Memorializing the Twisted Legacy of J. Edgar Hoover
The FBI and the DOJ have insinuated
themselves into the politics of US democracy before.
Just not like they did this time.
The Americans have seen the electoral mischief which marks the operation of the "new order." We have had one President essentially elected by a suspiciously obedient Supreme Court. Given this, although historically depressing, it is not particularly shocking to watch another "President" as he is materially "assisted" by the machinations of the previously fairly respectable and trustworthy, FBI.
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| 1952-72: UNITED STATES. For two decades,FBI Director J. "Edna" Hoover and his lover, miraculously promoted FBI Assistant DirectorClyde Tolson, spend extended summer vacations at the Del Charro, La Jolla, California [image] |
Of course, the FBI hasn't always enjoyed the somewhat acceptable reputation attributed to it these days. Most of this previously famous, meat handed reputation was accumulated under the quivering hand of J. Edgar Hoover. As FBI Director Hoover suffered under a tragic, homosexual, self-hating mania, with a violent bent for eliminating all possible political "complications" which might have interfered with his raw ambition for power, not to mention those who were merely "irritants" to his numerous "other" psychological sensitivities.
After J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972 Congress began a decades long effort [Congress actually did such things back then.] to restore the FBI to some semblance of its intended, legal role.
After nearly five decades as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover dies, leaving the powerful government agency without the administrator who had been largely responsible for its existence and shape.
By the time Hoover entered service under his eighth president in 1969, the media, the public, and Congress had grown suspicious that the FBI might be abusing its authority. For the first time in his bureaucratic career, Hoover endured widespread criticism, and Congress responded by passing laws requiring Senate confirmation of future FBI directors and limiting their tenure to 10 years. On May 2, 1972, with the Watergate affair about to explode onto the national stage, J. Edgar Hoover died of heart disease at the age of 77. The Watergate affair subsequently revealed that the FBI had illegally protected President Richard Nixon from investigation, and the agency was thoroughly investigated by Congress. Revelations of the FBI’s abuses of power and unconstitutional surveillance motivated Congress and the media to become more vigilant in future monitoring of the FBI.
[Excerpted. Read the entire article about Hoover's demise here - HISTORY.com]
FBI - Rehabilitated, Then Corrupted -- Again
Stuff "happens" when it becomes necessary to make crimes legal.
Not trusting yourself or anybody else doesn't help.
By the time Bush W. had begun his disastrous Administration the agency had recovered much its reputation as a "straight shooting," professional department filled with competent government servants. Unhappily, "The W," undoubtedly influenced by the horrible Administration officials surrounding him [George W. Bush was, it turns out, dangerously naive and credulous.], appointed a "highly soiled" group of strangely untrustworthy collaborators into positions of power, including not just obedient advisers but also a collection of remarkably conflicted types into the Department of Justice and to the position of US Attorney General.
This much is ancient history. "The W." needed some actively sympathetic "cover" for the things he intended to do as President. The final consequences of this emerged "front and center" as the FBI lurched into partisan politics eleven days before the 2016 Presidential election. The results were catastrophic -- even worse than the most pessimistic estimates made at the time.
This marked a turning point in the gradual demise of democracy in the United States. Although it may be too late to effect any beneficial change in the outcome, it remains a valuable goal to understand the mechanism which allowed this unusual treachery to deal the "death blow" to such an established process. There are a good number of "moving parts" to the scheme, so let's get busy.
How the FBI Became Permanently Crippled
What un-elected President would want
hordes of uncontrollable G-Men prowling around at full strength
while he was torturing people, racking up the national debt,
illegally spying on everyone in the country, lying to the public
and destroying the economy while starting his own oil wars for fun and profit?
Now, thanks in part to the corrupt FBI, we have another un-elected President.
Okay, right. George W. was, in fact, not the brightest candle on the oligarchs' altar, and he was able to be effortlessly manipulated by all the creature-like fascists he had packed into the White House, but was he this incompetent? Really?
Yeah. The damage done to the FBI during his watch had to have been organized by those several "pay rates" above the war mongering Connecticut Texan in the boots and the cowboy hat.
The corruption injected into the bowels of the FBI at the time was like a dental cavity which took several years to become a gut wrenching, brain numbing, painful nightmare, but, in time, it accomplished precisely this outcome. Worse, the task of wrecking the FBI was not his only anti-democratic project, either, but MeanMesa will reserve a discussion of those for other posts.
Here's how it unfolded.
Years ago, a constantly chortling, liquid tongued con man and televangelist, Pat Robertson, had amassed enough "love offerings" to finance his very own "university." Reverend Robertson had some significant other great business ideas, too. These included looting more than a few "drips and drops" from his annual "love offering" accounts for all sorts of other, self serving purposes beyond simply "carrying the good news" -- for example, purposes such as using his tax deductible "church cargo planes" for highly profitable transportation to and from his blood diamond mines in Africa.
