The stunning part of all this is the FBI cooperated fully in Connolly’s prosecution knowing that what he had done was part of the job he was supposed to have done. Some agents testified on his behalf but others testified for the prosecution. But overall the FBI and its agents except for a small group (100 out of 15,000) walked away from him. How can it be that so few, and mostly retired, special agents would stand up for a guy they knew was doing his job.
Connolly never seemed to understand he had been left out to hang by the FBI. I never understood that. He was so loyal to it that I guess he could not conceive of it turning against him. He always blamed the prosecutors without realizing had the FBI stood up and said he was doing his job there would have been no prosecution.
After the dust settled I decided to try to understand why so few backed Connolly. I did some reading on the FBI in books by agents who were proud of their careers and some who were disgruntled. All of them mentioned its supreme commandment, “Don’t Embarrass the FBI.” In fact, one book had the title . “Don’t Embarrass The Bureau.” I thought it strange that I had figured it out sitting during Connolly’s trial and later to learn in fact that was the most important thing to the FBI.
The more I read the more it became apparent to me that most special agents tried to get along, do their jobs, and not cross the bosses. To incur the wrath of the director could result in fast and severe punishment. Hoover had the ability to fire an agent “for cause” and prevent the agent from getting another job in the federal government. It didn’t matter how close a guy was to retirement if Hoover turned against him, they were all male agents in his time, he was out of luck.
Hoover maintained his discipline with an iron hand. FBI agents, working stiffs like I was on the state side, had devoted years to the job. The last thing they wanted to find out they were out on the street. So many just sucked it up, did their jobs, and tried to avoid getting put into compromising situations which would reflect badly on the Bureau. It isn’t easy in your mid-forties working from one check to another to suddenly find no more were coming in.
There were many situations which agents were require to engage in that they thought questionable but did it because ordered and kept their mouths shut. One example was the black bag jobs to place listening devices in private areas. One agent wrote of those that if they were caught doing these they were not supposed to disclose their true identities and if they could not work it out and it became public knowledge, the Seat of Government, as agents referred to FBI headquarters would call them rogue agents. They were on their own if it looked like the FBI would be embarrassed. Usually there was little to fear because the FBI could use their IDs to have the local cops give them a pass.
Other bad situations good agents were put in were breaking into private premises and rifling through files. Then there were the opening of private mail, the infamous COINTELPRO, and the like. Agents engaged in these questionable legal programs to keep their jobs and because they were told to by higher-ups.
Now, for the first time in its history, the FBI is being attacked by the president, Republican members of Congress, and the president’s news channel Fox. The other day one person who hosts a Fox show said: “There is a cleansing needed in our FBI and Department of Justice. It needs to be cleansed of individuals who should not just be fired but need to be taken out in handcuffs.” I’ve told how Gregg Jarrett on the Hannity show said: “the FBI has become America’s secret police. . . . It’s like the old KGB . . . “ These follow-up on the president’s lead where he said the FBI’s reputation “was in tatters – worst in history.”
One article had it: ”People are finally tumbling to the realization that this [FBI] has become a proto-KGB. We’re in a Constitutional crisis. These guys are playing out a silent coup against an elected official.” When FBI Director Christopher Wray testified he was told by a chairman of a committee: “The FBI’s reputation has been called into question. You, Director Wray, have a unique opportunity to repair the damage.”
Wa-llahi! Obama’s strategy for dealing with Iran is coming to fruition. Remember when I told you folks the plan was to force Iran into over extending itself overseas? The Iranian people are out in the streets demanding Khameni’s head and the end of wilayat al-faqih (mullah rule). The casualties, and, the expense of overseas adventures, has soured the Iranian people. Khomeni’s dreams are becoming unimportant to the average Iranian. The rural areas and small cities are restive. That’s bad news for the Mullahs. They recruit the basij militia from the rural people. Great chess moves, Obama! Too bad, you couldn’t run for a third term.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2014/04/09/media-conned-public-loving-fbi-book-review/
APRIL 9, 2014 | STEVE WEINBERG
HOW THE MEDIA CONNED THE PUBLIC INTO LOVING THE FBI: BOOK REVIEW
A review of “Hoover’s FBI and the Fourth Estate: The Campaign to Control the Press and the Bureau’s Image” by Matthew Cecil, University Press of Kansas, 355 pages, $34.95
Matthew Cecil, a communications professor at Wichita State University, has resolved a conundrum that’s bedeviled me since 1970, when I was a fledgling investigative reporter.
I had just completed my first interaction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the supposedly crackerjack national law enforcement agency. But the crackerjack part escaped me. My initial experience suggested an agency that produced inaccurate information inefficiently, failed to respect the constitutional liberties of U.S. citizens, and often resorted to intimidation and lies to get their way. Yet many of my journalistic “betters” told me I was misguided.
