Think we are a bit overwrought about the current direction of the FBI?
Bill Gertz is a noted champion* of an effective intelligence and law enforcement apparat in defense of the Constitution and national interests. The following link and excerpts are from a report he wrote a few days ago at the Free Beacon:
FBI Increasingly Politicized Under Comey and Mueller
Analysis: Bureau operating as unchecked power
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, once America’s storied crime fighting agency, is under fire for an increasing leftward politicization blamed on recent liberal directors and a bureaucracy operating with nearly unchecked power.
Once a bastion of conservative anti-communism under long-time director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI has become one of the more liberal political agencies of government, and some critics say appears increasingly to operate outside normal constitutional controls.
The shift is the result of a bureaucratic culture that emerged in the 1990s and was fueled by its two most recent former directors, James Comey and Robert Mueller, who ran the agency for the past 16 years. Mueller headed the FBI from 2001 to 2013, when Comey took over and served until he was fired by Trump in May.
Both former directors currently are at the center of a fierce political debate over the FBI’s competency and integrity.
“People are finally tumbling to the realization that this [FBI] has become a proto-KGB,” said a former senior intelligence official with extensive experience in counterintelligence. “We’re in a constitutional crisis. These guys are playing out a silent coup against an elected official.”
. . .
As for Congress, the FBI for years also has stonewalled overseers under both Comey and Mueller.
Even routine requests for FBI documents and information have been rejected or ignored, and congressional overseers have not taken action to force the FBI to comply.
The lack of congressional oversight and administration controls have left the FBI with enormous power and little accountability.
The former intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity over concerns about FBI retaliation, said the mindset of Comey, Mueller and others of their group is that they are going to punish Trump for his criticism of the FBI.
“Mueller, Comey, and Rosenstein are going to make Trump pay for having dissed the bureau,” the former official said.
More details in the full article. V’pac
*Gertz’ books include:
- Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (1999)
- The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America (2000)
- Breakdown: How America’s Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 (2002)
- Treachery: How America’s Friends And Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies (2004)
- Enemies: How America’s Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets-And How We Let It Happen (2006)
- The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big Government Republicans Are Undermining America’s Security and Leading Us to War (2008)
- iWar: War and Peace in the Information Age (2017)
