Using some recent examples, Perlstein paints a startling picture. He notes the arrest this month of a small group of self-identified anarchists, participating in Occupy Cleveland, who -- strung along in an FBI sting -- planned to blow up a large Ohio bridge. The target was suggested and (fake) C-4 explosives were provided by an FBI infiltrator. As Perlstein put it, the episode was one among numerous law enforcement schemes since 2001 in which "the alleged terrorist masterminds end up seeming, when the full story comes out, unable to terrorize their way out of a paper bag without law enforcement tutelage."

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Five young men from Cleveland are now in jail, accused of plotting to "blow up a bridge in the Cleveland area," according to the FBI's triumphant press release/criminal complaint. As is always the case with FBI terror stings, the "sting" part involved the bureau's informant/agent provocateur mostly inventing the plot the accused have now been arrested for. In this case, the five planned to detonate smoke bombs as a distraction as they "topple[d] financial institution signs atop high rise buildings in downtown Cleveland." But the informant (as usual, a sketchy unnamed character with a checkered past) strongly pushed the group to seriously consider different, more extreme plots. At the end, some or all of them were going to plant C-4 on the Route 82 Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

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You have spent decades studying the inner workings of America’s intelligence system, and the past few years looking at newly released files from the FBI. What will we learn by reading your new history of the FBI, "Enemies"?

You will learn that the Bureau has served first and foremost as a secret intelligence service reporting to the president of the United States. In its first incarnation under J. Edgar Hoover, who ruled the Bureau for 48 years, the FBI was the president’s secret intelligence service. Today, 40 years after Hoover’s death, we still live in the shadow of his legacy. How do you run a secret intelligence agency in an open and democratic society? How do you balance national security and civil liberty? How can we be both safe and free? These are questions that Hoover struggled with, and that we struggle with still.

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Director Clint Eastwood, who often played the part of a lawman on the big screen, is now serving up what amounts to a brief for the defense of the FBI’s legendary director, J. Edgar Hoover (played by Leonardo DiCaprio).  In the process, Eastwood distorts the historical record, omitting  facts about Hoover’s ruthless abuse of power, and even sanitizing the infamous cross-dressing rumors involving America’s top cop.

The film deservedly gives Hoover credit for establishing the first federal police force that used modern forensics to nab bad guys, especially Prohibition-era gangsters whose grisly kidnappings and murders had captivated the public’s appetite for the lurid underworld of criminals and their molls. Eastwood also provides a plausible rationale for Hoover’s lifelong paranoia about Communism:  Soon after World War I ended, the Washington home of Hoover’s boss, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, was bombed by an anarchist.

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Four aged right-wingers apparently plotted to carry out a mass murder based on the plot of a thriller written by frequent Fox guest Mike Vanderboegh. They planned to "save this country" by attacking Washington, D.C., and Atlanta with ricin and botulinium toxin. And they were targeting the government:

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Last year, the FBI subjected 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement, support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and then issue a Press Release boasting of its success.  In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington Metro.  And now, the FBI has yet again saved us all from its own Terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus after having spent months providing him with the plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, American troops in Iraq, and possibly the Capitol Building using "remote-controlled" model airplanes carrying explosives.

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Here's Matt Drudge's headline (which was, for hours, just below the huge Murdoch story on top of the page): "Obama donor arrested as 'Pakistani agent'..."

Free Republic used the same headline, along with "Pakistani accused of masking contributions to US politicians."

Leaving aside the fact that "Pakistani agent" sounds more like "spy" than "unregistered foreign lobbyist," it's true that Syed Ghulam Fai gave $250 to Barack Obama, making him an "Obama donor." He's also given $6,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and at least $10,000 to Representative Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana.

