January 29, 2023
Republican sights are set on the Federal Bureau of Investigation . Everywhere you turn, GOP notables are demanding that the FBI be reinvented — or perhaps disbanded altogether. For any civil libertarian, the Bureau, which functions as America’s secret police, as well as the top federal law enforcement agency, is an easy organization to view with suspicion.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas this weekend (summer 2022), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) publicly demanded the defunding of the FBI. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a longtime FBI critic, has accused the Bureau of playing politics in favor of Democrats on a host of high-profile issues, about which he claims multiple FBI whistleblowers have spilled the beans to him. [I find this to be an interesting accusation since it is generally accepted that the agents of the FBI are among the most conservative employees of the Federal government. I guess Jim Jordan will sort this out for us.] Republicans aren’t wrong to suspect the FBI has lost its way. The Bureau's mishandling of 2016 allegations that then-candidate Donald Trump was in bed with the Kremlin left many Republicans with a bad aftertaste. That got worse with the FBI’s 2020 missteps regarding Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop, the counterintelligence implications of which are painfully obvious .
Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted as much in testimony before Congress, stating that allegations of politically driven interference inside the Bureau about that laptop were "deeply troubling." When you add in Republican claims that the FBI oversells domestic extremism on the Right while lowballing it on the Left, it’s no wonder that many in the GOP want to force change upon the Bureau. Since ending it isn’t in the cards — if we disband the FBI, the federal authorities will still need an agency doing their functions, perhaps under a minor name alteration — how about mending it? Republicans have several ideas here, from increasing whistleblower protections to more congressional oversight to strengthening inspector general authorities. Let me speak frankly as a former "deep state" insider: None of this will work. The problem is the nature of the FBI itself — its bureaucratic DNA, if you like. The Bureau was birthed and led for an amazing 48 years by J. Edgar Hoover, a controversial character but a consummate bureaucrat. Thanks to Hoover, there really is no FBI: There’s a headquarters in Washington and 56 field offices, large and small (New York City’s includes 10% of the FBI), each a quasi-independent fiefdom. Really, nobody has exercised tight control over the FBI since Hoover left the building in 1972. Reforming such a dispersed and secretive system from headquarters is almost impossible.
The problem with the FBI being our secret police is the second word. Although few Americans realize it, the Bureau is an anomaly. Few advanced democracies share our system, in which the domestic intelligence service is also the top law enforcement agency. This setup, established by Hoover a century ago, is anachronistic and needs to end.
For most of our allies, the domestic spies and top cops reside in different agencies, since putting them under one roof gives too much power to one outfit. All our anglophone Five Eyes partners work like this. Britain has its Security Service, popularly called MI5, which cooperates with the Metropolitan Police's specialist branches on national security cases. Still, MI5 and the police are separate organizations. It works that way with Canada’s CSIS, Australia’s ASIO, and New Zealand’s NZSIS too. The same is true for most of our allies.
The FBI would be less feared by average citizens if the people allowed to spy on you inside the United States were not also the people who arrest you. It’s time to spin off the FBI’s vital national security mission — counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and countersubversion — into a new domestic intelligence agency while leaving the Bureau’s traditional policing skills where they belong. The FBI is the world’s leading law enforcement agency. Let them focus on what they do best: catching bank robbers, kidnappers, and corrupt politicians. [Gosh, I hope its responsibilities are broader than this -- cyber security?] Such reform was seriously considered after the 9/11 attacks, which brought significant changes to our intelligence community. However, the FBI pulled out all the stops and quietly lobbied Congress, which quashed any major changes. That was a mistake, as recent events have made plain. Our domestic intelligence agency must be free of any taint of politics, particularly of a partisan nature. [Is this really possible?]
GOP demands for fundamentally changing how the FBI does business are correct, but they misunderstand the problem. The Bureau cannot change its DNA. Surgery is required. Asking the police to be spies creates a fundamental clash of cultures and authorities. Make them separate, putting the U.S. in line with most of our allies — and all of our close ones. That should be a reform all civil libertarians, regardless of party affiliation, can get behind.
John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.
Leadership sets the path and the standard for every organization. If the leadership is politicized, corrupt, dishonest, criminal the organization's performance will reflect the leadership. If the leadership is virtuous and committed to uncompromised performance, the organization will ultimately reflect those values.
Certainly politicians on the left and the right have attempted to politicize the FBI as well as other departments in the federal bureaucracy. There are enough events from recent years for citizens to know the concept of a professional, non-politicized, federal bureaucracy is dead. Enough political appointees have been inserted into the career civil service, by Democrat and Republican presidents, to kill what objective and rational professionalism may have existed. If nothing else, the management of Covid, …