Thought Candy: The FBI’s Most Wanted Dilemma

(2) lollypopThe book I’m reading reminds me that Whitey Bulger became the Most Wanted man in America on the FBI’s Top Most Wanted List when Osama ashbin Laden passed away. That’s quite an achievement.

He earned that position for the crimes he committed between 1975 and 1990 and for having fled in 1995 to avoid prosecution.

Now all during the time he was committing those crimes he was working with the FBI. Every special agent in charge, assistant special agent in charge and fellow agents on the squads his handler was assigned to knew of his status. One person who worked in the office said that everyone in the office knew Whitey was an informant including the secretaries and file clerks.

Whitey was in the FBI’s Top Echelon Informant program. That’s a program where in exchange for information on other organized crime figures the FBI will protect the person in the program. As one agent was overheard saying to his Top Echelon Informant, “my job is to keep you safe.” In other words the FBI partners up with the criminal.

Now doesn’t it seem odd that the FBI’s most wanted guy in the world is a guy it partnered with? Don’t you think that’s what is called chutzpah when it puts the guy at the top of the crime ladder and then pretends it had nothing to do with helping him climb it? Then again, I suppose, the FBI couldn’t put itself at the top of its own wanted list since it was not looking for itself.

 

 

8 Comments

  1. see link for full story

    http://online.wsj.com/articles/fbi-agents-say-rivals-encroach-on-their-turf-1409095148

    News
    FBI Agents Say Rivals Encroach on Their Turf
    Internal Survey Showing Complaints About ATF, HSI Doesn’t Reflect View of FBI’s Leadership, Spokesman Says

    Aug. 26, 2014 7:19 p.m. ET

    FBI Director James Comey, shown at a news conference last week, told his counterpart at the ATF that the language in the memo didn’t reflect the views of the bureau’s leadership. Associated Press

    Federal Bureau of Investigation officials are in a turf battle with other federal law-enforcement agencies over perceived attempts to muscle into what the FBI considers its territory: fighting violent crime.

    In the past year, 61% of the FBI’s 56 field offices have run into “severe” or “moderate” conflicts with other federal law-enforcement agencies, according to an internal survey conducted by the bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division. A summary of the survey was included in a memo circulated to managers in July and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

    The memo provides a rare public look at the tensions that simmer beneath the surface as federal agents from an alphabet soup of three-letter agencies try to make big arrests and win prestige and congressional funding. It shows the FBI fretting that smaller agencies—particularly Homeland Security Investigations and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—are taking over cases the FBI should handle, sometimes causing confusion.

    The FBI and the ATF, both part of the Justice Department, have been butting heads for years. In 2009, the department’s inspector general faulted the two agencies for failing to cooperate on explosives investigations.

    “The jurisdiction encroachment by the ATF continues as a disturbing concern,” the memo distributed last month said, adding that “mission creep by HSI is an issue in an alarming number of field offices.” Thirty field offices reported conflicts with the agency in areas such as human trafficking, violence against children, drugs, shootings, gangs and robberies.

    The survey doesn’t reflect the view of the FBI’s leadership, said spokesman Michael Kortan. FBI Director James Comey “has repeatedly emphasized the American people have no tolerance for turf battles among agencies and that has been reinforced with field managers,” Mr. Kortan said.

    “Because some FBI authorities overlap with those of other federal agencies, challenges and conflicts inevitably arise,” Mr. Kortan said. “But we have always tried to resolve those conflicts in a professional and collaborative manner, throughout the field and at headquarters, and that will continue.”

    Mr. Comey and other high-level FBI officials called their counterparts at the ATF on Monday to explain that they hadn’t authorized the survey and the language in the memo didn’t reflect the views of FBI leadership, law-enforcement officials said.

    Both HSI, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and the ATF have sought to carve out space for themselves in an era of tightening federal budgets. At the same time, the FBI has devoted more of its resources to national-security matters such as counterintelligence and fighting terrorism and cybercrime.

