I. Studies in Megalomania For those too young to remember J. Edgar Hoover, he was the FBI director for over 30 years, mainly because he had dirt on everyone. No president could cross him. This wiki entry is almost comically restrained:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover His many critics assert that he abused his power and exceeded the jurisdiction of the FBI. He is known to have used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to have amassed secret files on political leaders and to have used illegal methods to collect evidence. It is because of Hoover's long and controversial reign that FBI directors are now limited to 10-year terms.
HOOVER
MUKASEY II. Welcome to the Police State .
Last week, we were told that the FBI wanted to broaden its powers to conduct investigations into possible national security threats by increasing its access to local and state police records.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503497_2.html?hpid=topnewsThis was enough to raise concerns about a possible “police state”.
It now appears that the Bush administration had a hidden agenda. Buried within that “terrorism prevention plan” was one that would enable to FBI to increase the sophistication of its blackmail ops----which it used very effectively last spring to force New York Governor Eliot Spitzer from office after he publicly blamed the Bush administration for the mortgage and banking crisis.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/cd_20080819_1356.php "However, the main rules governing the FBI's conduct of criminal investigations, national security investigations, and foreign intelligence collection have continued to exist as separate regimes set forth in separate documents -- one set of guidelines applies to criminal investigations, another set to national security matters, and so on," (Mukaey) said.
"As you might expect, this has resulted in different standards and procedures applying to comparable FBI activities, based solely on what label or category is attached to the activity -- a result that makes no sense and which has confused for the agents in the field."
As an example of the situation under current guidelines, he said, "if the FBI receives a tip that a person is associated with organized crime, agents may look at commercial databases, but only those that are available to the public
," Mukasey said.
"But if the tip relates to a threat to the national security, then agents may look at a broader universe of databases," he added. "The new guidelines will eliminate this distinction, and ensure that rules about access to information are consistent across categories of investigations." There is a very good reason for this distinction. The rules that apply to criminal investigations are the law. Special exceptions were made for threats to nation security, because they were considered to be of such life or death importance to so many people. Lowering the bar for national security threats was never meant to be a prelude to stripping the rights a peaceful protester or user of medical marijuana ---but that is exactly what Mukasey and his Republican bosses are trying to do.
We only know about this latest move, because Congress has asked the Attorney General to delay implementing the plan until he testifies before Congress about it. In the Congressional letter
they said the proposals to harmonize rules over traditional criminal and national security matters "also raise potential civil liberties concerns."
Mukasey replies
"The implementation of new Attorney General Guidelines will help in the Bureau's transformation into an elite national security organization."
No, I think the implementation of the new Attorney General Guidelines will help in the Bureau’s transformation into the KGB. With Mukasey starring as J. Edgar Hoover. If you can imagine a more hellish mix of police excess, please let me know.
III. Who Watches the Watchmen? We have seen the Department of Justice fail to enforce the law, most notably in the area of the Voting Rights Act. Tens of thousands of African-Americans were stripped from voting rolls in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, illegally and in violation of that Act, and the DOJ did nothing. Electronic voting machines and soft wear have been tampered with, and the FBI refuses to investigate. Instead, the DOJ signed off on legislation like the Georgia Voter ID law which their own career attorneys told them violated the Voting Rights Act and which the Supreme Court struck down for the same reason. The DOJ signed off on the Texas redistricting which the Supreme Court called flawed. The DOJ has attempted to prosecute only one case----against Blacks for suppressing the voting rights of Whites. I cite this as only one area in which the Bush DOJ has failed to uphold the law. Why this area? Because the Voting Rights Act helps minority voters, who tend to vote for Democratic candidates.
While failing to enforce the law, the DOJ has made itself into a political body for the use of the Republican Party, manufacturing wrongful prosecutions against Georgia Thompson in an attempt to force her to lie against a superior and former Gov. Don Seigelman of Alabama among others. They have violated hiring laws by using a political litmus test and now face civil suits which place the department’s reputation in jeopardy. In his refusal to disciple anyone for the politicization of the Justice Department, Mukasey has shown himself to be as partisan as Gonzales.
