The FBI is unreformable. Eliminate it root and branch and start over. Do not hire anyone from the predecessor organization.
Mom and Dad Wanted by the FBI
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
“The FBI is unreformable. Eliminate it root and branch and start over. Do not hire anyone from the predecessor organization.”
I totally agree, Don. And while we’re at it, the same fate should be accorded to the DEA, ATF and DHS. I’m not sure about the Secret Service, but they probably deserve at least a housecleaning of the top several levels of management and administration.
Where are the FBI whistleblowers? Where are all the retired agents who sign letters demanding the reform of the agency they dedicated their lives to that is now hopelessly corrupt? Pretty much crickets. It’s been a Formerly Believable Institution for some time now. Eliminate it root and branch.
Yes, FOS, great point. Where are they, indeed?
I liked it better when the Left hated the FBI. Maybe they were corrupt then, too, but I still believe they were going after genuine threats to society, at least some of the time. Or so my long-retired field agent friends tell me, anyway.
Where are the FBI whistleblowers?
They only do stupid stuff in offices where they know there isn’t pushback.
When they try it and there is the kind of person who would whistleblow, it gets stopped before the paperwork is filed.
@Frank, Curious on the logic regarding the DEA. I can see the purpose of getting rid of the ATF, they blatantly disregard the rule of law and the Constitution to file their own opinions on what law-abiding citizens can own. And DHS should never have had agents to begin with, since the department was originally created to be an intelligence sharing group not an organizational blob like it quickly became.
But all DEA has done is enforce drug laws. You can’t even blame them for the overdose uptick because the drugs used were nearly all illicitly produced (yes, even the opiate-related ones people keep trying to pin on over-prescription). Can’t get mad at them about going after cannabis either, it’s codified illegal in US law and multiple international treaties signed by the Senate.
My logic on the DEA is based on personal experience working with them as an attorney for a major corporation. If the nature and level of surveillance they are conducting every day, with the cheerful cooperation of the companies that provide your cellular service, were ever made public, few people of rational mind would have any qualms about disbanding the organization. And that doesn’t even begin to touch their tactics on the ground, about which I also have knowledge from my prior employment. I probably have already said too much.
And DHS should never have had agents to begin with, since the department was originally created to be an intelligence sharing group not an organizational blob like it quickly became.
Um, no. It was an assemblage of already existing agencies. The one new thing added was the TSA, whose functions had previously been done by employees of local airports.
Why stop with the FBI? We need to raze all of government by (pick a percentage–above 40%) farm out the public servants to real jobs…or hand out armbands and Lugers to them because we are very close to the point of no return in mimicking the totalitarianism of the 20th century.
Dude, if we were ANYWHERE CLOSE to going Nazi, you wouldn’t be able to say that.
Not twice.
I’ve been pointing THAT out to the progs for at least 20 years, now. They desperately want a totalitarian state. We have to be realistic to stop that.
@Frank, No, you’ve proven one of two things. 1) That you don’t know anything at all about the organization, and/or 2) you have knowledge regarding a specific office(s)’ activities that were not reported, which makes you complicit in the crimes.
As far as surveillance through phone companies, doesn’t exist without a warrant granted by a judge. Acquired phone records are deleted after 90 days (as required by law) unless specifically associated with an individual committing a crime.
As for tactics on the ground, please be specific. There is no non-disclosure agreement that will stand up against revealing illicit activities by any group. In point of fact, that kind of thing is exactly why whistleblower laws were created.
@Art, Yes, the point of putting them all under one roof was so they could share intelligence and prevent another 9/11 fiasco where multiple groups had pieces of the puzzle but weren’t talking to each other…
so they could share intelligence and prevent another 9/11 fiasco where multiple groups had pieces of the puzzle but weren’t talking to each other…
Neither the CIA nor the FBI are to be found in Homeland Security.
I think you’ve confused Homeland Security with the Directorate of National Intelligence.
For years I’ve wondered if the FBI has stopped more crime than it has created (both through the use of “undercover agents” and by turning innocent people into criminals through knowingly false accusations.)
Why stop with the FBI? We need to raze all of government by (pick a percentage–above 40%) farm out the public servants to real jobs…or hand out armbands and Lugers to them because we are very close to the point of no return in mimicking the totalitarianism of the 20th century.
It’s not that difficult to identify federal agencies which are impinging on the functions of provincial local government and agencies which function as patronage mills. It’s more challenging to identify agencies which are assigned legitimate functions which they perform poorly.
As far as surveillance through phone companies, doesn’t exist without a warrant granted by a judge.
The eagle eye of the FISA court. I feel so much better.