    “We have long-standing and positive working relationships with all of our federal counterparts and in particular, our Department of Justice colleagues,” an ATF spokeswoman said. “We will continue to foster this relationship as we fight against violent crime to make our communities safer.”

    HSI “is committed to upholding national security and public safety through the enforcement of the more than 400 federal laws that the agency is charged with investigating—which include everything from human trafficking to child exploitation to transnational criminal organizations,” a spokeswoman said. She said the agency works with a variety of partners, including the FBI, to achieve those goals.

    The ATF, with its historic focus on firearms and its role as a regulator of gun makers and retailers, sees investigating and stopping gun crime as a natural mission. B. Todd Jones, who took over as the ATF’s director after the troubled Fast and Furious probe—in which agents allowed gun sales to suspected smugglers in an effort to track the weapons and prosecute top traffickers—said in 2012 that he saw a “sweet spot” in fighting violent crime. The agency flirted with changing its name to the Violent Crime Bureau, a move that would require congressional approval.

    HSI, a relatively young agency with roots in customs enforcement, has in recent years taken aim at border-crossing crime such as child exploitation and gangs.

    The result is that both agencies sometimes step on the toes of the FBI, which has a wide mandate, international notoriety and, officials from other agencies often grumble, egos to match.

    “There’s enough violent crime to go around. The obvious challenge is always coordinating task forces and commitment and resources,” said Jon Adler, who leads the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, a group whose members include agents from all three agencies. “The most important thing is putting really bad people away. Who holds the trophy doesn’t matter.”

  2. Matt, the FBI mishandling TEIs including Whitey and its cover up of its responsibility for TEI’s going astray and its pretense that TEIs continued criminal activity but “no violence”, is pathognomonic and symptomatic of the Federal Government in general, which has forget it is supposed to serve, educate and inform the Public, and not disserve, deceive and misinform. The FEDs today protect themselves first and foremost (witness IRS and 100 other Government scandals), to perpetuate their jobs, to protect and expand their agencies. The FEDs have become monstrous and anti-American. The American People should wake up. 2. The President and Congressmen say, “but Federal employees are your neighbors.” To which we respond, “So weren’t the Tories.” We need a serious non-violent revolution to take back our Federal government, to make it adhere to principles of honesty, fully disclosure and constitutionality, and to make it much smaller and right-sized. I’d prefer to see DC a BAckwater, not an IMperial City. I’d prefer to end Imperialism abroad, largesse at home, fat cat lobbyists (I’ve got a plan to do that), but I’d keep our Military strong: stronger than any other in the World (defense of the AMerican People being a primary responsibility of government: Public Health, Public Safety.).

    • Bill:
      down here in the whisper stream we call it Fedametstasis
      The troops at Ground Zero call it your St Crispin Day speech
      My sentiments exactly.
      Now, how do we get Howie Carr to file a FOIA request with the
      Vermont State Police and find out why Louis Fresh was not given a breathalyzer exam and a blood test.
      I concur heartily with you about keeping our military industrial complex strong.
      Who knows when we will have to bring Amerikan Democracy to Vietnam for
      the oil deposits in the South China Sea ,using our troops to topple the dictator we created Saddam Hussein so we can take control of the last remaining
      oil reserves in Iraq,Iran and Syria.Did I mention Afghanistan and the Caspian
      Oil reserves and Lithium Deposits? Who can forget Chiquita Banana and the parent company United Brands overthrowing Central America elected democracies in the 1950’s.
      Of course the US Military supplies our communities with its most important product.
      Returning serial killers discharged unable to find work because the US Corporate-Military has bankrupted our economy.So taxpayers have created a safety net
      workfare program called Mercenaries R US for the returning vet now called the Police where we have over 200,000 unsolved murders in the last 15 years, over 5 million unsolved break ins, Another primary employer of vets is Corrections where the electronic cesspools called prisons do nothing more than produce more vicious and competent criminals operating at a recidivism rate of 75%.I won’t even mention the other part of the trifecta losers called probation and parole.
      Just ask the poster child Whitey Bulger a man who never visited Ferguson.
      Wait a minute I just got a tweet from my buddies business, as, usual over at
      Goldman Sachs telling me to remind you we are past the point of no return
      with regards to climate change and global warming. see. http://ldsfreedomforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=27422

