Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The FBI And Ethics


FBI Director Robert S. Mueller has invaded the public's privacy far more than his notorious predecessor J. Edgar Hoover

A number of legal cases by unrelated litigants, filed all over the country and subsequently carried by many mainstream press outlets, reveals a pattern of abuse at the FBI, betraying a serious lack of ethics on the agency's part. It's to be expected that criminals will be investigated, but what happens when the FBI resorts to very underhanded and illegal tactics in doing so - and even worse - when these terrible practices are used against innocent people, falsely branded criminals.

What happens when innocent people's lives are irreparably destroyed, as seen in the Steven Hatfill case and many others. Hatfill is a scientist the FBI took the gloves off with, investigating him in an illegal and unethical manner, completely destroying his business and personal life and that of his family. He was later exonerated and sued the FBI for their abhorrent conduct, winning a multi-million dollar judgment.

If the FBI stuck to universally accepted investigative guidelines that do not violate human rights, such things would never happen. The accepted standard all over the world, when investigating suspected criminals, is to engage wiretaps and request personal and business files on the subject via a court order, utilize digital and paper forensics and conduct physical surveillance, in building a case. To do so, one must have proper probable cause to not only investigate, but bring charges.

However, the FBI has taken investigations to sick, unconscionable extremes. The FBI routinely gets very personal and very nasty when investigation people, via getting into their family life, among other things. The agency tries to turn people’s spouses, children and friends against them in very psychologically disturbing ways - issuing threats if they do not cooperate. There is something very insidious about law enforcement trying to mentally destroy people by sowing discord and division amongst spouses, their children and friends, in a sick game of divide and conquer.

It is unprofessional and sick and has nothing to do with good law enforcement procedures. This is compounded by the fact, many of the people being targeted have committed no crime, yet permanent damage is being inflicted on their lives, relationships and careers.

Many of these cases have to do with the FBI, White House or a member of Congress, attempting to settle a personal score with innocent citizens that LAWFULLY said or wrote something they did not like. Others have to do with the FBI trying to pin crimes on innocent people, seeking pansies to take the fall, in aiding the agency to fill arrest quotas, in order to look productive to Congress, in bids at extracting more of your tax dollars, which they often waste.

As legal documents have shown, the FBI also routinely ropes in other government agencies, such as the IRS and Social Security, among others, in abusing innocent people they investigate. It is an abuse of public office. Any individual that participates in such criminality against innocent people, which clearly violates the constitution, must be exposed to be public, fired, severely sued and imprisoned. Taxpayers do not pay your salaries for you to turn around and abuse innocent people. Public office should never be used to settle personal vendettas.

Recently, another case surfaced where the FBI and CIA, illegally investigated an American university professor, for writing a lawful article, questioning the legality of former president George W. Bush's policies. He simply exercised his constitutional right to free press and free speech, writing nothing unlawful or threatening and was abusively investigated by a power mad administration, for doing so.

A presidency is not meant for such abuses. It is petty, pathetic, unethical and financially costly (the nation cannot afford such wasteful expenditures). It was also a great waste of taxpayer money, but there are many cases like his and disgracefully so and the financial toll is devastating, via wasted resources and man-hours investigating innocent people. The professor is now suing.

The White House and U.S. Congress have allowed the 8-billion-dollar-a-year FBI to do the unthinkable, in conduct that not only affects American citizens, but people in other nations, when the invasive surveillance and abuses secretly reaches their shores, in violation of international law and is later exposed.

Nothing useful comes of this criminal misconduct on the FBI's part that is only adding an enormous amounts of unjustifiable debt to the national deficit. FBI Director, Robert S. Mueller, has turned the FBI into a private police force, single-handedly adding billions to the national deficit with illegal investigations and wasteful programs that didn't amount to a hill of beans, yet Capitol Hill allowed it, to the detriment of the nation.