THE FBI AND THE X-FILES The recent troubles of the Federal Bureau of Investigation are a far cry from the nearly unanimous praise the agency received from the federal government and the media for most of its life. Yet judging by the popularity of the Fox-TV show "The X-Files," the American public entertained doubts about the FBI years before it had heard about Robert Hanssen, Wen Ho Lee, or the agency's missing firearms and laptop computers. What a tidal change. Before the show debuted, Fox executives worried that the show's political undertones, implying that the FBI routinely withheld Important News from the public, would turn off too many viewers. Today, we know "The X-Files" was the hit that put Fox on the map. "One can see what an extraordinary development 'The X-Files' represents in American popular culture by concentrating on the fact that, for all its science-fiction and horror elements, it is fundamentally a series about the FBI," writes Paul Cantor in the summer issue of THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW. "As a TV advertiser might put it, however, this is not your father's FBI -- and certainly not J. Edgar Hoover's. Far from being the hero of the series, as one might expect on American television, the federal agency is virtually the villain." And the FBI's television villainy was not limited to bureaucratic incompetence, although that was one aspect. "As the series developed, it began to suggest that the opposition to [main characters] Mulder and Scully is the product of sinister forces working within the FBI or at least exerting pressure on it from other branches of the federal government. We gradually learn that this agency, which more than any other over the years has represented the federal government's ability to uncover threats to its citizens is being used as part of a plot to cover up the greatest threat the American people have ever faced -- a worldwide conspiracy to aid aliens in taking over the earth." "Alien takeover" aside, the reality of the FBI's problems may simply be inherent in the agency's operations as a government bureaucracy subject to political whims and pressures. See: "This Is Not Your Father's FBI: 'The X-Files' and the Delegitimation of the Nation-State" by Paul Cantor (THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, Summer 2001), at: http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink3-29-4.html Also see: Bruce Benson's op-ed, "The Countervailing Trend to FBI Failures," at: http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink3-29-5.html TO SERVE AND PROTECT: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice, by Bruce Benson (The Independent Institute/New York University Press, 1998) http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink3-29-6.html ************************************************************************** Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: freematt@coil.com with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week) Matthew Gaylor, (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/ **************************************************************************