Spotlight on the FBI: The Bureau’s Checkered Past and Present

The post Spotlight on the FBI: The Bureau’s Checkered Past and Present appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

We presented a story on March 27, 2017 — Why FBI Can’t Tell All on Trump, Russia — that contained troubling information about the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Some found it shocking, even during these times when nothing seems shocking anymore.

To be sure, with the FBI, as with all institutions, there are extenuating circumstances, the competing priorities and agendas, unrealistic expectations, and tremendous pressure — from the press, from the public, and from above — to produce results.

This pressure may partly explain the bad choices the Bureau continues to make. Partly.

The fact is, the FBI has a long history of incompetence and worse: falsifying evidence; framing innocent people (go here, here, here, here, here, and here); and even shooting people for what appears to be no justifiable reason. With the shootings, the Bureau “reviews” the situation, then, it almost always absolves itself.

When its employees try to work within the system to improve it, quietly blowing an internal whistle, they are subjected to severe retaliation.

For more on the range of problems at the Bureau, see the links and summaries below: a small selection of our FBI stories that demonstrate the consequences of those bad choices. They have endangered national security, harmed our civil liberties, harmed innocent people, and appear to have put out false narratives, misleading the government, the media, and the public.

Disinformation Part 1: How Trolls Control an Internet Forum (01/27/2016)

Treachery is as old as mankind, but let’s start with the late J. Edgar Hoover, the old trickster behind the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program, also known as COINTELPRO. The Church Committee reported that “Bureau witnesses admit that many of the targets were nonviolent and most had no connections with a foreign power.” Cointelpro supposedly ended in 1971, but the author of this story has identified a variety of insidious Cointelpro techniques in political forums to cause disruption, suppress dissent, and spread disinformation.

FBI, Snipers & Occupy (06/27/2013)

Would you be shocked to learn that the FBI apparently knew that some organization, perhaps even a law enforcement agency or private security outfit, had contingency plans to assassinate peaceful protestors in a major American city — and did nothing to intervene?

FBI’s Amazing Trick to Avoid Accountability (07/08/2015)

How credible are the reports of interviews filed by FBI agents working a case? The FBI’s process for handling interview reports (302s) is hardly an ideal one for accurate recording and transmittal of what was said during an interview. The process is thus: two FBI agents ask questions and listen to the answers — without tape recording or obtaining a certified transcript. Instead, they return to their office and, based on their recollection and any notes they may have taken during the interview, write up a summary of what transpired.   

Read more http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/04/13/spotlight-fbi-bureaus-checkered-past-present/