The FBI Record on Fighting Terrorism.
Many Americans assume, however, that at least in the area of Islamic terrorism, the FBI has kept Americans largely safe. Not so fast. The record doesn’t quite show that. In fact, the agency has blundered many terrorism investigations and thus jeopardized the security of Americans. Examples:
- In 2009, Islamist Nidal Hasan fatally shot 13 people at the Fort Hood Military Base, but his radical associations and open support for jihad were previously known by the FBI. It even had emails in which Hasan stated he wanted to kill his fellow soldiers. Indeed, records show that not only was there reluctance by officials to drum Hasan out of the military — for political reasons — but he was promoted at every opportunity.
- In 2013, local officials caught seven foreign Muslims trespassing after midnight onto Quabbin Reservoir, a critical Northwest drinking reservoir. The FBI took over the case but let the trespassers go because they believe them to be just “tourists.” Yes, just midnight tourists. Only a few months earlier, another terrorist had been arrested for planning to poison a different reservoir.
- In 2013, the Tsarnaev brothers bombed the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds more. Russian intelligence warned the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the agency even interviewed him, but it appears the FBI determined that Russia’s intelligence was not accurate. Until the bombs went off.
- In 2015, when the government watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained documents confirming that ISIS terrorists were crossing the Mexican/Texas border, concerned FBI agents held meetings at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez with Mexican officials. But not to figure out a plan to deal with such crossings, but rather to deny these allegations and to determine who leaked the info to JW. Forget the message and attack the messenger. What a great counter-terrorism strategy.
- In 2015, the FBI failed to prevent the San Bernardino terror attack by an Islamic couple from Pakistan connected to an Islamic terrorist group whose files were among those purged earlier by the FBI, thereby making it nearly impossible for the agency to detect this pair.
- In 2015, two Islamic terrorists attacked a Muhammad art expo in Garland, Texas, but the FBI actually had an informant at the scene with the terrorists, but it never bothered to warn the expo’s organizers of the impending attack. Apparently, the agency didn’t want to blow the informant’s cover! Fortunately, security guard Bruce Joiner shot and killed both shooters before they could get inside the exhibition hall. Joiner wonders why the FBI would allow this attack to transpire, stating “That’s not the kind of thing we do in the United States with our citizens.”
- In 2016, Islamist Omar Mateen slaughtered 49 people at an Orlando nightclub. While the FBI did investigate him for 10 months it closed his file because it believed he was “being marginalized because of his Muslim faith.” Seriously.
- The FBI has flat out denied that Las Vegas shooter Steven Paddock has any Islamic terror connections, but the reality is it really doesn’t know enough about him to make such a claim. Indeed, ISIS never takes credit for attacks that are not its own and on three occasions, it has announced Paddock was connected to ISIS. It even revealed Paddock’s Islamic name: Abu Abdul Barr al-Amriki. Also, Paddock made trips to the Middle East. Given the FBI’s record, ISIS’s statements may be more credible than the FBI’s denials.
- The latest terrorist incident in New York City was also bungled. Months before Sayfullo Saipov mowed down over 20 people, the FBI interviewed him because it knew he was connected to two men with terrorist connections. As such, his visa should have been revoked and he should have been deported, but the agency didn’t even open up a file on him.
- Finally, the 9/11 terrorist attack itself could have been prevented by the FBI. It had enough intel to connect the dots but didn’t. Many of its pre-9/11 reports on al Qaeda were lost or not shared with the proper people. One was a memo by Phoenix FBI Agent Ken Williams, describing suspected al Qaeda members training at U.S. flight schools. How could that not result in a full-scale investigation? And Special Agent Mark Rossini sent a message to FBI headquarters warning that 9/11 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar had a multi-entry visa to enter the U.S. before 9/11. But that cable went “missing” when Congress held hearings on how our intelligence agencies manage to completely miss so many obvious clues.
