Can you compress the experience of two decades into one word?
You’ve probably heard about the decade of decadence, referring to the conspicuous consumption of the 90’s. Or, maybe Google’s top search result comes to mind, the Decade of Action — a predictably globalist green initiative.
But what about twenty years of personal experience? I don’t know what the last twenty years meant to you, but for me, the last two decades were dominated by my experience as an FBI Special Agent. I think I can distill twenty years into a single word — fraternity.
The FBI has, and continues, to entangle itself in controversy and debate concerning the validity and efficacy of a 114-year-old institution. Some of that criticism is self-inflicted and deserved. The FBI barely survived intact after failing to prevent the events of 9/11. Director Muller battled on Capitol Hill to stem the tide of criticism and maintain the structural integrity of the FBI. Many on The Hill wanted to carve the Bureau into two separate entities, creating a criminal half possessing traditional law enforcement authority, and a domestic intelligence collection agency modeled on the British domestic intelligence service, MI5. Even MI5 thought that was a bad idea. But, there’s no shortage of bad ideas in Washington.
Not surprisingly, what we know today as the Federal Bureau of Investigation began as a highly controversial entity. The FBI was born on June 29, 1908, and employed a “special agent force” of 34 agents. The fledgling agency mostly poached Secret Service cases until the passage of the Mann Act, which addressed the burgeoning traffic of women across state lines for immoral purposes. In 1909, Director George W. Wickersham named his agency the Bureau of Investigation. By 1917 the nation was embroiled in WWI and Democrat President Woodrow Wilson used the crisis to expand federal power. Sound familiar? Congress passed the Espionage Act, and in 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer created the Radical Division to investigate the activities of the Communist Party of America. This is the point when future FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made his first significant appearance — as head of the Radical Division.
By the way, if you believe J. Edgar Hoover was a crossdressing sexual deviant, you’re the victim of the original Russia, Russia, Russia hoax concocted by the KGB’s Service A. Don’t take my word for it, just consult The Sword and the Shield, written by Cambridge intelligence expert Christopher Andrew with former KGB colonel Vasili Mitrokhin, who admitted there was no evidence of Hoover engaging in deviant behavior. The Russians are still up to their old tricks, facilitated by their dupes, fellow-travelers, and operatives in Washington, legacy media, and Hollywood.
The early days of the Bureau of Investigation were marked by incompetence and corruption. Agents were often hired without any substantive background checks. Some were hired with criminal records and, not surprisingly, conducted investigations with an “ends justifies the means” modus operandi. In 1924 Republican Calvin Coolidge was elected president, and J. Edgar Hoover was tasked with cleaning up the mess.
Most of what we know about professional law enforcement was the creation and is the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover. Given the position of Acting Director, Hoover instituted an array of standards designed to create the most professional and competent cadre of law enforcement agents in the world.
In many respects, he accomplished his goal. Hoover was a perfectionist, eccentric, and a complex man. He left an indelible mark on the FBI during his 48-year tenure and created the mystique of the G-man. He got a lot of things right, judging him by his own time, and some things wrong. But Hoover is an example of how a bureaucracy can be characterized by its leadership, or lack thereof. For a detailed look into J. Edgar Hoover and the history of the FBI, consult The Bureau, by Ronald Kessler.
Fundamentally the FBI is a tool of power, like a gun. A gun requires a bad actor to point it in the wrong direction and pull the trigger — unless, you’re Alec Baldwin with a magic self-firing pistol. Bureaucracies function just like a firearm and the culture of Washington’s three letter agencies are influenced by those the President appoints to lead them. They’re the ones who point the gun — the cadre of executive management bureaucrats pull the trigger. Who do you blame if your favorite NFL team is dysfunctional? The players certainly bear responsibility, but the buck stops with the coach for a losing season.
We vote, or we don’t and, as the old saying goes, elections have consequences. The election of President Barack Obama in 2009 and his appointment of Former Director James Comey in 2013 was disastrous.
The Obama administration installed statists in leadership positions across the entire structure of the executive branch; the FBI was no exception. Former Director Comey’s exoneration of Hillary Clinton’s obvious criminal mishandling of classified information during a press conference in 2017, for many, signaled the end of the modern era of the FBI as an impartial fact-finding agency.
As any FBI agent can tell you, handling classified information the way Hillary did would land any federal agent in a federal penitentiary. But Comey dutifully tossed out the inductive model of Sherlock Holmes and replaced it with the deductive model of the hack, political activist and paved the way for the politically motivated debacles to follow: the “pee-pee” tapes, the dossier, and Russia, Russia, Russia, which Hillary Clinton raved about with quivering jowls and eyes like a goldfish with a bad case of pop-eye. Instead of collecting facts and then forming a theory of the case, the theory of the case dictated what was considered to be fact.
So, how do we fix the FBI? I say “we” because we get the government and institutions we deserve. Who the President is matters. A president who plays fast and loose with your inalienable rights will appoint people to head agencies like the FBI who think the ends justify the means. And, in case you were wondering, neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden care about your inalienable rights. Draconian COVID policies should be evidence enough of the Biden administration’s complete disregard for civil liberties.
For twenty years, I worked side-by-side with the best people the FBI has to offer. A fraternity of Special Agents who take their oath to the Constitution seriously and exemplified Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity. We can take back our institutions like the FBI, but that will require fighting the good fight at the ballot box, electing representatives who honor the Constitution and believe in American exceptionalism. Anything short of this will lead to a bigger, more intrusive government that cares nothing for liberty and lusts only for more power.