Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI's Long History of Law-breaking, Abuse of Power

[AZJoe]

Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI: A Brief Overview of FBI's Long History of Law-breaking and Abuse of Power

A 1924 American Civil Liberties Union report warned that the FBI had become “a secret police system of a political character.” In the 1930s, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court feared that the FBI had bugged the conference room where justices privately wrangled over landmark cases, as Tim Weiner noted in his “Enemies: A History of the FBI.” In 1945, President Harry Truman noted that “We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction.” And FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover compiled a list of 20,000 “potentially or actually dangerous” Americans who could be rounded up and locked away in one of the six detention camps the federal government secretly built in the 1950s.

From 1956 through 1971, the FBI’s COINTELPRO program conducted thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to smear innocent people by portraying them as government informants, to sic the IRS on people, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, communist, white racist, antiwar, and black organizations (including Martin Luther King Jr.). These operations involved vast numbers of warrantless wiretaps and illicit break-ins and resulted in the murder of some black militants. … Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) issued a damning report on FBI abuses of power that should be mandatory reading …

we learned five years ago that the FBI explicitly teaches its agents that “the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” … an FBI academy ethics course taught new agents that subjects of FBI investigations have "forfeited their right to the truth." … the 2015 Washington Post bombshell about false FBI trial testimony that may have sentenced 32 innocent people to death? …

the Branch Davidians — 80 of whom died after the FBI assaulted their ramshackle home with tanks and pyrotechnic devices and collapsed much of the building on their heads even before fires burst out. …

FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi gunned down Vicki Weaver in 1992 as she stood in her Idaho cabin doorway holding her baby. … FBI coverup … after a confidential Justice Department report leaked out revealing the FBI’s deceits and unconstitutional rules of engagement, the feds paid a $3 million wrongful death settlement to the Weaver family. When an Idaho County sought to prosecute the FBI sniper, the Justice Department invoked the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution to torpedo the case. …

the FBI’s secrecy is profoundly skewing American politics. More than a year after the 2016 election, Americans still have no idea the true extent of the FBI's manipulation of the presidential campaign. Did the FBI wrongfully absolve Hillary Clinton on the email server issue? What role did the FBI have in financing or exploiting the Steele dossier? …

there is little or no accountability when few members of Congress have the courage to openly criticize or vigorously cross-examine FBI officials. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs admitted in 1971 that Congress was afraid of the FBI: “Our very fear of speaking out (against the FBI) ... has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny” … The FBI is currently scorning almost every congressional attempt at oversight. …

 

[AZJoe]

And this does not even include the FBI's current crimes, corruption, attempts to rig the United States presidential election, political espionage, and felonious cover-up up, and concealment and collusion of their own crimes as well as the crimes committed by the Bureau heads' championed candidate.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...zok-Partisan-FBI-infiltrator&highlight=strzok

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?517695-FBI-Obama-Trump-Hillary-Chess&highlight=strzok

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...eveal-FBI-s-Clinton-cover-up&highlight=strzok

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...-As-Pawns-to-Protect-Hillary&highlight=strzok

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...hoenix&highlight=loretta+lynch+judicial+watch

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...lled-Her-Illegal-Server&p=6564005#post6564005

ACLU's 2013 Report documenting the explosion n FBI surveillance law-breaking, and abuse since 9/11.

 

[oyarde]

Abolish the fbi .

 

[donnay]

Lock 'em up!

 

[kcchiefs6465]

And the time where they lied and kept a wrongfully convicted man in prison for decades while letting the known perpetrator go on to murder more people.


http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...s-Innocent-Men-Covers-Up-Evidence-for-Decades

 

[phill4paul]

Let's not forget the FBI gunman that shot twice at LaVoy Finicum as he exited his vehicle with his hands up, and then subsequently tried to cover it up with the help of the other FBI agents at the scene. Still no word about the FBI's investigation into this FBI agent.

 

[oyarde]

And the time where they lied and kept a wrongfully convicted man in prison for decades while letting the known perpetrator go on to murder more people.


http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...s-Innocent-Men-Covers-Up-Evidence-for-Decades

I appreciate the efforts of Dan Burton on that .

