Author: John Greenewald

Background An Aviat A-1C Husky, flown by actor Harrison Ford, was involved in an incident during landing at Orange County-John Wayne Airport, California. The pilot had been cleared to land on runway 20L but touched down on the parallel taxiway C instead. On final approach the aircraft passed over American Airlines flight AA1456 that was taxiing on taxiway L for takeoff on a flight to Dallas, Texas. Flight AA1456 was a Boeing 737-800, N959NN, with 110 passengers and a six crew members on board. Flight tracking website Flightradar24 shows a calibrated altitude of 125 feet as the aircraft overflew taxiway…

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Background The Inspection Service Manual (ISM) is official policy of the United States Postal Inspection Service. The ISM is maintained in an electronic format. The ISM is available to all Inspection Service personnel. The ISM is a restricted document and is not available for distribution outside of the Postal lnspection Service without the prior written approval of the Inspection Service Chief Counsel. In April of 2015, I requested under the FOIA the entire manual.  Sadly, it is quite lengthy, and required costs for review and reproduction, so I amended my request to include just the Table of Contents and References…

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Background Five years of images from the front left hazard avoidance camera (Hazcam) on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover were used to create this time-lapse movie. The inset map shows the rover’s location in Mars’ Gale Crater. Each image is labeled with the date it was taken, and its corresponding sol (Martian day), along with information about the rover’s location at the time.

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Background Excerpt:  According to Noah Webster, secret is defined as, “kept from public knowledge or from the knowledge of certain persons•and service is shown to be, employment, especially public employment. This is exactly what the original Secret Service was: an organization of spies which operated during the Civil War at the direction of  the United States Government under the ultimate control of the Honorable Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of State and then Secretary of War. This use of spies during times of confrontation between factions was not a new idea. In fact the idea may have had divine inspiration, as the…

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Background The purpose of this policy is to establish a single source of policy information for FBI whistleblower protections and the conditions necessary to invoke the special protections afforded under the law. A whistleblower protection policy is necessary to ensure proper management understanding and compliance with applicable federal statutes, regulations, DOJ policy and FBI management practices. This policy sets forth the specific requirements under the law for whistleblower protections to apply to FBI employees, and clarifies the responsibility for reporting allegations of reprisal taken against any FBI whistleblower. This policy is applicable to all FBI employees. Persons not falling within…

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