A humble, brilliant monk named Martin Luther sparked what we now call the Reformation. But, in 1517 Luther’s objective was not to depart from the church of Rome, but to bring about certain reforms in church doctrine and practice. Luther’s bold 95 Theses was composed and attached to the door of Wittenberg, in part, as a response to the church’s selling of indulgences. An indulgence was an ecclesiastical document that absolved the bearer of sin —for a price. The church had grown fat on the revenue raised from making merchandise of spiritual things, running afoul of Christ’s admonition — “make not my father’s house an house of merchandise.”
The FBI finds itself in a similar position to that of the sixteenth century church of Rome. The FBI has made merchandise of its most valuable asset, the spirit of Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity. And, FBI leadership, as papal potentates of old, have grown fat on the political largess derived from serving a political master. The seventh floor of Headquarters has become heretical, forsaking its allegiance to the constitution and its natural right codification of equal protection under the law. The most powerful law enforcement agency in the country has sold its soul to Democrat overlords.
The FBI is certainly at a crossroads. The raid on Mar-a-Lago was an assault on the constitution’s prohibition against general search warrants. It was a perverse attempt to erode the highest executive office from which all other executive functions derive. Mark Levin recently made a cogent point when he observed that the office of the President exists as a matter of constitutional law, all other executive offices drawing on power delegated to them by the chief executive. The president has plenary authority to classify or declassify any document and is not bound by any administrative procedure.
The case against the FBI’s raid is growing in scope and vigor as each day passes and the current management culture is unsustainable. An anecdotal, common sense evaluation of the FBI’s treatment of former President Donald Trump strains credulity to the breaking point. No other former president has been treated in this manner, though every other living president has left office with documents of the same degree of sensitivity. Every other former president has been treated cordially, conflicts with the NARA being handled through surrogates via subpoena. What is more, Hillary Clinton was spared the indignity of an early morning raid of her unmentionables drawer by the FBI, even without the original classification authority of a president, and demonstrably proven to have been criminally negligent in handling classified information. The verdict in the supreme court of common sense case is crystal clear, if you’re on the side of the deep state, you’ve got a gold embossed get-out-of-jail-free-card.
Even for all of that, the call for disbanding or defunding the FBI is yet premature.
FBI Headquarters (FBI HQ), located in the Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., is the locus for most of what the public views as reprehensible — it’s the veritable “head of the snake.” And, it’s the key to understanding the problem as well as the solution to the politicization of the FBI.
The managerial structure of the FBI is paramilitary in nature. There is a distinct chain of command and attempting to work outside that chain is often career ending. Which means, FBI culture is very much a function of top-down expectations. For example, in recent years, there has been a headquarters initiative to move the FBI in the direction of intelligence gathering rather than the previous modus operandi of case investigation. This emphasis is similar to Brian’s MI5 model but without the law enforcement authority. And, may be the primary reason for the ease in which FBI culture has been radically altered.
Intelligence collection and case investigation are philosophically worlds apart. Historically, the FBI has performed its counterintelligence and counterterrorism functions effectively and efficiently — because both functions were viewed from the perspective of criminal case investigations. I began my FBI career in counterintelligence and learned how to construct an effective counterintelligence case from old school FBI agents. The rigorous, constitutional standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” applied to any U.S. citizen involved in espionage. And the facts led the case. Pure intelligence collection was a different discipline, and its products were used as part of the investigator’s “tool chest,” but recently the lines between the two have been blurred. A good intelligence analyst may effectively make logical leaps and assumptions and, as a matter of course, the facts may not necessarily lead at every step. As long as the two disciplines were kept distinct, a sound theory of case investigation remained.
FBI HQ has placed emphasis on recruiting, hiring, and promoting non-agent analysts and support personnel. In fact, many headquarters program and even field office mid-level management positions are staffed, not by agents, but by non-1811 personnel. This affects FBI culture in subtle and not so subtle ways. For instance, the report used by Senator Ted Cruz to question FBI Director Christopher Wray, was likely based on an Intelligence Information Report (IIR) generated by intelligence analysis. Symbols such as the Betsy Ross Flag and the Gadsden Flag were stigmatized as possibly determinative of extremist sentiment or support. Senator Cruz was rightly outraged by this, especially given the lack of analysis regarding BLM or ANTIFA symbology.
FBI analysts serve an invaluable function, but overemphasis of analyst recommendations or speculative conclusions do not serve the FBI as an enterprise. Something is lost when investigations rely on or are led by personnel who do not have the decades of practical experience applying constitutional protections to real fact patterns. Most FBI agents do. An FBI analyst’s stock-in-trade is speculative analysis in a complex intelligence environment once famously described as a “hall of mirrors.”
But, overemphasis of analyst derived information, as well as the misapplication of their talents within the managerial structure, is illustrative of how decisions on the seventh floor of FBI HQ can radically impact the course of our nation’s premier law enforcement agency. Let me be clear, I am not critical of the valuable work FBI analysts do; rather, it’s the change in philosophy at the FBI HQ level which deemphasizes classical case investigations for the intelligence collection model.
Defunding the FBI isn’t as simple as the slogan sounds. What would replace it? If the fix to the problems that precipitated 9/11 can teach us anything, it’s that less bureaucracy is more. Bush’s response to calls for disbanding the FBI was the creation of yet another level of massive bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security. This behemoth makes the FBI look like a small town sheriff’s office. And, if that’s any indication, whatever replaces the FBI would likely be a monstrosity of overreach and overspending. In light of the 80 billion dollars just allocated to the IRS, and the billions pilfered from COVID related funding, it staggers the mind to think what sort of Orwellian behemoth would be constructed out of the FBI husk. Would you entrust Capitol Hill, black-out drunk on printing trillions out of thin air, to produce a federal agency streamlined and dedicated to preserving your inalienable rights?
We’re at the point of “nailing” a modern 95 Thesis to the door of the White House. Reformation still makes far more sense than annihilation. What is needed is a Director with a mandate to reform FBI structure at the HQ Division level and the fortitude to resist unconstitutional mandates from a rogue U.S. Attorney General. It really is that easy to turn the beast around. We just need a few people with the courage of Martin Luther to pull it off.