 

[AZJoe]

From 2011, Chronic FBI law-breaking:

Compelled by a lawsuit, the government was recently [2011] forced to release files detailing abuses by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in investigating cases between 2001 and 2008. … the 2,500 heavily redacted files show evidence of chronic abuse at rates far surpassing any previous estimates …

In a recently released report analyzing the files, the EFF asserts that between 2003 and 2006 there is evidence that as many as 17,000 abuses may have occurred, “or an average of 4,250 serious intelligence violations per year.” …

the FBI “engaged in a number of flagrant legal violations,” including “submitting false or inaccurate declarations to courts; using improper evidence to obtain federal grand jury subpoenas; [and] accessing password protected documents without a warrant.” …

Government protocol requires that when such potential or actual abuses are discovered internally, they must be investigated, and a report documenting the abuses needs to be filed with the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) … [established] in response to evidence of rampant violations in the FBI’s investigations … “…[O]n average, 2.5 years elapsed between a violation’s occurrence and its eventual reporting to the IOB,” … Further, which abuses are reported is clearly at the FBI’s discretion…

The Bureau’s willingness to break the law in order to uphold it appears to only be matched by the willingness of some companies to deliver their customers’ private info to the feds. …

the FBI can secretly subpoena records from third parties without any judicial review. … the agency issued nearly 200,000 NSL requests between 2003 and 2006. …

 

[Occam's Banana]

The FBI is a terrorist organization. If the various incitements to violence mentioned in the OP article are not sufficient to demonstrate this, then there's the 1993 World Trade Center bombing ...

The bomb would have been a dud if the FBI had not explicitly instructed the bomb maker (who was an FBI informant) to make certain that the bomb would actually work. Several people died as a result.

 

[shakey1]

Funny Business Incorporated

 

[Marenco]

Another Alphabet Agency that should be abolished...

 

[AZJoe]

FBI Evil Deeds

One of the unfortunate ironies of the manufactured “Russiagate” controversy is the perception of the FBI as a friend of liberty and justice. But the FBI has never been a friend of liberty and justice. … [the FBI] “has a long record of both deceit and incompetence. Five years ago, Americans learned that the FBI was teaching its agents that ‘the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.’ This has practically been the Bureau’s motif since its creation in 1908…. The FBI has always used its ‘good guy’ image to keep a lid on its crimes.” …

Take the case of Michael Flynn … Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in connection with conversations he had with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States … One need not be an admirer of Flynn … to be disturbed by how the FBI has handled this case.

One ought to be immediately suspicious whenever someone is charged with or pleads guilty to lying to the FBI without any underlying crime …

When the FBI questioned Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak, it already had the transcripts of those conversations … the FBI asked Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak, apparently to test him. If he lied … or had a bad memory, he could have been charged with lying to the FBI.

As investigative reporter Robert Parry explains:

What is arguably most disturbing about this case is that then-National Security Adviser Flynn was pushed into a perjury trap by Obama administration holdovers at the Justice Department who concocted an unorthodox legal rationale for subjecting Flynn to an FBI interrogation four days after he took office, testing Flynn’s recollection of the conversations while the FBI agents had transcripts of the calls intercepted by the National Security Agency. …

the Justice Department wasn’t seeking information about what Flynn said to Russian Ambassador … the intelligence agencies already had that information. Instead, Flynn was being quizzed on his precise recollection of the conversations and nailed for lying when his recollections deviated from the transcripts. [The FBI lied to fabricate a false pretext to interrogate Flynn for four (4) days to set an intentional trap to induce any deviation from the concealed transcripts to manufacture a crime where none existed.]

For Americans who worry about how the pervasive surveillance powers of the US government could be put to use criminalizing otherwise constitutionally protected speech and political associations, Flynn’s prosecution represents a troubling precedent.​

David Stockman shows that the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller themselves indicate the Flynn-Kislyak conversations contained no evidence of criminal behavior. ...

 

[AZJoe]

Another Goody from James Bovard:

The Justice Department was caught in another high-profile travesty … prosecutors were caught withholding massive amounts of evidence undermining federal charges. This is the latest in a long series of federal law enforcement debacles …

The Bundys have long claimed the feds were on a vendetta against them, and 3,300 pages of documents the Justice Department wrongfully concealed from their lawyers provides smoking guns that buttress their case.

