Phil Brennan
Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2001

You've got a tough job ahead of you, once you get past all that preening and gasbaggery your senatorial inquisitors engage in during your confirmation hearings, but the worst of it won't be what the media and the honorable gasbags say they want you to do once you take over.

They expect you to tinker with the machinery until you get it whirring along again. They want you to be the total executive who moves in, takes over and puts the place in order. In short, they expect you to do what a new CEO would do when taking over a major business operation that has fallen into disrepair: fix what's broken, shake up the table of organization, get rid of the deadwood, and start making big profits for the stockholders.

But the FBI isn't a business. It's the investigative arm of the Justice Department. Its principal job is to go out and dig up the facts to back up whatever litigation DOJ is working on. Its field is interstate crime.

In recent years, however, the Bureau has become something more. And it's that something more that you have to deal with if you're going to restore public confidence in the FBI.

The FBI has become an agency that views its principal function as being the guardian of the federal government. And its principal weapon in protecting the interests of the government and its top executives has been the cover-up. These are the earmarks of a police state. A police agency that allows itself to become the servant of government becomes an enemy of the public it is sworn to serve and protect.

Whatever else is wrong with the Bureau - investigative sloppiness, corruption among its top executives and agents - even betrayal of country - all of this and more is a side effect of the agency's willingness to prostitute itself to protect corrupt officials of the federal government. That's where the rot began. If you really want to reform the FBI, that's where you have to start.

To begin with, as painful as it may prove to be, you are going to have to go back and take a very careful look at some of the most egregious abuses of the public trust of which your agency has been guilty.

A good place to start would be with the shamefully corrupt activities of the Bureau in connection with the so-called investigation of the destruction of TWA Flight 800.

Anyone who has taken the trouble to examine the activities of the Bureau in that fiasco can reach no other conclusion than that the agency made every effort to cover up any facts inconsistent with the federal government's predetermined conclusion - that the cause of the disaster was an accident when all the evidence shows that not to have been the case.

Several hundred extremely credible eyewitness swore they saw what can only be described as a missile rise from the surface and head toward where TWA 800 exploded in midair. The FBI ignored their testimony. There isn't space here to cover their testimony, but it's readily available to you, and I urge you to look into it.

Then New York SAC James Kallstrom fought to keep the damaging eyewitness testimony from NTSB hearings and the public. In December 1997 he wrote NTSB Chairman Hall: "... the FBI objects to the use of the CIA video at the hearing if the purpose is to examine the eyewitnesses' observations or negate the possibility that a missile caused the crash. Because they are the product of a criminal investigation and the remote possibility that the criminal investigation could be reactivated, the FBI also objects to requests to disclose or include in the public docket of any FBI FD-302s or summaries of FD-302s prepared by the NTSB that report the results of any interviews or reinterviews of the 244 eyewitnesses whose reports were examined by the CIA in connection with its analysis and to calling any eyewitnesses to testify at the public hearing."

There's a word for that: It's called "cover-up."

Then there's the matter of Ruby Ridge and Waco. The FBI deliberately withheld a secret memo that revealed the dissension in the FBI's upper echelon concerning the matter of gassing the Branch Davidians.

Here are excerpts from that memo as reported by NewsMax.com:

"A lot of pressure is coming from [hostage rescue team commander Richard] Rogers," wrote deputy assistant FBI director Danny O. Coulson - the FBI’s top expert on tactical matters - in an internal FBI memo during the Waco siege on March 23, 1993 - a memo withheld from congressional investigators.

"We had similar problems in Idaho with him [Rogers], and he argued and convinced the SACs [special agents in charge of local FBI offices] that Weaver would not come out. That proved to be wrong. I believe he is a significant part of the problem here."

Release of the memo’s contents by The Dallas Morning News angered members of Congress who said they were kept in the dark about the dissension expressed in the document, which shows that a top Bureau official was dubious about Roger’s claim that only by gassing the Branch Davidians could the matter be resolved.

Moreover, the fact that the on-scene FBI boss had made similar claims that only extreme action could resolve the standoff at Ruby Ridge, which resulted in the death of Weaver’s wife and son, turned out to be untrue - Rogers had insisted that Weaver would never voluntarily surrender when in fact Weaver eventually did.

