In an otherwise so-so report from back in March, Jon Miltimore and Carey Welder make one spot-on observation [tip of the fedora to Baldilocks]:
Conservatives tend to have two bad habits. First, they’re prone to viewing the past through a nostalgic lens. Second, they tend to instinctively give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt.
These tendencies help explain why conservatives for decades have been able to overlook the many abuses — constitutional, legal, and moral — of US intelligence agencies.
NOSTALGIA:
As to the first habit: there’s nothing wrong, per se, with feeling Nostalgia — it is a Neutral term that can be either a Good or a Bad thing, depending on what it is rooted in.
When it is born out of Pure and, therefore, Mushy Sentimentality, based purely on Emotion and seen through rose-colored glasses, it is a Negative Nostalgia. An example of this is the way some Leftists view the History of the Labor Unionization Movement, which was Dirty and Corrupt through-and-through.
And let us not forget ‘Busing To Achieve Racial Desegregation
’ which is rearing it’s ugly head again [see here for one example]. The takeover of School Systems by the Courts in the late 1960’s through the 1970’s Destroyed many school systems, causing them to become more segregated. It tore communities apart and led to heightened Tensions between Whites and Ethnic Groups that have culminated, egged-on by Leftist Politicians and Pundits, in the Bad Racial Atmosphere we see today in America [it must be said that President Trump is making, often successful efforts it seems, to relieve the Tensions].
When Nostalgia is born out of Right Reason, a Sober look at a period in The Past, it is a Good thing, such as revering The Founders — enough said.
GIVING LAW ENFORCEMENT THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT:
‘…they tend to instinctively give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt’
Yes, we Law-Abiding Americans do. The Conservative Instinct many Americans have is partially responsible for this. Another source: since the FDR Generation [when Obedience to the government became Normalized, all subsequent ones have been brought-up to accept a more intrusive policing presence [and a majority of them did not rebel against this worrying development].
In a World Turned Upside Down, we have Embraced what we have considered ‘The Guardians Of Law And Order’ in Reaction.
However, we must never forget that every, single Government Organization is subject to Corruption — most especially in these days when Morals are so loose that they’ve run away and we have much trouble finding them.
The FBI and, to a lesser extent, the CIA¹, have had their Corruptions throughout their histories. But, while they have risen to the Level of Egregious Corruption, they have never been as bad as they’ve been in the last forty or so years, growing to flirt with Outright Treason in the last twenty or so.
In a deeply Insightful article over at American Greatness, the Wise Angelo Codevilla writes:
The Justice Department’s inspector general this month reprimanded the FBI for the manner in which it recruits and supervises its “confidential human sources.” To the layman, this seems about technicalities. In fact, it shows that one of the CIA’s deadliest dysfunctions now infects the FBI as well.
This disease consists of choosing and rejecting sources for the purpose of indulging the agencies’ and their leaders’ private agendas rather than to further intelligence work on the public’s behalf.
…
The inspector general’s concern with the FBI’s source management stems from the investigation into the FBI’s involvement in the 2016 presidential campaign, including by taking seriously the infamous Steele dossier that it knew was a fabrication as well as, likely, some Russian communication intercepts that also should have been rejected on strictly professional grounds. In short, the FBI departed from its tradition of professionalism and honesty in pursuit of domestic political influence.
Choosing and recruiting sources, validating and managing them, is the very heart of intelligence. Doing it badly, taking sources that come easy—especially dispensing with due skepticism about the ones that contribute to one’s own agendas—is professional corruption. But doing it right is hard. To the extent that intelligence agencies find it difficult to fulfill expectations, they are tempted to substitute such corruption for the competence they lack. The pursuit of agency interests or even personal agendas takes over.
Which is exactly what we have sensed for quite some time.
The FBI and the rest of The Justice Department have evolved into acting like the Corrupt people did in the CIA of times past:
Soon after the Central Intelligence Agency’s founding in 1947, Hanson Baldwin, the New York Times’ legendary military correspondent, had already noticed that the agency was using perfunctorily vetted-sources, or the officers’ own opinions, to fill the gap between the few modest secrets of which it could be sure, and the many big questions on which it was pronouncing itself.
CIA case officers, ivy leaguers whose “cover” was a thin pretense, were never able to recruit Soviet officials and tore at each other over whether those who offered themselves were for real. They solved the problem by subordinating counterintelligence (i.e., quality control) to what they felt was the need to tell the stories they wanted to tell.
During my years on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s staff, CIA officials’ preference for their personal and corporate interests over professional standards continued to get worse….
Mr. Codevilla then gives some examples of this that are Damning.
More:
The FBI used to take counterintelligence seriously. That made it possible for them to neutralize threats to America — the old joke was that, in any meeting of the U.S, Communist Party or of its front groups, a majority of attendees were FBI agents. The only U.S. intelligence penetration of the Kremlin was the FBI’s recruitment of a U.S. labor activist whom high-level Soviets trusted.
In the late 1970s, that began to change. Director William Webster (1978-1987) failed to back up the officers who had infiltrated and surveilled the New Left’s collaboration with the Soviets against America in the Vietnam War. Webster also introduced contemporary political correctness into the FBI….