A whistleblowing memo by BLM chief investigator Larry Wooten charges that BLM chose "the most intrusive, oppressive, large scale and militaristic trespass cattle (seizure) possible'' against Bundy. He also cited a "widespread pattern of bad judgment, lack of discipline, incredible bias, unprofessionalism and misconduct, as well as likely policy, ethical and legal violations" by BLM officials … newly-released documents confirm that [FBI] snipers were in place prior to the Bundy’s call for help.

The feds also belatedly turned over multiple threat assessments which revealed that the Bundys were not violent or dangerous, including an FBI analysis that concluded that BLM was "trying to provoke a conflict" … the left-leaning Intercept observed, federal missteps in this case “fueled longstanding perceptions … that the federal government is an underhanded institution that will stop at nothing to crush the little guy and cover up its own misdeeds.” …

In the early 1990s, the federal government decided to take down Randy Weaver … After Weaver was entrapped by a federal agent, U.S. Marshals trespassed on Weaver's land and killed his son. … After a jury found Weaver not guilty on all major charges, federal Judge Edward Lodge issued a lengthy catalog of the Justice Department’s and FBI’s misconduct and fabrication of evidence in the case. A top FBI official was later sent to prison for destroying key evidence in the case.

The Justice Department also did the conspiracy/suppression of evidence two-step against the Branch Davidians in Waco. A grand jury indictment accused 11 Davidians who survived 1993 federal assaults on their home of conspiring "with malice aforethought" to kill Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agents. The ATF's decision to launch a frontal attack on their home somehow proved that the residents sought an “armed confrontation.” … But a jury rejected the most serious charges … which the New York Times characterized as a "stunning defeat" for the federal government. Five years later, Americans learned that, contrary to Justice Department assertions, FBI attackers fired pyrotechnic grenades into the Davidians’ property before a massive fire erupted that left 80 people dead. …

Judge Navarro slammed the FBI for withholding key evidence. Unfortunately, this seems to be standard procedure for the FBI — including in their investigations of both the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns as well as the Las Vegas shooter who slaughtered concert goers last October. FBI officials have also been caught routinely twisting the truth … False FBI trial testimony may have helped sentence 32 innocent people to death, as the Washington Post reported in 2015. …

 

[Firestarter]

COINTELPRO was a program of the FBI that was started officially in 1956. In 1971 the Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI made secret information on COINTELPRO public.
The government´s reaction was to tell us they stopped COINTELPRO and continued it under a different name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO


Attorney Brian Glick wrote a book about CONTELPRO “War at Home” (1988?): https://ia802703.us.archive.org/35/i...ar_At_Home.pdf

Glick summarised the four main methods used during COINTELPRO as:
1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.

2. Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The FBI and police used myriad other "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.

3. Harassment Through the Legal System: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.

4. Extralegal Force and Violence: The FBI and police threatened, instigated, and themselves conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements. In the case of radical Black and Puerto Rican activists (and later Native Americans), these attacks—including political assassinations—were so extensive, vicious, and calculated that they can accurately be termed a form of official "terrorism."


On December 4, 1981 Executive Order 12333 effectively legalised the activities of the COINTELPRO program (and since 9/11 they’ve implemented new laws that go even further).
Glick mentions several Targeted Groups that were infiltrated and harassed by the American (secret) police since 1971: especially for Human Rights in South and Central America, and Human rights organisations in the USA.


For more information on COINTELPRO (and MK-ULTRA of the CIA): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/entry.php?1093-MKULTRA-COINTELPRO-Targeted-Individuals

 

[AZJoe]

Destroying Evidence, Committing Crimes, is FBI standard procedure

five months of text messages from a top FBI investigator ... had mysteriously vanished. The FBI-issued cell phone of Peter Strzok ... suddenly had problems ... and voila — all the messages between the two from Dec. 14, 2016, to May 17, 2017 vanished. ... “data that should have been automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval was not collected.” ...

this type of tactic has long been standard procedure for the FBI. Acting FBI chief Patrick Gray was forced to resign in 1973 after it was revealed that he had burned incriminating evidence from the White House in his fireplace ...

The FBI has a long history of “losing” evidence that would tarnish its halo. ...

In the Ruby Ridge case, when an FBI sniper gunned down an Idaho mother holding her baby in 1992, the chief of the FBI’s Violence Crimes division was sent to prison for destroying evidence.