Smart people who think they are well informed about a subject—say, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s role as the nation’s elite law enforcement agency—usually “know” what they think they know based on exposure to mass media—television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books. But when mass media have been corrupted, the reliability of the “knowledge” becomes suspect. That’s the case with the FBI.
As “Hoover’s FBI and the Fourth Estate: The Campaign to Control the Press and the Bureau’s Image” shows, the performance of supposedly first-rate FBI agents has been dismal time and again when the citizens of the United States needed them most, including perhaps most notably the run-up to the events of September 11, 2001.
also see
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222792461_A_Quantitative_Description_of_FBI_Public_Relations
A Quantitative Description of FBI Public Relations
Article · March 1997 with 22 Reads
DOI: 10.1016/S0363-8111(97)90003-5
Cite this publication
Dirk C. Gibson
Abstract
Of all federal government agencies in the U.S. from the 1930’s to the 1980’s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation probably had the most successful media relations program. The Bureau’s leaders seemed to be masters at getting good publicity and avoiding bad.By describing a quantitative analysis of the FBI’s publicity over that 50-year period, this article attempts to show why those efforts were so successful. It identifies the themes that typified the verbal component of Bureau publicity, and the broad spectrum of mass communication channels that were tapped.
Don’t forget Tim Flaherty, Bob George and Fitzpatrick. Three victims of DOJ abuse. Trump’s political foes have called him Hitler and other names. Justice Scalia was called the same names. What an empty and hollow charge. Does Trump run any concentration camps? We know the liberal Democrat FDR ran some. With the help of the ACLU he put 100 thousand innocent Japanese Americans in concentration camps. 2. Did Harry Truman view the FBI as a gestapo?
Right on NC: Everyone ran from the innocent man Naimovich:
Kerry another point: The reason so many forgot about John Connolly was he was tried in Miami in 2008 and convicted on a stupid count added after the all the testimony conclude. The jury acquitted him of murder and conspiracy counts.
Secondly, it took until 2014 for an Appeals Court to issue its first written decision overturning John’s conviction. Then it took over another year until @June 2015 when the full panel of the Appeals Court ruled 6-4 to reinstate the conviction.
That reinstated conviction was called “novel” a.k.a = a bizarre interpretation, a crazy stretch of the law, supported by no previous case law (no precedents) and by no clear reading of the plain language of the statute. The dissent basically said the majority’s decision was bogus, fake-law, a travesty of justice.
How did the Globe Herald Howie Carr and all the press ’round here cover it? Like it was clear . . . in fact it was clear as mud. A GRAVE TRAVESTY of JUSTICE! And for last 2 years many people having cursing it, including over 100 FBI agents, and the CORRUPT PRESS AND MEDIA simply will not cover it!
It’s exactly what happened to Dreyfus. J’ACCUSE!
Right on Kerry; there are other books; and what the FBI needs and more importantly what the Justice Department needs and men like Wyshak need is a heavy dose of accountability, investigation and imprisonment if and when malicious prosecution is discovered and the withhholding of exculpatory evidence is discovered which I SUSPECT has occurred in more than one case around here!
And you are right there is an evil TROIKA: Leftist Press, Leftist Academics and a Compliant Malleable JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: How else to explain everything from Raymond Donovan to the Probation Case to Boston Cop Ken Conley and to John Conley and many other malicious overly zealous politically motived “axes to grind” prosecutions just here in the Boston Office of the FEDS. Don’t forget Charles Turner!
How much support did Naimovich get from the three thousand State Cops when he was framed? One out of three grand. Even if your 100 number is true for the FBI supporting Connolly it dwarfs Naimovich’s. They all ran for the hills save Lowell.
Wow! An amazing story that America thought was over, evidently not. Nearly everything I know about it comes from this blog, Matt’s Book, and Bob Fitzpatrick’s book.
I do know there has to be greater transparency and oversight of the FBI if we are to remain free. Can we trust the press to do it? Rarely it seems.
“Weinstein held off press scrutiny with a mix of threats and enticements,” the New York Times reported (re-posted by the Boston Globe.) in an article about the Weinstein complicity machine.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/12/05/weinstein-complicity-machine-entangled-stars-scribes-and-aides-web-secrets/LAwAkbPX5mnOPowdEZ7klK/story.html
If Weinstein can do it, then wouldn’t be that much easier for the FBI to surround itself with enablers in the media as well?
