The Wall Street Journal: Abolish the FBI

[grarpamp]

> The Wall Street Journal: Abolish the FBI.
> https://www.wsj.com/articles/abolish-fbi-durham-indictment-russia-collusion-clinton-sussman-strzok-comey-corruption-11632256384

He Thought I Was An Undercover Fed

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/he-thought-i-was-an-undercover-fed/

https://jimbovard.com/blog/2021/08/22/ruby-ridge-and-the-fbi-license-to-kill/
https://www.jimbovard.com/Diatribe%20FBI%20Freeh%20%201%2026%2095.htm
https://jimbovard.com/blog/2020/03/03/ruby-ridge-the-fbi-and-louis-freeh-my-1995-cover-story/
https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Your-Pain-Government-Clinton-Gore/dp/0312230826

>From the early 1990s onward, I was exposing FBI crimes, lies, and
cover-ups. FBI director Louis Freeh publicly denounced me after I
wrote a Wall Street Journal piece on the FBI’s killing of an innocent
mother holding her baby at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. I continued hammering
FBI abuses in the Journal, Playboy, American Spectator, and other
publications.

One of the FBI’s biggest blunders occurred when it falsely accused a
hapless security guard of masterminding an explosion at the 1996
Olympics in Atlanta. Richard Jewell heroically saved lives by
detecting and removing a pipe bomb before it exploded. But the FBI
decided that Jewell had actually planted the bomb and leaked that
charge to the media, which proceeded to drag Jewell’s life through the
dirt for eighty-eight days. The FBI did nothing to curb the media
harassment long after it recognized Jewell was innocent. I flogged the
FBI’s vilification of Jewell in my 2000 book, Feeling Your Pain: The
Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years.

In August 2001, I took a brief vacation in the mountains of western
North Carolina. My then spouse was leafing through a tourist guidebook
and swooned over a chalet inn she saw that was far off the beaten
path. Alas, the directions to that hideaway were not worth a plug
nickel. After futilely roving that zip code for an hour, I pulled up
in front of a hardware store in Whittier, a one-stoplight hamlet, to
cuss and recheck the map.

I stepped out of my car and fired up a cheap cigar as I leaned against
the front hood of my Ford. Ninety seconds later, a big ol’ bald guy
wearing bib overalls came bounding out of the hardware store and asked
in a booming voice: "What part of Maryland you from?"

"Rockville," I replied.

He told me his name was Dennis and started chatting me up at racehorse
pace. He told me that he was originally from Maryland, had been living
down here for twenty years, worked as a long-haul truck driver and
maybe that’s why he had prostate problems. He boasted that he lost
$5,000 gambling last year at a nearby Cherokee Indian casino but a
buddy of his lost $60,000. He said he owned four acres of land a few
miles away and then bragged about all the babes he’d boinked before he
got married in 1987.

I nodded and threw in an occasional "huh." Since I was raised in the
mountains of Virginia, I was accustomed to country folks rattling on
like they hadn’t spoken to anyone since the last solar eclipse. But
something about this guy’s palavering seemed amiss.

And then he suddenly paused midsentence and stared at me intently. "I
think you might be an undercover federal agent," he gravely announced.
Holy crap! I would have been less astounded if he’d accused me of
being a vampire come to rob the local blood bank.

"Why do you think I’m a fed?" I asked incredulously. Shazam—my
battered railroad cap was supposed to make me immune from such
suspicions. "Because you’re driving a black car with a Maryland
license plate," he replied without missing a beat.

I rolled my eyes and raised both arms by my side. "Are there any other
signs of undercover federal agents?" I asked.

    "Ya—they have hidden tracking devices on the underside of the back
of the car."

    "Feel free to check out my car," I grinned.

    "OK!"

Whittier, North Carolina. Wiki Commons

He and I walked to the back of my vehicle, he got down on his knees
and pawed his big right hand around the Ford’s underside. A minute
later, after he found no GPS tracker, he decided I wasn’t a G-man and
gave me a hearty handshake.

    "I didn’t mean no harm by saying you were a fed," he apologized.

    "No sweat," I replied. "Feds don’t like me."

"It’s just that this whole area was crawling with hundreds of FBI
agents a few years ago—ever since they heard Eric Rudolph was hiding
out somewhere in the mountains nearby," Dennis explained. "Whoa—I had
forgotten the feds came looking for Rudolph in North Carolina," I
replied.

After the FBI finished slandering Richard Jewell, they announced that
Rudolph was the 1996 Olympic bomber, placed him on their Most Wanted
list, and put a million-dollar bounty on his head.

Dennis warmed to the subject. "The FBI bragged that they were sending
their best agents here and would catch Rudolph real quick. FBI came in
like they owned the place. When they took over a motel for their
headquarters, their agents went around banging on doors and threw
every guest out on the spot. Their strutting was so bad that some
restaurants refused to serve them. Well, they didn’t really
refuse—they just told the FBI agents they had to leave their guns
outside. Restaurants knew the agents weren’t allowed to do that.
People taunted the feds with signs saying, 'Eric Rudolph Ate Here.'"

"And they never caught Rudolph," I commented. "No," Dennis replied.
"Nobody would give them the time of day. After a few months, most of
the agents were sent back to Washington."

Dennis became more at ease after I mentioned that I’d written about
federal outrages at Waco and Ruby Ridge—two cases that epitomized the
FBI’s right to kill with impunity. Dennis was far better informed on
Waco and Ruby Ridge than the vast majority of people I met inside the
Beltway, who took their reality from the Washington Post.

Dennis wasn’t the type to take guff from any federal agent. He was a
hunter, and proudly recapped how he’d told a Fish and Wildlife Service
agent to go to hell a few months earlier. He started out talking about
how the people in that neck of the woods were fine folks but later
lamented that most of his neighbors had no interest in ideas. He
wasn’t like them, he assured me, because "I didn’t fall off the pickle
wagon yesterday" (i.e., wasn’t born yesterday).

After two hours, Dennis was "talked out." He wasn’t familiar with that
chalet that my wife wanted to visit but said that she and I were
welcome to stay at his house that night. I thanked him kindly but said
we should probably be heading down the road toward Asheville.

Eric Rudolph was finally captured in 2003 by a local policeman in a
small town about an hour from that hardware store. He pleaded guilty
to the Atlanta bombing as well as bombings of abortion clinics and a
lesbian nightclub. Shortly after Rudolph was apprehended after more
than four years in the mountains, a British newspaper pointed out that
the FBI’s failure to catch him illustrated "all the shortcomings of a
hi-tech, militarized federal force unable to negotiate such alien, not
to say hostile, territory."

To nail Rudolph, the feds had pulled out all their tricks, including
"bloodhounds, electronic motion detectors, and heat-sensing
helicopters." Instead of a triumphal "perp walk" and press conference,
the FBI spurred the local sale of bumper stickers proclaiming, “Eric
Rudolph: 1998 Hide and Seek Champion.”

One lesson I took from Dennis was that the FBI’s power and federal
legitimacy are far more tenuous than Washington recognizes. Beyond the
nation’s big cities and the coastlines, federal authority hinges
largely on the consent of local citizens. Once that consent vanishes,
FBI agents are left to sit in their cars eating their lunches all by
themselves. But plenty of pundits and congressmen still clamor for the
government to confiscate everyone’s guns or forcibly inject their
children. If the feds came in and started shooting mountain men who
refused to surrender their firearms, they would likely quickly find
themselves in a worse plight than Custer at the Little Big Horn.

And the other lesson I took from meeting Dennis?

People in Washington think I’m a redneck, and rednecks think I’m an
undercover fed. I can’t get a break.