Bye Bye FBI?

Must it be replaced?

Captain Al Francis

Senior citizens like myself grew up listening to radio programs like “The FBI in Peace and War”, which lauded that agency as a bulwark of law enforcement. We believed that it defended us and protected our constitutionally guaranteed liberties.  The reality of what that organization has become is shocking indeed.

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Even now, I would like to believe that there are only a few “Bad Apples in the Barrel”. However common sense tells me otherwise. From Director Christopher Wray on down, the Federal Bureau of Investigation appears to have become tainted to the core. Politicized to the point that it cannot be reformed, only replaced by a new agency. That institution must be dedicated to the concept that its actions are completely apolitical and must remain so. It has to, if it is to gain and keep the respect , not only of the American public in general, but their fellow law officers throughout the land.

It is no secret that for years, many FBI agents have looked on state and local law enforcement agencies with distain, the “local yokels” so to speak. Their actions, when they became involved in a case, were frequently disdainful and dismissive. Never mind the fact that local law enforcement had a better grasp of the community issues facing their departments, and perhaps a better working relationship with community leaders and residents. For better or worse, the FBI’s attitude was: “The federal government is here! We’ll take over. Get out of our way.”

My first introduction to this behavior was after the crash of TWA 800 on July 17, 1996. Although it had little or no formal training in the field of aviation accident investigation, the local FBI Agent In Charge, James Kallstrom,  proceeded to take over the case from the National Transportation Safety Board investigators who were legally tasked with that responsibility. The results of this unprecedented action was what many believe was a completely botched job. It resulted in a completely erroneous conclusion that ended up being included in the NTSB’s “Probable Cause” report published three years later. I give a presentation on that crash titled: “The Downing of TWA 800 – What Really Happened”.

Here’s a link to a YouTube version of that presentation:

I realized that if the FBI could actively work to subvert the investigation of an event that took the lives of 230 people, they were basically capable of anything. In the years that followed, I became aware of more examples of apparent FBI malfeasance, especially by its leadership.  I’ll  give some examples:

In early 2001 a female agent from the FBI Phoenix field office was informed by a local flight school that several Saudi students at the facility were only interested in manipulating the controls of an aircraft in flight, and could care less about learning to takeoff and land. She passed this on to her superiors and it was ignored. The students turned out to be among the hijackers on 9/11.

After that awful day, a neighbor of mine ran a business which supplied specialty metals to the top secret Sandia Labs located at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, NM.  A man who answered his ad for a truck driver position asked only one question, not about salary or benefits, but would he be allowed to drive the truck onto the grounds of the airbase and to the labs? Since the individual appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, with a heavy accent, my neighbor called the FBI. Incredibly, the FBI showed no interest at all.

In January of 2002, after I had retired from TWA, I took a job as a pilot with an air ambulance company based in Albuquerque. After I had completed my training, I learned of an incident which had taken place in the fall of 2001. After a late night flight to Deming, NM, the female pilot, an air force veteran, was waiting for the ambulance to arrive with the patient and medical team for the return flight to Albuquerque. Dozing in her seat in the cockpit, she was awakened by a hand placed over her mouth and felt a blunt object on her temple. A heavily accented voice said: “Don’t turn around. Start the plane and takeoff. I’ll tell you our destination when we’re in the air”.  She then heard the cabin door slam shut, so there had to be at least one other individual onboard.

She did as she was told and started to taxi out for takeoff, The blunt object, probably a gun, was still at the back of her head. Realizing that if she flew the hijackers to another destination, they’d probably kill her when safely on the ground, leaving no witness to the act, Worse, they might crash the airplane into any one of the top secret facilities located in the state, including White Sands Missile Range at Alamogordo, Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, or the nuclear labs in Los Alamos. So, instead of taking off, she ran the aircraft off the runway at high speed and shut down the engines. Infuriated, the hijacker pistol whipped her so severely that she required many sutures to close her head wounds.

When the ambulance returned, they found her in the cockpit, unconscious and bleeding profusely. The FBI was of course notified of the event, and they interviewed her at the hospital. Unbelievably, they later accused her of faking the incident to gain notoriety.

Along with the rest of the nation, I listened to then FBI Director James Comey lay out in detail the case against Hillary Clinton on July 5, 2016. He described the smashing with hammers of government issued Blackberries and private cellphones by Hillary Clinton or her staff. He explained about her use of a private email server located in an un-secure location in Denver. This totally illegal server had been “wiped” by a program called “BleachBit” after the information it contained had been subpoenaed by a Congressional Committee. Clinton claimed she had only deleted “personal” emails from the server, which amounted to over thirty-three thousand documents. Comey went on to explain that while there had indeed been illegal actions taken by the former Secretary of State, in his opinion no “reasonable” prosecutor would file charges against her. Mind boggling!

In the months ahead, before and after the 2016 election, the FBI illegally obtained FISA warrants which allowed them to spy on the Trump campaign and the transition team, after Trump won the election. FBI agent Peter Strzok and his girlfriend Lisa Page collaborated to frame Trumps National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn, and advanced the “Russia Collusion” hoax using the phony dossier purchased and supplied by the Clinton campaign.

After the 2020 election, awarded in very controversial circumstances to Joe Biden, the FBI has continued to harass former Trump Cabinet Members and advisors, conducting pre dawn raids on many of their private residences and offices. The latest example of this rogue behavior is the raid conducted last Monday at Trumps Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.

If the awesome power of the FBI and other offices of the Department of Justice can be used against a former President and his family, what chance does the average citizen have should they become the target of the administrations wrath? Ask the January 6th protestors who still languish, untried and un-convicted, as political prisoners in federal prisons.

It would appear that the current administration is hoping, indeed praying for an armed uprising in this country.  God help us all if they succeed in causing one because of their draconian tactics. Martial Law will surely follow.

A last thought. After the lastest incident at Mar-a-Lago a few former members of the FBI have had enough, and are beginning to speak out. There surely must be current FBI agents who know what is going on is wrong, but keep silent for fear of retaliation or losing their jobs. They must be reminind of what happened to members of the Axis forces after they were defeated by the Allies in World War Two. When the war crime trials began, many of the defendants tried to use the “I was only following orders” defence. They ended up hanging from the same gibbets as those above them, who gave orders that should have been rufused on moral grounds, but instead were carried out.