I am ticked off and horrified by what happened to Flynn.
However, we need to recognize something in our anger.
This coup was run out of the 7th floor of the FBI by senior officials. The “field office” below them was going to close the case because they found nothing after their tasking. In other words, the “rank and file” was going to close it down because there was nothing there. That should have been the end of it.
The case, which had not been closed yet administratively, was then pulled up to the 7th floor. We know this (Strozk text messages). A place where they were not allowed to roam and certainly had no reason to know what was up. The investigation was run by the Deputy Director reporting directly to Comey - not field agents. It was as far above the field as you could get.
The lack of “whistleblowers” has made many of us (me too) upset, but who was there to blow the whistle if they knew nothing about it? Everything we see and hear involves only a few people - Strozk, Page, McCabe, Priestap, Baker, Comey, et all. Basically the 7th floor or command staff - a place they never went to unless they were summoned.
It is likely that some were given individual taskings by the 7th floor, but they had no idea what the big picture or even the real goal of all of this was. They had no authority to ask. How would they know what the goal was unless they were in the Deputy Director’s office? They couldn’t.
As we said in the military - it was all above their grade and rank and it is unlikely many of the “field agents” knew anything more than the same crap we read in the newspapers (what the 7th floor leaked).
I know none of us want to hear any defense of the “FBI” and I don’t want to defend them because I am pissed, but the only names we hear were the bigwigs on the 7th floor. None of this has referenced the field agents or even the groups at the Hoover building.
At this point, unless we learn something very different, blaming the average FBI agent for this coup attempt (I have too in my anger) is not supported by the evidence we have seen. I have looked. It is the same names over and over and these were people who far outranked the rank and file agents in a compartmentalized organization.
Just pointing this out because I value accuracy.
But the "Thou shalt not make the FBI look bad" 'Prime Directive' has been in effect -- essentially since there's been an FBI -- and that goes right down to the "grunts"...
And, the "What the FBI (and its FD302s) says -- is Gospel Truth" attitude pervades the entire "FBI Culture" -- top to bottom. I had the opportunity to meet many OKC witnesses, and, every single one claimed, "The 302 of my interview doesn't reflect what I said!" BUT, the 302 is claimed to be the SOLE evidence of the interview.
In my chapter on the physics of the collapse of the Murrah Building, I flat-out called FBI OKBomb SAIC Danny Defenbaugh a "Liar".When asked about why the truck crater was covered so quickly, he exclaimed to the press:
"Investigators weren't hiding anything from the public, only trying to preserve water-soluble evidence."
When I called him "liar", I was looking at this photo of the crater, taken ~4 hours after the explosion.
That reddish-brown area in the left foreground is the crater, filed with ("Oklahoma red clay") muddy water -- "camouflaged" by floating debris (mostly paper). The water was running down the gutter -- through the crater -- from a damaged A/C chiller uphill from it.
For over a week, FBI nightly meetings recorded a continuing problem: "Water running through the Crater"...
What the FBI was hiding was the size of the crater. They claimed it was 28, then 32 feet in diameter. But -- they covered it with eight (8) sheets of plywood - a sixteen (16) foot square!
I could type for hours -- but the FBI wasn't out to reveal the truth in OKC...
And, I see no evidence that it has become more justice-oriented.
