The FBI and/or the Law

THIS IS A VERY SPECIAL DAY for America! Today, in a solemn, properly anal ceremony, probably at the White House with Obama smiling nearby, the new Director of the FBI was sworn in. This is big, because it isn't often that the FBI gets a new director. In the eighty or ninety year history of this esteemed law enforcement agency, there have been what, three or four directors at most? The right person is always chosen to head the Bureau, for the long haul. Each director stays a long time, builds an impressive array of relationships and arrangements, and a potent power base. J. Edgar Hoover, the first director, stayed over forty years and damn near came to rule America; he was way above and beyond being fired by anyone so weak and small as the President of the United States; he had a dirty bill of goods, real and imaginary, on all of them. Even Attorney General Bobby Kennedy couldn't touch J. Edgar, and Bobby Kennedy wasn't afraid to take on the mafia. The mafia, however,couldn't use Bobby's extramarital affairs against him. J. Edgar Hoover could, and would,in a heartbeat. The new director, a youngish sounding guy, obviously ebullient, proclaimed that he now had the best job he had ever or would ever have, as the head of a remarkable group of Americans proudly serving their county. IN fact, this is the last job he'll ever have; once he builds his power base and gets the dirty laundry on the folks at the top, he too will enjoy long term employment security, just like each of his few predecessors. The FBI is a remarkable group of people, for sure. The did a remarkably good job of torturing Martin Luther King, and tapping his telephones, and recording King and his wife having sex. They did an even better job of hounding one of my best friends for several years, accusing him being a serial killer, when in fact he is a perfectly good citizen, as everyone knows. The Fibbies (slang for FBI) finaly realized that my friend was innocent, after shadowing him for two years, confiscating all his personal beliongings, ruining his computer, and damned near ruining his life. One more complaint about the FBI, though minor: my father, right after Pearl harbor,tried to join the FBI to avoid military service. He had a new law degree, but was rejected. For a good albeit fictional description of the FBI, read John Grisham. In Grisham's novels, the FBI has money to burn, they burn it doing whatever they feel necessary to catch criminals, and they are under immense pressure to catch criminals. Catching criminals often involves elaborate and crazy schemes of dubious legality. The FBI, we know, is not afraid to operate outside the law. Ask the Martin Luther King family. Grisham obviously does not like the FBI, nor does he have the highest regard for the leagl profession the way it works in America, and he was part of it for long enough to have an educated opinion of both the FBI and the law. The new director requires that all FBI employees visit the MLK Menorial, to atone for past sins. Good start, but we'll see. If only the FBI and the law were more often the same thing.