      In other news

      Louis Freeh in surgery Tuesday after wreck
      BurlingtonFreePress.
      The Vermont State Police say there is no evidence that drugs or alcohol were a factor in former FBI director Louis Freeh’s crashing his SUV in …

  3. Re: Hernandez, it seems Judge Garsh has some type of personal vendetta or issue with lead prosecutor William McCauley, you think that played into the blocking of AH’s phones from being presented today? Seemed like a slam dunk at first but I heard a rumor judge Garsh hates McCauley

    • Jim:

      Garsh has a problem with the prosecution. I too have a problem with it after reading her decision on the motion to suppress. I think Garsh was wrong in suppressing the evidence and hope to do a post on it but she is sending a signal to the prosecution she’s going to come down hard on it anytime she can.

      I also think the prosecution did not adequately prepare its witness for the hearing and walked into a trap it could have avoided. I’m worried that the prosecution might not be up to the game. This could mean Hernandez might get a hung jury or even walk.

      That being said, I’m not sure how the suppression of the evidence hurts the case. But the signs are ominous for the prosecutors so they better up their game plan; it’ll have to be close to perfect if they hope to convict him.

      • What are your thoughts RE: The prosecutions case for the double homicide in the south end?

        • Jim:

          I’m worried about the Fall River prosecution as you know. I’m not sure Hernandez will be convicted with the biased judge and the lack of preparation by the state. I hope to go into the motion to suppress if time allows. But I’ve mentioned that before.

          If Hernandez walks in Fall River, my gut tells me he’ll do the same in Boston. I’m not that familiar with the evidence but my thinking is that if it was so good why wasn’t he indicted previous to the time he murdered Odin Lloyd. Were the Boston cops and prosecutors giving him a break because he played for the Patriots? I doubt that so I have to figure the case is touch and go and the evidence questionable.

          Remember the Amy Bishop case where she was indicted for three murders in Alabama where she was caught cold. There was no doubt she would be convicted there. The Norfolk DA indicted her after that for a murder of her brother. He did that figuring she would be convicted in Alabama and then come to Norfolk and plead guilty. After being convicted she wanted to come to MA for a trial. It was then the case was dismissed against he claiming she had already been convicted in Alabama which begs the question why was she indicted here at all.

          The Boston case seems to me to be one of those cases that is brought predicated on the idea that there would be a conviction in Bristol County and Hernandez would come up to Suffolk and enter a plea for a concurrent sentence. I’d suggest that the prosecutors are not sitting too comfortably watching the developments in Fall River.

  4. Matt:
    Ed Tatro sent me this link
    of a new documentary that you
    can watch for free only during august.
    This film is the reason we will be hit again soon by the FBI.

    The Zapruder Film Mystery
    from E2 Films PRO 3 weeks ago All Audiences

    Was the Zapruder Film altered by the CIA in the days after the JFK assassination to hide evidence of a conspiracy? Legendary CIA photo interpreter Dino Brugioni thinks it was.

    In this film, Brugioni speaks for the first time about his examination of the film at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center on the Saturday evening after the assassination. As researcher Doug Horne discovers, Brugioni was not aware of a second examination of the film at NPIC the following evening by a completely different team and believes the Zapruder Film in the archives today is not the film he saw the day after the assassination.

    Drawing on Volume 4 of his book Inside the ARRB, Doug Horne, former chief analyst of military records at the Assassination Records Review Board, sets the scene for his interview with Brugioni and presents his disturbing conclusions.

    Edited and Produced by Shane O’Sullivan as an extra feature to Killing Oswald: killingoswald.com