11/9/2016 -
Bob Barr Townhall.com
There was a point in time when federal law enforcement was the
standard-bearer for policing. Agencies such as the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, the Department of Justice, and the Secret Service were the gold
standard for professionalism and integrity that state and local agencies looked
up to. This was the case when I worked closely with federal law
enforcement during my tenure as the United States Attorney for the Northern
District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990. But, things have changed.
More often than not, in recent years, federal law enforcement
agencies find themselves in the news not for breaking a massive, complex
investigation; but defending the misdeeds of its agents or the mistakes of its
leaders. Add to this the massive growth in federal criminal laws, and the
inevitable bureaucracies such growth spurs, and you have a recipe for disaster.
This current decline of federal law enforcement can be traced back
to at least the Clinton Administration, when the politicization of the
Department of Justice reached a level not seen since the Administration of
Richard Nixon.
The 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, led
by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), but
ultimately involving federal agencies from the FBI to the Department of
Defense, was a colossal and tragic screw up resulting in the deaths of four
agents and more than six dozen civilians (including many children). Yet,
despite the Attorney General nominally taking the “blame” for the mess, not a
single federal employee was disciplined in the aftermath. “Accountability”
was just a fig leaf.
The Clinton Justice Department found itself at the center of one
political firestorm after another – from the bungled investigation surrounding
illegal contributions to the campaign of then-Vice President Al Gore, to the
almost-comically mishandled seizure and deportation to Cuba of youngster Elian
Gonzalez.
Unfortunately, things were little improved at the Justice
Department during the subsequent Administration of George W. Bush. The
open political pressure brought to bear on a number of U.S. Attorneys during
the Bush Administration cast a pall over this group of non-partisan
prosecutors. The perception of the Department as the pinnacle of respect
for constitutional rights, was further diminished when Bush’s Attorney General
Alberto Gonzalez testified before Congress that the “great writ of habeas
corpus” was not a constitutionally-guaranteed right.
Matters would sink even lower under the Executive leadership of
Barack Obama.
Symptomatic of a “Bureaucracy Gone Wild,” one of the first scandals
of the Obama Administration was the ATF’s “Fast and Furious” operation, in
which Department of Justice officials approved the intentional sale
of firearms to known gun traffickers, then lost track of those weapons. Rather
than admit its fault and hold those responsible accountable, the Department
ducked and dodged all attempts by congressional investigators to find out what
went wrong; continuing a tradition begun nearly two decades earlier.
Most recently, we are witnessing the impact of inept leadership at
the FBI under Director James Comey. Rather than handling the twin
investigations of possible “pay-to-play” allegations between the Clinton
Foundation and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the improper use
of e-mail accounts, as the Justice Department and the FBI historically
conducted themselves – by notcommenting on or allowing themselves
to be drawn into divulging details of ongoing investigations –
this FBI Director appears to have gone out of his way to comment
and characterize ongoinginvestigations. In so doing, he has
undercut the credibility of his agency that had been its stock-in-trade for
decades.
Add to Comey’s bungled leadership the highly improper meeting
between former President Bill Clinton and current Attorney General Loretta
Lynch smack-dab in the middle of the FBI’s investigations, and there is little
wonder why citizen respect for the government is at an all-time low.
The moral and professional failures of law enforcement officials
have not been limited to the ATF, the FBI and the Office of the Attorney
General. Even the Secret Service, one of the most respected of federal
law enforcement agencies, has seen its stock plummet as its ranks fell victim
to scandals from hookers in Colombia to drunk driving at home. Making
matters worse for the Secret Service, when a high-ranking member of the House
of Representatives – Jason Chaffetz – sought to investigate some of the
problems plaguing the Service, it resorted to leaking potentially embarrassing
information about the Congressman.
While Hollywood continues to churn out popular law enforcement
programs extolling the exploits of the men and women who serve in those
agencies, our next real-life president will have a much harder job rebuilding
the tarnished reputation and less-than-stellar leadership of our country’s
federal law enforcement system. But it is a task that truly ought to be
high on the new President’s To Do List.
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