One recent story that give me hope is this one:
Family: New DNA testing could crack Colonial Parkway Murders case
http://www.13newsnow.com/news/crime/family-new-dna-testing-could-crack-colonial-parkway-murders-case/492039399
The victim’s families in this case, 30 years later, are still looking for answers and getting a familiar runaround. So the families get a TV investigative TV reporter, Laura Geller, to ask the FBI for the answers to the same questions and she too gets the runaround. So does Geller stop there? No. She prints out the unsatisfactory emailed response out and is televised standing in front of FBI Quantico waving it around and reporting what it says:
“13News Now pushed the FBI for answers. We asked very specific questions, including if any of the forensic samples have been tested with newer technology and why the bureau wouldn’t allow an outside lab to perform the tests. We received a statement, in which a spokeswoman called the case an active investigation. The statement didn’t acknowledge specific testing, but said “a number of items are currently being reviewed” at the lab in Quantico.
“Maintaining the integrity of evidence and the chain of custody is a very high priority for the FBI and is integral to all investigations,” spokeswoman Tina Pullen wrote.
This is what we need around here, what the FBI needs, and the country needs. We need a free and independent press, not state sponsored journalism and journalists looking for exclusives and to rub elbows with the powerful.
Do FBI agents lie? Or take political sides? Apparently, they do if it’s ‘in a good cause.’
REP. JORDAN SUSPECTS FBI’S STRZOK LINKED TO ANTI-TRUMP DOSSIER
Top counterintelligence agent ‘probably has his fingerprints all over application’ to spy on campaign
http://www.wnd.com/2017/12/congressman-suspects-fbis-strzok-linked-to-anti-trump-dossier/
Two things: If you look back at posts on your own site you’ll see thousands of FBI agents support John. It was 4-6-2013, or 6-2-2013. (Was doing research on related matter and found this . . .I think DB or 251 Callaghan could confirm this.
2. How may probation officers sprung to the defense of John O’Brien et al when the maliciously corrupt Fred Wyshak came after them, or to the defense of Aaron Scwartz when Wyshak’s overzealously team drove him to suicide. Folks are intimidated by the FBI/DOJ because they in fact do intimdate/threaten/punish/prosecute innocent folks, and use underhanded methods to do so, like asking 1000 questions and you get one partially wrong you’re guilty of Lying to an FBI agent.
3. The wonder is that 100 boldly write their names and repeatedly to this day assert that John is innocent and was framed, and behind them stand another 1000 just as convinced, but because of various concerns . . . fear of retribution from maliciously overzealous prosecutors like Fred Wyshak . . . .must stay in the background.
4. I’ve petitioned the Governor of Florida for a Commutation for John.
Here, boiled down, are the 5 “crimes” John was convicted of in Boston (1) giving a case of wine with $1,000 to Morris, his boss, in the 1980s. The only “crime” convicted of during his 22 years as highly decorated FBI agent. Morris is a pathetic perjurer. (2) Telling Weeks in 1995 he heard an indictment was coming down. John was retired 5 years then. Not a crime for private citizen to say, “I heard it through the grapevine: an indictment is coming down.” Moreover, Weeks is a proven perjurer. He’d say anything to get 5 years for 5 murders. Plus, these two “acts” and only these two are why Wyshak and the corrupt Feds can boast we convicted under RICO of Racketeering and Corrupt Acts. We’ve proved he’s Corrupt and a Racketeer because (1) he gave a case of wine to Morris which Morris said had $1,000 in it . . .the Boston jury rejected every other story the corrupt perjurer attempted murderer Morris said and (2) he told someone he heard an indictement was coming down. SO FOLKS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY A MAN IS CONVICTED OF BEING A RACKETEER AND CORRUPT UNDER RICO FOR DOING TWO THINGS: giving someone a case of wine and saying something legal to someone. Talk about corruption in the Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the Courts . . .
Now what where the other 3 crimes John was convicted of in Boston? All three occurred while he was a private citizen, @6-8 years after he’d retired from the FBI”:
(1) writing a letter to Judge Wolfe: it’s not a crime to do so, it’s a Free Speech Act, anonymously or not; If he stood outside the Court house with a sign saying the same words in the letter and another sign saying “FRED WYSHAK IS A LYING SCUM CORRUPT PANSY PROSECUTOR WHO TOOK $100 I GAVE HIM IN BRIBES” … he’d be committing no crime . . . he may be civilly sued for defamation . . . but no crime.
(2) An FBI agent testified John lied to him once: The jury believed him. John was convicted of “lying to an FBI agent” About what? Whether he’d called some lawyer’s office in Boston from Cape Cod, or something. Was the FBI agent’s question relevant, material? NO! I can’t see how a call or calls placed by a private citizen to a lawyer’s office mean anything. Plus did John say, No,, or None of your business, or No, meaning FBI agents don’t ask those type of questions. No, No, that’s it. Any other questions? We don’t know; only John and He were there. Even if he did, so what! Do you have a constitutional right to call any lawyer’s office you want, even F. Lee Bailey’s, YES.