One of the most egregious abuses by the Justice Department has been the pattern of leaking hints and innuendo to the news media about
possible criminal activity by Democrats. The case of Eliot Spitzer was only the most recent example. There has also been a seven year long pattern of prosecutions of prominent African-Americans for the same crimes for which White-Americans have been forgiven or referred to local authorities. The case of Barry Bonds is the most glaring example. His prosecution was only made possible because of a criminal leak of sealed federal grand jury testimony---a typical pattern from the Bush DOJ—which was then used to justify the indictment on the grounds that public opinion called for it.
And that is what the FBI/KGB under Gonzales/Mukasey is all about. Not about justice or law enforcement. It as propaganda body whose job is to shape public opinion to help Republicans win elections. Blacks have been targeted, because many Democratic politicians are Black. Therefore, if African-Americans can be stigmatized in the public eye as criminal, the Republicans hope to stigmatize a certain number of Democratic politicians. Democratic politicians are directly targeted to make the party look corrupt. Prosecutions of Republicans are discouraged, as we saw with the change of federal prosecutors in Southern California prosecuting the Duke Cunningham case. In Texas, Johnny Sutton refused to intervene when Texas Youth Commission authorities were sexually abusing children, because the scandal might have hurt the re-election chances of Republican Governor Rick Perry.
What does this change in FBI policy signal? I believe that there are two factors at play here. One, in the short term,
Republicans want access to local law enforcement records of people associated with the Barrack Obama campaign, such as Democratic supporters, donors, political allies, perhaps even the candidate himself. Think of this as a fishing expedition. If they can discover that someone has a DUI conviction or maybe a juvenile arrest record (even if it is sealed), they can leak that information to the press. Since Obama has admitted youthful experimentation with marijuana, the first place they will start is with him, to see if he was ever ticketed or charged with any drug related crime that might have been a juvenile offense.
In addition, they would like access to the criminal records of reporters, since this will allow them to conduct blackmail. If a reporter has ever been arrested on a prostitution charge, someone at the RNC can threaten to make the information public, unless the reporter begins to write the stories which the Republicans want to hear.
Under the new rules, all that the FBI will need is for one of their regular informants to sign a piece of paper saying that someone told him that the target did x, y or z. It would be a lie, of course. Any accusation will be sufficient. There need be no imminent threat. The crime need not relate to national security.
There are a lot of obscure, silly federal laws that no one has ever heard of that could be cited as reasons to investigate people. Like the Mann Act. In the long term, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover/Mukasey would
use the next few months to accumulate as much dirt on as many reporters and Democratic politicians as possible. The information gleaned from the local and state law enforcement files would be squirreled away in the boxes of RNC oppo as described here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200406/green "It's a science to know where to look, what to look for, and how to look for it," David Bossie told me recently. Bossie, who was forced off the Burton Committee for being too aggressive, is now the president of the conservative organization Citizens United and an independent researcher, though no less committed to the cause. When I visited his Capitol Hill townhouse not long ago, he was surrounded by stacks of Kerry files, busily scrutinizing Kerry contributors' business dealings for a forthcoming book.
Kerry was clearly not Bossie's first choice of nominee. In his basement he proudly showed me dozens, perhaps hundreds, of boxes marked "HILLARY: WHITEWATER" or "HILLARY: TRAVELGATE." He called them the "Sierra Madre of Hillary oppo," regretfully adding that what could have been "ready to roll in twenty-four hours" will now have to wait until 2008.
That way, if the Republicans lose the election, Karl Rove will have blackmail information on literally
everyone inside the beltway. He and Dick Cheney will know who was caught driving drunk ten years ago while home on vacation, and they will know who hired a hooker and who was interviewed as part of a child pornography sting but not indicted. They will be able to use this information to ensure that no one dares to talk of prosecuting anyone in the outgoing administration.
Think of this as the Bush Administration’s
Keep Out of Jail Blackmail Oppo .
If I were local or state law enforcement, and I did not represent a Republican constituency, I would do to court to challenge the FBI’s right to do this and stall them at least until after the November election, because their intentions are crystal clear. This is just one more inevitable step in the coup.
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