FBI confidential informants report [US DOJ OIG] News
FBI confidential informants report [US DOJ OIG]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Compliance with the Attorney General's Investigative Guidelines, released to the public on September 14, 2005 [report revealing that federal agents frequently violate the FBI's guidelines for dealing with confidential informants]. Excerpt:

We found that the FBI's compliance with each of the four Investigative Guidelines differed considerably by Guideline and field office. The most significant problems were failures to comply with the Confidential Informant Guidelines. For example, we identified one or more Guidelines violations in 87 percent of the confidential informant files we examined. By contrast, we found approximately 90 percent of the undercover operations and consensual monitoring files we reviewed contained no authorization-related Guidelines deficiencies.

Read the full text of the report here [PDF]. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

THIS DAY @ LAW

First US life insurance company incorporated

On January 11, 1759, America's first life insurance company was incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Corporation for Relief of Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers was established by Presbyterians to support the families of their ministers. In 1988, the company's name was changed to the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund. The company later became Covenant Life Insurance Company before being acquired by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company in 2002. Read a history of the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund from the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

Treaty ended Anglo-American claims, courts in China

On January 11, 1943, the United States and Great Britain relinquished by treaty their extraterritorial claims in China. This abandonment effectively ended the jurisdiction of the extraterritorial United States Court for China (established 1906) and the British Supreme Court in China. Read more about the United States Court for China, which one scholar has called "probably the strangest federal tribunal ever constituted by Congress," in a short online history of the US Ninth Circuit.