And there are many other examples that can’t be cited here due to lack of space, but it’s difficult to find a domestic terrorist investigation that the FBI hasn’t screwed up. The above incidents alone cost the lives of almost 3,200 Americans. One would think that in the aftermath of 9/11, the FBI would make an effort to become more efficient when it comes to counter-terrorism, but with the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the FBI not only remained overly bureaucratic but became hyper politically correct.
Incredible as it may seem, in 2011, Obama’s FBI Director, Robert Mueller, met with a coalition of radical Islamic groups and agreed to purge thousands of files “offensive” to Muslims. Judicial Watch said the “purge is part of a broader Islamic ‘influence operation’ aimed at our government and constitution.”
In other words, the FBI caved in to groups that do not have our best interests at heart. Indeed, two of the groups Mueller met with, ISNA and CAIR, were unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case. Many terror experts believe this purge crippled the FBI’s abilities to detect some of the terror plots that occurred during the Obama years. Due to its desire not to offend Muslims, the FBI jeopardized the lives of many Americans.
Conservatives Should Quit Defending the FBI
The FBI has a long history of being used by various administrations to harass certain groups and individuals, or, conversely, to allow certain groups and individuals to commit crimes without fear of prosecution. The FBI is supposed to uphold the Constitution but instead has repeatedly violated the constitutional rights of Americans. This politicization has cost many Americans their lives and their freedoms. The abuse listed here is not comprehensive but it’s enough, one would think, to make conservatives think twice about defending this agency’s police state tactics.
Indeed, the Wall Street Journal has reported that “nearly one out of every three American adults are on file in the FBI’s master criminal database,” even though most of them have not been convicted of a crime. Does anyone really believe our founding fathers would be fine with such sweeping federal law enforcement powers?
The aforementioned conservative civil rights attorney, John Whitehead, summarizes today’s FBI: “In additions to procedural misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, the FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, and harassment.” President Harry Truman once said, “We want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is trending in that direction.” And that was 72 years ago.
It’s Time to Turn Over FBI Investigations to the States
If the FBI was abolished and its workload turned over to the states, it would not be as difficult as some would portray it. Indeed, what most Americans don’t realize is that almost every state already has a state version of the FBI. New Mexico has the New Mexico State Police, the Golden State has the California Bureau of Investigation, Texas has both the Texas Rangers and the Texas Department of Public Safety, and Georgia has the Georgia Bureau of investigation. (One can view the list here.)
Moreover, all these agencies are equipped with crime labs and the latest forensic tools. At one time, such tools were prohibitively expensive for state police agencies to acquire, but technological advances have brought the cost of such equipment down, resulting in most states having the latest forensics equipment that at one time was monopolized by the FBI. For example, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is famous for its forensic work: “The Division of Forensic Sciences envisions a future in which we continue to build and develop an internationally recognized forensic laboratory system that partners with governmental and private entities….”
Today, much of the FBI’s work entails the investigation of federal crimes committed within one state. There is no reason why the states can’t handle these investigations and if the case does happen to cross over into other states, then the states simply coordinate. Those days in which a criminal would escape the law by crossing a state line are long gone. Indeed, that practice was one of the reasons why the FBI was created, but with today’s advances in communication technology, that simply doesn’t happen anymore. All states today have the technology to easily track criminals as they cross state lines and it’s not difficult for two states or more to work together in the apprehension of a criminal. Already, states today cooperate on a wide array of governmental actions; there is no reason why they can’t coordinate on a police investigation or criminal apprehension.
James Bovard reported in his 2012 article “A Stasi for America“:
A ripple of protest swept across the Internet in late March after the disclosure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was teaching its agents that “the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” This maxim was inculcated as part of FBI counterterrorism training. The exposure of the training material—sparked by a series of articles by Wired.com’s Spencer Ackerman—spurred the ritual declaration by an FBI spokesman that “mistakes were made, and we are correcting those mistakes.” No FBI officials were sanctioned or fired for teaching lawmen that they were above the law…At least the FBI has been consistent. Since its founding in 1908, the bureau has rarely let either the statute book or the Constitution impede its public service.
