditions of a Soviet prison. He was on the threshold of freedom, and his heart was thumping heavily. Read full article > >

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A spy swap’s legacy persists, 50 years on

Even before the world knew him as a genius, the FBI had the book on Steve Jobs. In a 1991 background check, the FBI pegged Apple’s co-founder as brash and unlikable and noted his early drug use. Most tellingly, the agents, evaluating Jobs for an appointment under President George H.W. Bush, said acquaintances found him to have a peculiarly driven nature. Read full article > >

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Steve Jobs’s unflattering FBI file mentions drug use, 2.65 GPA

After days of agonizing negotiations, Greek politicians have reached a deal to make a sweeping series of cuts that they hope will secure an international bailout and help the debt-ridden nation avoid bankruptcy, Prime Minister Lucas Papademos’s office said on Thursday. Read full article > >

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Greek officials reach austerity deal that could pave way for bailout

TOKYO — The U.S. military will probably scale back plans to build key bases in Japan and Guam because of political obstacles and budget pressures, according to U.S. and Japanese officials, complicating the Obama administration’s efforts to strengthen its troop presence in Asia. Read full article > >

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U.S. likely to scale down plans for bases in Japan and Guam

The FBI investigates how activists linked to Anonymous obtained a recording of a phone call between US and UK police on their operations against hacking.

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FBI probes Anonymous phone hack

Hackers Anonymous release a recording of an intercepted conference call between the FBI and UK police discussing their efforts to fight hacking.

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Hackers breach FBI-UK police call

A hacker group claimed credit Friday for intercepting and leaking a call between FBI and Scotland Yard detectives discussing ongoing cyber-crime investigations. The call apparently took place on an unsecured conference call system. Read full article > >

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Hackers release call between FBI, Scotland Yard

When a former employee in 2010 accused a California company called Sempra Energy of paying bribes to advance its interests in Mexico, the U.S. government responded as it often does in white-collar cases : It asked the company to investigate itself. Read full article > >

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U.S. probe relied heavily on firm’s own investigation, FBI memos show

A former U.S. soldier trained in cryptology and intelligence was charged Monday with attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization after he flew to Africa in an unsuccessful bid to join al-Shabab, a group with links to al-Qaeda, authorities said. Craig B. Baxam, 24, of Laurel told FBI agents that he had no contacts with al-Shabab and only a haphazard plan to connect with the group when he boarded a flight out of Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport last month, according to a federal criminal complaint. But he said he shared al-Shabab’s religious beliefs — at least as he had read them on an Islamic Web site — and he considered himself obligated to move to land the group controlled in Somalia. Read full article > >

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Craig Baxam, ex-U.S. soldier, charged with trying to aid terror group al-Shabab

The Obama administration on Friday expanded the FBI’s more than eight-decade-old definition of rape to count men as victims for the first time and to drop the requirement that victims must have physically resisted their attackers.

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US Redefines Rape; Adds Men, Others as Victims

WASHINGTON — The family of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, who vanished years ago in Iran, issued a plea to his kidnappers Friday and, for the first time, released a hostage video they received from his unidentified captors. The video message released on the Levinson family’s website publicly transformed the mysterious disappearance into an international hostage standoff. Despite a lengthy investigation, however, the U.S. government has no evidence of who is holding the 63-year-old father of seven. Read full article > >

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Years after vanishing in Iran, retired FBI agent appears in hostage video: ‘Please help me’

FBI unable to explain the surge.

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Black Friday Sets Gun Sales Record

Gregg Schwarz frowned as he positioned himself, just so, in front of the wrought iron fence surrounding John Edgar Hoover’s grave, a place he has visited countless times but never before in anger. A retired FBI agent who joined the agency in 1972, the year Hoover died, Schwarz had hired a videographer to film him for YouTube expressing his displeasure with a movie that depicted Hoover as a repressed homosexual. In a dig at Clint Eastwood, the director of “J. Edgar,” Schwarz titled his video response, “Dirty Harry to Filthy Harry.” Read full article > >

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FBI agents upset over movie alleging J. Edgar Hoover was gay

A year ago, I dodged doing any actual, serious reporting during Thanksgiving week by writing a column picking the Washington region’s “Turkeys of the Year.” Why not make it a tradition? The awards recognize outstanding acts of foolishness, incompetence and other self-defeating or outrageous behavior. Rereading last year’s column , it seems that 2011 fell short of 2010 in displays of blatant ineptitude in our area. Nobody this year equaled the performance of Jack Johnson , the No. 1 winner a year ago. The then Prince George’s county executive told his wife to hide bribe money in her underwear while the FBI listened in on a wiretap. Read full article > >

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Foolishness aplenty: D.C. region’s ‘Turkeys of the Year’ for 2011

In the middle of the Pakistani night, near the border with Afghanistan, a team of FBI agents dressed in native garb descended on a hotel room. One of those agents, Sean M. Joyce, kicked in the door, tackled a screaming Pakistani man and threw him to the ground. The 1997 raid resulted in the capture of Mir Aimal Kasi , who was later executed for murdering two CIA employees outside the agency’s Langley headquarters. And it marked a milestone in the ascension of Joyce, who in September became the FBI’s deputy director, the bureau’s second-ranking job. Read full article > >

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Sean Joyce brings intensity to No. 2 job at FBI