I know something about the policies and procedures employed by the FBI and I think I'd like to comment on this in a new thread. If anyone wants to call bullshit down on me, please do!Bro.Tiag wrote:...but since the FBI was involved in the case, I would guess it was a federal crime, ergo a felony
I’m sure many people won’t agree with my observations and opinions here.The FBI doesn't normally get involved unless the dollar amount at issue is $10,000 or greater, or unless the FBI feels that there is some political advantage to taking some minor case to their ADA's office for prosecution -- or if some special, well connected corporate customer pushes their political button. (The FBI also like to “cherry pick” its investigations, choosing only those they think they have a certainty of winning.)
Way back when, when I was at Indian Springs, Nevada, the "United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities" Church Committee came out with their recommendations and orders, and their ROI Report On Investigation which putatively put a stop to the public activities of the old COINTELPRO of which the FBI was committing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
The FBI's primary job was and continues to be the suppression of Constitutionally guaranteed activities by American citizens, activities which threatened the supposed "stability" of societal norms. The FBI has never been a legitimate law enforcement organization with a primary charter of investigating crimes and taking the body of evidence to their ADAs for recommendations of prosecution.
The FBI's secondary job -- which at times eclipses their primary job -- is to justify and excuse their very reason to exist as a Federally funded agency.
I know a little about what I'm talking about: In the aftermath of the Church Committee, back when I was young, stupid, and not the disillusioned aging hippie you see here before you, I was given access to perform survey work which allowed some minor measure of access to a number of legitimate law enforcement agencies in the United States.
The task was to accumulate a sample of opinions and impressions among law enforcement agencies about their dealings with agents of the FBI for a now-defunct office of the Office of Naval Intelligence. A number of things evaporated out of that survey of talking to field and office Officers of a number of law enforcement agencies, most of which from the Southwest:
1) The public image of the FBI is one of an elite law enforcement agency with a stellar record of keeping America safe from bad guys. Actual cops on the street exhibited jealousy at the public’s mistaken impressions as well as exhibited (additional) general distain for the public in believing the FBI was elite.
2) The public image was also that other, supposedly lesser law enforcement agencies likewise considered FBI agents to be elite, highly competent Agents which are looked up to in the ranks. This also caused resentment among actual cops who felt that the public was stupid for believing they (actual cops) fell for the FBI’s public relations efforts.
3) The actual impression of field and office Officers who had dealings with agents of the FBI was one of bumbling prima-donna Keystone Kops, candy asses who wouldn’t survive a minute actually working in the field with “real cops.” The fall-out of that opinion was that few actual cops ever wanted to work with any FBI agent or have any dealings whatsoever with the FBI as an agency.
Three years ago I took a list of field cops and had telephone interviews with those who hadn’t retired or left their forces and if anything their opinions of FBI agents were even more in line with actual reality as opposed to the public image that the FBI seeks to instill.
About 11 years ago I joined others in the investigative and suppression efforts for the so-called “sporgery” crimes that a notoriously, allegedly criminal corporate enterprise was committing against about 100 Internet Service Providers in a brand of denial-of-service attack specifically aimed at suppressing factual, accurate information about the corporation. (Do a Google on “sporgery” and you’ll see what that was about.)
Eventually a great deal of evidence and hard technical information was accumulated on the criminals committing the crimes, complete with some video tape, some fingerprints, signatures on a Money Order purchased from a Postal Office which also had video surveillance taken of the purchaser, and other hard evidence. (Purchase of Money Orders from a Post Office for purposes of criminal intention is itself a crime, details of which are often posted in bulletins inside of Post Offices.)
I scheduled a meeting with a local Field Office of the FBI in Azusa, California to go through the evidence that had been accumulated, knowing what the FBI’s primary function was but thinking that they might actually arrest the criminals who we had managed to identify by name and by residence. (In the middle of our investigations we had also uncovered an alleged “safe house” allegedly operated by the corporation wherein an individual had falsified his driving license information and other public records. After the residence was discussed in Usenet, the owner allegedly and coincidentally moved out of the residence.)
During the interview with the FBI agent in Azusa, I eventually came to the realization that the FBI wasn’t interested in the evidence which had been accumulated, nor the activities of the individuals who had been committing the crimes. The FBI was interested in the individuals who had been investigating the crimes and had been accumulating the evidence.
The corporate entity which was at issue had enough clout and contacts within the FBI and its supportive structure that they themselves were never made part of any official FBI inquiry. It was the people who had been accumulating the hard evidence who were the FBI’s focus – their methods and procedures for accumulating the hard evidence were being looked in to by the FBI, not the actual crimes that were being documented.
That’s what the FBI is all about.
On a related issue, the FBI on occasion as a whole invites a rare question from one politician or another asking whether the FBI couldn’t be gutted to a third or a fourth of its current budgetary size and still maintain its actual supposed charter, divesting the agency of its sinister, criminal core and retaining the actual crime fighting aspects (sticking with bank robbers and kidnappers, basically, and putting an end to the fictitious “Joint Terrorism Task Force” and other massive violationary aspects of the agency.)
Killing monuments like the FBI is very difficult since once such organizations get created, it’s nearly impossible to reform or disband them. They outlive their usefulness or they become twisted, usually, or in the case of the FBI they’re created for political experiences which are now embarrassing or are otherwise obsolete.
The FBI’s efforts on bank robbing and kidnapping managed to keep the FBI extant up until now, but the outrageous notion that they’re also some how “fighting domestic terrorism” has been another shot-in-the-arm for the agency. Their budgets now include BILLIONS of dollars under the guise of fighting domestic terrorists – when in fact they oppress and violate legitimate, law abiding individuals like animal rights activists, ecology advocates, Civil rights groups, religious organizations, and everything else that the FBI has always targeted under COINTELPRO.
Also the BATF had been for many years under the knife with an actual effort to disband the organization and to disperse its assets and personnel to other agencies. Prior to the Branch Davidians, all other law enforcement agencies and many intelligence agencies were asked if they wanted the BATF’s assets and people with an eye toward finally ending the BATF.
Every organization coveted the BATF’s assets and budgets however not a one of them wanted any of the BATF people. The BATF had labored under the same general impression of legitimate law enforcement agencies which considered the BATF people to be, if anything, even worse fuckups and wannabes than the FBI’s people.
The issue culminated in a grandly redacted (or at least minimized) account of the issue of disbanding the BATF in an article of Time Magazine and the BATF was ever more an embarrassment.
When Janet Reno (an individual who suffers from the religious belief that there are somewhere upwards of 300,000 babies bred and ritually murdered in the United States every year as part of a “world wide Satanic conspiracy) started focusing on the Branch Davidians, the BATF was tasked with the arms allegations aspects of the Davidians and the BATF people leaped on the issue with as much zeal as Reno had.
In the aftermath of the Davidian slaughter, the public discussion of disbanding the BATF and dividing up its assets was dropped. To disband the agency in the aftermath of what had happened would have been perceived to have been an admission of guilt and culpability and people would naturally assume that the disassociation of the BATF was punishment – that despite any and all the public discussions held about the possibility of doing so in the years previous.
The BATF grew despite its proven history, and the FBI grew despite COINTELPRO – when in fact the Church Committee would have better served America had they ordered the FBI to be disbanded at the time.
Not long ago I did a write-up asking whether COINTELPRO is still a funded project within the FBI. I concluded that it is not but that the COINTELPRO program continues virtually unfettered by the Church Committee’s dictates.
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2005/07/110196.shtml
My opinions only and only my opinions.
