Why We Should Close Down the FBI
(Part Two, The Bad they Fight…)
The good the FBI has done in the past can be summed up in four points. They captured spies, the mob, and occasionally terrorists. Oh, and that they got a lot of power in that time.
As I touched on earlier however, the SIS (aka the CIA) captured many more spies in a much shorter time. One captured 800+ during WW2 while the other captured barely 100 during the entirety of the Cold War and it’s quasi wars of Korea, and Vietnam. The Cold War includes the dozens if not hundreds of smaller conflicts like the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis. The rise of Red China, the Congo, and the conflict with Taiwan all took place during the Cold War. Yet only 100?
In my study however, I stress that the numbers of people caught in regard to spies went down after WW2. While this is true, the number of mobsters starting to get busted shot up. My rough estimate is that from WW2 to the nigh extinction of some families in the 90’s is around one thousand convicted criminals. These are strictly the high profile cases that are common to summon FBI response. Everyone knows that state and local jurisdictions most likely collect the thousands of smaller cases.
The FBI going after the mob involved federal & state RICO laws but this required a mutually symbiotic relationship with prosecutors as well. Also, a lot — if not most — of the biggest mob busts were before 1970, when RICO was passed. Indeed, RICO would be useless without prosecutors willing enough to use it.
In New York, for example, the law sat there for 15 years before Rudy Giuliani (despite The Daily Beast’s hit piece) used it to great effect. Even if the FBI knew someone was crooked one couldn’t do anything unless the FBI went to a prosecutor. For example, if they had a “completely hypothetical” non classified FD-1023 alleging that the current President took bribes, or 40+ FBI informants saying the same; it’s just a piece of paper until a DA or someone does something with it and that’s if they release the information at all instead of classifying it. While the right currently believes that the left is persecuting Trump with the four indictments like the mob, one can attest to that from the hands of Rudy Giualani himself:
“[…] the RICO statute had been on the books for oven ten years when Rudy came in, but nobody ever used it. He learned — or he saw how to use it effectively, and he started using it against us and it was designed to be used against us but nobody ever did it. […] it’s an extremely difficult law to (…) navigate around, I mean, I had three RICO indictments.” —Valuetainment Ep. 263, Michael Franzese of the Columbo Family, highest paid mobster since Al Capone (48:05 — 48:25)
“If you look back (at his case with Giuliani), that was the only case that ended up in an acquittal. He convicted everybody. We were the only ones where there was an acquittal. So that gave me the leverage to go in and make the deal in the eastern district and only — and I say only — get ten years. ‘Cuz that was a bonus back then to only get ten years. They were giving everybody fifty and a hundred.” —Valuetainment Ep. 263, Michael Franzese of the Columbo Family, highest paid mobster since Al Capone, 52:35 — 52:55
“(When asked on how many years he could have gotten. 35? 50?) Oh easy. Fifty minimum. Patrick (the show host), they were giving guys a hundred and fifty years. (…) I’m the youngest outta all these guys I’m gonna get three hundred years. They would have crucified me. (…) Everybody I know is either dead or in prison for the rest of their lives.” —Valuetainment Ep. 263, Michael Franzese of the Columbo Family, highest paid mobster since Al Capone, 53:15 — 54:00
While his comments are also a testament of how harsh punishment for criminals (rather than catch and release if they stole less than $1k) can erase the most powerful criminals from the US in history that would be perfect for another time. When many people think of what the mission is of the FBI there are a lot of things that come to mind. Namely it’s looking for federal crimes, stopping child pornographers, or catching spies. Let’s look for a moment at the mission of the FBI and how they… claim to be performing it very well.
The FBI’s Mission
As stated on their Missions & Priorities page their priorities are as follows:
Protect the U.S. from terrorist attack
Protect the U.S. against foreign intelligence, espionage, and cyber operations
Combat significant cyber-criminal activity
Combat public corruption at all levels
Protect civil rights
Combat transnational criminal enterprises (organized crimes)
Combat significant white-collar crime
Combat significant violent crime
Let’s see how the FBI claims to do their work.
Terror
There are two basic types of terrorism. International and domestic. 9/11, for example, was international whereas the Oklahoma City Bombing was a domestic attack of a lone actor.
Despite our War on Terror for the last twenty years the FBI has only apprehended & prosecuted 992 cases of international terrorism. 54% of these cases are related to “material support” (The Intercept) which range from giving water to a dying terrorist, teaching them to fly planes or other things. Material support would be like the US favoring the Egyptian’s and Saudi’s in a move akin to Enrico Dandolo convincing the Fourth Crusade to sack Constantinople and give their countries considerable power to this day when 9/11 pilot an ethnic Egyptian, Khalid al-Mihdhar, had a Saudi passport.
Mihdhar arrived [INFORMATION REDACTED], on January 5, 2000. Mihdhar was traveling on a Saudi passport. This passport contained a valid U.S. visa. —FBI
I digress, but material support would be like giving Iran nuclear power no matter what they claim to say they plan to do with it or selling Uranium to Russia for them to fashion nukes to point at us in the event of a testy land war in Ukraine. Oops, digressed again but hang on I’m getting there. See the material support charge has been an overly vague and overreaching charge that can affect anyone. I wasn’t joking about the giving water either.
US Senator Patrick Leahy sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding humanitarian relief in Somalia in 2011. “I have long urged reform of our laws governing so-called material support for terrorism. The current law is so broad as to be unworkable. Aid workers trying to provide relief to starving Somalis fear they could be prosecuted if some of it were to end up in the hands of al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda affiliate that controls parts of Somalia.” —Leahy (& Wikipedia)
Nor them being overreaching:
Material support laws are the black box of domestic terrorism prosecutions, a shape-shifting space into which all sorts of constitutionally protected activities can be thrown and classified as suspect, if not criminal. Their vagueness is key. They criminalize guilt by association and often use political and religious beliefs to demonstrate intent and state of mind. — Jeanne Theoharis a Liberal Professor from Brooklyn College
So as the cynic I am I am going to deduct these cases since they are sham in my opinion. I mean, the Capitol Police leading rioters around the Capitol would be material support to domestic terrorists. Why aren’t they locked up after the FBI used up half of fiscal year 2022 trying to find them? That leaves 500 cases of terrorism supposedly thwarted since 9/11. Not much to speak for our War on Terror then POP! They get 1,000 “domestic terrorists” in a year? What were they doing for the last 20-years? Nothing?
As we shall see in my next piece, there is ample things the FBI could do other than spying on Catholics. In some cases, they even run what they are supposed to stop. In part 1 & 2 of this series I tried to give the FBI a fair shake. Now get ready for the fireworks…