Bill Morlin

It was a fluke that brought two ex-East Coast mobsters together on Spokane's South Hill a couple years ago, but it didn't take Nicholas P. Mitola Jr. and Al Anglisano long to figure out they had a lot in common. They knew a lot of the same "crew" members from the Lucchese, Bonanno and Colombo organized crime families. They both had heavy New York accents, a penchant for profanity and a profound frustration with the quality of Spokane's Italian restaurants.

For Nick Mitola, life is all about gambling. As a teenager growing up in New Jersey, he was a high school bookie, taking sports bets. As a young man, he sold cocaine, betting he wouldn't get caught. When he was caught, he testified against 20 of his friends in the Lucchese organized crime family, betting they wouldn't hunt him down after they were acquitted in the longest trial of organized crime in U.S. history. And while he was working as an FBI informant, he took another gamble – selling heroin.

The federal Witness Protection Program began in the mid-1960s and is operated by the U.S. Marshals Service. To be eligible for the program, candidates must face threats for agreeing to testify as a prosecution witness or for cooperating with federal law enforcement agencies. Candidates undergo psychological testing and a "threat assessment." They must be willing to sever all contact with friends and relatives who don't enter the program.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI announced Thursday that there is insufficient proof to charge former Spokane Mayor Jim West under a "very narrow" federal public corruption law, but that doesn't mean wrongdoing didn't occur. "Our probe determined federal criminal charges were not warranted," said Special Counsel Mark Bartlett. "But our investigation did not address whether Jim West's activities were ethical, moral or appropriate."

After a 10-month inquiry, the U.S. Justice Department is expected to announce today that it is closing an FBI investigation into possible violations of federal law by former Spokane Mayor Jim West. Senior Justice Department and FBI officials are expected to announce that the investigation did not produce sufficient evidence to convince a jury that West had "specific intent" to violate federal public corruption laws.

Thomas "Tommy" Stanko Marks, the eldest son of Spokane Gypsy leader Jimmy Marks, entered a "conditional" guilty plea Thursday to a federal firearms charge. His plea, attached to his continuing legal challenge of an underlying state felony conviction, was the latest development in a federal firearms case against him filed in September 2002.

A major Spokane-based accounting firm faces a lawsuit accusing it of "negligence and carelessness" in preparing public financial statements about the operations of Spokane Raceway Park over the past 25 years. The lawsuit for unspecified damages against LeMaster & Daniels and one of its senior accountants, Larry D. Wyatt, was filed Friday in Spokane County Superior Court by a court-appointed receiver representing 500 limited partners.

The U.S. attorney's office in Spokane may invoke extraordinary legal procedures to keep names of witnesses secret until the last minute in the coming murder trial of James H. Galliher Jr., authorities said Monday. Galliher is charged with killing Edwin O. "Eddy" Pooler in 1991 on the Colville Indian Reservation. His body has not been found.

Four computers used as part of an alleged Spokane-based diploma mill operation also stored more than 10,000 images of child pornography, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday. The statement came after a grand jury indicted Kenneth Wade Pearson on federal charges of possession and receipt of child pornography.

A former police officer in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene will spend five years in federal prison for deliberately starting a fire that heavily damaged his Spokane Valley nightclub in 2004. Kelly L. Falcon, who earlier colleted $80,000 when his Spokane Valley home burned in an arson fire, started the fire at the Wild Horse Saloon in the hopes of collecting insurance, federal investigators say.

For the first time in Spokane, a satellite and high-tech gear helped catch a bank robbery suspect. Thomas R. Fricks was arrested Wednesday evening, just a few minutes after an armed masked man left a South Hill bank with a duffle bag stuffed with $37,920 and a hidden Global Positioning Device.

The Spokane Fire Department's practice of restocking a private ambulance company with 911 medical supplies without documentation may soon end, a City Council subcommittee was told Friday. Since 2003, Fire Department paramedics have resupplied American Medic Response (AMR) ambulances with various supplies, including narcotics, used for medical emergencies in the city of Spokane.

A judge is being asked to reconsider his November ruling blocking the release of photographs from Gay.com found on Mayor Jim West's government-owned computer. Pictures and "profiles" found at Gay.com are posted by individuals who have no expectation of privacy on the Web site and, in fact, want the world to see the information, attorneys for The Spokesman-Review argue in the legal filing.

Spokane Mayor Jim West's city-owned computer recorded 6,626 pictures, most of them from Gay.com, during a three-month period earlier this year, according to public records released this week. The electronic records include a list of dates and times West used his City Hall computer to view profiles of men who are members of Gay.com and who post their pictures on that Web site.

Spokane Mayor Jim West has 3,300 pictures – 100 of them sexually explicit – from Gay.com on his City Hall computer, a Superior Court judge said Thursday in declaring the files to be public record. "It appears to me … the information sought here is public record," said Judge Richard Miller of Adams County.

Spokane Mayor Jim West, fighting to keep the public from seeing the sexually explicit contents of his City Hall computer, is buttressing his legal case with an affidavit from the city's director of information technology. Garv Brakel, who manages computer services for the city and works directly for West, performed a test to determine what trace material is left behind when a computer is directed to visit Gay.com on the Internet.

A federal prosecutor and an FBI supervisor recommended against filing criminal charges against seven Spokane County Jail corrections officers involved in a 2003 incident that an inmate described as a jailhouse beating, FBI investigative records show. The 40 pages of FBI documents were delivered to The Spokesman-Review on Tuesday in response to a federal Freedom of Information Act request filed earlier this year.

Computer records show Mayor Jim West's taxpayer-owned laptop contained links to images of men engaged in sex acts with other men. Internet "history" files left behind on West's computer also show it was used to view close-ups of male genitalia and sexually explicit poses by various men, many of them in their 20s.