During the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff, white supremacist Randy Weaver’s wife was killed by an FBI sniper under Mr. Rogers' command after Rogers relaxed bureau rules of engagement and insisted that only an all-out tank and tear-gas assault on the Weavers' cabin could end the standoff.

Coulson found a similar pattern developing at Waco.

"All of their intelligence indicates that [sect leader] David [Koresh] does not intend suicide and that he will come out eventually," Mr. Coulson's memo added.

Angered House of Representative probers said that the failure of the FBI to make Coulson’s key memo available was simply one more instance of the Bureau’s history of stonewalling congressional investigators. They say that they have gotten less than half of the documents they have demanded. Senate staffers echo the complaints of their colleagues on the other side of Capitol Hill

"We've had a subpoena out there for all relevant documents - all documents - since Sept. 7, 1999," Mark Corallo, spokesman for the House Government Reform Committee, told the Dallas Morning News. "Is the Department of Justice withholding only embarrassing documents from us? It makes you wonder."

Another matter that makes one wonder involved a secret FBI operation that targeted pro-life groups and individuals, even including New York's late Cardinal O'Connor.

The Bureau falsely told a member of Congress that it was not tracking members of the pro-life movement when that's exactly what the Bureau was doing.

In responding to a request from Rep. Charles Taylor for information on reports that the feds were targeting pro-lifers, the FBI insisted that it only tracks individuals or organizations known to be or suspected of being involved in criminal activities, according to Insight magazine.

Despite the existence of documents that flatly contradict the Bureau’s assertion, the FBI told Taylor they do not maintain files on people merely because they are involved in the pro-life movement.

"The FBI initiates FACE [Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrance Act of 1994] investigations based upon the receipt of information indicating that a potential criminal violation has occurred which meets the … threshold" of the law which, essentially, prohibits any interference or threat or harm to people seeking abortions or those providing such services," the Bureau wrote Taylor.

"For information, when an investigation is initiated by the FBI, an investigative file is opened and all information obtained throughout the investigative period is maintained therein. The FBI does not maintain non-investigative files on individuals or organizations involved in anti-abortion activities."

This in the face of official documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the watchdog organization Judicial Watch, that show there are "many files on non-violent groups such as the Conference of Bishops and other organizations - and prominent people like Cardinal O’Conner - in the forefront of the pro-life movement with no known ties to criminal actions."

"Besides political and biographical information on such people and groups, the FBI also appears to have included extensive telephone, credit card, financial and even lobbying records on people and groups," Insight magazine reported, citing one shocking case involving the National Right to Life Committee in which "an extensive investigative file dates back to 1978 on suspected fraud and other wrongdoing."

The documents revealed that the federal government has a hitherto secret program VAAPCOM (Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy) or VAAP, which targeted a host of individuals and groups involved in the pro-life movement including America’s Catholic bishops, Concerned Women for America, the Rev. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, the National Right to Life Committee and similar groups.

According to Insight, "not only does the file on the Bishops’ group exist in the criminal database, but there also is information on the late Cardinal John O’Conner’s role in the pro-life movement, as well as information on other groups with no known ties to criminal types or illegal activities. "

Sources at the FBI and the Justice Department told Insight that VAAPCON was meant to establish a federal database that would enable the Bureau and other law enforcement agencies to track any criminal elements in the pro-life movement suspected of committing terrorist-type crimes, including murder, bombings, arson and harassment.

Objections by some FBI officials that VAAP covered more ground than it is meant to do were overruled by higher-ups in Janet Reno’s Justice Department.

"It wasn’t the inclusion of suspected criminals or the infusion of old files on such activities that we objected to," a senior FBI agent told Insight. "It was the collection of political and personal information on people such as the cardinal that many of us found objectionable. It should not be in the database or passed over to Justice for general reading – this is obviously political in nature and something we work hard to avoid."

That's a classic example of the kind of police-state activities the Bureau has conducted in recent years - all of them covered up by the Bureau's top executives.

That's where you have to begin.

When he announced your appointment to head the FBI, President Bush said you enjoyed his full confidence. Now its up to you to justify that confidence.

Good luck, and God be with you.

Phil Brennan

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor and publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee, which won statehood for Alaska.

E-mail: pvb@pvbr.com

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