The FBI, Bullying, and Sloppy Investigations

Our media and the cinema continue to portray FBI agents and most federal investigators as being brilliant crime solvers when, in reality, decades of bullying and immunity have turned these agents into bullying, incompetent jerks. We should not be surprised at all at what Kurt Haskell has written about the FBI “investigation” of the underwear bomber. Likewise, we see the incompetence demonstrated by TSA “investigators” when they went after a blogger who posted some new TSA screening directives.

Contrary to the nonsense from the U.S. Supreme Court about the growing “professionalism” of the police and FBI, in reality, what has been happening is that as police powers increase, they are able to get their way by sheer bullying, by defining the narratives and then forcing square pegs into round holes. To make matters worse, federal prosecutors are able to box in people they target by creating so many criminal charges that innocent people often find it in their interests to plead out to something rather than fight charges in court, where compliant juries (who have been force-fed propaganda from the media about our “professional” police and prosecutors) are likely to vote guilty.

Unfortunately, this is not going to change any time soon. By empowering police and prosecutors and providing them with immunity from their wrongdoing, the government is encouraging investigators to be sloppy and incompetent. As we have seen in the two linked examples, bullying investigators have managed to botch these investigations, and it is no accident. The political classes tell us that we have to give the “authorities” near-absolute power to keep us “safe.” (Read any of the conservative websites and you will see what I mean. There is near-worship of the police, prosecutors, and federal investigators.) Guess what? When there are no consequences for being wrong, we can expect the police and FBI and others to be wrong, as it is much easier for them to make up their own narratives and then bully people into “agreeing” with them.

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10:56 am on January 1, 2010