Daily Political Wire

George Wenschhof



Executives of Fox News were informed by Justice Department 3 years ago, they were investigating one of their reporters - The parent company of Fox News was aware years ago that the Justice Department was targeting one of its reporters in a leak investigation, sources said Saturday.
 
One law enforcement source said the Justice Department notified a media organization three years ago of a subpoena for detailed telephone records, and a second told CNN that organization was Fox News.

After that news broke, a Fox News executive said the Justice Department notified Fox's parent company News Corporation of the subpoena in May 2010. But Fox News itself apparently never got the word.

The subpoena came as the Justice Department was investigating Stephen Kim, a former State Department worker accused of the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information to James Rosen, a Fox News reporter.  CNN.com has more here.

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Bridge collapse a wake-up call - The collapse of an Interstate highway bridge in northern Washington state is a wake-up call for the entire nation, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board says.
 
Investigators need to find out what happened at the I-5 span 60 miles north of Seattle and if it could be repeated at similar bridges around the country, Debbie Hersman said Saturday.

"This is a really significant event and we need to learn from it, not just in Washington but around the country," Hersman said after taking a boat ride on the Skagit River below the dramatic scene where a truck bumped against the steel framework, collapsing the bridge and sending two vehicles and three people falling into the chilly water.  Politico.com has more here.
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Hezbollah admits to helping Syria - The leader of the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah on Saturday defiantly defended sending his fighters to support President Bashar al-Assad’s army in neighboring Syria and proclaimed that they would be victorious.
 
Hasan Nasrallah’s televised address provided the clearest public acknowledgment to date that his men are fighting alongside Assad’s troops and will continue to do so. As he spoke, Hezbollah and government forces were escalating an assault on the strategically important Syrian town of Qusair.

A staunch ally of Iran as well as Assad, Hezbollah has deepened its involvement in Syria’s two-year-old civil war in recent weeks, leading the push to drive rebels out of Qusair, near the Syria-Lebanon border. The group has long justified its stockpile of weapons as necessary to the “resistance” against Israel, and its growing role in Syria has stirred controversy in Lebanon.  The Washington Post has more here.

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Rockets hit Beirut after Hezbollah vows Syria victory - Two rockets hit a Shi'ite Muslim district of southern Beirut on Sunday and wounded several people, residents said, a day after the leader of Lebanese Shi'ite militant movement Hezbollah said his group would continue fighting in Syria until victory.

It was the first attack to apparently target Hezbollah's stronghold in the south of the Lebanese capital since the outbreak of the two-year conflict in neighboring Syria, which has sharply heightened Lebanon's own sectarian tensions.

One rocket landed in a car sales yard next to a busy road junction in the Chiah neighborhood and the other hit an apartment several hundred meters away, wounding five people, residents said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility and the army said it was investigating who was behind the attack.  Reuters.com has more here.

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