• Report details FBI's missteps ahead of Fort Hood shootings

    By Pete Williams, NBC News

    An investigation of the FBI's handling of the events leading up to the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009, concludes that agents made a series of mistakes, failing to follow up on important questions and to share information widely enough.


    "We do not find, and we do not suggest, that these mistakes resulted from intentional misconduct or the disregard of duties," concluded William Webster, the FBI's former director who led the investigation. "Indeed, we find that each special agent, intelligence analyst, and task force officer who handled the information acted with good intent."

    Click here to read the full report (pdf)

    Most of the shortcomings have been previously disclosed, and some resulted from a lack of training and of understanding military nomenclature. For example, agents in San Diego, who were investigating al-Qaida propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, noticed on December 17, 2008, that Nidal Hasan, who would become the Fort Hood shooter, sent al-Awlaki an e-mail asking about soldiers who kill fellow military personnel with the aim of "helping muslims fighting jihad."

    Related: Judge delays Fort Hood shooting hearing over Hasan's beard

    The San Diego agents decided against sending out a broadly disseminated message that would have alerted the system that a member of the US military was communicating with a known al-Qaida terrorist. The agents noticed that a summary of his military records said Hasan was a "Comm Officer," and they assumed it meant he was a communications officer and might have access to the system that would contain such an alert message. In fact, the abbreviation meant Hasan was a commissioned officer.

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    The report also says agents in the FBI's Washington field office failed to follow through more aggressively to the leads developed in San Diego. Part of the problem, the report said, was that the FBI received only glowing accounts from the Department of Defense about Hasan's career. Agents were never told that he was actually considered a poor performer who was often on probation.

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  • Contempt: Now what?

    By NBC's Pete Williams

    Once the House committee votes in favor of citing Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, it goes to the full House for consideration.

    If the full House votes in favor of the contempt citation, the issue is sent to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. A federal law adopted by Congress in 1857 directs federal prosecutors to refer these matters to a grand jury for possible prosecution. The language is mandatory as to the U.S. attorney: "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

    But from there on, it gets complicated.

    The Justice Department has long taken the position, as a separation of powers matter, that Congress cannot force the Justice Department to undertake a prosecution of an executive branch official. The courts have never resolved the question. 

    The Justice Department, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, has further claimed that a U.S. attorney must not initiate a prosecution when the president has asserted executive privilege over what Congress seeks.

    The administration of George W. Bush most recently made this claim during the congressional investigation of the firings of several U.S. attorneys nationwide. Congress subpoenaed former White House counsel Harriet Miers and Chief of Staff Josh Bolton, and the president directed that neither should testify or produce the requested documents. Though the broad issue of executive privlege went to court, it is still unresolved.

    Another gray area here is how much a president can cover under the umbrella of an assertion of executive privilege. The further a matter gets from the White House and presidential decision making, the more the courts have been unwilling to recognize it.

    On a broader point, the federal courts have been reluctant to referee what they see as fights between the White House and Congress. During the legal battle over Miers, the federal district court in Washington practically begged the two sides to work it out without suing each other.

    "The court strongly encourages the political branches to resume their discourse and negotiations in an effort to resolve their differences constructively," it said.

    And finally, there's this point to remember: if this does end up in court, it could take up to two years to resolve, given the time for a trial and subsequent appeals. However, a contempt citation is valid only during the Congress which approved it. Each term of Congress lasts only two years, so if the issue was still in the courts when this Congress ends in a year and a half, the contempt citation would evaporate, and so would any lawsuit.

  • Trying to track the IHOP gun's path from China

    Reuters

    Eduardo Sencion is shown in this driver's license photograph. Authorities say he opened fire with an AK-47 in Carson City before killing himself.

    By Pete Williams, NBC News chief justice correspondent

    The assault rifle used in the deadly shooting at a Nevada IHOP restaurant came from a Chinese company whose weapons imports have been banned since 1994, authorities say, but it’s unclear how the gunman acquired the AK-47 rifle.

    Law enforcement officials say the man who fired the shots Tuesday in Carson City, Eduardo Sencion, had three weapons: two AK-47-style rifles and a handgun.

     

    The officials say the actual shooting was committed with a Norinco Arms AK-47. Norinco, the Chinese company, is a global supplier of firearms and military weapons.

    Since 1994, the United States has banned all imports of Norinco weapons into the United States (other than shotguns), but dealers were allowed to sell any stock they acquired before the import ban went into effect.

    An attempt to trace where and how Sencion acquired the weapon has not come up with an answer. The dealer who originally sold the weapon has since gone out of business, which complicates the tracing effort.

    Nevada IHOP shooter was 'gentle, kind man'

    The gun could have been legally purchased. It could have been imported before the Norinco ban. The Clinton-era assault weapons ban applied to weapons like it, but the law expired in 2004. When Barack Obama first came into office, the administration suggested it would ask Congress to reimpose the ban, but that idea was quickly abandoned. 

