Hatin' On the FBI

IN 1941, right after Pearl Harbor, my father, who had a law degree at the tender age of twenty two, and who knew that he was no military man, tried to join the FBI. Seeing through his scam, they rejected him. Their loss. He turned out to be a pretty good country lawyer. The years went by, I came into the world, and another war, this one, far less holy, this one instigated by the United States, commenced against Saddam Hussein, in 1990. As I marched down the street with five hundred other people, protesting with my "no war for oil" sign flappin' in the breeze, there they were, suits, ties, lapel pins, and binoculars, keeping a watchful eyes on us from far above, atop the roof of the hotel Hilton. I waved. They didn't wave back, unless it was with gun barrels. I was afraid to look that hard. Twenty years later, a good friend of mine became a "person of interest" in a string of serial killings in New Mexico, the one in which all the victims were Hispanic prostitutes. After a year or two of constant harassment, including twenty four seven surveillance of his home, and the dissection of his computer and photography equipment, he was releases from the cloud of suspicion, with great reluctance by the Fibbies, presumably. At one point I went striding into the local FBI office to protest the treatment of my friend, and was politely told to leave. I still feel fortunate to be been afforded that opportunity. When I became a fan of John Grisham and read all his novels, my aversion to the Bureau was reinforced by the lawyer-writer who seems to agree with me, and who knows whereof he speaks. The FBI was founded in 1908 as a response by the federal government to the incipient revolution that was brewing during the "progressive era". The agency's original purpose was not the apprehension of criminals, but rather, the control of the American lower, and potentially revolutionary classes. Then came J. Edgar hoover, and the rest, as we say, is history. The feud with RFK, the wiretapping of MLK, and all the thuggish activities we have come to know and, one assumes, despise. I despise the Federal Bureau of investigation, for good reason, methinks, and long for the day, which will never come, when law enforcement is once again the exclusive purview of the fifty nifty, and all a criminal has to do to evade capture is to cross a state line. Good luck with that.