Violating the rights of ordinary people has been standard policy at the FBI for decades. But, who can be surprised that the FBI now seeks to protect powerful politicians from the same laws that the FBI would enthusiastically use to prosecute and imprison ordinary citizens?
The FBI Is Unconstitutional and Ineffective
Thanks to the enduring view that federal police would tip the balance too far in favor of the federal government, many Americans opposed federal agencies like the FBI throughout the nineteenth century. It was feared that federal police would turn into secret police forces such as those known to be used in imperial Russia. Certainly, the Constitution does not mandate any federal police force. Consequently, it was not until the twentieth century that federal agencies like the FBI gained traction, thanks to a rising tide of pro-federal sentiment brought on by war and hysterical fear of “anarchists.”
Thanks to war hysteria during World War I, the FBI rose to prominence as Woodrow Wilson’s shock troops against “dissidents” (i.e., peaceful opponents of the war). Indeed, persecuting and prosecuting political enemies of the American state would become something of the forte of the FBI, with the role of the agency being expanded ever more during times of perceived national crisis. The idea of the FBI as a crime-fighting organization — the primary message of fawning treatments of the FBI such as The Untouchables and The FBI Story — for decades served as cover for the FBI’s political activities. As Foreign Policy pointed out in 2014, though, the FBI quietly dropped its claims of being a crime fighting organization and began declaring itself a “national security” organization. Down the memory hole goes the FBI’s original claimed raison d’etre. In its current Q and A, the FBI now acts as if it had never claimed to be a crime fighting organization at all:
Is the FBI a type of national police force?
No. The FBI is a national security organization that works closely with many partners around the country and across the globe to address the most serious security threats facing the nation.
No longer tied down by the need to waste its valuable time — as the FBI sees it — on mundane, real, and concrete crime such as kidnapping, the FBI can now focus on the far-more-amorphous “national security.” Never mind the fact, of course, that the FBI’s record on preventing terrorist acts such as 9/11 and the Orlando shooting is abysmal, and the terrorist plots it has “prevented” in recent years were actually facilitated by the FBI itself. Predictably, after the FBI was criticized in the wake of the Orlando shooting, James Comey declared to the press that the FBI did a fine job:
“We are also going to look hard at our own work to see whether there is something we should have done differently,” Comey said. “So far, the honest answer is: I don’t think so.”
The FBI Was Created to Compete with Successful Private Agencies
It should be noted that the FBI was not created to fill a hole in law enforcement needs. On the contrary, it was created to usurp and displace a highly-efficient and effective private police force that already existed: the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
Writing in Private Investigation and Security Science: A Scientific Approach, Frank Machovec notes that “The FBI, founded in 1908, was modeled from Pinkerton’s organization and methods,” while Marie Gottschalk writes in The Prison and the Gallows that “In its early years, the FBI modeled itself after the Pinkertons and other private police agencies.”
In fact, government-run police organizations had long been shown to be inefficient and prone to corruption, which is why the private sector turned to private security instead. Gottschalk continues:
The unreliability of metropolitan police, with their strong local and partisan ties, prompted major businesses and industrialists to establish the Pinkertons and other private police forces. The Pinkertons ultimately functioned as a de factonational detective and policing service until the 1920s, when the FBI finally came into its own.
By the early twentieth century, the Pinkertons and other private investigative organizations had established themselves as reliable and effective. It’s why the Pinkertons repeatedly show up in popular culture as the highly-efficient and dangerous enemies of beloved Old-West outlaws like Butch Cassidy.
