Flashback : Comey Declared That FBI Would Be Independent of Politics

Saint Comey

For Saturday’s flashback and whatever happened to – I went back to an old 2013 post of James Comey. I don’t think I have to fill you in on the “whatever happened to” part. Amazing that it recalls that he became the new FBI Director in the fall of 2013. So that is when the long National nightmare was born. This will be a real knee slapper.

October 29, 2013 — bunkerville

“I’m going to direct that all new agents and analysts also visit the Martin Luther King Memorial here in Washington,” said Comey, whose term runs for 10 years.

“I think it will serve as a different kind of lesson, one more personal to the Bureau, of the dangers in becoming untethered to oversight and accountability,” he said.

Rev. King was monitored by FBI agents from 1958 to 1968, during the presidencies of Republican Dwight Eisenhower, and Democrats John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Democrats dominated southern politics, and used their power to block demands for equal treatment of blacks with whites. For example, Birmingham’s police chief, Theophilus “Bull” Connor, used firehoses and dogs to block a march in 1963. Connor was a Democrat and a member of the Democratic National Committee.

Comey declared the FBI would be independent of politics.

“The FBI must be independent of all political forces or interests in this country… [and] must stand apart from other institutions in American life,” he said. “But, second, at the same time, it must be part of the United States Department of Justice, and constrained by the rule of law and the checks and balances built into our brilliant design by our nation’s founders.”

“Our first half-century or so was a time of great progress and achievement for this country, and for the Bureau,” Comey said. “But it also saw abuse and overreach — most famously with respect to Martin Luther King and others, who were viewed as internal security threats.”

Comey did not explain who the “others” were, but he did seem to criticize the FBI’s surveillance of political radicals in the 1960s.

New FBI Director has agents visiting MLK monument

Daily Caller