Whither the FBI — and Us?

 

One evening in 1968, my father put down his newspaper and said to me, “Eugene McCarthy must be the cleanest man in American politics.” I was a little surprised. Dad was a pretty conventional Irish Catholic voter who made the transition from JFK to Reagan as the Democratic Party forced out people like us. That year I figured he would vote for LBJ (or Humphrey after LBJ dropped out). He was with the Civil Rights Division and worked on desegregation cases in Mississippi and Tennessee. He knew a number of FBI guys, as did any other DOJ attorney.

I asked, “How do you know that?”

“Because about a month ago, McCarthy called for the resignation of J. Edgar Hoover and made a campaign promise to replace him.”

“So?”

“Absolutely nothing bad about McCarthy’s personal life or finances has emerged since then, and Hoover would have destroyed him if he had anything.”

Apparently, Dad had no illusions about J. Edgar’s FBI.

The speaker at my high school graduation was Cartha DeLoach, an assistant FBI director. It was a weird speech, essentially listing categories of crimes and then telling us after each that we were not the type to do such things. In the finest FBI tradition, he is reported to have told the senior aide to the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee that the bureau knew about the aide’s sexual indiscretions. Oddly enough, DeLoach did not cover blackmail in the graduation speech.

The FBI has always been a self-aware, self-interested, politically astute entity. The bureau invariably wins turf and appropriations battles when pitted against other law enforcement agencies. In 2002, when the Department of Homeland Security was created, many assumed that the FBI would be subsumed into it. Fat chance. Two programs were ceded to DHS, but the FBI budget increased by a whopping 25% that year and continues to increase every year. The current budget is now over $10 billion.

By 1992, I still assumed that despite the sordid political traditions at the top of the agency, the FBI was all about straight shooters and principled people. My brother’s Boston Irish political contacts were already laughing at the Boston FBI and the “elusive” Whitey Bulger at that time, but I did not believe it could possibly be as bad as it turned out to be.

My image of the FBI at that time was shaped by Robert Hanssen. We were acquainted because our sons were classmates and friends, and we had lots of mutual friends and acquaintances. Hanssen seemed slightly to the right of Moses on matters of faith and morality. I knew that he was in the section that combatted foreign spies but not much else about his work. If I had to make a list of everybody I ever knew in order of least likely to betray the USA to communists, Bob Hanssen would have been at the top of the list (except for my mother or maybe Pope John Paul II). Captain America might turn out to be a squish, but not Bob Hanssen. If he was typical of the bureau, then they were still the fiercely principled people in the popular image of the FBI.

In April of 1992, Hanssen was at our house for my son’s birthday party. I kidded him that he would have to get a new job now that the USSR was kaput (as of December ’91). He did not take it as a joke and said that in reality, nothing had changed. The same people would be doing the same things for the same reasons because that’s just how the world is. He was kind of animated about the whole thing. I changed the subject.

Little did I know that it was probably the temporary disruption of his traitorous sideline that had him so agitated back then. When my wife and I heard the TV news in 2001 that an FBI agent named Robert Hanssen had been arrested for espionage, we both assumed that it was quite a coincidence that there was another guy with the same name at the bureau. And then they flashed his picture. It was a gut punch for a lot of people.

The current FBI leadership seems to be entirely populated by weasels playing political games. The absurd overkill against the Jan. 6 “insurrections” and the vomitous disgrace of not acting to protect the girls abused by Larry Nassar are deeply disturbing. Infidelity, corruption, and partisan impropriety seem less and less like exceptions when the FBI is in the news.

But it simply cannot be that the bulk of 13,000 or so FBI special agents are more corrupt than the average American. I am at least as paranoid as anybody else who posts on Ricochet, but I don’t buy that. The FBI rank and file is still a pretty select bunch. But like the rest of America, the good guys are being betrayed by a lack of moral leadership, and betrayal can have insidious, lasting consequences. How do we fix that? And not just in the FBI.

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  1. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Metalheaddoc (View Comment):

    I too have lost trust in government and it’s institutions in the past 5 years. Perhaps rank and file FBI agents aren’t corrupt in the traditional sense. But what about those that operate in the gray zones at the margins of legality? How pure would you be if you knew your superiors would sweep under the rug any wrongdoing that wasn’t totally egregious?

    To this ordinary citizen’s eyes, there is clearly a two tier justice system with separate rules and exceptions for elites and government apparatchiks of the left. Equal justice under the law is a joke now. Only fools believe that now.

