{"id":14264,"date":"2019-12-16T17:26:54","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T22:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=14264"},"modified":"2024-09-11T16:00:55","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T20:00:55","slug":"richard-jewell-and-the-illusion-of-the-fbis-power-and-competence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/16\/richard-jewell-and-the-illusion-of-the-fbis-power-and-competence\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Jewell And The Illusion Of The FBI\u2019s Power And Competence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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dailycaller.com<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Richard Jewell, Carter Page And The Illusion Of The FBI\u2019s Power And Competence<\/a><\/h1>\n
by James Bovard<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation\u2019s reputation has been ravaged this month by the inspector general report that proved that the FBI deceived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to secretly spy on a Trump campaign official.<\/p>\n

Even fired FBI chief James Comey was forced to admit<\/a> that \u201cI was wrong\u201d in a Fox News interview Sunday regarding the FBI\u2019s abuse of Carter Page. The Russiagate controversy could not have occurred unless much of the American media docilely recited the false charges that FBI officials fed them. A stunning new movie on Richard Jewell is a reminder that this is not the first time that collusion between the feds and the media destroyed the reputation of innocent Americans.<\/p>\n

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is outraged that Clint Eastwood\u2019s<\/a> new movie portrays its star reporter Kathy Scruggs as sleeping with her FBI source, but there is no question that Scruggs screwed the hell out of Jewell. The movie vividly portrays how the FBI shoveled false information to journalists who rushed to condemn the 33-year-old security guard who saved many lives by discovering a pipe bomb that had been placed in a crowded venue during the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta. When he died in 2007 at age 44, his New York Times obituary was headlined: \u201cRichard Jewell, Hero of Atlanta Attack, Dies<\/a>.\u201d But his heroism revived only after the FBI and the media sought to destroy him.<\/p>\n

After suspecting that Jewell had planted the bomb he discovered, FBI agents lured him to their Atlanta office and asked him to help them make a training film about detecting bombs. The ruse allowed the agents to question Jewell extensively without reading him a Miranda warning notifying him that anything he said could be used against him. FBI leaks tagging Jewell led to 88 days of Jewell\u2019s life and reputation dragged in the gutter day after day. The FBI did nothing to curb the media harassment of Jewell long after it had recognized that he was innocent, as I wrote in \u201cFeeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Justice Department investigation concluded that the FBI\u2019s training film charade violated Jewell\u2019s constitutional rights. But in 1997 Senate testimony, FBI chief Louis Freeh denied that Jewell\u2019s rights were violated because he did not incriminate himself. Who knew that only guilty citizens have constitutional rights? Freeh did tell the Senate committee that he had instructed FBI agents \u201cnot to use deceptive ploys<\/a> in getting people to waive their constitutional rights.\u201d Freeh\u2019s order was merely aspirational and did not prevent a tsunami of FBI entrapment and other schemes, including the bogus briefing on Russia that FBI agents gave the Trump campaign, as the inspector general report revealed last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By the summer of 2001, Jewell was no longer in the news but the name of the suspected Atlanta bomber, Eric Rudolph, remained on the FBI\u2019s Top 10 Most Wanted list. I was vacationing in the mountains of western North Carolina and my then-spouse had the bright idea of going to some damn chalet inn she had seen in a tourist guidebook. The directions to the inn were lame and after roaming that zip code for half an hour, I pulled into a parking lot in front of a hardware store in Whittier to cuss and recheck the map.<\/p>\n

I stepped out of my car and fired up a cheap cigar. Two minutes later, a big ol\u2019 bald guy named Dennis came bounding out of the hardware store and asked in a booming voice: \u201cWhat part of Maryland you from?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRockville,\u201d I replied. He started chatting me up at race-horse pace, telling me he was from Maryland, been living down here for twenty years, worked as a long-haul truck driver, and had lost $5,000 gambling last year at a nearby Cherokee Indian casino. I was raised in the mountains of Virginia so I wasn\u2019t surprised by his palaver but something seemed amiss.<\/p>\n

After about 15 minutes, he suddenly announced that he thought I was an undercover federal agent. Holy crap! With my scruffy beard, railroad cap, and \u201cjust a country boy\u201d shtick, federal agencies often presume I\u2019m a (harmless) redneck. And now the rednecks think I am a fed! I can\u2019t get a break.<\/p>\n

I asked Dennis why he suspected I was an undercover agent.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you\u2019re driving a black car with a Maryland license plate,\u201d he replied without missing a beat.<\/p>\n

Guilty on both counts \u2014 though I doubted that Ford Contours were standard undercover issue. I asked if there were other signs of federal agents.<\/p>\n

\u201cYa \u2014 they have hidden tracking devices on the underside of the back of the car.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFeel free to check out my car.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOK!\u201d<\/p>\n

He and I walked to the back of my vehicle, he got down on his knees and pawed his big hands around the Ford\u2019s underside and found no GPS tracker. After about a minute, he decided I wasn\u2019t a G-man, got back up, and gave me a hearty handshake.<\/p>\n

He explained that he\u2019d been suspicious because the FBI had sent hundreds agents to that area to capture Eric Rudolph. The FBI arrived full of bluster, promising to speedily take down Rudolph. Dennis said many of his neighbors came to despise the FBI because they were heavy-handed and condescending. He said they showed up at a motel and decided to take it over; agents went around banging on doors and threw every guest out on the spot. Dennis had heard that some restaurants refused to serve FBI agents \u2014 insisting that they leave their guns outside, knowing they couldn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

