Federal government weaponization is real and unarguably a clear and present threat to our democratic republic. In an effort to link policymakers with the best in conservative thought, on Tuesday, the Heritage Foundation hosted the Weaponization of U.S. Government Symposium.
The symposium’s stated purpose is highlighted on Heritage’s website, “The Left has corrupted every institution of society and infected its poisonous ideology into almost every aspect of American life…hear from influential voices who are sounding the alarm and fighting back against the rot of ideological weaponization.”
The public certainly heard from “influential voices,” but some of the ideas espoused were not in keeping with the scholarship and rigorous intellectual traditions characteristic of the Heritage Foundation.
Heritage assembled a list of highly respected and serious luminaries including Mollie Hemingway, Sen. Chuck Grassley, and John Gentry among others. The symposium covered government weaponization across a broad spectrum of American life, with the morning session covering the FBI, rogue prosecutors, culture, tech, the importance of whistleblowers, and COVID-19. Afternoon sessions covered a wide variety of topics, including the weaponization of the Intelligence Community and specifically the CIA.
Any discussion of government weaponization necessarily focuses on the abuses that seem rampant at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI, since these two federal agencies impact matters most closely situated to domestic interests. A persistent idea, loudly propounded by the ever-supercilious Vivek Ramaswamy, purports to solve the FBI weaponization problem by lopping off much of the FBI’s current responsibilities and reallocating them to the U.S. Marshalls Service.
The U.S. Marshalls Service boasts a long and storied history. President George Washington, in view of the newly passed Judiciary Act of 1789, signed the commissions of the first thirteen Marshalls on September 26, 1789. Today, a Director and ninety-four U.S. Marshalls preside over America’s 94 judicial districts, with about four thousand Deputy U.S. Marshalls who diligently carry out the primary responsibilities of judicial security, custody of prisoners, fugitive investigations, and witness security.
However, the Marshalls Service is wholly unprepared and unequipped to carry out the national security functions of the FBI. Marshalls do not have the infrastructure, training, administrative apparatus, and most significantly, the institutional knowledge necessary to perform the national security or criminal investigative functions of the FBI. As former CIA analyst John Gentry pointed out during the afternoon session, the national security functions of the FBI and CIA are simply too important to do without.
Nor can the Marshalls Service acquire the necessary tools and talent in a manner that would not seriously jeopardize national security interests. It would take years to rejigger the Marshalls Service while budget allocations would become a congressional boondoggle. Can you imagine Congress trying to get that done when they can’t even agree on what defines a woman?
Gentry and Adam Lovinger of the Gold Institute for International Strategy argued that the current dysfunction within America’s intelligence apparatus is a boon to all of our foreign adversaries. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are all watching with glee as Biden’s Marxist-infused DEIA policies (originally emanating from the Frankfurt School) create a self-perpetuating agitation operation that not only degrades but threatens to implode our counterintelligence and intelligence capabilities.
It’s preposterous to put forward the U.S. Marshalls Service as some FBI weaponization panacea — it’s a federal agency under Biden’s DEIA mandates with the same perverse system of incentive and proclivity to promote and replicate managers infected with cultural Marxism, which idealizes complex bureaucracies and politicization.
This idea gives “kicking the can down the road” an entirely new breadth of meaning.
The only real solution to government weaponization which preserves critical national security interests is reform. There are actual barbarians at the gates, peering over the dilapidated battlements, greedy to dominate and destroy. This is no time for silly flights of fancy.
Perhaps the most specious argument to come out of Heritage’s Symposium was the disarming of the FBI bromide. It’s similar to an argument made after 9/11, during congresses’ mania to find a scapegoat. At the time, many voices in Washington called for the bifurcation of the FBI into separate criminal and intelligence components. Basically, the British MI5 model.
However, the theory expressed during the symposium is a radicalization of the post 9/11 MI5 idea and sees merit in stripping the FBI of its Special Agent (Series 1811) designation. FBI employees would be unarmed and, essentially, a cadre of analysts. Obtusely, as the theory goes, all law enforcement actions would have to be coordinated with local and state law enforcement.
Essentially, a return to the colorful, if not deadly, days of marauding rum runners and Jessie James.
Not surprisingly, given the congenital deformity of this idea, how national security concerns are coordinated between the federal analyst corps and local law enforcement isn’t specified. I can only imagine the myriad opportunities for compromise within this ungainly and impracticable system of law enforcement shuttlecock — not to mention the unmanageable addition of law enforcement responsibility.
Just imagine your local or state law enforcement officials, who already struggle to recruit, hire, and retain qualified personnel under the current conditions of overwork, being saddled with the additional responsibilities of RICO, child exploitation, national security, and numerous other responsibilities currently borne by the FBI. It’s preposterous on its face.
For a very serious treatment of Intelligence Community weaponization and activism, see Mr. John Gentry’s latest piece in the American Thinker. Better yet, get a copy of his approachable and highly analytic book, Neutering The CIA.
Despite a few foibles, Heritage’s Symposium was a wealth of information. You can view the entire day-long session here. Policymakers must access serious thinkers with practical ideas to excise the cancer of politicization while maintaining those essential organs of national security which keep the existential threats at bay. The defenses are crumbling. We need men and women to shore them up, not tear them down.
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