To the Rank and File of the FBI

This is a message to the “rank and file” of the FBI. And the Department of Justice. And to the talking head pundits who continue to tell us that the rank and file of various government agencies are good people.

Some reminders:

1. “Nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000,” the newspaper reported, adding that “the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.”
2. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Washington’s efforts to stomp out bad ideas spawned federal crime waves. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program utterly exempted itself from the Constitution and federal, state, and local laws. The FBI set up its own 250-member Klan organization “to attract membership away from the United Klans of America,” as a 1976 Senate report noted. One federally funded informant admitted that he and other Klansmen had “beaten people severely, had boarded buses and kicked people off; had went [sic] in restaurants and beaten them with blackjacks, chains, pistols.” Other FBI COINTELPRO operations sought to destroy black activists, including Martin Luther King Jr. One FBI office boasted of spurring “shootings, beatings, and a high degree of unrest … in the ghetto area of southeast San Diego.” Because the instigators were federal agents, they faced no criminal penalty for behavior that would have sent other Americans to prison.Once the FBI committed to subverting dissident speech, its crackdowns became a bureaucratic growth industry that eventually targeted even the Women’s Liberation Movement. Tom Charles Huston, an aide to President Richard Nixon, gave testimony in 1975 about COINTELPRO’s tendency “to move from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.
3. An FBI agent accused of lying about firing two shots at Oregon standoff spokesman Robert “LaVoy” Finicum faces a five-count indictment, charging him with three counts of making a false statement and two counts of obstruction of justice.
4. A federal investigator is alleging prosecutors in the Bundy Ranch standoff trial covered up misconduct by law enforcement agents who engaged in “likely policy, ethical and legal violations.” In an 18-page memo to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General, Special Agent Larry Wooten said he “routinely observed … a widespread pattern of bad judgment, lack of discipline, incredible bias, unprofessionalism and misconduct” among agents involved in the 2014 armed standoff.
5. We’re also finding out about another hopelessly compromised member of the Mueller investigative team —  namely, Andrew Weissmann. And what we’re finding out isn’t all that good. It turns out that Weissmann is the federal prosecutor who took down Enron, Arthur Anderson, and Merrill Lynch in separate cases, all of which resulted in convictions which were overturned all or in part due to prosecutorial misconduct. Weissmann was reportedly the genius behind the government’s armed pre-dawn raid at the home of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, in order to push an investigation resulting in charges of — essentially — consulting for a foreign political party and “laundering” money which was not illegal.
6. Between guilty pleas and trials, the conviction rate was 99.8% in U.S. federal courts in 2015: 126,802 convictions and 258 acquittals. That wasn’t an anomaly. In 2014 the conviction rate was 99.76% and in 2013 it was 99.75%.Federal courts were not defendant friendly in 1955, or 1973, but now the odds are so heavily stacked against a defendant that it would be appropriate if every federal courthouse had Dante’s admonition inscribed above its entrance: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
7. Writing for the Wall Street Journal in 2005, federal judge and former U.S. deputy attorney general Laurence Silberman recalled how he was “shocked” to discover the extent the FBI abused its power to spy on Americans.Speaking of the first time he reviewed the files of J. Edgar Hoover, Silberman writes how Hoover tasked “his agents with reporting privately to him on any bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King or their families — information Hoover sometimes used as blackmail to ensure his and the bureau’s power.”
8. “We want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him.”—President Harry S. Truman
9. For instance, you might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you:
   • • express libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
     • exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership)
     • read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books
     • show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
     • fear an economic collapse
     • buy gold and barter items
     • subscribe to religious views concerning the book of Revelation
     • voice fears about Big Brother or big government
     • expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties
     • believe in a New World Order conspiracy
10. According to the memo, high-ranking FBI officials repeatedly sought, received and renewed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to engage in surveillance of members of the Trump campaign during the election. These officials, including then-Director James Comey and recently removed Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, justified the warrant requests before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in part with information generated by Christopher Steele, who was working on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the firm Fusion GPS. Steele’s main contact at the Justice Department was Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, whose wife was also employed by Fusion GPS as a Russia expert working on anti-Trump opposition research.

To the rank and file of the FBI: you are a national disgrace to the country and the Constitution. I wonder how you sleep at night as you consider the crimes your agency is responsible for committing and the reign of terror that you help perpetuate against the people. I will never understand how or why “you look on and do nothing”.

David DeGerolamo