I have no idea how many people were in the KKK but I am sure I read that from a normal source. It could have been wrong but I am not wrong about it being reported.
Now the one about the FBI having informants who operated an entire operation from within some radical group by accident, I am certain was widely reported.
I don’t care if you are J. Edgar himself, I just repeated what I read. At one time I would have trusted the FBI to an extreme degree and that trust was probably justified.
Now I think they are a bunch of clowns. Well actually there probably are lots of good ones left however I personally witnessed a bunch of FBI agents behaving like trash during the 60’s.
First mistake: Don’t believe everything you read. I have been a reporter/journalist for over 40 years, and have seen just about every type of pisspoor reporting from all sides, even being the subject of one libelous story (what I did to that newspaper is for another day, but it was fun).
I worked with the FBI and the two agents, during Hoover’s time, were extremely professional and knowledgeable in their field. I have known other FBI, CIA, and military intelligence agents, and have found them to be professionals, dedicated patriots, and very rational people.
If I mentioned some of their names, you would recognize them; others you wouldn’t but they probably prevented WW3 - my contacts went way up the food chain in spooksville, from Nam to Berlin, Latin America to the Weathermen.
I’ll just mention a couple who you will find at Google, etc. - Herb “I Led Three Lives” Philbrick; Larry Gratwohl - Weather Underground; Tom West and Irvin Bock, Chicago PD; Larry Sulc, CIA; Herb Romerstein, NY state investigator, HCUA, HISC, Senate Intelligence Committee, State Dept/USIA Soviet Propaganda section; Whittaker Chambers, KGB/GRU, CPUSA, etc.
Whatever is wrong with the FBI today is due to the politicization of it and the CIA by Obama, pure and simple. If you know where to look, you’ll see what I mean.
Most newspaper writers are NOT trained in intelligence and police matters. The few good ones, like Fred Reed, are retired and there are literally no “police beat” reporters anymore.
To often they write a story and miss half of it. Not always their fault but a rush to judgment and a lack of background fundamentals of the subjects (i.e. intelligence, police methodology, the criminal justice system, our enemies and their tactics, and media bias), provide the average reader with average to poor stories, aka “junk”.
I got a degree in Police Science specifically to enhance my writing on law enforcement, terrorism, and internal security. My classmates, all law enforcement people, provided real-time comments and information, and all my teachers were either criminal lawyers, judges, retired FBI (one was the man who helped capture the German saboteurs who landed in New Jersey during WW2), active duty police officers, etc.
You’d be amazed what you DON’T KNOW when you start to write about police matters and internal security affairs. It takes decades to really learn the basics and nuances of the subject and how to write accurately about it.
Oh, attend a Klan/Nazi rally if you really want an education. Those today are nothing like those of the past, but you can get a glimpse of their mentally ill state. Then attend a communist or related leftist extremist organization’s meeting/rally, and you will find the same thing. Been there, done that.
About an informant who operated an entire operation - so what. Some radical groups were so disorganized that it made surveillance easier of some kind of structural form was given to the group. Been there, done that.
It is the goal of that group that is important, and the hidden identity of those who really run it. That’s what opened my eyes, but the mainstream media totally refused to report it despite many congressional hearings and reports, including live inside witnesses testimony.
Be glad we have the FBI and not the KGB. Too many of my friends spent time in Soviet torture centers (Lubyanka prison), and the Gulags of the Trans-Siberian Railroad system ( i.e. Potma)or in Murmansk-Archangel salt mines such as Vorkutka.
Yarddog: You’ve got a lot to learn about the real world. Open the door and enter it, if you to “see”.
Now: About Vietnam and Cambodia. Been there, done that. but it’s another story for another day.