Tag Archives: culture

Trust in the FBI

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It’s rapidly eroding in the aftermath of the FBI’s pre-dawn raid on Mar-a-Lago, a raid that those same agents explicitly barred Trump lawyers from observing.

In response to that eroding trust, FBI Director Christopher Wray had this:

Unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others….

Unfounded attacks on the FBI’s integrity are, assuredly, wrong.

However, what Wray is carefully ignoring is that this is the same FBI whose agents lied to FISA courts—repeatedly—in order to get search and surveillance warrants.

This is the same FBI whose agents have repeatedly fabricated “evidence” in order to get warrants from Article III judges.

This is the same FBI whose agents routinely lie in other venues.

This is the same FBI that deliberately avoided going to an Article III judge for their Mar-a-Lago raid warrant, choosing, instead to go to a magistrate judge.

The current attacks on FBI integrity are sadly, dangerously, entirely founded.

This FBI needs to be completely disbanded, its line agents reallocated to the US Marshals Service and to the Secret Service, its forensics capability converted to a small independent agency responsible to State and local police departments (and relocated to our nation’s heartland—say Wichita, KS), and everyone else in the FBI reallocated to the private sector.

Late Update: Corrected an erroneous reference to the CDC to be a reference to the FBI.

Again, I Ask

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A canonical example of the journalism guild’s view of what constitutes honest reporting is this from CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell and CBS News‘ response to the outcry over her…error. She emitted a tweet regarding the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, claiming

NEW: According to a DOJ official, the FBI is NOT in possession of former President Trump’s passports. Trump had accused the FBI of stealing his three passports during the search of his Mar-a-Lago home.

This was shown later to be obviously wrong; the FBI returned three of Trump’s passports, which of course they could not have done had they not “been in position” of them in the first place.

Notice: O’Donnell claimed to be citing a DOJ official (emphasis mine).

Regarding that,

CBS News protocol is to confirm news with at least two people before reporting it as fact.

Two people.

It used to be the case that journalists were required to cite two on-the-record sources to corroborate an anonymous source’s claim. The journalism guild has long since walked away from that requirement.

And so I ask again.

Why have journalists chosen to walk away from that standard of integrity?

What concrete, measurable standard of integrity do journalists use today in lieu of that one?

Rearranging the Furniture

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CDC Director Rochelle Walensky now claims she’s going to reorganize the CDC after saying that her agency did not reliably meet expectations during the course of the Wuhan Virus Situation.

The changes will include elevating the laboratory division to report to the CDC’s director and restructuring the communications office….

Because the CDC needs to do a better job of selling its claims. And this bit:

shift the CDC’s culture from highly academic to focus more on preparedness and response

And

Dr Walensky also wants additional funding and more authority for the CDC on matters including mandating data collection from states….

There it is. The Progressive-Democratic Party’s go-to solution for all of our ails—more government funding and more government power.

No.

Aside from the interest in being better at the agency’s used car salesman patter, the wasteful increase in taxpayer money coming her way, and the dangerous increase in government power, mechanically, this is just a cosmetic rearrangement of the furniture. The CDC needs reorganization, but it needs to be seriously reorganized.

There’ll be no culture change so long as the personnel of the current culture remain. Any reorg must begin with personnel, not a change of office symbols. That beginning, then, must be the termination, for reasons ranging from cause to what the military refers to as the good of the service, of the agency’s managers, from Walensky and her staff through her deputies and their staffs on down through (not to) middle management.

Every single one of them needs to go. And then Walensky’s replacement as Director, before any additional hiring occurs, needs to justify in concrete and measurable terms, line by line and position by position, why the personnel slot for that proposed new hire needs to exist.

Only with that change in personnel and that streamlining can the CDC become an efficient and effective organization and an organization us American citizens can trust.

Trump’s “Chaotic exit from White House”

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That’s opening of the subheadline of a Wall Street Journal article concerning former President Donald Trump’s (R) last days in office. One remark jumped out at me, though, from a former aide.

If you only start packing with two days left to go, you’re just running low on time. And if he’s the one just throwing things in boxes, who knows what could happen?

Aside from the foolishness of assuming Trump was the one doing the packing, this is a canonical example politicians and bureaucrats (and pressmen) being unable to understand moving at the speed of business rather than at the speed of politics. A hectic departure, most probably, but there’s no reason to believe chaotic. Not by a businessman.

A former Trump aide, though? Trump isn’t perfect; his White House staff and the Executive Branch agencies for which he was responsible for staffing consisted of hundreds of persons, if not thousands. Nor has Trump been perfect in his selections—see his initial choice for Attorney General and his choice for FBI Director for a couple of his more famous personnel mistakes.

What’s the basis for claiming chaos out of hecticality? Besides the claimants’ (assuming this unidentified source actually exists) confusion, I mean.

It’s Not Just the Moms

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First, the President Joe Biden/Attorney General Merrick Garland (each Progressive-Democrats) Department of Justice designated angry and enthusiastic mothers at school board meetings as domestic terrorists and Garland had his FBI begin investigating them as such.

Now the Biden administration are hinting around that average Americans who are angry over the FBI raid in former President Donald Trump’s (R) Mar-a-Lago home and the exploding security failure at our southern border might be terrorists, also.

Americans angry about the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida estate and insecurity at the southern border pose an increased risk of domestic terrorism, the Biden administration warned in a series of bulletins sent to federal and local law enforcement over the weekend.

And

“Last night, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice issued a Joint Intelligence Bulletin, accessible via the Homeland Security Information Network, providing information on the potential for domestic violent extremists to carry out attacks on federal, state, and local law enforcement and government personnel or facilities,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus wrote in a memo to 60,000 employees.

This is a general warning about all of us Americans, not just the tiny few who are prone to violence. A tinier few than the antifa, BLM, Ruth Sent Us, Jane’s Revenge, et al., arsonists, rioters, terrorists toward whom Garland and his FBI have chosen to turn a blind eye.

Magnus, again:

Since the search, the FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities.

Yet, the FBI has chosen, repeatedly, to not “observe” the violent threats posted on social media by individuals who engaged in mass shootings or those posted by antifa, BLM, Ruth Sent Us, Jane’s Revenge, et al.

We’re all terrorists, those 10s of millions of us average Americans who won’t kowtow, according to this Progressive-Democratic Party-controlled government.