Comey’s fall justly drags FBI off its pedestal
President Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey provides a welcome chance to dethrone the FBI from its pinnacle in American politics and life. Last September, Comey denounced Twitter “demagoguery” for the widespread belief that the FBI was not “honest” or “competent.”
But the FBI has a long record of both deceit and incompetence. Just five years ago, Americans learned that the FBI was teaching its agents the bureau “has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” This has practically been the FBI’s motif since its creation.
J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the FBI from 1924 until his death in 1972, built a revered agency that utterly intimidated official Washington. From 1956 through 1971, the FBI’s COINTELPRO (counterintelligence programs) conducted thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to smear innocent people by portraying them as government informants, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, white racist and anti-war organizations. COINTELPRO was exposed only after a handful of activists burglarized an FBI office in a Philadelphia suburb, seized FBI files, and leaked the damning documents to journalists.
On April 19, 1993, agents used armored vehicles to smash into the Branch Davidians’ home near Waco, Texas. After the FBI pumped the building full of CS gas ( banned for use on enemy soldiers by the Chemical Weapons Convention), a fire ignited that left 80 children, women and men dead. The FBI swore it was blameless, but six years later, an investigation revealed that the FBI fired incendiary cartridges into the building before the blaze. No FBI agents were penalized.
Before 9/11, the FBI failed to connect the dots on suspicious foreigners engaged in domestic aviation training. Though Congress had deluged the FBI with $1.7 billion to upgrade its computers, many agents had old machines incapable of searching the Web or emailing photos.
In the decade after 9/11, only 1% of the 500 people charged with international terrorism offenses were threats, estimated Trevor Aaronson, author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism. Thirty times as many were induced by the FBI to behave in ways that prompted their arrest.
Then there are the other scandals — the perpetual false testimony from the FBI crime lab, its use of National Security Letters and other surveillance tools to illegally vacuum up Americans’ personal info.
The FBI’s power has rarely been effectively curbed by either Congress or federal courts. If Trump fired Comey to throttle an investigation into Trump administration criminality, that is an impeachable offense. Otherwise, Comey’s fall provides an excellent opportunity to take the FBI off its pedestal and place it where it belongs — under the law.
It is time to cease venerating a federal agency whose abuses have perennially menaced Americans’ constitutional rights.
James Bovard, author of Public Policy Hooligan, is on USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.