The second act: An FBI agent said John lied once about a completely irrelevant immaterial thing.
(3) The Third Act (for which Wyshak and The Globe can throw stones at John) comes from the exceedingly pliable, excessively gullible, and maliciously deviously mind and tongue of Kevin Weeks. Week said, sometime after 1995 and before 1999, when John Connolly was first indicted by the Das Stern Gang (Wyshak, Durham, Stern) John told Weeks to go to Jail and tell Flemmi (who had been saying since his arrest) that John said Flemmi was to continue saying or to start saying more emphatically that John Connolly was an honest cop. And lo and behold from 1995 to 2003, that is, in fact, exactly what Flemmi said, multiple times, continuously, to all, and multiple times under oath, under oath as late as 2003. And why didn’t the Stern Gang use Flemmi in John Connolly’s first federal trial in Boston; because Flemmi was still insisting John was an honest cop who never did or said anything intending anyone be killed and furthermore swore under oath that if John knew he (Flemmi) or anyone else committed murder or was involved in murder he’d arrest them immediately.
But Stern, Durham and Wyshak maliciously argued that Flemmi lied for 8 years because he thought John could intercede with the Senate President who could wield his political power to get Flemmi some leniency. The problem with that hallucination, delusion, psychosis . . . lie . . . GREAT LIE . . . is that in 1996 the Honorable William M. Bulger had been appointed President of the University of Massachusetts, including its 5 campuses, including its prestigious Medical School, the problem is Bill Bulger would have nothing to do with the serial murderer Steve Flemmi, who by 1996 or 1998 (not pre-1995) was known to have blown up a lawyer’s car (with Salemme) and murdered young women and a dozen others.
Now let’s recap: Here’s the five crimes
(1) about 1998 giving a case of wine with $1000 in envelope somewhere inside case to his corrupt perjurious murdering boss, John Morris.
(2) about 1995 (five years after John retired) telling the murderer liar Kevin Weeks that he heard an indictment was coming down. 1 plus 2 makes him a Racketeer and Corrupt.
(3) Post 1995, writing a letter to judge Wolfe (an anonymous letter) Free Speech
(4) Post 1995, “lying” to an FBI agent about whether he called a lawyer’s office, an irrelevant, immaterial, constitutionally protected, legal thing to do.
(5) Post 1995, according to Weeks, Connolly told him to tell Flemmi that Flemmi should keep on saying or begin to say and keep on saying that John Connolly was an honest cop.
For that, Judge Tauro sentenced John to 10 years and one day in Federal Prison. For Martha’s Stewart’s bargained down admission (as I understand it) to just one count of lying to an FBI agent about a highly material, relevant fact, Martha got 90 days.
JUSTICE ala the zealots and libs at the Boston Globe and in Boston’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office.
As far as the fiasco and travesty in Florida: Wyshak dragged in chains five serial murderers including Morris (an attempted murderer):; all known perjurers . . . he all dragged 5 State Cops who sat behind him as he took over a Miami courtroom in a grotesque display or double jeapordy usurpation, and added a count after all the testimony was in, and the Trial Judge, Hey, the Statute of Limitations has run on that count and zero evidence was introduced on an essential element of that count, and then John’s Miami lawyers raised the SOL defense and Essential Element defense a few days too late, and the TRIAL JUDGE, a good man, and I mean that sincerely he is good, said, misinterpretating the law, too late, he stands convicted. You see FAILURE TO TIMELY RAISE THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS DEFENSE IS PER SE “INEFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL” AND THE CASE THROWN OUT ON THAT BASIS ALONE . . . .but I go beyond the facts to literature; Remember the Play: GOOD! B.C. students put it on; one of the most powerful indictments of the slippery slope when good people do and say nothing, or feel their hands are tied by circumstance, laws and regulations.
The FBI did not construct its image alone. The entertainment industry pitched in with movies, radio and TV shows. It has been one hagiography after another.
An important rule for life, especially in politics, is do not believe your own bullshit. It would seem the upper bureaucrats believe that the BS is of greater consequence than reality. They and every one of their agents is made of the same clay as everyone else. The Republic will survive this simple fact, as will the bureaucracy.
Add the FBI to death and taxes as things that will be with you to the end. The Cheka begot the NKVD which begot the KGB which begot the Federal Security Service. America may clean out the top of the FBI and repaint the sign on the door, but nothing much else will happen.