Lax oversight in the Salt Lake City FBI office could be detrimental to national security.

After nearly a yearlong investigation, including interviews with FBI informants, Lori Prichard and Kelly Just report on the corruption inside the SLC FBI offices. These whistleblowers were interviewed as part of a yearlong investigation by KSL News, which was able to corroborate much of what each source reported by conducting individual interviews without the knowledge of other sources. These individuals spoke on the condition that their identities be protected.

The Daily investigates the increasing number of Mexican drug cartels in American suburbs. The team was led by reporter Josh Bernstein and "spent six months traveling" through Mexico to document how the "drug cartels are becoming 'The New Mafia' in America." Smugglers bring illegal immigrants into the country and hold them in "drop houses," which are located in higher end neighborhoods. "Law enforcement agencies from Texas to Northern California report being overwhelmed by the surge of violence." The print version of the investigative series is also accompanied by extensive video reporting.

Despite sanctions and trade embargoes, over the past decade the United States government has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, an examination by Jo Becker of The New York Times has found. Nearly 10,000 licenses for deals involving such countries have been granted.

Lee Davidson reported how Thai workers recruited to work on Utah pig and chicken farms were victims of human trafficking. Read "A Story of Modern Slavery in Utah."

The Washington Post's "Top Secret America" series investigates the U.S. national security and intelligence system that is "so big, so complex and so hard to manage, no one really knows if it's fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping its citizens safe." The project, nearly two years in the making, includes detailed interactive graphics and maps.

Last week, President Obama nominated Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding to head the Transportation Security Administration, but Harding's ties to several TSA contractors via Harding Security, a firm he founded in 2003, have raised ethics concerns.   "A review of Harding Security's business activities by CongressDaily showed that of 21 companies listed on the firm's Web site as its 'clients and partners,' several firms, including Lockheed Martin Corp., L-3 Communications, SAIC, CACI, QinetiQ and General Dynamics Corp., have done business with TSA."

Analysis of a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) database made available to ABCNews.com showed that "a notorious drug kingpin, a convicted arms trafficker and several other individuals linked to aviation-connected crimes continue to hold FAA pilots licenses," according to a report by Eric Longabardi and Joseph Rhee. The findings raise questions in the efforts of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) and the FAA in purging individuals who pose a threat to national security.

Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.) reports that documents obtained by the paper show "the U.S. attorney's office in Oxford targeted convenience store operators in north Mississippi, many of Middle Eastern descent, despite a lack of any connection to terrorism." While no links to terrorism were found, the "Convenience Store Initiative" netted other criminal misconduct such as the sale of excessive amounts of pseudoephedrine — a drug used in meth production. The initiative was praised by the Justice Department in the Bush administration.

G.W. Schulz of California Watch found widespread waste and mismanagement of homeland security grants awarded to agencies throughout the state of California. Schulz reviewed thousands of pages of documents from state monitoring reports and found scores of problems and questionable purchases.

G.W. Schulz of the Center for Investigative Reporting investigated the policing tactics used during Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. last year. "Officials took unprecedented advantage of new laws to halt potential subversives before they attack. But the effort resulted in heavy-handed tactics, according to interviews and documents obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting."