The late reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes–whose giant wooden seaplane the Hercules (AKA the Spruce Goose) was displayed for a time in Long Beach, before going to a museum in Oregon–has been dead 32 years.
But traces of his empire and the people who ran it still remain, though their evidence is dwindling.
As the Los Angeles Times [...]

A little more Lott
Since Rebecca mentioned the rumor about lust and corruption playing a role in the sudden end of Trent Lott’s senate career, it’s only fair we note (a) it’s a flimsy rumor, and (b) it completely overlooks the latest Lott-related greed and corruption news.
Maybe it was Dickie, not [fill in the obvious male-escort-related [...]

Lead poisoning blinds Justice
It’s 44 years later, and the bullets Lee Harvey Oswald fired at President Kennedy are still claiming victims. During its investigation of the Kennedy assassination, the FBI introduced a new forensic tool: comparative bullet-lead analysis. But the FBI’s tool, which has been used in an estimated 2,500 cases, is as fictional as [...]

So there I am minding my own business taking pictures of ex-Nixon White House counsel, John Dean who’s standing on the edge of the stage in the Long Beach Public Library auditorium when he holds his hand out to block my next shot and says, “You’re showing me more interest than your paper did.”
His publicist [...]

Report: gunmen behaved liked gunmen
No one could have predicted this: the trigger-happy gunmen of a mercenary force that has enjoyed U.S. government-backed impunity, and who have a widely reported history of shooting at innocent bystanders as part of their standard operating procedure, are believed to have shot innocent bystanders.
The FBI’s report on the infamous September [...]

Suitcase nukes vs. ladders
Beloved by idea-dry screenwriters and fear-mongering politicians alike, the suitcase nuke shows up not only in movies and TV shows, but also on the list of dire threats to national security on the White House’s website. Now comes word that such conveniently portable nuclear bombs probably don’t exist, and possibly never did.
“No [...]

Al-Qaeda and adjustable rate mortgages
The FBI announced yesterday it had received a tip that Al-Qaeda is planning to attack shopping malls in L.A. and Chicago during the holiday shopping season. The FBI also announced it considered the tip unreliable, and had no real information about any mall attacks. Since the second announcement completely undermines the [...]

In the not-so-secret lead up to a potential war with Iran, the FBI traced a peculiar path to find terrorists: falafel sales.
Congressional Quarterly reports that in 2005 and 2006, FBI agents sifted through consumer data from San Francisco-area grocery stores hoping that sales records of falafel and other typical Middle Eastern foods would somehow [...]