Folks old enough to remember J. Edgar Hoover and how the FBI played such a disruptive role in our pursuit of democratic and constitutional rights must be having terrible flashbacks to those turbulent times.
Back then, particularly in the 1960s and early 1970s, the FBI and its counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, were mainly concerned with preventing the rise of a “Black Messiah” and with trying to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” civil rights, Black liberation and the anti-war and student movements.
Apparently the agency’s interest in disrupting and misdirecting is still high on the agenda as we witness a very disturbing current iteration. Despite a warning from the Justice Department, FBI Director James Comey boldly defied policy and protocol in sending a letter to Congress that a fresh batch of emails had surfaced in a case unrelated (the laptop of the disgraced Anthony Weiner) as to whether Hillary Clinton or her aides mishandled classified information.
According to the letter, Comey said that some of the emails “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” Well, you would think that the agency’s director would take a little more time to see what’s in the trove before shooting a missive off to Congress. But there seems to be another imperative on the Republican director’s mind, the kind of menace that characterized the Hoover days. Presently, there is a flood of petitions cropping up online calling for Comey’s resignation, most of them opposed to “the outrageous abuse of power to influence” the presidential election. That the action comes within two weeks of the election is a clear violation of the Hatch Act by making the investigation public so close to the election date.
Moreover, this action seems like déjà vu because Comey, back in July, announced that after reviewing thousands of emails there was no indication of wrongdoing by Clinton, merely a case of “extremely mishandling” documents.
In our society, in which far too often an accusation is tantamount to conviction, in which the rumor of malfeasance can incriminate, Comey’s act cannot be taken lightly, and certainly a gullible American electorate can easily be misled.
Also, we have a double standard afoot because Comey has not been forthright on Donald Trump’s connection to one of his former surrogate’s relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia. An FBI inquiry into the surrogate’s business ties to Russia falls short of a full investigation such as the one they are pursuing regarding Clinton’s emails.
Trump has already revealed his anti-democratic intentions; we don’t need another element of this coming from the FBI. And we certainly don’t need any reminders of the past when Hoover ran rampant over our constitutional, civil and human rights.