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Maybe Murdoch just agreed to attend the hearing because he needs to get out of the States for a while: The FBI is now apparently investigating News Corp.. This is according to the Wall Street Journal, which is of course also owned by News Corp. The bureau is investigating at the urging of Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who got mad because 9/11:

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The FBI finally caught the 81-year-old Bulger Wednesday at a residence in Santa Monica along with his longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig just days after the government launched a new publicity campaign to locate the fugitive mobster, said Steven Martinez, FBI's assistant director in charge in Los Angeles. The arrest was based on a tip from the campaign, he said.

The FBI had been conducting a surveillance operation in the area where the arrest was made, said police Sgt. Rudy Flores, who gave no details of the arrest.

FBI agents still swarmed around Bulger's building late Wednesday, hours after the arrests in a neighborhood of two and three-story apartment buildings.

Bulger lived on the third floor of The Princess Eugenia, a three-story, 28-unit building of one and two-bedroom apartments three blocks from a bluff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. Neighbors said the couple hadn't stood out as unusual.

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Mueller made the comments Wednesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee where he got a favorable reception from Republicans and Democrats who are considering legislation that would extend his job for up to two more years, a proposal initiated by President Barack Obama.

Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., expressed confidence that Congress would agree to the extension. A co-sponsor of the legislation, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said continuity in the arenas of national security and counter-terrorism is important, especially in light of increased threats.

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"These allegations are very serious," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. "We take them seriously. We are looking into them."

She had no comment on reports of China's involvement.

Google said Wednesday that personal Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials, military personnel and political activists, had been exposed. Google traced the origin of the attacks to Jinan, China, the home city of a military vocational school whose computers were linked to a more sophisticated assault on Google's systems 17 months ago. The two attacks are not believed to be linked.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Obama administration doesn't restrict government employees from using personal Gmail accounts, but does direct workers to use government email for official business. He had no comment on who in the administration may have been affected by the hacking.

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Certain sections of the Patriot Act, which originally passed Congress a month after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with near-unanimous support, have long been criticized by civil libertarians in both political parties.

But the Obama administration and its allies on Capitol Hill have been eager to renew about-to-expire provisions that expanded domestic intelligence collection and wiretapping powers. As the AP put it, "The idea [of the deal] is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government." A vote is expected within several days.

To find out more about the provisions that are set to be extended, I spoke with Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute who closely follows technology and civil liberties issues.

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• James "Whitey" Bulger was a Boston mobster active during the 1970s and 1980s. He is wanted on charges that include racketeering, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, extortion and narcotics distribution. (According to the FBI, he is also "an avid reader with an interest in history" who is "known to frequent libraries and historic sites," and he and his partner, Catherine Elizabeth Greig, "love animals.") Reward: $2 million.
• Former security guard Victor Manuel Gerena allegedly worked to score nearly $7 million in the 1983 armed robbery of a Connecticut security company. Reward: up to $1 million.
• Jason Derek Brown "allegedly shot and killed an armored car guard outside a movie theater" in the course of a 2004 robbery in Phoenix. Reward: up to $100,000.
• The list of charges Semion Mogilevich will face if he is found includes: fraud by wire, RICO conspiracy, mail fraud, money laundering, securities fraud and false filings with the SEC. "Thousands of investors lost in excess of 150 million dollars" when his scheme collapsed in 1998, and Mogilevich was indicted five years later. Reward: up to $100,000.
• Alexis Flores allegedly kidnapped, raped and killed a young girl, Iriana DeJesus, in Philadelphia just over a decade ago. DNA has since been used to connect him to the 2000 murder. Reward: up to $100,000.
• Robert William Fisher, one-time cardiovascular technician at the Mayo Clinic and Navy veteran, is wanted for the murders of his wife and children in Scottsdale, Ariz., a decade ago; he allegedly blew up their family home after committing the murders. He had no criminal record before the horrifying incident, which thoroughly shocked neighbors and acquaintances. Reward: up to $100,000.
• Glen Stewart Godwin escaped from California's Folsom State Prison in 1987 and was soon arrested in Mexico on drug trafficking charges. He escaped his Guadalajara prison in 1991 and is now on the run; the FBI's official listing says he is "thought to be involved in narcotics distribution" somewhere in Central or South America. Reward: up to $100,000.
• Barrio Azteca gang Capo Eduardo Ravelo has been indicted on charges of racketeering, conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, and conspiracy to possess heroin, cocaine and marijuana with the intent to distribute. Reward: up to $100,000.
• Joe Luis Saenz is wanted on charges of murder, kidnapping, rape and parole violation. He allegedly murdered four people between 1998 and 2008 -- including a girlfriend he also kidnapped and raped. Reward: up to $100,000.

