“Absolute power corrupts absolutely”
Lord Acton (19th Century British Politician)
The Office of the United States Attorney General came into being with the creation of the Executive Branch of Government formed with the approval of our Constitution, and the recognition by Congress the nation needed a lawyer. At the time of its creation, Edmund Jennings Randolph was appointed the first Attorney General[1]. Along with Randolph, there was a staff of U.S. Attorneys appointed to serve the litigation needs of the new nation. In that same act, the U.S. Marshalls office was created to serve as the enforcement/apprehension arm of the newly created department.
Things moved along as they usually do in government with the Department growing in size and responsibilities as the nation grew. The current Department of Justice was established by Congress in 1870. In 1908, Attorney General Charles Bonaparte created the “Bureau of Investigations” when he selected 10 individuals from the Secret Service to help streamline the investigations of criminal activities. The Bureau of Investigations was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigations in 1935.
In 1920, after the overthrow of the Russian Czars and strikes by the Boston Police and thousands of steelworks, and following an assassination attempt on the U.S. Attorney General[2] came the first “Red Scare” with the federal government suddenly concerned about the possibility that communists would do the same here. This is where J. Edger Hoover enters our history in a significant way.
John Edger Hoover[3] was born in Washington D.C on January 1, 1895. He studied law at George Washington University, receiving a Masters of Law in 1917, and went to work for the Department of Justice as a "file reviewer." Two years later he had risen to become the special assistant to the Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer. Because of his documentation of suspected communists, he was placed in charge of their roundup and deportations. As a result of his work, he was then appointed as Director of the Bureau of Investigations in 1924. It was a position he held until his death (May 2, 1972), and was responsible for the growth of the Bureau to the FBI in the mid-1930s.
J. Edger was an “anti-radical” who was opposed to activists from both the left and the right. He had no problem tracking down communists, white supremacist movements like the Ku Klux Klan, or those seeking racial equality like Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He had no problem keeping them, and others he disliked (including politicians), under surveillance (often without judicial approval).
Under his directorship, the FBI evolved from a small investigative body into a national force supposedly defending America from organized crime, and the subversive threats, both external and internal. It proudly cites all its successes like the killings of bank robbers like John Dillinger and “Machine Gun” Kelly, the arrest of spies like the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, or the prosecutions of Mafia Godfathers like John Gotti. At the same time, it quietly sweeps under the rug its failures and dubious actions like building dossiers on potential political enemies, not following up on potential mass murders, or even failing to identify and apprehend the terrorists who would destroy the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Today we see much about how the political leadership of the FBI is following in the footsteps of their first director. Their involvement in the political process of this nation should be troubling for all of us, yet it isn’t. Its former director, James Comey, tweets from his perch the moral condemnations of a duly elected President. It is his right to do so, but those willing to agree with him so easily dismiss the significant failures in the due process he allowed and perhaps encouraged during his time as the director.
From the abuses of process and the bureau’s lies in seeking FISA court approval to spy on Americans, to encouraging the flagrant partisanship of an organization that is supposed to be non-partisan, James Comey encouraged a corruption of an organization the average American thought was supposed to be incorruptible.
As Lord Acton observed, too much power in one organization will ultimately destroy the integrity of that organization. This is precisely why our founders created a tripartite government where two branches can check the power of the third. Perhaps it is time to rethink the organization of America’s secret police?
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