“In the meantime Robert Mueller, with the same doggedness and blind faith which caused him to pursue the wrong man, Hatfill, in the anthrax case, wasting millions of man-hours and our money, continues on like Inspector Clouseau.”
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CLARICE SCORES ANOTHER ‘GREATEST HIT’ WITH THIS COLUMN
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Our opinion first, Feldmann column follows:
Robert Mueller is no ‘inspector Clouseau’, the bumbling, klutzy French detective whose ineptitude often turned into ‘accidental brilliance’ (as one critic described it) in solving cases.
As far as we can determine, a) Mueller has not had any episodes of ‘accidental brilliance’…he does have an unenviable record of destroying the lives of innocent “targets” as a result of his other ‘qualities’ of ‘doggedness’ and we would say, ‘nasty stubborness to pursue the wrong man’ (men, women, etc).
b) We are not inclined to ‘credit’, or charge Mr. Mueller with ‘bumbling ineptitude’; in fact we lean toward cruel expertise in the way he can reduce a ‘target’ to a pathetic, broken individual willing to plead to anything, whether guilty or not.
Examples are several as we’ve seen in recent events related to his ‘special counsel’ assignment, and in this column by Clarice Feldmann.
c) We are of the belief that the FBI is an irreparably corrupt and badly damaged agency…and a huge threat to the nation as a relatively free society, and, if it did not embark on this path under Mr. Mueller’s direction, it was certainly accelerated under his leadership.
Ms. Feldmann’s observations and conclusions do not go as far as ours…and wise gamblers would be better advised to bet on hers, but, if Robert Mueller is just a bumbling incompetent, though well-meaning and capable of ‘accidental brilliance’, he has shown none of those attributes in his current role as ‘special counsel’ , nor by his performance in any of his prior roles.
Based on his extensive record, and only part of which Feldmann has reported on here, Bob Mueller, if he is not a corrupt, vindictive, little (in character if not in physical stature) man, than he is a soulless political hack better suited to an earlier era as a posse leader in search of cattle rustlers, meting out ‘frontier justice’ to the guilty, the “suspected” guilty, and the innocent alike.
Finally, we may seem to exaggerate in our characterization of the great Robert Mueller, but, in our opinion, he and his ilk are really creepy people reminiscent of others who have headed agencies like what is feared the fbi has become or is becoming.
A “High Calling”? Or, Just a Job?
It may seem like a nightmare but Mueller’s methods and the way they are acted upon by others who are characterized as “hardworking, dedicated, patriotic, truth-seeking public servants, protectors of the American people , etc…”, the 35,000 plus FBI personnel, is chilling!
Suppose, for example, you become a “target” of a Bob Mueller investigation, maybe because of your association with someone who has gone onto playing a key role in the organization of a political figure that fate has put at odds politically with a Mueller benefactor. Suppose Mr. Mueller has determined that you could provide information valuable in ultimately discrediting your one-time associate and his organization.
He has also determined that the most effective and efficient way to get you to provide that information is to file charges against you…to squeeze you to ‘rat out’ your one time associate.
Those charges need not be provable in a court of law. they serve their purpose by forcing you to hire counsel to defend against them. and Bob Mueller has no worries about how much his prosecutorial effort will cost.
But, to defend against them, frivolous though those charges may be, you do. How much of whatever resources you have would you be willing to lose before agreeing to ruin the career, reputation, and livelihood of someone you don’t even know? All you have to do is go along with a prosecution-provided narrative. (if bail is $100,000 for a “credible” allegation, your out $10,000 , even if proven ‘not guilty’.)
That’s how a “ministry of state security” throughout modern history works. That’s how otherwise “good, hardworking, patriotic public servants” get entangled in a corrupt and evil enterprise. (Didn’t those armed agents ordered to raid the home of the Manaforts in the early morning hours to remove computers and various personal items wonder if ‘maybe this doesn’t seem exactly right’? Did this seem to be an action vital to protect ‘state security’?: or, is it “just a job”?)
As Florida’s unpopular “popular” Charlie Crist once said after losing a bruising political battle, “welcome to the NFL”! DLH
Faithless in Holy Week
While Jews and Christians celebrate Passover and Easter this week, it is increasingly obvious that large numbers of Americans are losing faith in our institutions and the people who have been running them. A bit of skepticism about government is always a healthy thing, to my way of thinking, but the cynicism and distrust is now at a higher level than I can recall.