When a Senate committee held hearings three years later, four FBI agents took the Fifth Amendment rather than tell the incriminating truth about their activities ... A subsequent Senate report concluded that the five successive FBI reports of internal investigations of the episode "are variously contradictory, inaccurate, and biased. They demonstrate a reluctance on the part of the FBI initially to take the incidents at Ruby Ridge seriously.” ...

The FBI suppressed mounds of evidence regarding its final assault on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993. ... investigators found pyrotechnic rounds the FBI fired into the building before the conflagration erupted. ... “as many as 100 FBI agents and officials may have known about” the military-style explosive devices used by the FBI at Waco, despite Reno’s and the FBI’s repeated denials that such devices were used. The FBI deceived Congress and a federal judge by withholding information that it had six closed-circuit television cameras monitoring the Davidians’ home throughout the siege. ... the FBI withheld the tapes for years ...

FBI evidence shenanigans destroyed the prosecution of Cliven Bundy, ... The feds charged the Bundy family with conspiracy in large part because the ranchers summoned militia to defend them after they claimed that FBI snipers had surrounded their ranch. Justice Department lawyers scoffed at this claim ... but newly-released documents confirm that snipers were in place prior to the Bundy’s call for help. ...

Evidence disposal is no problem for politically-favored targets of FBI investigation. ... the FBI agreed to destroy the laptops of top Hillary Clinton aides after a limited examination of their contents (including a promise not to examine any emails or content after January 31, 2015) ... The FBI shrugged off the Clinton team’s subsequent use of bleachbit software to erase thousands of her emails. ...

“I really don’t see how Congress can issue a subpoena for records and they then destroy those records. I am telling you that every business knows that if they get a subpoena for business records, and they destroy those records, they are subject to criminal prosecution and will be prosecuted.”

 

[goldenequity]

You people are scaring me.

 

[AZJoe]

Thanks to goldenequity the latest FBI foils their own plot: FBI IN PLOT TO FORCE MENTALLY ILL SON TO BE A TERRORIST

the FBI will announce that they’ve foiled yet another terrorist plot and saved lives. However, as the data shows, the majority of these cases involve psychologically diminished patsies who’ve been entirely groomed, armed, and entrapped by FBI agents. Simply put, the FBI manufactures terror threats and then takes credit for stopping them. …

in the case of Jerry Drake Varnell, the 23-year-old diagnosed schizophrenic … the FBI fomented terror … backtrack just a bit, to when the FBI began grooming their would-be right-wing militia terrorist, the vileness comes directly from the government.

“The FBI knew he was schizophrenic,” .. “The State of Oklahoma found him mentally incompetent and we, his parents have legal guardianship over him by the Court.” … Yet they knowingly continued to groom him, despite the clear immoral implications.

When they began grooming him … the FBI knew that Varnell was declared mentally unfit to live by himself and that he was a paranoid schizophrenic. Without … the FBI tactics playing mind games with this vulnerable man, the idea of him committing an act of terror would have likely never materialized. …

“He has no job, no money, no vehicle, and no driver’s license, due to the fact that he is schizophrenic … his parents do everything we can possible to keep him safe and functional….. He has suffered through countless serious full-blown schizophrenic delusional episodes and he has been put in numerous mental hospitals since he was 16 years old. The FBI came and picked him up … they gave him a vehicle, gave him a fake bomb, and every means to make this happen none of which he had access to on his own.” …

Jerry’s father told the informant to stay away from their son. However, according to the parents, the [FBI] informant “continued to sneak onto our residence. The FBI paid him to continue this operation and I believe they have cleared [the informant’s] criminal record.” …

the FBI deliberately targeted a severely delusional and mentally ill person. …

No one — other than the FBI — would’ve attempted to get a schizophrenic man with nothing to contribute to do their bidding as it would most likely be a futile effort — unless you are the FBI looking for an easy patsy to keep fear alive.

This is disgustingly atrocious evil behavior by the FBI! Seems the only "terror" plots the FBI ever foils are the ones they cook up themselves. Find some semi-mentally retarded or mentally ill patsy; prey upon their need for social interaction/companionship/belonging; then use psychological mind-games to brainwash the mentally challenged patsy to take some action the FBI tells them to.