As early as 1857, politicians were already noting the public’s favorable perceptions of private police over public police, with Chicago mayor John Wentworth noting:
Our police system has been gradually falling into disrepute; and it is a lamentable fact that, whilst our citizens are heavily taxed to support a large police force, a highly respectable private police is doing a lucrative business. Our citizens have ceased to look to the public police for protection, for the detection of culprits or the recovery of stolen property.
The federal government, however, wanted a similar force that it could directly control, and thus turned to a federal police force instead. The desire to present the new agency as like the Pinkertons can be seen in the decision to call FBI investigators “agents” just as many private sector investigators were addressed (as opposed to “deputy” or “officer”).
The Pinkertons were primarily interested in property crime with actual victims (i.e., train robbing). The FBI, however, could be used to go after political enemies, protesters, supposed draft dodgers and others who ran afoul of government regulations created to benefit the government itself. Over time, the FBI would crowd out the Pinkertons as a national police force (although, unfortunately, government organizations were known to contract with the Pinkertons).
This was all to the good according to many critics of the Pinkertons who wanted a government-controlled national police force that could be used against the private sector, rather than be controlled by it.
The FBI Is a Product of Anti-Capitalist Movements
Indeed, the rise of the FBI is very much the product of left-wing and labor unionist movements to curb the power of the Pinkertons in favor of the FBI and similar agencies.
A recent example of this line of thought can be found in Elizabeth Joh’s 2006 article “The Forgotten Threat: Private Policing and the State.”
As explained by Joh, the left was highly critical of the Pinkertons in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for their role in combating striking workers and for being employed by private organizations. While federal police forces such as the FBI would work only in the “public interest” it was assumed, organizations like the the Pinkertons functioned at the morally base level of seeking “profit.”
The Pinkerton’s however, never functioned with the sort of firepower, manpower, and legal immunity enjoyed by federal agencies today. Indeed, in some cases, the Pinkertons surrendered to their “victims” as in the case of the Homestead Riot of 1892 where, according to Joh, “[o]utnumbered, the Pinkerton guards surrendered, and were beaten by an angry mob.”
Three workers were killed in the melee, making the Homestead Riot a peaceful affair by FBI standards. Under the leadership of the FBI, federal agents killed 17 times as many people at Waco, including children. However, unlike Waco, which produced no sanctions or sustained public reactions against the FBI, the Homestead Riot became the high tide for anti-Pinkerton scrutiny and a flashpoint for action against private security agencies. For example, following an investigation of private security agencies at the time, the US Senate’s investigatory committee declared that private security is illegitimate and that “use of private armed men is an assumption [that is, usurpation] of the State’s authority by private citizens.” Indeed, the Senate committee declared, the use of private arms to secure private property will lead to “anarchy.”
For decades afterward, government committee and pro-labor groups worked together to condemn, investigate, and discredit private security agencies. Government agencies, it was maintained, would be responsive to elected officials and the public at large. If private policing agencies could be done away with, the public was told, no more would police organizations function in their own self-interest.
Such views have always been impressively naïve, although the public has long fallen for these claims. Moreover, one of the primary benefits of private security has been that it is subject to a totally separate and often hostile (to private security) legal system. Unlike the FBI, which enjoys a variety of government-granted immunities from responsibility for abuses and wrongful deaths, private security is legally subject to the same laws as everyone else. Even worse, agencies like the FBI can directly tap into nearly limitless funds through their taxpayer-funded budgets. Unlike private security firms that are constrained by real-world budgets, government prosecutors and police agencies face no such limitation. Obviously, this places defendants at an even more lopsided economic disadvantage than when dealing with powerful private firms.
Today, federal police organizations, federal courts, and federal prosecutors are all part of a single organization. Naturally, these organizations tend to favor each other in their proceedings. On the other hand, if there is a distrust of private security within the court system (or vice versa) that’s all for the best, since as a result of this tension, checks and balances are likely to actually mean something. The same cannot be said for the current system which unifies policing and court proceedings within a single organization and in which a sizable number of government judges are former government prosecutors.
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