Something the Attorney General Can Correct Right Now
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has authority over the FBI. If he’s paying attention, he might notice how far that agency’s credibility has fallen. This week, the Noor Salman jury refused to find her (the wife of the Pulse nightclub shooter) guilty of obstruction of justice and providing material support to a terrorist act. The jury foreman explained why, and if Sessions is paying attention, he can do something immediately to help restore faith in the agency. (Recall that the jury learned that the shooter’s father had been a longtime FBI informant and had persuaded the agency to disregard the obvious signs of his son’s intent.)
In the foreman’s post-verdict statement, he said: “I wish that the FBI had recorded their interviews with Ms. Salman as there were several significant inconsistencies with the written summaries of her statements.”
This is something FBI watchers have long criticized. The notion that in this age, it is sufficient to prosecute people based on an agent’s self-serving notes (302’s) sometimes written a considerable time after interviews. We have read that 302’s forming the basis of some of Mueller’s investigations were changed by supervisors and the originals lost; we know that in the Libby case one agent present at his interview conceded at trial that the 302 of her co-agent (retired just as trial began) was inconsistent with her recollections, Videos of interviews are easy to do. They are used by police forces throughout the country and, to the best of my knowledge by Western law enforcement agencies outside the U.S. The attorney general should issue a directive scrapping further use of this 302 gambit. How would you like to face a grand jury with only your word versus the written account of the FBI agent who handled the interview? I wouldn’t. I’d never agree to an interview that was not videographed or transcribed by a stenographer.
Something Congress Can and Should Do
Shut down the FBI’s National Security Branch or force the FBI to significantly reshape its operations — it’s useless and inconsistent with the FBI’s crimefighting mission where what’s important is not stopping crime, but gathering prosecution evidence of crime.
In 2005 the FBI was restructured to emphasize counterintelligence: As Robert Mueller (then head of the FBI) noted:
The National Security Branch structure took effect on September 12, 2005, in response to a directive from the President to the Attorney General. The NSB consists of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division (CTD), the Counterintelligence Division (CD), the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), and the new Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Directorate. Combining our national security workforce and mission under one leadership umbrella enhances our contribution to the national intelligence effort and provides us with the opportunity to leverage resources from our U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) partners, as well as our federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement partners.
Counterterrorism Division
The mission of the Counterterrorism Division is to identify and disrupt potential terrorist plots by individuals or terror cells, freezing terrorist finances, sharing information with law enforcement and intelligence partners worldwide, and providing strategic and operational threat analysis to the wider intelligence community. Since the September 11 attacks, we have dramatically strengthened our ability to combat terrorism and have had success identifying, disrupting, and dismantling terrorist threats.
The FBI, which has in its ranks many good accountants, has apparently done a reasonable job on tracking terrorist finances. It has been a bust in “disrupting” terrorism. As noted, they missed the Pulse shooter. The undercover agent assigned to the group that tried to kill Pamela Geller encouraged them and never did a thing to stop them or even to alert authorities to the attack. Then there was the Tsarnaev case, where ignoring Russian warnings, the FBI sat by and the brothers murdered three men (and got away with it due to fumbling by the Boston law enforcement agencies) and proceeded in time to bomb a marathon route,
I won’t even go into the number of times where the FBI agents entrapped mentally deficient men into acts for which they then took credit for stopping. But there have been many such incidents: Jerry Drake Varnell, a paranoid schizphrenic, in 2017, the depressive Aby Rayyan in 2016, the delunsional Sami Osmakac in 2012, and Peyton Pruitt, who suffers from “mental retardation, autism, and attention deficit disorder,” in 2015.
*A Rotten Tomatoes Review:
Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) in L.A. Confidential
Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) . . . The seemingly upstanding Captain Smith asks purist recruit Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) to rat out corrupt cops, in what seems to be a genuine effort to clean up the department, but Smith is merely covering his bases. He’s also using the brutish Bud White (Russell Crowe) on a goon squad that runs mobsters out of L.A so that Smith can maintain control of the city’s drug traffic. James Cromwell is frighteningly believable as the “man in charge,” especially once we see how corrupt he really is.
