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.
Well I am surprised that I actually agree with just about every thing you said. I used to watch “I led 3 lives” when I was a kid.
I certainly did not know any of the famous people you did but I have known and worked with some people who were about as deep into counter-intelligence as one gets tho of course they never gave me any details.
During the 60s, I spent a couple of weeks being around a bunch of FBI agents and they were not impressive at all. I personally had some dealings with an FBI supervisor and he was about as sorry as they get. I had grown up watching “The FBI, with Efrim Zimbalist Jr.” and thought they about walked on water.
I ended up seizing his ranch and as far as I know, he never suffered any repercussions for his misbehavior.
The media usually get’s 1/5th of the story correct if it’s more complicated than a hit and run or stop and rob incident.
Everyone is a talking head these days...... I rarely watch cable news but we were cooped up with inclement weather on the day of the Virginia Tech shooting incident. I was so disgusted with the news coverage and the comments made by “experts” on television.
It is pointless to debate about these topics when so few facts are known. An affidavit to support these arrests is sealed by the court. It is probably hundreds of pages long (single spaced) and spans all kinds of investigative procedures and techniques. Too often, including on this forum, you get people who seem to think the arresting document is contained within the news article written by some young hack. Too many people form an opinion based on the initial coverage and rarely change it when new facts come to light.
Law enforcement in America at every level suffers from diarrhea of the mouth in the quest for good publicity. It’s not necessary to tell the media a GPS tracker was put on the burglars car and detectives used that to follow him/her and catch them red-handed. The wiser men of yesteryear would simply say “we had him under surveillance”. Trackers are expensive. This is why affidavits like this should be sealed, these are extremely comprehensive investigations that will be critically reviewed throughout the process. Conspiracy minded folks neglect the FACT that the defense attorney, his defense colleagues, defense investigators, and any other expert they wish to employ are all free to scrutinize the facts contained within the four corners of the affidavit. The Judge and the appeals court are not an easy audience either!
You sound like you would be an interesting man at choir practice.
Sounds like you have a book to write some day - good reading, too...
Another thing to consider, with this administration’s claims of “terrorism” and “racism” among the tea party protests...
If there WERE people who joined the tea party movement who could’ve been tempted by FBI agents into planting bombs, we would have heard it by now.
I do not doubt they infiltrated the group. Especially in the wake of what’s been learned from Fast and Furious.
There is a core difference between the tea party patriots and occupy communist/anarchist/socialists. One seeks to keep America in accordance with the founding principles of this nation, the other seeks to tear down the system and replace it with some sort of socialist system. Even political “anarchists” want universal healthcare (which means a tax system to pay for it) so there goes their claims of no centralized government.