{"id":28736,"date":"2017-12-11T12:01:20","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T17:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28736"},"modified":"2017-12-11T12:01:20","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T17:01:20","slug":"the-fbi-is-not-your-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28736","title":{"rendered":"The FBI is Not Your Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/12\/11\/the-fbi-is-not-your-friend\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">The FBI is Not Your Friend<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"socialtwo\">\n<div class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 a2a_default_style left-social\" data-a2a-icon-color=\"unset\">\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>One of the unfortunate ironies of the manufactured \u201cRussiagate\u201d 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. Rather, as James Bovard <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/10\/24\/the-fbis-forgotten-criminal-history\/\">writes<\/a>, it<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>has a long record of both deceit and incompetence. Five years ago, Americans learned that the FBI was teaching its agents that \u2018the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.\u2019 This has practically been the Bureau\u2019s motif since its creation in 1908\u2026. The FBI has always used its \u2018good guy\u2019 image to keep a lid on its crimes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bovard has made a vocation of cataloging the FBI\u2019s many offenses against liberty and justice, for which we are forever in his debt.<\/p>\n<p>Things are certainly not different today. Take the case of Michael Flynn, the retired lieutenant general who spent less than a month as Donald Trump\u2019s national-security adviser. Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in connection with conversations he had with Russia\u2019s then-ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, between Trump\u2019s election and inauguration. One need not be an admirer of Flynn \u2014 and for many reasons I certainly am not \u2014 to be disturbed by how the FBI has handled this case.<\/p>\n<p>One ought to be immediately suspicious whenever someone is charged with or pleads guilty to lying to the FBI without any underlying crime being charged. Former assistant U.S. attorney Andrew C. McCarthy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/454269\/michael-flynn-plea-no-breakthrough-russia-investigation\">points out<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When a prosecutor has a cooperator who was an accomplice in a major criminal scheme, the cooperator is made to plead guilty to the scheme.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The FBI is Not Your Friend One of the unfortunate ironies of the manufactured \u201cRussiagate\u201d 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. Rather, as James Bovard writes, it has a long record of both deceit and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5493,7844,301,16594,14807,15282,16771,827],"class_list":["post-28736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-donald-trump","tag-fbi","tag-james-bovard","tag-michael-flynn","tag-russiagate","tag-sheldon-richman","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28737,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28736\/revisions\/28737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}