    Agree entirely.

    As to the rank and file being good guys. Aren’t they following orders from the top?

    I can imagine, at my interrogation for possible sedition in some government building…..  

    Look agent Friendly, what I said about the FBI on the internet was only about your superiors, you guys are cool, bra-,  and they will nod and understand as they put me in handcuffs.

    • #31
  2. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Old Bathos: “Absolutely nothing bad about McCarthy’s personal life or finances has emerged since then, and Hoover would have destroyed him if he had anything.”

    That sounds a bit like first-level thinking.  What if Hoover did have dirt on McCarthy, but figured it would be more valuable to hold that over him after he was elected, if he won?

    • #32
  3. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    Skyler (View Comment):

    From Wikipedia I learned, “After going to prison, Hanssen claimed he periodically admitted his espionage to priests in Confession.”

    One of the severe errors that priests make is thinking that hearing a confession means that forgiveness must be given. As devout as this loon seems to have been, I wonder if the priest had refused to grant forgiveness unless he performed a penance of public confession and a term in jail, would our country have been safer (and to you religious folk, his “soul” might have been more protected).

    Doesn’t really work like that. If the penitent admits the sin, asks forgiveness and promises to try to do better that’s it. Priests can’t refuse, rat him out or impose a penance that involves a disclosure. If the confession is insincere or done by a sociopath, that’s for God to work out…

    Scott Peck’s book People of the Lie offered a lot of insights into how making a lie a central fixture of your life and trying to force everything and everyone around to accommodate it is the essence of evil. Not exactly sure how Hanssen saw himself. But what he built around that one distortion was truly bizarre.

    Are the priests allowed to withhold absolution if the person continues their criminal behavior?  Even Father Mulcahey refused to grant absolution to a soldier who had taken another’s identity in order to get out of Korea because the sin was continuing.

    • #33
  4. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    Old Bathos (View Comment):
    Priests can’t refuse, rat him out or impose a penance that involves a disclosure.

    Incorrect.  They can’t rat him out, but they can certainly impose a penance, and the penance could be anything they want.

    Priests have the power to forgive and the power to hold the sinner bound to  their sin.  They always forget that part.  

     

    • #34
  5. Headedwest Coolidge
    Headedwest
    @Headedwest

    DonG (2+2=5. Say it!) (View Comment):
    I think the FBI does a good job of having a database of fibers and paint samples.

    Don’t be so quick. Remember a few years when it was discovered that their lab just flat out lied to get convictions? Their fiber and paint database might be just as fictional as their other lab work.

    • #35
  6. GlennAmurgis Coolidge
    GlennAmurgis
    @GlennAmurgis

    Read about the Boston FBI dealings with Whitey Bulger 

     

    • #36
  7. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    GlennAmurgis (View Comment):

    Read about the Boston FBI dealings with Whitey Bulger

     

    What about them?

    • #37
  8. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    Skyler (View Comment):

    Old Bathos (View Comment):
    Priests can’t refuse, rat him out or impose a penance that involves a disclosure.

    Incorrect. They can’t rat him out, but they can certainly impose a penance, and the penance could be anything they want.

    Priests have the power to forgive and the power to hold the sinner bound to their sin. They always forget that part.

     

    Don’t know where you got that. Unless there is direct knowledge that the confession is insincere, the presumption is forgiveness. The fact that the sinner is and is likely to remain a repeat offender makes forgiveness and a restart more necessary, not less. We have no idea what was confessed, what penance was assigned and what advice given. We only know that he did not stop selling info to the Russians.

    • #38
  9. Dr Steve Member
    Dr Steve
    @DrSteve

    In re: Hanssen’s motivations. The old rule of thumb about this is to think of the acronym, MICE.

    Money. Ideology. Compromise. Ego.

    These can be ANDs, as well as ORs, and can happen in any order. That is, you can start to spy because you think you need the money, keep doing it because you have an ego, and can’t stop because now you are compromised (they have their hooks into you). Or it can go the other direction: you get compromised by the adversary, and start to spy rather than face the exposure, and maybe the money is a second incentive. The classic example is that, back in the day, they tried to keep out homosexuals because (supposedly) they were subject to blackmail by adversaries (and the FBI itself, going back to the original story in this post?).

