BANDERA — Concerns that municipal offices were bugged by police led to an emergency City Council meeting Wednesday, where Police Chief Jim Eigner denied the claim and said he welcomes an inquiry.
A motion to suspend the entire force with pay pending an investigation was defeated on a 3-2 vote.
Councilwoman Maggie Schumacher said the alleged bugging was mentioned by an officer upset that a computer technician was told Wednesday — without advance notice to Eigner or others — to copy police computer hard drives.
Eigner said the officer’s comment was misinterpreted by Schumacher, who joined Councilwoman Binky Archer in voting for the suspensions.
Council critics at the meeting praised the force, blasted the council for micromanaging it, and said they don’t want to rely on Bandera County deputies for law enforcement.
7 September 2011
Last updated at 14:20 ET
Nozette was accused of seeking millions of dollars to sell classified information
A former government scientist charged with attempting to sell technology secrets to Israel has confessed to one count of attempted espionage.
Stewart Nozette is expected to serve a sentence of 13 years in prison after making a plea deal with prosecutors.
He has been in jail since his arrest in 2009 after a sting operation by an undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer.
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LONDON: From what France calls “economic warfare” as it probes a Chinese link to industrial espionage at Renault to currency confrontation and commodity rivalry, economic conflict is increasingly impacting businesses. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office has asked French intelligence to probe suspected industrial espionage at the car giant with a possible Chinese link, a government source told Reuters Friday.
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Contending that corruption is rampant throughout media giant News Corp., a group of shareholders have added allegations of corporate spying to a complaint against the company’s chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch and other board members.
Tuesday’s action amended a lawsuit filed in March in a Delaware court by the New York-based Amalgamated Bank, which manages several investment funds that have stock in News Corp.
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WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 (UPI) — U.S. supporters of Israel and at least one member of Congress were recorded on FBI wiretaps of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, a blogger reported.
In an interview with The New York Times published Tuesday, Richard Silverstein provided a motive for the extraordinary secrecy surrounding the prosecution in a Maryland federal court of Shamai Leibowitz.
Leibowitz, an FBI translator, was sentenced to 20 months in prison last year for leaking classified information to Silverstein, who writes a blog called Tikum Olam, named after a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.”
In his first interview about the case, Silverstein said he received some 200 pages of verbatim records of telephone calls and what seemed to be Israeli Embassy conversations.
In one of the conversations, Israeli officials discussed their concern that they were being monitored.
The U.S. government routinely eavesdrops on some embassies inside the United States but intelligence collection against allies, especially one as close as Israel, is a delicate matter.
Silverstein said Leibowitz gave him the documents because of concern about Israel’s aggressive efforts to influence Congress and fears that Israel might strike nuclear facilities in Iran.
