My good friend Ed called me to ask if all was OK. His call was prompted by not seeing any post by me on the incident involving the FBI agent who left his sniper rifle and an assault weapon in his vehicle. He thought that was a gift that I could not refuse.
I suppose you can form your own opinion on the training and sense of responsibility of an FBI agent who could do such a bone headed act as that. As usual we’ll find out little about it since the local chief being intimidated by the FBI will refuse to tell us simple things as to whether this genius agent left the guns loaded. And, what is the purpose of having an agent driving around with a sniper rifle of all things.
Anyone who has read my book Don’t Embarrass The Enemy will understand my frustration with the FBI, in sum, it has a good group of agents but they are laboring in an organization that still operates as if the American people are its enemy. I’ve noted how they refuse to record any interviews and how in the case of Todashev they killed him and refuse to tell us why. Had they recorded his statements we would have some certainty as to his implication of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the Waltham triple homicides. I sometimes think we are little removed from the horror days in Argentina when the state security forces would make people disappear. Sniper rifles and unexplained killings are omens of a not so nice future.
Speaking of sniper rifles and considering the date, it behooves me to remind you that tomorrow is the Marine Corps Birthday, and to note how well the Marines trains its snipers as demonstrated by Lee Harvey Oswald.
As tempting as it is, I’d rather not discuss the stolen rifles but two other incidents that I related to the FBI in the last couple of days: One involving a man who received the Congressional Medal of Honor; and the other CBS News.
CBS news had a report last week on the Benghazi Attack. It presented a man, Dylan Davies, who alleged he was present during the attack on our embassy, the mysterious matter that some wish would go away but it won’t as long as people like my cousin Jimmy are around. The report was somewhat critical of the Obama administration.
It turns out Davies may not have been present at the attack. When he was interviewed after the attack, he told both his employer and the FBI that he didn’t leave his home compound so he didn’t witness it. Prior to using him in its report, CBS tried to check with the FBI to verify his story but was unable to do this apparently the matter being “under investigation.” Once the critical report on Obama came out, the FBI then provided its report to the Administration in order to let it counteract the criticism.
So much for having a non political police force. The FBI apparently is comfortable hiding things unless it serves the purpose of the party in power in the executive suite. Brings back memories of its involvement for LBJ during the Chicago convention.
Surely CBS erred if Davies was not there; but it seems to me something is wrong when things are concealed under the mantra “under investigation” unless it serves a political end. Sadly, the FBI’s history is replete with such examples.
Captain William Swenson received the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Obama on October 15, 2013. General David Petraeus recommended that he not receive it and the papers concerning his reward seemed to have had a rough time (4 years) moving through the Army administration, which I suggest shows it operates in a similar fashion as the FBI.
Captain Swenson had this to say, which I believe goes in spades for the FBI:
“An institution can’t heal itself unless it can identify what its weaknesses are, and its weaknesses in this case is an individual, The investigation failed to meet the standard of a military investigation in which individuals are identified. Behind every single institutional failure, there’s a name.”
Even though it is long past for the FBI to take a close look at itself and improve, I despair of either the FBI or Army getting over the need to hide things and avoid embarrassment. With the FBI hiding things is so endemic that no agent who served in it will deny that no offense is worse than washing its dirty laundry in public. Its disease has spread to the Army. In Swenson’s case the Army wanted to hide that he spent 7 hours asking for help that never came. And, we all know of the case of Pat Tillman. There are some who suggest that this malady has already infected the Administration and will point to Benghazi as exhibit number one.
Happy Birthday all you Leathernecks!
Who would of thought Matt would give me some lead-ins
for new one liners’
1st one liner
We have been tracking the Lost and Found Department at the FBI Crime Family for the past 15 years. Google fbi missing computers or see: In 2001 FBI agents lost 449 firearms and 184 laptop computers Not to worry your tax dime replaced them http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92863 How about in 2002 FBI agents lost 354 submachine guns , shotguns and sniper rifles in a 8 month period. Oh yea 317 laptop computers went missing during the same time period. see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/12/AR2007021200629.html Not to worry the Boston taxpayer replaced them. In 2006 FBI agents caused Boston taxpayers to hemorrhage $7.6 million in lost computers see http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2006/20060320.asp OK in 1997 there was the FBI van that was filled with weapons including a grenade launcher that was never found Yea the van was torched see http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/06/us/fbi-finds-most-of-arsenal.html
The ultimate taxpayer reaming from Boston FBI crime Family capo Vincent Lisi came with the Boston taxpayer having to shell out $20,000.00 big ones to get the two weapons back. see http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013/11/08/lawrence-teen-arrested-theft-high-powered-rifles-from-fbi-swat-vehicle-andover-guns-recovered-officials-say/AIiR4QPqP9q4ZV1wnNTo2J/story.html
2nd one liner When you are the law enforcement agency investigating the assassination of a President you just murdered you can almost always get away with the crime. see HARVEY AND LEE
John Armstrong’s Documented History of the CIA’s “Oswald Project”
Website Created 3/9/99 and Last Updated 11/2/13 by Jim Hargrove
http://harveyandlee.net
3rd one line. As voters and taxpayers we should take responsibility for the creation of the monster called Whitey Bulger. Our tax dime funded the electronic cesspools called prison where he was nurtured only to be released back into the community a more vicious and competent criminal.
Lance Tapley is a former tenant of mine. He just sent me this email.
Here at the link immediately below is my Portland Phoenix photo feature on the Maine State Prison’s solitary-confinement “supermax.” To see the photos, continue going to “Next” at the end of the brief, introductory personal essay.
http://portland.thephoenix.com/news/156318-rare-look-inside-the-maine-state-prisons-%E2%80%98super/
Over 8 years I have now written 103 stories for the Portland Phoenix on prison issues, the majority of them on solitary confinement.
When I reached 100 stories I wanted to send out links to all of them to people interested in prison issues, but being allowed into the Maine supermax for the first time seemed an even better marker.
The first 94 stories in my prison series are at:
http://contests.thephoenix.com/maine-prisons?page=2
The latest 9 are here:
http://portland.thephoenix.com/authors/lance-tapley/
This is an old-fashioned, frustrating, rewarding journalistic “crusade.” I want to express my deep appreciation to the Phoenix’s managing editor, Jeff Inglis; to Stephen Mindich, its owner; and to other editors (particularly, Peter Kadzis and Sam Pfeifle) and employees past and present for a consistency and intensity of support, especially to a free-lancer, that would be hard to find a parallel to, I submit, in American journalism.
I also want to express my great thanks to the many prisoners, former prisoners, activists, scholars, fellow journalists, friends,
mrfreeh:
Believe me it was purely unintentional in offering you the gift but I should have known you’d jump all over it.
I find the figures you offer fascinating. I do agree with you that our prison system is awful although it is better than the one in Bengladesh or Moldova.
I had a simple thought through my career about prisons: if we are going to incarcerate people then it is our obligation to insure that no person who goes into prison comes out worse than she was the day she entered. I was thinking basically along the lines of preserving a person from physical (including sexual) assaults and demeaning a person’s humanity. Even though Whitey is quite low on the totem pole of humanity we could see that the guards at the prison took delight in conducting a body strip of him four or more times a day. Does one despair of bettering prisons when the guards may have monsterous dispositions.
Of course one thing about prison’s though, as a society we have many demands on us. I agree that there is much waste. But in the sense the demands of education or health care or other things for those who are deemed more worthy than those in prison will always have first precedent. But it’s nice to see there are still some Don Quiote’s around since even the least among us need support.