The FBI became Public Enemy No. 1 long ago
Way back in 2001 a Senate oversight committee presented a crushing indictment of the FBI's many failures and crimes and called for reform. Today the agency is more dangerous than ever.
The FBI has been digging its own grave for decades.
Our national police force was in such deep trouble and its reputation was in such deep disrepute in 2001 that the U.S. Senate held a bipartisan oversight hearing to try to fix it.
The committee’s report, which reads like it could have been written last week, is proof that the reforms senators Leahy, Feinestein and Grassley said were so desperately needed at the FBI 22 years ago never happened.
The FBI’s mistakes and arrogance at Waco and Ruby Ridge, not to mention its failure to stop terrorists from bombing the Trade Towers in NYC and find Communist spies in its own lunchrooms, were already a national embarrasment.
As we know, the FBI’s illegal spying, police-state tactics, mistakes, arrogance and political biases have only gotten worse since 2001.
It’s gotten so bad that civil liberties activists and at least one 2024 presidential candidate are calling for the agency to be defunded and put out of business before it abuses any more Americans.
Here’s a link to the Senate’s oversight committee “RESTORING CONFIDENCE IN THE FBI” from June 20, 2001.
And before we get to what Sen. Chuck Grassley said 22 years ago about the FBI in his opening statement to the oversight committee, here’s the editorial I wrote for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review that month.
Everything I wrote about our over-revered and out-of control federal police force in 2001 is even truer today.
The FBI
Fifty years ago, when good and evil didn't come in shades of gray, the FBI's public image was comic-book pure.
Our famed federal police force bravely did battle with America's No. 1 enemies — murderous gangsters, the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi and Commie spies.
The prototypical G-man was Jimmy Stewart in "The FBI Story." And J. Edgar Hoover, whose iconic reputation was yet to be sullied by details of his odd personal life and taste for political blackmail, was everybody's hero.
It's amazing how far the FBI has fallen.
Once lionized by nearly everyone for its honesty, professionalism and scientific certainty, it is today sniped at from all sides for a series of bloody blunders, sloppy goofs and an arrogant, "fortress mentality" that blocks outside scrutiny.
As this month's oversight hearings in the U.S. Senate showed, nearly everyone in Washington is coming up with ideas for how the FBI should be reformed, watched much more closely and made to own up to its mistakes.
The mistakes are serious and go beyond the atrocities of Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Beyond the tardy disclosure of 4,000 pages of evidence in the Timothy McVeigh case.
Beyond the police-state treatment accorded suspects such as Wen Ho Lee, the nuclear scientist now cleared of spying allegations.
The mistakes include widespread ineptitude in crime labs, selling FBI secrets to mob figures and the failure to sniff out agent Robert Hanssen, who allegedly spent most of his FBI career selling secrets to the Soviets.
These embarrassments, and new ones to come, should not diminish the good work done by the majority of the FBI's 11,000 agents.
But they provide redundant proof that Mr. Hoover's misbehaving child needs to go to reform school.
And the FBI's hard fall from grace reminds us that in a free society, all government agencies, even sainted ones, must be watched closely for signs of sin.
Here’s is Sen. Grassley’s opening statement to the oversight committee:
Senator Grassley. ``Restoring Confidence in the FBI'' is a
particularly good title for this hearing because confidence is
what truly goes to the heart of the issue that we are here to
discuss today.
My father taught me the FBI could do no wrong, but I think
confidence in the FBI, particularly the presumption of
integrity, has been shaken. There is no question that for too
long the FBI has broken faith with the American people. The
time for meaningful and lasting reform is now, and it is up to
us to help the FBI regain the trust and confidence of the
American people.
As an advocate for FBI reform, what often gets lost in my
comments is the respect that we must all have, and I have, for
the thousands of men and women who are serving their country
well as FBI employees. But the FBI management is broken, and
this does a real disservice to the hard-working agents on the
street.
Now, at long last, we have consensus for reform. Reform
should be structured around three areas: accountability,
jurisdiction and leadership; accountability through the
enhancement of executive and congressional oversight,
jurisdiction through the streamlining of the FBI's
investigative responsibilities, and leadership through the
selection of a new director with an appetite for reform and the
wherewithal to accomplish it.
The issue of accountability is the most important part of
the reform effort. The FBI is buried under a mountain of
evidence proving that it cannot police itself. The culture
within the FBI is so entrenched that there can be no way of
changing it without introducing an element of independent
oversight.
There are many options, but at this time I believe the
option that we should choose is to enhance the existing
structure of the DOJ Inspector General as the more viable
course to take. This is a position that I have been advocating
since the FBI Crime Lab investigation in 1997.
I am hesitant to create an entirely new inspector general
bureaucracy in the FBI that may only serve to isolate and
insulate the Bureau further from the rest of the law
enforcement community. It is exactly this notion of privilege
and separateness that helps to feed the Bureau's culture of
arrogance.
With regard to jurisdiction, many of you may remember the
Webster Commission. I am pleased that Judge Webster is here.
One of the recommendations of that commission was to expand
jurisdiction of the FBI and that the DEA and the ATF should be
folded into the FBI.
Here today, sitting in the wake of the Hanssen and McVeigh
fiascoes, it seems to me that is not a viable option. It
couldn't be clearer that the FBI has simply become too unwieldy
to be effectively managed. The answer to the problem at the
Bureau will not be found in increasing its jurisdiction, nor
will the concerns of the American people be addressed by
creating a de facto national police force.
The history of congressional response to the FBI's problems
has usually been that the FBI ends up with a bigger budget,
more program jurisdiction, and the director walks out of this
room with a nice pat on the back. I believe that the FBI will
become a more efficient and accountable organization through
the narrowing of its investigative focus.
Finally, with an opening for the Director of the FBI, this
gives us a real opportunity. President Bush will be naming that
new director, and that person needs to make changes. This
person needs to change the kind of culture that places
publicity and image before basics and fundamentals. This person
needs to change the kind of culture that holds press
conferences in high-profile cases before all the facts are in.
We have seen the consequences of this approach in cases such as
Richard Jewell, Wen Ho Lee, and the TWA 800 investigation.
The new director needs to change the kind of culture that
suppresses dissent and discourages independent oversight.
Director Freeh once stated the following with regard to the
FBI: ``We are potentially the most dangerous agency in the
country if we are not scrutinized carefully.'' I agree, so let
us now get down to the business of helping the FBI and its new
director regain trust and confidence from the American people.
I am with Vivek. Eliminate the FBI and scatter its remains. Keep most of the rank and file, but get new leadership across all manage levels.