I am aware neither the FBI nor CIA are part of DHS, but they do still share information with them. The FBI not falling under DHS makes sense as they are a law enforcement agency (in theory), CIA should have been attached but good luck getting the Agency to fall under anyone. It’s one of my many many issues with the existence of DHS. No, I did not get them confused with DNI because DNI has no power; though if the DNI and their office were used instead of DHS I’d be much happier.
For one, not FISA judges since DEA doesn’t generally deal with anything at the Secret level. Secondly, those warrants were granted under false pretenses, which goes back to the FBI lying to them. Not an issue with the judges other than their trust that agents will follow the law and present them with truthful information. If you needed an investigation to prove the information from another investigation was real nothing would ever get done. And from an enforcement angle that is a terrible setup.
Is it easy to get contact records and times? Yes. But that can’t be used for actual surveillance since getting location and text information requires a warrant, and a phone tap (called a T-III) is a huge amount of information before it’s even considered. There needs to be no other reasonably viable method of getting the information for a judge to grant T-III authority.
This whole attitude of “There’s a couple bad offices in the biggest cities, so everyone is corrupt” sh*t needs to stop. It helps nobody, and is how you get all of the anti-police sentiment that is the cause of the massive crime increase. There are legitimate scandals where those involved need to be prosecuted and hung out to dry, but that does not make everyone else in their agency into bad guys. That’s no different than saying your brother is a drug dealer, so everyone else in your family must also be drug dealers.
FOXFIER NOTE-
It looks like one of the recent updates is filtering for language, maybe? Asterisked the term for fecal matter and approved, apologies if that’s overstepping
DEA doesn’t seem to use FISA.
Not surprising, since while they do deal with international terror promoting groups, those guys are classified as criminal groups. (Apparently it’s very important if you’re torturing people to death to make terror for a cause, or for power and money.)
Neither the CIA nor the FBI are to be found in Homeland Security.
That’s only relevant for your argument, not his– the DHS was founded to get the agencies to actually share information.
That’s why they’re usually in the news all at the same time,
They are supposed to be a clearing house exactly because not all of the agencies are rolled into one.
Which is good, because it keeps the advantage of preventing easy capture of an agency or department, but also avoids the “nobody knew what the other guy knew” issue.
This whole attitude of “There’s a couple bad offices in the biggest cities, so everyone is corrupt” sh*t needs to stop. It helps nobody,
We’re not buying the ‘couple of bad offices’ thesis. Andrew McCabe and Peter Sztrok were promoted through the ranks for 20+ years, btw.
Noted, you’re simply another person demanding we burn everything down, ignoring logic and reality, and with no feasible solution. McCabe and Sztrok sat in same office in DC. And I’d lay money that they were in Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, or New York if they ever went anywhere else. Considering that there are hundreds of offices across the country, that is a couple of bad offices. I am sorry math is not your thing and you have no experience working in that environment to actually have a clue.
The rot is from the very top of the FBI Killbait. The people who control the FBI are far more than “a few bad apples”.
I was there, and I know what I saw. And everything involving the DEA was perfectly legal. In fact, for the most part no warrants were required under applicable law. Why do you think they had us lawyers involved, anyway? Just to let more people in on what was going on? Not a chance. It pays to remember, everything that’s been done (as far as we know) to the January 6 prisoners has been perfectly legal, too. It’s the structure of the Federal surveillance power that’s out of control and needs to be re-booted.
I know what I’ve seen, as well– and the stuff that got stopped.
The most obvious is things like that yearly sex abuse sting operation, which folks literally talked about how the FBI couldn’t be bothered to deal with it when the press release specifically noted they were highly involved.
Heck, DEA is involved in that, too– through the intel sharing, when they break up crime rings and feed that information into the system. Slaver rings broken up because they’re tracking a weed grow in Washington’s forest, etc.
The weak point there is it’s federal only– my mom just buried a friend because the local law enforcement couldn’t be bothered to share the connecting dots that would have gotten their killer arrested before the lady, and her husband, were dead.
Looks like phone records can be gotten with a subpoena.
@Donald, That does not make the entire FBI bad, nor is completely dismantling all of law enforcement a viable solution. Unless you’re looking for anarchy and a true takeover of our institutions, which is what would happen if you went to dismantle them and try to replace them with anything in this day and age. Also yes, the people at the top being corrupt does still only signify “a few bad apples”. The number of people at the top is miniscule compared to the total number of employees.
@Frank, I notice you are refusing to talk about what occurred, which basically tells me you are making it up. Law enforcement doesn’t make you sign NDAs to prevent you from talking about what you saw, because they would be blatantly illegal. If your company did so in regards to law enforcement actions, that would also be illegal. If you see something shady and don’t tell people about it then you are part of the problem that you seem to dislike so much. And really, that is one of the real issues. People see things, and don’t want to tell anyone because they don’t want to lose friends, or hurt somebody’s feelings, or the might lose their job (which btw is also illegal), and so the people doing the shady stuff just get emboldened to do more and worse. Just because people are allowing it does not mean the actions are legal.