    Maybe Hanssen started for the money, or maybe he started to prove he was clever. Only he knows. However he began spying for the Soviets, I suspect Hanssen was pretty easily caught in a trap of his own making. By the way, if you follow the famous cases (say, Ames as well as Hanssen) the money is never as much as Hollywood would have you believe.

    I am not qualified to speak to the issue of the confessions to a priest, but if Hanssen was truly interested in penance, he could have confessed to his superiors too, and cut a deal, either to turn double or at least to help them roll up his handler(s). He ended up having to do that anyway, once he was caught.

    Finally, it is interesting to see that the family was in fact as devout as reported. The daughter is now a pretty fiercely conservative professor at a Catholic university.

    • #39
  10. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Old Bathos: The FBI rank and file is still a pretty select bunch. But like the rest of America, the good guys are being betrayed by a lack of moral leadership, and betrayal can have insidious, lasting consequences. How do we fix that?

    I’ve always thought that one of the most interesting actions that GW took in the wake of the terrorists’ attacks on New York and Washington was to establish the Department of Homeland Security. He described the overall purpose for this new intelligence agency as being ostensibly to fill the gap between the domestic actions the FBI was authorized to take and the foreign actions the CIA was authorized to take. However, its work is redundant with the other two agencies, and the INS as well:

    Its stated missions involve anti-terrorism, border security, immigration and customs, cyber security, and disaster prevention and management.

    In reality, essentially what GW did was create a management team and impose it over the existing agencies. I say this to suggest that everything we have seen that happened in the Donald Trump Goes to Washington story I’m positive GW saw too. 

    I think GW did this because he could see that some of the management problems in these existing agencies could not be fixed. 

    Every organization, big or small, tends toward bureaucratic behavior over time. And the more isolated from normal life outside it the organization becomes, the faster the bureaucratic forces overwhelm it. By “bureaucratic,” I mean serving itself rather than some higher purpose. 

    I think Americans have known this about Washington for some time. I don’t mean the press here. I mean specifically the American Republican people. Those are the people who elected Donald Trump–a complete outsider. Subsequently, the Washington bureaucracy, rather than honoring and respecting the intelligence of the American Republican people in electing President Trump, did everything in their power to stop him from doing anything. 

    The upper echelon of our government is not even as astute as the lowliest credential-challenged, unimpressive board of directors of a medium-sized company in America, a group of people who can see how far their company’s management bureaucracy has degenerated over time. That middle-American modest board of directors would have realized (and frankly did realize) that the Washington bureaucracy could not be fixed–not in a human lifetime. Everyone in lower, middle, and upper management needed to be fired and all new people brought in. When companies bring in a firer like Donald Trump, that’s what they are looking for: Jack Welch’s neutron bomb approach that saves the building but gets rid of all of the people. 

    I don’t know of any other way to fix situations like this. 

    Companies know there will be serious repercussions for these massive actions. They get rid of everyone all at once, and they hire the best lawyers they can find to defend the new CEO and the board in the aftermath of the firings. 

     

    • #40
  11. Richard Easton Coolidge
    Richard Easton
    @RichardEaston

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    Unsk (View Comment):

    Interesting post.

    Robert Hanssen spied for the Russians for over 20 years. Allegedly his motivation was financial. He converted to Catholicism after he married , became a member of Opus Dei, and seemingly was a staunch conservative. Was this all an act? It seems his family didn’t know of his activities, which kinda begs the question of how much money was he given, where did it all go and was it all worth it?

    Since we have at least a couple of people who are more than familiar with Hanssen, maybe you could shed some light on what really motivated him.

    I think the motive was not just money but enormous ego, to prove that he was not given his due given his cleverness.

    I don’t think the rest was an act. He was sick enough to think he was doing both without contradiction. But what do I really know? He fooled me along with a lot of people who knew him far better.

    His brother-in-law Mark Wauck, also worked for the FIB, recommended that he be investigated in 1990 since his sister told him that her sister found a pile of cash on the dresser and Hanssen had talked about retiring in Poland. Wauk talked to his boss who took no action. The FIB is incompetent in addition to being corrupt.

    • #41
  12. GlennAmurgis Coolidge
    GlennAmurgis
    @GlennAmurgis

    Skyler (View Comment):

    GlennAmurgis (View Comment):

    Read about the Boston FBI dealings with Whitey Bulger

     

    What about them?

