The FBI: America’s Out Of Control Monster

Here’s one of the things I’ve been preaching about. The FBI is out of control. Supposedly under the control of the Department of Justice (DOJ) it just routinely does what it wants to do. The FBI was created to be an investigative agency that is one that investigated criminal activity. It has turned itself into a police agency making SWAT team arrests and providing armed security. No one supervises it. This is bad for our country.

I’ve gone on about the lamentable Top Echelon Informant (TEI) program which created the Whitey Bulger myth and the demonizing of FBI Agent John Connolly still incarcerated in Florida even though an Appeals Court threw out his conviction. The TEI still continues today. To cut to the chase it makes the FBI into gangsters and gangsters into federal agents. A slight peek into its operation shows it has littered the streets of America with murdered bodies.

I’ve criticized about the way the FBI makes its agents into little robots depriving its good agents of the ability to be creative and think outside the box; rewarding those who most resemble bean counters and brown noses. Yet one thing I avoided criticizing was its technical laboratories. We’ve been told they are the best in the world. It turns out that was another propaganda pitch covering up its immense failings.

It was old news that the FBI had trouble in its labs. The cited article noted: “Revelations that the government’s largest post-conviction review of forensic evidence has found widespread problems counter earlier FBI claims that a single rogue examiner was at fault.”

Does that sound familiar? The one single rogue agent causing all the problems. It should if you’ve read this blog. It is exactly what was done with John Connolly who far from being a rogue was doing what the FBI told him to do. Yes, never forget, Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi, Connolly’s TEIs, were approved by FBI headquarters and each special agent in charge who ran the Boston office. When it came out that the FBI had for years protected those two top criminals it cleverly covered its evil with the “single rogue agent” theory that was sold magnificently in the Boston media.

It’s not that smoke and mirror FBI trick that frosts me this time. It’s that the FBI seeing how inept and deficient its work had been decided to stop a review of it. It is noted: “Nearly every criminal case reviewed by the FBI and the Justice Department as part of a massive investigation started in 2012 of problems at the FBI lab has included flawed forensic testimony from the agency, government officials said. The findings troubled the bureau, and it stopped the review of convictions last August.”

Let’s speak plainly, it decided to cover-up the problems rather than addressing them. It decided to let people rot in prison whom might have been wrongly convicted. How is that any different than the Deegan case? 

The review began again after an 11-month hiatus when “the Justice Department’s inspector general excoriated the department and the FBI for unacceptable delays and inadequate investigation . . . “

The FBI said the delay was due to: “a vigorous debate that occurred within the FBI and DOJ about the appropriate scientific standards . . . .“  

The DOJ meekly replied to the FBI’s bold lie: “The Department of Justice never signed off on the FBI’s decision to change the way they reviewed the hair analysis.” 

It took five years for the FBI to to reexamine 60 death-row convictions that were potentially tainted by agent misconduct during which three defendants were executed and a fourth died on death row. During the 11-month delay death-row inmate James Aren Duckett’s who challenged his 1988 conviction based on an FBI hair match had his appeal denied by Florida’s Supreme Court.

The FBI’s history of lies, delays and obstructions go on unobstructed. (Think of how long it took to know what happened in the Todashev case.) Inexplicably no one in the FBI is punished for this. The DOJ’s response to this utterly fraudulent FBI activity is not outrage; it is  “We are pleased that the review has resumed and that notification letters will be going out in the next few weeks.” (my emphasis)

While “the next few weeks” pass and the snail’s pace of correcting the errors (reviewing one case a  month if history is a guide) people who may be innocent will languish in prison. There are few things worse than to be innocent and imprisoned for life or facing death on false evidence provided by the FBI laboratory?

Can anyone doubt that in creating the FBI we made a monster that is out of control.