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But the Department of Justice is refusing to publicly release the guidance, with a spokesman describing it in an interview as an "internal document." So we don't know the administration's exact interpretation of Miranda, even though it may have significantly reshaped the way terrorism interrogations are conducted.

The Miranda warning, which was created by a 1966 Supreme Court decision of that name, requires that police interrogators inform a criminal suspect of his rights before an interrogation. If the police fail to do this, statements made during the interrogation are not admissible in court. The rule, which was designed to prevent coercive interrogations, is rooted in the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and the Constitution's due process clause.

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CHRISTIAN COUNTY, Mo. — A local blogger who was critical of Rep. Billy Long during last year's congressional campaign has been interviewed by the FBI about his encounters with the congressman.

Clay Bowler, who lives in Christian County, says he was shocked to find an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation at his doorstep. Accompanying the agent was Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott.

The agent asked Bowler if he was a threat to Long, a notion Bowler finds laughable.

Long, an auctioneer and former talk radio host, is a freshman member of the new Congress. The blog in question, Long is Wrong, is now behind a password wall. Though Long is a Republican, the blog apparently attacked him from the right.  While Bowler apparently "confronted" Long at some campaign events, there's no suggestion in the ABC article that he ever threatened the candidate.

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Charges against 11 members of California's Hmong community and a former U.S. Army officer were dismissed "in the interests of justice," according to court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento and obtained by The Associated Press.

The move follows the death of Hmong leader and Vietnam War-era Gen. Vang Pao, 81, last week.

The general led Hmong guerrillas in their CIA-backed battle against communists in the 1960s and 1970s. He is revered as a father figure by the 240,000 Hmong now in the U.S., many living in California's Central Valley and the Upper Midwest.

Thousands of Hmong journeyed to Sacramento's federal courthouse to wave American flags in peaceful protests each time there was another hearing in the case.

"They should have dropped it a long time ago," said Blong Xiong, a Fresno city councilman and the first Hmong-American in California to win a city council seat. "We're just happy that it's over with. The cloud over the community is gone, and it will allow the community to mourn the death of the general."

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Antonio Martinez, 21, was arrested last week in an FBI sting after agents said he tried to detonate a phony bomb outside a Catonsville recruitment center. He's charged with attempted murder of federal officers and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

His public defender, Joseph Balter, argued at a detention hearing Monday that his client, who prefers to be addressed as Muhammad Hussain, did not initiate the bombing plot. He described it as "the creation of the government -- a creation which was implanted into Mr. Hussain's mind."

"There was nothing provided which showed that Mr. Hussain had any ability whatsoever to carry out any kind of plan," Balter said.

But prosecutors said Martinez had been plotting to kill U.S. soldiers before he even met the informant who reported him to the FBI. They offered new details of the investigation to support their argument that he should be detained.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Manuelian said investigators captured Martinez on videotape, "grinning from ear to ear," as he armed the phony bomb.

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The warrant, unsealed Friday in federal court, says 22-year-old Navy Reserve Intelligence Specialist 3rd Class Bryan Minkyu Martin of Mexico, N.Y., accepted $3,500 from an undercover FBI agent.

According to the warrant, Martin gave the agent dozens of pages of documents that were either secret or top secret. The case was first reported by The Fayetteville Observer.

Martin has not been charged. He's being held in Norfolk, Va.

Paul O'Donnell, a spokesman for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, says the agency does not believe Martin was able to pass any classified information to foreign agents.

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