    They allowed all of his criminal behavoir because they considered him an informant 

    • #42
  13. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    GlennAmurgis (View Comment):

    Skyler (View Comment):

    GlennAmurgis (View Comment):

    Read about the Boston FBI dealings with Whitey Bulger

    What about them?

    They allowed all of his criminal behavoir because they considered him an informant

    More complicated.  Agent Connolly (same local origins as Whitey, got money from Whitey) actually fed intel about the mafia to Whitey who then relayed it back to the FBI.  Then Connolly et al could say that it proved Whitey was a valuable asset because he provided independent confirmation of this important info.  Whitey always denied he did any of this, that he was never a rat.

    Mueller, who did some sort of investigation of the Boston FBI mess from his slot in the US attorney’s office, failed to detect that five guys went to jail for a murder that they did not do (most likely Whitey and/or Flemmi did it).  His apparent goal was to appear to cleanse the local FBI and declare the matter closed and all fixed ASAP.  When the truth was finally uncovered, those men (2 or 3 died in prison) and their families collected about $100 mill in taxpayer dollars in damages.

    • #43
  14. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    Skyler (View Comment):

    Old Bathos (View Comment):
    Priests can’t refuse, rat him out or impose a penance that involves a disclosure.

    Incorrect. They can’t rat him out, but they can certainly impose a penance, and the penance could be anything they want.

    Priests have the power to forgive and the power to hold the sinner bound to their sin. They always forget that part.

     

    Don’t know where you got that. Unless there is direct knowledge that the confession is insincere, the presumption is forgiveness. The fact that the sinner is and is likely to remain a repeat offender makes forgiveness and a restart more necessary, not less. We have no idea what was confessed, what penance was assigned and what advice given. We only know that he did not stop selling info to the Russians.

    From my CCD days.  They were granted the power to forgive sins and if they decide to hold them bound, then they are held bound.  

    They are not required to forgive everything and anything, and even if so they can certainly require more penance than just reciting 4 our fathers and 3 hail Maries.  

    One of my roommates from college was a priest jailed for embezzling the collection plate to support his gambling habit (he calls it an addiction).  The church didn’t forgive him until he did about two years in jail and then a few years working at a factory.  

    • #44
  15. Headedwest Coolidge
    Headedwest
    @Headedwest

    GlennAmurgis (View Comment):

    Read about the Boston FBI dealings with Whitey Bulger

    Howie Carr has been in the news business in Boston for decades. I like his book “The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century” for an inside look at Mass. politics and crime and the corrupt Boston FBI office.

    At one point the Bulger gang was considering a hit on Howie because of his reporting.

    • #45
  16. Gazpacho Grande' Coolidge
    Gazpacho Grande'
    @ChrisCampion

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Old Bathos: The FBI rank and file is still a pretty select bunch. But like the rest of America, the good guys are being betrayed by a lack of moral leadership, and betrayal can have insidious, lasting consequences. How do we fix that?

    I’ve always thought that one of the most interesting actions that GW took in the wake of the terrorists’ attacks on New York and Washington was to establish the Department of Homeland Security. He described the overall purpose for this new intelligence agency as being ostensibly to fill the gap between the domestic actions the FBI was authorized to take and the foreign actions the CIA was authorized to take. However, its work is redundant with the other two agencies, and the INS as well:

    Its stated missions involve anti-terrorism, border security, immigration and customs, cyber security, and disaster prevention and management.

    Every organization, big or small, tends toward bureaucratic behavior over time. And the more isolated from normal life outside it the organization becomes, the faster the bureaucratic forces overwhelm it. By “bureaucratic,” I mean serving itself rather than some higher purpose.

    I think Americans have known this about Washington for some time. I don’t mean the press here. I mean specifically the American Republican people. Those are the people who elected Donald Trump–a complete outsider. Subsequently, the Washington bureaucracy, rather than honoring and respecting the intelligence of the American Republican people in electing President Trump, did everything in their power to stop him from doing anything.

    The upper echelon of our government is not even as astute as the lowliest credential-challenged, unimpressive board of directors of a medium-sized company in America, a group of people who can see how far their company’s management bureaucracy has degenerated over time. That middle-American modest board of directors would have realized (and frankly did realize) that the Washington bureaucracy could not be fixed–not in a human lifetime. Everyone in lower, middle, and upper management needed to be fired and all new people brought in. When companies bring in a firer like Donald Trump, that’s what they are looking for: Jack Welch’s neutron bomb approach that saves the building but gets rid of all of the people.