The New Left was then able to Infiltrate governments at all levels rather easily, evolving eventually into the New New Left of ‘Barack Hussein Obama’. In other words, the Boomer Bombers and their Fellow Travellers were left alone to Legitimize themselves as Normals.
More [emphasis mine]:
In due course, FBI officials became standard bureaucrats and learned to operate on the assumption that all Americans were equally likely to be proper targets of investigation. They replaced the distinctions by which they had operated with the classic bureaucratic imperative: look out for yourselves by making sure not to displease the powerful.
Webster’s FBI joined the ACLU as the principal sponsor of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which judicially pre-cleared all electronic surveillance operations through ex parte secret proceedings, despite warnings that such pre-clearance amounts to warrants for warrantless surveillance, and hence that it incentivizes political abuse.
We now, of course, know that FISA has been egregiously Abused by the FBI and Justice Department.
Mr. Codevilla continues
The directorships of William Sessions and Louis Freeh, ending in 2001, did nothing to slow the FBI’s devolution. Two additional tendencies developed, which further contributed to the devaluation of what had been scrupulous recruitment and evaluation of sources. First, reliance on pseudoscientific “profiling” vastly reduced the felt need for scruples. But the FBI’s experience with profiles is as powerful an argument as can be made of how debilitating, noxious, and corrupting reliance on them can be. Thus did the bureau practically convict an innocent man, Richard Jewell, of having bombed Centennial Park during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Profiling has long been seen as a con.
More
Second, the bureau’s increasing adoption of military weapons and tactics further tempted its officials to shortcut intelligence for the sake of, well, war against disfavored persons and movements.
The FBI in 1992 conducted an 11-day war against Randy Weaver and his family in a remote Idaho cabin, in which one law enforcement officer was killed along with the Weavers’ 14-year-old son, and which ended with an FBI sniper killing Weaver’s wife, Vicki, with a baby in her arms—leading to an angry jury acquitting Weaver. A year later, the FBI ran another war against a religious cult in Texas, that cost four lives.
I wrote about this Militarization in 2014.
This is why it is now more important than ever that we Preserve, Protect, and Defend the system of Trial By Jury…and we should teach our fellows that one of the Powers held by Juries is Jury Nullification.
More:
Robert Mueller’s directorship (2001-2013), followed by his friend James Comey’s, made the FBI into the domestic danger it is today.
AC then sites, as an example, the Anthrax Mailing Investigation.
And let us never forget that the Coddling of active Murderous Boston Mobsters Whitey Bulger and Steve ‘The Rifleman’ Flemmi was started and continued under Webster, Sessions, Freeh, and included rising stars Robert Mueller and James Comey.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
The FBI needs to be Reformed top-to-bottom.
People need to be Fired — all of those who have abused the Privilege — and I personally don’t care how many are Fired.
Tight Restrictions have to be put in place on Allowable Behavior.
Some of the current FBI’s Power must be returned to the Several States where we can keep a much easier closer-eye on activities.
And, most importantly, a non-governmental committee must be formed to constantly monitor the FBI and Department Of Justice.
These, I think, are just a few actions we True Americans must debate. I’m very open to more.
It’s a Delicate Balance: on one side we do need a clearing-house for criminal activity occurring in multiple states so we must not Restrict too tightly so it can do the job we expect of it; on the other side we must set in place Laws that Effective in controlling their actions and maintain an extremly watchful eye on their activities.
This job is made all the harder because we cannot put any Trust in the vast majority of the members of the Congress and the Supreme Court.
SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND AT ALL TIMES:
The Police were never intended to be Soldiers-Lite, watered-down versions of of our Military. We, The Sovereign People, created police departments ‘to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence’. In other words, we delegated to the Police and other law enforcement agencies, the power to maintain Order in our communities, to see that those who broke the Law were brought before the Justice System, and to help us, the People, protect our Lives, our Liberties, and our Property.
From the beginning the Police were to act as our agents.
In their embrace of the code of behavior of the Military, in their convincing of themselves that we, the Law-Abiding, are not the same as themselves, the Police violated their oath ‘To Protect And To Serve’ us.
Such a group, such a tribe, is easily susceptible to adopting the ways of Tyrants.
America in 2014 is not only a nation where those in control of the national government, and many state and local governments, consider we, The Sovereign People their Public Enemy Number One, but where many of our Police Officers consider us Outlaws, who need to be watched very closely because we are all suspect, to be treated as Suspects.
This is Despotism.
Beyond practicing mere Due Diligence, we, The Sovereign People, from whom all Power And Control ultimately comes, must gear-up our efforts to keep a very close-eye on our governments and publicize loudly and relentlessly when they cross-the-line. It’s time to turn the volume to eleven.
We, the Sovereign People, are the only ultimate Guardians Of Law And Order.
Are we up to the task?
I have my doubts.
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¹ I use the term ‘to a lesser extent’ because the CIA often operates outside the borders of America, where The Constitution does not apply and, therefore, they have more freedom, if you will, to do things that the FBI cannot and must never do. You can argue whether such actions of the CIA are Moral, but not if they’re Legal.