The feds pulled out all their tricks to nail Rudolph. Blue Ridge Outdoors<\/a> noted that the FBI came in \u201cwith bloodhounds, electronic motion detectors, and heat-sensing helicopters. They set up listing posts with cameras and hired local scouts to tromp through the woods with gridded maps,\u201d as well as putting a million dollar bounty on Rudolph. The FBI got nothing. The Los Angeles Times reported<\/a> that Rudolph became \u201ca local folk figure, earning him minor tributes on posters, bumper stickers and T-shirts bearing slogans like \u2018Eric Rudolph Ate Here\u2019 and \u2018Eric Rudolph: 1998 Hide and Seek Champion.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Patrick Crosby, the spokesman for the federal task force, whined<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly difficult. You can\u2019t see squat, and there are sudden cliffs and rocks, and you could get shot or blown up at any time. It\u2019s hot as hell during the day and cold as hell at night. And once you\u2019re in the woods, all bets are off. This is a guy who plants bombs \u2026 and now you\u2019re on his turf.\u201d The poor darlings.<\/p>\n

Dennis became more at ease when I mentioned that I\u2019d written about federal abuses at Waco and Ruby Ridge and had been publicly denounced by Freeh<\/a>. I\u2019m not sure he believed that last point, but he was far better informed on the details of FBI misconduct in those cases than was the typical Washington journalist who happily printed whatever hooey FBI agents fed them. We chatted for two hours outside that hardware store before Dennis invited me to spend the night at his house. I thanked him for the invite but said I wanted to head on to Asheville to hear some great fiddling.<\/p>\n

Eric Rudolph was finally captured in 2003 by a local policeman in a small town about an hour from that hardware store. He pleaded guilty to the Atlanta bombing as well as multiple bombings of abortion clinics and a lesbian nightclub; he is now serving a life sentence in federal prison. Shortly after Rudolph was apprehended after more than four years in the mountains, the U.K. Independent pointed<\/a> out that prior attempts to nail him illustrated \u201call the shortcomings of a hi-tech, militarized federal force unable to negotiate such alien, not to say hostile, territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was the lesson I took from Dennis and his story of FBI failures in his neck of the woods. FBI bosses can swagger in Washington and receive reverential treatment in the nation\u2019s media. But far beyond the big cities and the coastlines, federal authority hinges largely on the consent of local citizens. Just because rural residents are mostly peaceful doesn\u2019t mean they will be docile to imperious outsiders.<\/p>\n

What would happen if, instead of fruitlessly seeking a single fugitive, a federal task force decides to seize all the AR-15 rifles in western North Carolina? The result would be like the classic bluegrass song about the revenooer who went up Rocky Top mountain and never came down. If innocent people were killed in the crackdowns on gun owners, the feds would likely have to contend with the long-range .50 caliber armor-piercing bullets from Barrett sniper rifles<\/a>, developed by a Tennessee boy a few decades ago. At that point, it would not matter how many editorial pages and cable news channels cheered on the G-men and howled for the blood of those defying government commands. The game would be over. Federal jurisdiction in that swath of America would be as illusory as the Afghan government\u2019s control over the mountains of Tora Bora<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The perils of proposed gun bans are playing out vividly in Virginia. The new Democratic majority in the state legislature is threatening sweeping gun bans and restrictions.\u00a0 More than 70 local governments have preemptively responded by declaring themselves \u201cSecond Amendment sanctuaries.\u201d At the Shoney’s in Pulaski County (300 miles from D.C.) where I ate breakfast Sunday morning, the sanctuary effort was a hot topic of conversation \u2014 as it is in much of rural Virginia. Democrats are ratcheting up the tension by suggesting the governor could send the National Guard to violently enforce whatever politicians in Richmond decree. Many of the urban Democratic politicians probably view the rural hunters the same way that the media viewed Richard Jewell, who was portrayed as a loser who owned too many guns for his own good. Hopefully both sides can calm down before any shots are fired.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post, the hometown paper for the Deep State, is fretting that the Eastwood movie\u2019s \u201cvilification of reporters and the feds<\/a>\u201d amounts to \u201cnearly a second railroading \u2026 of Jewell\u2019s accusers.\u201d But some FBI officials and some journalists deserved tarring for their abuse of Jewell. The media\u2019s reflexive rallying around the FBI in the Jewell case is a warning sign of how difficult it will be to build support to rein in the FBI regardless of how many of its abuses are exposed.<\/p>\n

James Bovard<\/em> is the author of \u201c<\/em>Attention Deficit Democracy<\/em><\/a>,\u201d \u201c<\/em>The Bush Betrayal<\/em><\/a>,\u201d \u201c<\/em>Terrorism and Tyranny<\/em><\/a>,\u201d and other books. Bovard is on the\u00a0USA Today Board of Contributors. He is on Twitter at @jimbovard. His website is at <\/em>www.jimbovard.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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dailycaller.com Richard Jewell, Carter Page And The Illusion Of The FBI\u2019s Power And Competence by James Bovard December 16, 2019 4:47 PM ET The Federal Bureau of Investigation\u2019s reputation has been ravaged this month by the inspector general report that proved that the FBI deceived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to secretly spy on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2213,47,653,27,946,719,2215,2214,2212,2217],"class_list":["post-14264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-clint-eastwood","tag-fbi","tag-louis-freeh","tag-lying","tag-media","tag-north-carolina","tag-pulaski-county","tag-redneck","tag-richard-jewell","tag-shoneys"],"yoast_head":"\nRichard Jewell And The Illusion Of The FBI\u2019s Power And Competence - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Clint Eastwood movie is a reminder of FBI abuses of Richard Jewell - much worse than reviews & movie critics are recalling. 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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\/14264","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=14264"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20441,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14264\/revisions\/20441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}