    I don’t know of any other way to fix situations like this.

    Companies know there will be serious repercussions for these massive actions. They get rid of everyone all at once, and they hire the best lawyers they can find to defend the new CEO and the board in the aftermath of the firings.

     

    This is pretty good, and accurate.  We think elections provide oversight, but we don’t elect bureaucracies, and they live side by side with the politicians, and gain more budget by doing so.

    • #46
  17. Nanocelt TheContrarian Member
    Nanocelt TheContrarian
    @NanoceltTheContrarian

    Hanssen was clearly a psych/sociopath. Yet he was a trusted FBI agent. And I would hazard a guess that he was representative of the FBI in a way that Old Bathos does not mean to suggest, eg., that FBI agents are more psychopathic than the solid Friday-type law enforcement officials, just interested in the facts,  that we usually credit them with being.  With agents of the sort as Hanssen, and others like G. Gordon Liddy, it seems that the FBI may attract more than its share of strange individuals.

    I would suggest that many of the directors are psychologically unfit for the position. Mueller, for example, pursued an investigation long, long after he knew there was no “there” there. And Come-clearly a narcissistic psychopath. Fitzgerald demonstrated a serious psychopathology in prosecuting Scooter Libby when he knew the real culprit. And he got a conviction on a lie. 

    Old Bathos’ dad’s comment illustrates exactly why the FBI is problematic. He, along with everyone else, assumes that the FBI was/is political, highly political, and amassed dirt on every politician to keep them in line. Chuck Shumer gave the game away again not too many years ago when he observed that Trump should be careful criticizing the Bureau, as the Bureau had a lot of ways to hurt you (understatement of the Century). 

    Holman Jenkins recently wrote a column in the WSJ advocating for the abolition of the FBI. I didn’t read it, as I don’t have a subscription and it is behind a pay wall. But I would agree.  The FBI behavior, with bogus FISA warrants, alone, in the Russia hoax,  should be enough to disband the institution. But, generally, the sentiment is that while the leadership may be corrupt, the rank and file agents are solid.  I agree that the leadership is corrupt, and has been for a long time, mostly. 

     But I disagree that the rank and file are solid. 

    The investigation of the abuse of female gymnasts was a joke. Where were those solid field agents?

    Consider the universally condemned Cliven Bundy. He was savaged by the Conservative literati, particularly National Review, for his illegal behavior, and that armed standoff when the feds tried to confiscate his cattle. Yet, ultimately, a judge not only threw out his conviction and his case, the judge also forbid the government from ever bringing charges again, based on the malfeasance of the FBI.

    The FBI botched the investigation of TWA Flight 800. The FBI botched the investigation of Ron Brown’s death. The FBI may have instigated the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI certainly botched the investigation of the Weather Underground, as Bill Ayers wound up on a university faculty rather than spending life behind bars, based on FBI misconduct. And, as mentioned, the Whitey Bulgar fiasco–vast malfeasance by the FBI. The FBI utterly botched the Waco standoff. The FBI misbehaved egregiously going after the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, 

    And, etc. 

    • #47
  18. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    Nanocelt TheContrarian (View Comment):
    Hanssen was clearly a psych/sociopath. Yet he was a trusted FBI agent. And I would hazard a guess that he was representative of the FBI in a way that Old Bathos does not mean to suggest, eg., that FBI agents are more psychopathic than the solid Friday-type law enforcement officials, just interested in the facts,  that we usually credit them with being.  With agents of the sort as Hanssen, and others like G. Gordon Liddy, it seems that the FBI may attract more than its share of strange individuals.

    Yes, there are plenty of such people in the police, as well.  I know of a man who was quite a jerk.  He was a second lieutenant in my reserve unit.  The reserves had just started allowing new officers into the reserves without active duty time, so he was a novelty.  He was also one of the most immoral people I had ever met.  His civilian job was as a police officer and he said he was assigned to patrol in peaceful north Austin, but instead he went to east Austin, “because he got to beat up more people there.”  Knowing him and his behavior as a lieutenant convinced me that he was entirely truthful.  I can’t say enough bad about him, so I’ll just stop there.

    Liddy and Hanssen are common in such groups.  In the Marines it’s common to have officers who like to have power.  Sometimes that works, most times it’s oppressive.  You need a bit of it, but it’s not unusual to get oddballs who are successful and awful.

    • #48
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