As for the Jan 6 crowd, most of those charges are trumped up bull and you know it. The judge that signed those warrants should be removed and the agents that asked for it (as well as anyone in their chain that approved it) should be fired. Also, we’re coming up on the maximum sentence time allowed for the supposed crimes committed by nearly all of them. On top of that, they are using the excuse of the federal courthouse in DC not being able to try more than a few people at once while intentionally ignoring the federal courthouses in surrounding areas (it’s a federal crime, they can hold the trial anywhere in the country). That’s an egregious miscarriage of justice and willful violation of the 6th Amendment.
@Foxfier, Yes, phone contact records can be gained with a subpoena. Those records do not include what was in text messages, phone location, whether the contact was a text or call, nor information on the phone contacting the subpoenaed number.
@Killbait:”@Frank, I notice you are refusing to talk about what occurred, which basically tells me you are making it up”
I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve that accusation, but I note this approach is exactly like that of an FBI agent trying to manipulate an interview subject into saying what the agent wants said. I’ve been in a few of those interviews, too, as an invited observer, and it’s a common tactic. In fact, it’s one of the many reasons I would tell anyone never to sit for any sort of interview with any Federal or state or local law enforcement officer without legal representation. My brother and my nephew, both police officers, would tell you the same thing. A sensible person does not go into a session with a professional interrogator without professional help of his own. But I digress.
As to the substance of your accusation that I am lying, which you have made against someone you have never met and about whom you know nothing: I would assume you are familiar with the concept of a professional obligation not to disclose confidential matters involving a client. It has nothing whatever to do with NDA’s, which are, contrary to your assertion, offered routinely, in my experience, by Federal agencies of all stripes, not to mention private parties, regardless of their enforceability or lack thereof. Their purpose is to discourage, not necessarily ever to be legally enforced. In any event, I was doing legal work on behalf of the company, which was my employer and my client under applicable rules of legal ethics, and I remain obliged not to disclose confidences learned in the course of that representation without the client’s permission. That’s all there is to it. You have suggested that I should have been a “whistleblower” when I was involved in these matters. The problem with that is, there was nothing about which to blow a whistle. We were operating under Federal statutes and rules of procedure, and we had several in-house and outside lawyers involved to ensure that. Moreover, we all believed we were doing the right thing, working with the headquarters team at the agency to help the good guys beat the bad guys. Given that the ultimate objective was to apprehend, lawfully and ethically, persons engaged in trafficking dangerous drugs into and within the USA, I firmly believe we were, in fact, doing the right thing in terms of that stated objective. But there were and are areas not explicitly dealt with in the enabling statutes and rules. We had hints of these gray areas being exploited in ways that, at the time, seemed acceptable given the objectives noted. In the clarity of hindsight, and knowing what we now know about corruption at all levels of some Federal agencies, they no longer seem so clearly acceptable. Using that hindsight it appears that we should have made further inquiry into exactly what was being done, and how, with information we provided. But we believed what we were told by the agency, i.e., that the sole use of the data was in furtherance of the stated law enforcement objective. Had we been given any reason not to believe them, I like to think we all would have raised concerns with our General Counsel, to whom I then reported. That would also have been part of my ethical obligations as a lawyer.
Now to the Jan. 6 issue. I don’t disagree with anything you said about that. My original point, which in retrospect I see I did not make very well, was that the basic letter of the criminal procedure seems to have been followed, and thus, in that sense at least, the proceedings are “legal.” Charges were filed, arrests were made, representation (mostly incompetent, it appears, as Don has pointed out here several times) was provided, etc. I did not mean to suggest the proceedings are ultimately valid, nor in any way “right.” The charges are bogus, based on politics, not actual criminal conduct, and everyone involved should be out of a job. This will likely never happen, but a guy can hope.
Once again, my purpose in posting the comment that seems to have offended you was that the laws pertaining to telecom surveillance by the Federal government are too broad, and the nature and extent of their usage would surprise and likely shock most people. I still believe that. The purpose of our Federal law enforcement agencies was always noble, and many loyal and competent agents and employees, some of whom are long-time friends of mine, have served their country well. Such service has gone even to the point of agents giving their own lives in far too many cases. This does not change the reality we now face, which is that these agencies have lost the trust and unquestionable integrity that is absolutely essential to their existence. When a structure is no longer suitable for its purpose, it must be torn down and rebuilt. You have said this is an invitation to more corruption. I respectfully disagree.
God bless all here.