This article spends most of its time outlining relations between _domestic police_ -- local departments and officers -- with the public, and doesn't say a ton about the FBI, save for a blurb about statistics here and there... its substance with regard to the implications of the title is lacking.
I'd really like to understand more about the anti-FBI sentiment that's going around.
For most of the FBI’s history, it was run by J Edgar Hoover, who used it to spy on and blackmail innocent Americans and as a political weapon.
It’s still the same organization, from spying to entrapment to outright murder to authoritarian political influence (and don’t be mistaken - it’s not on any particular party’s side, it’s on the FBI’s side.) The real question is my mind is how some people came to be convinced it was respectable organization - maybe through its portrayal in pop culture shows? Just institutional power?
We can’t have a complete conversation about the anti-FBI sentiment without mentioning how a twice impeached former president, who is facing a half dozen federal indictments, drummed up said anti-FBI sentiment in order to discredit our federal investigative bureau in hopes of looking less guilty.
He is literally attacking the institutions of our country to distract from his crimes.
I would expect law and order conservatives not to stand for such blatant self serving behavior.
They do have a long rap sheet, but many of those were a long time ago. This is in the news because something has changed.
There are a great many, largely on the left, who distrust the FBI for crimes they committed under Hoover. Many of those actions were actually supported by the right.
"The FBI Loses The Public", as the article claims in the present tense. That is mostly on the right, and largely because the FBI is closely involved in investigating and prosecuting right-wing political figures over the past 7 years.
Many (including me) believe that they are doing so correctly. But there are plenty who still remember (as you do) the many crimes they committed before being substantially reorganized after 1976:
Nearly everything on the “FBI controversies” page the GP links is dated much more recently than 1976, and it’s hardly comprehensive.
For example, it doesn’t mention the continual entrapment of often mentally ill US Muslims, using informants to persuade and lead them into committing crimes, for which they were then arrested and charged. Only recently has the main target (but not only) of such activity changed to right wingers. We could probably easily add a dozen more subsections to that page from the last two decades. Some were mentioned in these comments already.
It seems to me that television and movies convinced a lot of modern conservatives that the FBI were good guys, while modern liberals have decided they’re good guys simply because they’ve been overzealously targeting their political enemies. But that’s simply by accident, not because of any actual ideological alignment.
You’re also forgetting that the net achievements of the Church committee were basically nil. The government succeeded in destroying lots of records and ultimately was able to continue nearly all the same behavior and worse anyway. Since then we’ve had murders of American citizens, torture scandals, national surveillance beyond anything Hoover could dream. Heck, just a few years ago, the CIA got busted spying on Congress after it began investigating CIA crimes, then lied about it, got caught red-handed, and the perp not only got off scot-free, but is regarded as a Resistance hero.
I don't know why that "word choice" is controversial. The FBI is not in the business of "prosecuting" crimes in the legal sense, they are an investigatory body, it's in the name. The FBI absolutely CAN investigate egregiously, for example by falsifying evidence, or eliding exculpatory evidence, which they have a long history of doing.
The mere existence of an FBI investigation can seriously injure the affected party, and so in that regard the FBI has tremendous power to influence people and organizations, and is an obvious organization to co-op if one wanted to wield political influence nefariously. The natural stance towards the FBI should be one of skepticism and apprehension at a minimum, if not outright deep suspicion.
I think what many people are pointing out is that left-wing politicians openly supporting the FBI, CIA and NSA in any capacity is a blatant about-face, and just downright distasteful, particularly when the most high profile "investigations" of late are political in nature.
Edit:
A simpler way of expressing this would be to point out that the FBI serves the same function as the "State Security Service(s)" of countries that we don't like.
You’ve completely side-stepped the question on pedantic word choices - what has the FBI done that could be characterized as “overzealous”? Aside from hypotheticals/slippery slopes that have no basis in reality.
Aside, too, of course, from the obvious answer that any investigation of “my team” is inherently bad and unjust.
It further seems reasonable that “the left” could applaud an investigation into an attempt to overturn a legal, fair election with a coup, while simultaneously not supporting other acts by the same body. I’m unclear why nuance is suddenly impossible, or why motives of people you don’t like are apparently perpetually impure.
> Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them. [...] A longtime government informant from Wisconsin, for example, helped organize a series of meetings around the country where many of the alleged plotters first met one another and the earliest notions of a plan took root, some of those people say. The Wisconsin informant even paid for some hotel rooms and food as an incentive to get people to come.
What do you call this if not overzealous? It's the same old playbook over and over again: the FBI pays people to go out and recruit terrorists, invents terror plots for them, offers to supply them with weapons and explosives, dares and nags them to commit felonies, then swoops in and arrests them when they make motions in that direction.
