One of the characteristics of secret government programs is that when they’re outed, the name gets changed and that’s about it. “We currently have no program by the name COINTELPRO” does not mean that the program has been anything but renamed.
It’s an interesting problem: if a federal agency claims the authority to regulate something, then they can be sued when they fail to discharge that responsibility effectively. My prediction is that this sort of thing won’t go far: there will be some new findings by the activist supreme court that there’s some theory like “qualified immunity” that applies.
Congress ought to be holding hearings to investigate the FBI’s non-competence as it sat around with its thumb up its butt while a nearly successful coup brewed. Remember, the FBI is the organization that is responsible for domestic counter-terrorism – the organization that notoriously spends a great deal of time creating terrorist plots so they can arrest the people who fall into their snare – their job is to do things like, well, stopping coups. The US people and government have placed an inordinate amount of trust (and money) in the FBI and we ought to be investigating the monumental incompetence of the agency.
This is a depressing view inside the FBI. It does not contradict any of the impressions I have already gleaned from ex-FBI agents I’ve talked to, and projects I’ve worked on where they have been involved. As usual, “not all FBI” – sure, there are some that are talented and not white supremacists – but those people (as the article shows) had to learn to work within a system that was incompetent and white supremacist.
As we’ve mentioned before, the FBI supposedly provided 25% of the KKK’s membership during the civil rights era. [stderr] I don’t blame you in the slightest if that is unbelievable – it took me a while to decide that it was probably true. And, we can see the damage that the FBI’s “penetrate and suborn” tactics do: I was listening to Ibram Kendi’s anti-racism podcast the other day, [kendi] and he was discussing anti-asian racism, and mentioned that Richard Aoki [stderr] as an example of Black/Asian cooperation. Oops, no. I wrote him a terse note to check Aoki’s background more carefully – he was an FBI agent trying to get Black Panthers killed, not help them.
I know you know I hate the FBI. They’re not just a stealth “secret police” they’re really bad at it. Basically, they had such a great self-promoter in J. Edgar Hoover, that they got a great public relationship through media manipulation and they have been coasting on it ever since. You know “we got John Dillinger” [Which was done by getting a tip-off and showing up and peppering him with machine-gun fire]
My first reaction was “no way!” and so was my second reaction. I have no idea why Associate Director of the FBI James B. Adams would say such a thing. Was he telling the truth?
Warning: Racist Violence, FBI
After the January 6th coup attempt, there has been a lot of cheering, in liberal circles, for the FBI’s apparent crackdown on the insurgents. It’s one thing to arrest and charge the hundred most obviously stupid of several thousand, but it’s another thing entirely to make the charges stick – especially to the sneakier ones. Or, to the FBI’s informants.
The surveillance state would like us to believe that it’s there for our protection. But, it’s rather obviously not – either because it’s really there for political control, or it’s too incompetent. I can’t decide which.
Willie Sutton robbed banks “because that’s where the money is.”