{"id":12204,"date":"2018-06-13T14:32:06","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T18:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=12204"},"modified":"2023-06-14T11:24:38","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T15:24:38","slug":"the-hill-a-politically-weaponized-fbi-is-plenty-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/13\/the-hill-a-politically-weaponized-fbi-is-plenty-dangerous\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hill: A Politically Weaponized FBI is Plenty Dangerous"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>The Hill, June 13, 2018\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A politically weaponized FBI is nothing new, but plenty dangerous<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n

The Justice Department Inspector General is expected to release<\/a> on Thursday its report on alleged FBI misconduct during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump supporters and opponents are already pre-spinning the report to vindicate or undercut the president. Unfortunately, the report will not consider fundamental question of whether the FBI\u2019s vast power and secrecy is compatible with American democracy.<\/p>\n

According to some Republicans, the FBI\u2019s noble history was tainted by its apparent favoritism for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton<\/a><\/span>. Democrats have gyrated over the past 18 months, first blaming the FBI for Clinton\u2019s loss and<\/a> then exalting the FBI<\/a> (along with former FBI chief and Special Counsel Robert Mueller<\/a><\/span>) as the best hope to save the nation.<\/p>\n

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In reality, the FBI has been politically weaponized for almost a century. The FBI was in the forefront of the notorious Red Scare raids<\/a> of 1919 and 1920. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer reportedly hoped that arresting nearly 10,000 suspected radicals and immigrants<\/a> would propel his presidential campaign<\/a>. Federal Judge Anderson condemned Palmer\u2019s crackdown for creating a \u201cspy system\u201d that \u201cdestroys trust and confidence and propagates hate<\/a>.\u201d He said, \u201cA mob is a mob whether made up of government officials acting under instructions from the Department of Justice, or of criminals, loafers, and the vicious classes.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

After the Palmer raids debacle, the FBI turned its attention to U.S. senators, \u201cbreaking into their offices and homes, intercepting their mail, and tapping their telephones<\/a>,\u201d as Timothy Weiner noted in his 2012 book, \u201cEnemies: The History of the FBI\u201d.<\/em> After the FBI\u2019s political espionage was exposed, Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone, warned in 1924, \u201cA secret police system may become a menace to free government and free institutions<\/a> because it carries with it the possibility of abuses of power which are not always quickly comprehended or understood.\u201d Stone fired the FBI chief, creating an opening for J. Edgar Hoover, who would head the FBI for the next 48 years. Hoover pledged to cease the abuses but the outrages mushroomed.<\/p>\n

In the 1948 presidential campaign, Hoover brazenly championed Republican candidate Thomas Dewey, leaking allegations that Truman was part of a corrupt Kansas City political machine<\/a>. In 1952, Hoover sought to undermine Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson by spreading rumors that he was a closet homosexual<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1964, the FBI illegally wiretapped Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater<\/a>\u2019s presidential headquarters and plane and conducted background checks on his campaign staff for evidence of homosexual activity<\/a>. The FBI also conducted an extensive surveillance operation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention<\/a> to prevent embarrassing challenges to President Lyndon Johnson.<\/p>\n

From 1956 to 1971, the FBI carried out \u201ca secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order<\/a>,\u201d a 1976 Senate report noted. The FBI\u2019s Operation COINTELPRO involved thousands<\/a> of covert operations to incite<\/a> street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to portray innocent people as government informants, to destroy activists\u2019 marriages, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, white racist, and anti-war organizations. Even feminists were eventually added to the target list. Senate investigators warned, \u201c(The) FBI intelligence system developed to a point where no one inside or outside the bureau was willing or able<\/a> to tell the difference between legitimate national security or law enforcement information and purely political intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoover served as FBI boss until his death in 1972. A New York Times <\/em>obituary<\/a> noted, \u201cThe more awesome Mr. Hoover’s power grew, the more plainly he would state, for the record, that there was nothing \u2018political\u2019 about it, that the FBI was simply a \u2018fact-finding agency\u2019 that \u2018never makes recommendations or draws conclusions.\u2019” This was the myth that allowed a federal agency to accumulate vast power which it continues to covertly exercise. The FBI pirouettes as the saintliest institution in Washington while its leaders dish dirt to their political or media favorites.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The pending IG report will likely spark renewed demands for the FBI to behave in a strictly non-partisan manner. That is an ideal that will likely be realized nowhere except in newspaper editorials. The sweeping discretionary power the FBI captures from enforcing thousands of federal criminal laws is destined to be abused.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first step to reining in the FBI is to open the agency\u2019s files. Oversight is often a mirage thanks to \u00a0FBI spurning of congressional subpoenas and other information demands<\/a>. Federal judges have been riled by FBI false testimony and withholding of evidence in major court cases ranging from Ruby Ridge<\/a>, Waco<\/a>, Orlando Pulse Massacre<\/a>, and Bundy Ranch showdown<\/a>. The FBI has perennially exempted itself from the Freedom of Information Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It has been more than 40 years since a Senate committee had the gumption and the sway to reveal the stunning details and breadth of FBI misconduct. It is time for another independent investigation with the courage and the clout to compel full disclosure from the most powerful domestic government agency. Investigators should receive all the crowbars they need to pry open FBI records.<\/p>\n

In the coming weeks, we will be assured that a few firings and perhaps a few indictments is all that is needed to put the FBI on a straight and narrow path. But the Founding Fathers never intended a secret police force to be an independent fourth branch of the federal government. As James Madison warned in 1788, \u201cWherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression<\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

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James Bovard is the author of\u00a0“Public Policy Hooligan<\/a>” (Kindle version 2012), “Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a>” (St. Martin’s\/Palgrave, 2006), and eight other books. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hill, June 13, 2018 A politically weaponized FBI is nothing new, but plenty dangerous by James Bovard The Justice Department Inspector General is expected to release on Thursday its report on alleged FBI misconduct during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump supporters and opponents are already pre-spinning the report to vindicate or undercut the president. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1539,1540,1328,253,753,47,771,1544,1264,339,362,1065,1189,11,473,1168,1541,1542,652,55,1543,1538,102],"class_list":["post-12204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adlai-stevenson","tag-barry-goldwater","tag-bundy-ranch","tag-cointelpro","tag-donald-trump","tag-fbi","tag-fourth-amendment","tag-harlan-fiske-stone","tag-harry-truman","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-inspector-general","tag-j-edgar-hoover","tag-james-madison","tag-justice-department","tag-lyndon-johnson","tag-mitchell-palmer","tag-orlando-pulse-nightclub","tag-red-raids","tag-ruby-ridge","tag-secrecy","tag-spies","tag-thomas-dewey","tag-waco"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Hill: A Politically Weaponized FBI is Plenty Dangerous - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/13\/the-hill-a-politically-weaponized-fbi-is-plenty-dangerous\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Hill: A Politically Weaponized FBI is Plenty Dangerous - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Hill, June 13, 2018 A politically weaponized FBI is nothing new, but plenty dangerous by James Bovard The Justice Department Inspector General is expected to release on Thursday its report on alleged FBI misconduct during the 2016 presidential campaign. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12204"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18404,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12204\/revisions\/18404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}