I have often wondered if the FBI and the Keystone Cops share the same parentage. I will explain my lack of regard for this august body in just a bit.
The FBI was brought to mind by an article I read. It reported that Wikipedia had been threatened if they did not discontinue displaying the FBI’s logo on their site’s article devoted to the agency.
Silly me. I thought the Feebies were busy catching communists terrorists; saving all of us innocents from what’s-his-name.
The legal office of the FBI opened with:
“Unauthorized reproduction or use of the FBI Seal is prohibited by 18 United States Code, Section 701, which provides:
One would hope that we had put the messianic personality of JEHoover behind us. It has been 40 years and more since I was involved to the extent that I felt I had a realistic take on the tragicomedy that was the FBI. When I was involved, there were eleven investigative agencies in the federal government. The last count I heard was sixteen.
The agency with the best conviction rate was Customs. That was likely because, the way they worked, they almost always secured the evidence at the time of the apprehension.
The FBI had the lowest conviction rate. I lay that to incompetence, sloppiness and hubris. They tended to believe their press clippings.
Have you been watching reruns of The FBI Story, I Led Three Lives or any other series based on that agency? No? You would bust a gut at how consistently cornball those shows were. Hoover’s office demanded and got editorial control of essentially anything portraying the agency. Though several presidents wanted to get rid of Hoover, no one had the guts to upset him.
The majority of cases that the FBI handled, when I was paying attention, were stolen cars. You didn’t know that, did you? When a car was stolen, it was assumed that after 24 hours it had crossed a state line. This caused the local law enforcement to notify the FBI. They, in turn, issued a regional (not all-points) bulletin. Yep. That’s what they did.
When the car was eventually found by a local police or sheriff’s department, they notified the FBI. The FBI fetched the vehicle and returned it to the original jurisdiction. That counted as a successful case for the Bureau. Padding their statistics thusly, they still had the worst record of any agency.
At a Washington party, Hoover once refused to shake hands with the Soviet Union’s ambassador and pretended to ignore him. His obsession with communism caused him, and therefore the Bureau, to see them everywhere. It was said that he could see communists under the bed who weren’t there but couldn’t see a real, live communist standing in front of him.
His devotion of resources to ferreting out communists caused him to flood the Communist Party USA with spies. While there were only about 9,000 members of the Party, 1,500 were FBI agents. It was truly comic with so many agents stepping on each others toes.
There was a directive sent out to all 1,500 of these agents not to pay their dues on time. They were afraid it would be a giveaway that they were FBI and could afford dues. The average member of the Party was rarely successful enough to be able to afford to pay their dues on time. This is what Hoover feared so much and, by his efforts, brought the public to an irrational level of fear of a takeover of the country.
Did the FBI discover the Shoe Bomber? The Bloomers Bomber? I think ordinary citizens discovered them. The FBI did find a bunch of kids who intended to blow up the Sears Tower, despite not knowing how to construct a bomb and not having enough for bus fare to Chicago. I think they did know that the Tower was in Chicago.
The Brits discovered a plot over there and told the Yanks. They regretted it. It seems Bush needed to boost his image and the Americans forced the operation to be closed down before the British could round up the entire group of plotters. Public relations trumps national security and relations with competent members of friendly foreign agencies.
Please don’t turn me in for posting their badge. If I were eating when they came a-calling, I might choke during my hysterical reaction.
It would not get me in trouble to post the logo of the CIA. It’s likely no one there would recognize it.
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