    Officials say Sencion had two other weapons with him, apparently in the van he drove to the restaurant — a handgun and a second AK-47. The other AK-47 was a Romarm Cugir, made by a Romanian weapons company. The handgun was a Colt .38 revolver.

    Four people are dead after a gunman opened fire on customers eating at an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, Nev. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports.

  • Sydney to Kentucky: Cracking the 'collar bomb' case

    A man has been arrested in Kentucky and accused of strapping a fake bomb around the neck of an 18-year-old woman in Australia. NBC's Sara James reports.

    By Pete Williams, NBC News justice correspondent

    An e-mail address launched police in Sydney, Australia, on a hunt for clues that ended Monday in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky, where the FBI arrested a man accused of placing a fake bomb around the neck of an Australian teenager studying for a school exam, according to newly released court documents.

    Paul Douglas Peters, 50, of Sydney appeared in a Kentucky federal courtroom Tuesday to face charges in connection with the terrifying ordeal of 18-year-old Madeleine Pulver. She waited 10 hours for police to remove what she was told was a bomb -- chained to her neck by an intruder who broke into her family's house Aug. 3 in a wealthy suburb of Sydney.

    Australian police say the young woman was studying in her bedroom when a man wearing a mask walked into her room carrying a baseball bat. He forced a black box against her throat and locked it to her neck with a chain, telling her not to move, they say.

    Attached to the chain was a note whose contents police revealed Tuesday. "Powerful new technology plastic explosives are located inside the small black combination case delivered to you. The case is booby trapped. It can ONLY be opened safely, if you follow the instructions and comply with its terms and conditions," it said.

     

    She telephoned her parents, who notified police. After X-raying the box several times and conducting other tests, bomb technicians determined it was harmless and removed it.

    Australian police describe the bizarre incident as an attempt to extort money from the girl's father, an executive of an Internet firm.

    "Paul Douglas Peters was formerly employed by a company with which the victim's family has links," the police said.

    Court documents give the following account of what led police to arrest Peters at the home of his ex-wife in a Lexington suburb, 9,300 miles from Sydney.

    The note attached to the fake bomb contained an e-mail address that Australian investigators discovered had been accessed from a public library a few hours after the hoax device was attached to the girl's neck. Surveillance video showed that a man matching a description given by the victim drove to the library in a Range Rover SUV. Its license number was not visible in the video, but police determined the vehicle was made between 1996 and 2001.

    Rob Griffith / AP

    Belinda Pulver looks at her husband, William, as he makes a statement regarding the arrest of a 50-year-old man, in Sydney, Australia, on Tuesday.

    Investigators then checked the records for all Range Rovers registered in the area that were made during those model years and obtained drivers license photos associated with the vehicles. They compared the pictures to the images of the man captured by the library surveillance cameras.

    "From these inquiries, the police located Paul Douglas Peters," the court documents said. Investigators also determined that the e-mail address was created at the Chicago airport on May 30. Travel records showed that Peters was at the airport that day, Australian police said.

    After discovering that Peters left Sydney five days after the hoax incident, Australian police notified the FBI that he flew to Chicago then on to Louisville. Federal officials say he was arrested there Monday without incident at the home of his ex-wife. She was not thought to be involved in the crime, investigators said.

    "He does have family connections" in the United States, according to Luke Moore, an Australian police official who was in Kentucky for the arrest.

    "We believe he's been employed in a number of areas and in a number of countries around the world," Moore said.

    An FBI SWAT team swooped into an address in Kentcuky and nabbed suspect, Paul Peters for strapping a fake bomb to a teenage girl in Australia earlier this month. ITN's Marc Mallett reports.

    The court documents also gave new details of the young woman's terrifying experience. After chaining the box to her neck, the man said, "Count to 200. I'll be back. If you move, I can see you. I'll be right here."

    "Extremely frightened," the documents say, she "sat there for a short time thinking that the man was stealing property from the house. After a few minutes, she yelled out but got no response."

    She then sent a text message to her mother and later telephoned her father, asking them both to summon the police.

    The young woman was initially "crying and hysterical, but after a time, she became more reasonable and settled and gave the police the note," the court documents said.

    Investigators also disclosed the e-mail address contained in the note : dirkstraun1840@gmail.com. Dirk Straun is the name of a character in a novel by James Clavell, "Tai-Pan," about a businessman's attempt to destroy a competitor during the 1840s.

    Reuters / Tim Wimborne

    A policeman wearing protective equipment walks near a house where bomb squad officers freed an 18-year-old girl from a fake bomb chained to her neck in the exclusive Sydney suburb of Mosman on Aug 3.