Just a Wee Bit About Dominionists
and Coerced Righteousness
Even when they complain, just remember that it is all for their own good.
What follows is a quick visit to America's "nest"
of judicially enforced, political evangelism.
Reverend Pat is what we call a Christian "Domionist." A thorough understanding of this term, "Dominionist," will be essential to explain the rest of this story.
It's all about "convenience."
A "Dominionist" is, in most cases, mindlessly pursuing one of the "governing doctrines" of a self-proclaimed "hand of God" mandate to rid the world of sin and sinners. Of course, all the definitions of such states as "sin" and "sinners" can be conveniently derived from what are often called "interpretations" of various sections of the Christian Bible.
It turns out that not only are these "interpretations" conveniently available to the "Dominionists," but the content and application of these "interpretations" as they pertain to "correcting" the sinful lives of others also proves to be "quite conveniently fluid." A further convenience -- again, as "conveniently interpreted" by "conveniently conflicted" preachers from various passages of selected scriptures -- is the complete acquittal of any measures taken by those "chosen by God, himself" to eliminate these "sins" and "sinners."
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| Good Christian, American Republicans love this stuff. [image] |
The "acquittal" idea assures these "soldiers following the divine orders" that no matter how detestable their "inspired social and spiritual purification" efforts might become, and no matter what suffering or injustices may be the unavoidable, added consequences of such efforts, absolutely everything will be completely forgiven when these long suffering types stand at the "Pearly Gate" of judgment. It is in the cases when one or more of these "spiritual warriors against sin" exercises an option for one of these specific, divine "acquittals," that the familiar, inevitable, "miserable" outcomes here in this "sinful world" become instantly evident.
While all of this may seem to be little more than pointless ranting and railing, it is actually chillingly relevant. This "Dominionist world view" is precisely what is relentlessly injected into the minds of the young students at Pat's "university." To put it bluntly, during the time of their "education" there, these, otherwise more or less normal, boys and girls are "reconstituted" into fire breathing "Dominionists."
At first none of this particularly mattered, but then, at a certain point, Pat suddenly had the idea that if his "university" took the business decision of starting a "law school," it would result in the creation of literally hordes of "Dominionist lawyers." Of course even the best "graduates" of this "law school" were terrible lawyers. Their priorities had been permanently twisted away from those usual priorities held a normal lawyer into the grotesque priorities of doing absolutely anything possible to "rid the world of sin."
In no time there were literally hundreds or thousands of these unemployable "sin fighting" lawyers standing around after graduating from Pat's special law school.
Where could they possibly find a job?
We are now ready to return to the tale of how the FBI became so corrupted.
George W.'s Strange Attorneys General
and Lots of New "Civil Servants" for the DOJ and FBI
Law enforcement becomes much easier when it's Biblical
Once the "packed" Supreme Court handed Bush W. the Presidency, his Texas "Bible Study" crowd suddenly found themselves enjoying all the power necessary to continue their Dominionist ambitions. [The routinely tipsy George W. claimed that the time he spent in the Bible study had "saved" him from his cocaine and whiskey habits. There is plenty of evidence indicating otherwise. The Doubtful Faith of George W./SLATE]
Bush W's first Attorney General was John Ashcroft. Ashcroft had plenty of Dominionist indoctrination during his childhood in an Assembly of God household. Ashcroft's father had been President of Central Bible College. Bush's torture regime began under Attorney General Ashcroft.
It turns out that Dominionists have very few problems with torturing people to a grisly death.
Bush replaced Ashcroft [Who resigned after the first Bush term.] with his General Counsel, Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales had been a Supreme Court Justice for Texas during the period when that state had the highest number of criminal death penalty executions. Continuing in his "righteousness seeking" bloodbath habits, Gonzales was the legal genius who approved the memo authorizing torture, backing up his decision with a formal opinion that the provisions of the Geneva Convention were no longer applicable and obsolete. [Alberto Gonzales/AmericanProgress]
However, having been placed in a position of power to undertake such a scheme, Dominionists such as Ashcroft and Gonzales, now ensconced in the Bush W. Administration, began to recruit these otherwise unemployable Regency Law School graduates as civil servants by the dozens, largely into the Department of Justice.
Of course, very few of these new employees were even remotely competent. That was far from the primary consideration for the merits of the "packing job." Importantly, these "new hires" were civil servants. This means that they were permanent. Had they been "appointments," they would have been subject to a "house cleaning" under a new Administration.