There are plenty of other examples, if you want to go on. What I don't understand is why anyone defends an institution that has been grossly corrupt continuously from its inception.
Well, I'll give you a quick summary for why a conservative might be upset. You do not have to agree with these issues at all or their interpretation, but a short list:
1. Anything Trump; because Hunter Biden. You might argue about "whataboutism," but "whataboutism" is what protects us from flagrantly biased institutions. This is also going on today with IRS "whistleblowers" claiming the IRS recommended felonies on Hunter, but the DOJ offered way too sweet a deal.
2. Catholics. Specifically, the memo which targeted "Radical-Traditional Catholic Extremists." It also attempted to define the term by theological distinctions (do they like Vatican II? Do they have disdain for modern Popes?), cited sources that are otherwise banned for bias in the FBI (the SPLC), and advocated "the exploration of new avenues for tripwire and source development." The memo also did not list any potential crimes that they were concerned such a group would commit. Christopher Wray retracted the memo immediately saying it was "appalling" but has been extremely cagey on answering questions as to how such a memo was even written.
3. The FBI, according to The Washington Post reporting (not even conservative media) admitted that they misused a Section 702 database, illegally, 278,000 times that they know of in just over a year. Did it against all sorts of people - protestors, BLM, Jan 6 suspects, basically managed to piss off everyone.
4. "Pro-Life" Pregnancy Centers were violently attacked over 100 times as of October 2022 since Roe v. Wade was overturned, with firebombings and similar. No arrests were made for any of them. When asked about the FBI's seemingly blind eye at the time in a Congressional hearing, Merrick Garland claimed the attackers were too "clever" by "doing this at night, in the dark." This explanation was not thrilling.
5. Mark Houck was a pro-lifer, and father of seven, who was recently acquitted unanimously after being accused of violating the FACE Act (basically, obstructing access to an abortion clinic). Now, that's a potential crime that does involve the FBI, but the FBI arrested him by raiding his house with a SWAT team for no apparent reason other than to terrorize his family. And that's not my assessment - 22 members of Congress demanded a plausible basis for sending a SWAT team over this alleged crime, and they claim to still not have had an answer. Republicans put him in the audience for the last State of the Union in protest against Biden.
This whole « FBI losing trust from people » looks to me basically because for the first time they are actually doing their job in going after trump’s flagrant law breaking and the Jan 6 attempt to overthrow the election, and conservatives are not liking it.
2) Refusing to prosecute the Bidens even though they already had to show (via threat) by the House of the vast amount of evidence of all the bribes the Bidens have been doing with countries including Ukraine and China.
In an interview with Vivek Ramaswamy Presidential Candidate he said he plans to fire all of them including most of the redundant 3 letter agencies. Are U.S. presidents empowered to do that? Interview is on TimcastIRL on YT.
Rick Perry in a presidential primary debate wanted to eliminate three government agencies but couldn't remember all three on live television. He later become head of the Department of Energy, the same agency which he wanted to eliminate but forgot during the debate years earlier.
This is grandstanding. The Federal government will have law enforcement and tax collection arms, whether you call them the FBI and IRS or something else.
Hmm. Maybe. But it isn't necessary. Federal law enforcement is a pretty novel thing. State institutions have parity. There's no technical reason not to go back to that, though it would be a rather radical restructuring.
The FBI was created in 1908. Since then, we've invented airplanes, interstate highways, and the Internet.
The US is far more connected than it used to be. It is much harder to treat everything as a matter for individual states. At the very least, state institutions need to coordinate -- exactly the kind of job for which a federal institution is ideal.
I'm in the middle of a suit against them for harassment received from surveillance employees. Can't say much more than that (active case), but it's extremely common. The methods used once surveillance is discovered are deliberately made to be so unusual that you're either terrified into silence or are afraid no one would believe you, so that the operation can continue.
I dunno. They applied COINTELPRO tactics from the 1960s to take down the Sicilian Mafia in the 1970s once Hoover was out of the picture. One of the best ways for cops to get some credibility is to bust somebody who deserves it.
I’m not afraid of the FBI (just doing their job) but I don’t need to get crap from the other people who were involved in that story and might still be sore about the crazy stuff that went down.
https://radixverum.substack.com/p/fbi-admits-to-planting-evi...
https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/594627286/fbi-experts-certif...
https://theintercept.com/2016/05/05/fbi-told-cops-to-recreat...
https://frankreport.com/2022/07/23/dr-brandon-porter-condemn...
https://casetext.com/case/reynolds-v-werlich