"We are the FBI. We don't make mistakes."
No. A mistake is a simple thing. Mistakes happen to people on a day-to-day basis. If I spill Pepsi on my cat, that's a mistake. I wash off my cat and move on.
The FBI doesn't make mistakes. The FBI takes mistakes, covers them up, lies about them and turns them into high-energy, grade-A catastrophes. This is the substance of "the American way."
According to a Saturday MSNBC article, officials in the FBI "mishandled" a terrorism investigation in Florida, then changed and forged documents to hide their mistakes. Along the way, they apparently "retaliated" against an agent who had complained about the situation.
The New York Times first published the findings, including the report of an investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general's office.
According to the report, the FBI at one point used correction fluid to change the dates on three separate forms. The purpose of the alteration? To conceal what seems to be a violation of federal wiretap law.
Let me just repeat that: The FBI screwed up an investigation and screwed it up so badly that the only way for officials to fix it was to lie their heads off.
They used Wite-Out on their own official documents and messed with their own agent when he had a problem with it.
The agent in question, Mike German, had been part of an FBI investigation for the Tampa, Fla., FBI office.
However, he soon reported the Orlando agent already working on the case had done such a poor job that any chance of exposing the possible terrorist financing plot had been lost.
German subsequently left the bureau, and claims that after the Florida affair, his boss "retaliated against" him by keeping him away from much-desired assignments in training new undercover agents.
According to the report, after German made his complaints, the head of the FBI undercover unit refused to give him any assignments training undercover agents and reportedly told another agent German would "never work another undercover case."
The report claims the FBI inspector general determined the FBI had "mishandled and mismanaged" the affair, and supervisors knew about the problem but didn't try to fix them in a timely manner.
The most secretive and powerful bureau in the western world - a group so elite and strict only the best and the brightest have any hope of entering its ranks - has dealt with its own mistake like a six-year-old child does when he spills a glass of grape juice: Pull the rug over the spill, cover it up and lie to mommy about it.
Coming on the heels of reports about the brutality and reckless lawbreaking of the CIA - not to mention the agency's complete dedication to keeping the public in the dark about it - these FBI reports suggest an unhealthy trend among the letter organizations of the government.
Of course, this is probably an optimistic perspective. If this were a "trend," it would suggest these agencies haven't been doing it all along - and if they have, we're all the worse for it. \
These people are doing worse than spitting on us: They're ignoring us altogether.
As far as they're concerned, we're so unimportant that we don't even deserve being lied to properly.
Instead, they slap a little liquid paper on the dates, black out anything that looks controversial, pay some flunky to lie his head off and call it a day.
Looks like it's been working so far.
Write to Jonathan at tenement_cellar@msn.com
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