Instead, the plan was to so thoroughly saturate these Federal offices with like-minded, Dominionist types as to permanently twist the DOJ's previous priorities concerning the enforcement of law as specified under Constitutional requirements. Although it would take a considerable passage of time before these new DOJ employees would consolidate their influence and move up in the ranks at the DOJ, the "seed had been planted."
Elections - By the Modern "FBI" Method
Quit screaming, and get used to it.
It is no secret that the Republican "dirt digging factory," with the assistance of various, complicit "co-conspirators" such as FOX News and others, undertook a decades long, industrial effort to permanently fix into the public consciousness the idea that Hillary Clinton had done at least "something" illegal with her private email server. For those few American voters interested enough to explore the facts of these allegations, it was clear enough that no secrets had been lost to the country's enemies and, thanks to the arm twisted FBI Director, James Comey, that no "prosecutable" offense had ever been committed.
It turns out that the "remaining" American voters -- that is, other than the few who bothered to understand this -- had essentially no idea about even what a "private email server" might be and absolutely no inclination to ever find out anything about the right wing "hissy fit" manufactured for their consumption by the GOP's think tanks.
Well, as the campaigns rolled along toward the November election, a reactionary right winger somewhere in the bowels of the GOP's industrial election machine noticed that the public opinion rage about Hillary's emails had calmed to the equivalent of barely smoking embers. Worse, at least for the GOP, the political entropy resulting from the developing of this gradual "lack of interest" had tipped the polls strongly into Hillary's favor.
Something simply had to be done.
We are all painfully familiar with exactly what that "something" was to be. Eleven days prior to the election, FBI Director Comey sent a letter to various Republican Congressmen to inform them that additional evidence "might possibly" have been "discovered" in Weiner's confiscated computer.
Two days prior to Comey's letter to the Congressmen, political "has been" and Trump apologist, Rudy Guiliani, after a corpse-like chortle during an interview with a FOX host, announced that "We have a trick up our sleeves." [Guliani and Trump Campaign "Smelling a Rat"/DailyKOS]
Now, exactly how did Guliani know this far ahead of time that Comey intended to sabotage the Clinton campaign with his letter? Although there are plenty of reasons why the FBI Director's "participation/intervention" was far from the sole reason for the Trump election, it was almost certainly a complicit, material factor which contributed to the disastrous outcome.
Comey's letter was very, very far "over the line" for FBI official behavior. Guliani's chortling acknowledgment of the plan on FOX is damning evidence that not only did Comey premeditate his illegal intervention, some FBI employees who were privy to his intentions "leaked" the information to Guliani.
Well now. Precisely which FBI employees might have made this "leak?"
Guliani, a previous New York city Mayor, had also been a DOJ prosecutor in New York. He was quite well connected to the New York office of the FBI.
Of course, there still remains the question of why "Constitution loving" FBI employees in the New York office would have stooped low enough to engage in such anti-democracy actions.
Not a problem. These are Domionists. Constitutional law means very little to them. They feel entirely empowered to do anything and take any action to further distort "Earthly events" in preparation for the joyful delight of the "Second Coming."
We are all painfully familiar with exactly what that "something" was to be. Eleven days prior to the election, FBI Director Comey sent a letter to various Republican Congressmen to inform them that additional evidence "might possibly" have been "discovered" in Weiner's confiscated computer.
Two days prior to Comey's letter to the Congressmen, political "has been" and Trump apologist, Rudy Guiliani, after a corpse-like chortle during an interview with a FOX host, announced that "We have a trick up our sleeves." [Guliani and Trump Campaign "Smelling a Rat"/DailyKOS]
Now, exactly how did Guliani know this far ahead of time that Comey intended to sabotage the Clinton campaign with his letter? Although there are plenty of reasons why the FBI Director's "participation/intervention" was far from the sole reason for the Trump election, it was almost certainly a complicit, material factor which contributed to the disastrous outcome.
Comey's letter was very, very far "over the line" for FBI official behavior. Guliani's chortling acknowledgment of the plan on FOX is damning evidence that not only did Comey premeditate his illegal intervention, some FBI employees who were privy to his intentions "leaked" the information to Guliani.
Well now. Precisely which FBI employees might have made this "leak?"
Guliani, a previous New York city Mayor, had also been a DOJ prosecutor in New York. He was quite well connected to the New York office of the FBI.
Of course, there still remains the question of why "Constitution loving" FBI employees in the New York office would have stooped low enough to engage in such anti-democracy actions.
Not a problem. These are Domionists. Constitutional law means very little to them. They feel entirely empowered to do anything and take any action to further distort "Earthly events" in preparation for the joyful delight of the "Second Coming."
Additional Reading
We should probably be familiar with what finally happened to US democracy.
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