We need to end the FBI as we know it. It needs to be broken up. I mean, clearly, it has become corrupt. The leadership is corrupt. You can talk to FBI agents in the field. I was just doing this in this past week. – Senator Tom Hawley (R-MO)

Peter Strzok called “Crossfire Hurricane” the bureau’s insurance policy — against a Trump presidency.  It was a good way to show off for his mistress, Lisa Page — a rabid anti-Trump FBI lawyer.

Apparently there are plenty of Strzok’s left inside the FBI, like the guys in charge of investigating the supposed plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmar, where most of the conspiracists were FBI agents who had constantly kept the plot moving forward with suggestions and offers of help with weapons and explosives. Richard Trask, the special agent in charge of the investigation was was arrested in July 2021 for physically assaulting and choking his wife after attending a swingers party. He was fired, but the rot went higher:

The ongoing legal drama is a reminder of the handiwork of Steven D’Antuono, former head of the Detroit FBI field office, which was primarily responsible for hatching and executing the Whitmer fednapping hoax. Supervising and undercover agents working out of that Detroit office and its satellite branches managed the day-to-day details of the wide-ranging operation such as handling the main FBI informant, Dan Chappel, who was compensated at least $60,000 in cash and personal items paid by the FBI for luring the men into the trap. About a week after law enforcement authorities announced arrests in the case on October 8, 2020, D’Antuono was rewarded with a plum assignment: head of the Washington FBI field office

From where he has since gleefully been involved in the Hunter Biden laptop investigation and those of the January 6 “Insurrection”. No surprises that after publicly yapping about catching the infamous pipe bombers of that day nothing has turned up from all the surveillance and investigative tools at his disposal. Much easier going after people who didn’t even enter the Capitol building:

This is a shameful story. Bolanos is 69. [ he takes care of his elderly mother, who is 94] He was fully cooperating with [the FBI], he had documentary evidence he wasn’t there when it went down — yet still, they upended his life, not caring how that might harm him. If they had any further questions, they could have asked him. They did the 6 a.m. in the morning thing for maximum terrorizing [“I opened the door and there’s about 10 tactical police soldiers and one is pointing a rifle at my head. [They had] a battering ram and a crowbar.”], even tipped off NBC for that little extra shame. He’s never been charged, and he still doesn’t have his devices back. Now, he clearly needs a lawyer to push back more on his behalf, but this appears to be something that never should have happened to begin with. They destroyed his life.

And intimidating people into giving up their Miranda Rights:

Khater has been in jail ever since, housed in the D.C. gulag specifically used to detain January 6 protesters; his trial is scheduled for June 6. But Khater’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, is now asking the court to toss the interrogation as evidence, arguing that the FBI used “coercion and deception” to force Khater into waiving his Miranda rights. Further, Tacopina wrote in a February 22 motion that Palmertree lied in his FBI report by claiming he advised Khater about the “nature of the interview” before asking Khater to waive his rights.

All of this covered in Part I, Part II and Part III, raises the question: can the FBI be saved?

It should be no surprise in the wake of such massive and ongoing corruption – of a type worse than the mere monetary bribery that Hoover so feared but that of ethics, morality and willingness to be law-abiding – that there are people who think it can’t be, like current FBI agents.

I read your article, and although you and your retiree Bureau co-author would hope to rehab the FBI – those of us seeing the internal work know it must be eliminated.  … This place is corrupted to the fundamental level. And much of the FBI I have seen in the past 6 years is beyond saving. … “Shut it all down” needs to be the resounding message. Forget probation. Suspension without pay. The FBI needs to give up badge and gun while we root out all of the failed culture of oath violations. If it never can be reestablished, so be it.

To be fair there are also whistleblowers. Marcus Allen dared to questioned the honesty of Director Wray’s testimony in March 2021 about the events of January 6:

There is a significant counter-story to the events of 6 January 2021 at the US Capitol. There is a good possibility the DC elements of our organization are not being forthright about the events of the day or the influence of government assets.

The lawyer for Intelligence Analyst Marcus Allen told Congress his client, a retired Marine, was once named the FBI employee of the year in his Charlotte, N.C., office but today has found himself without a paycheck (so no family health insurance for starters) and sidelined after raising concerns about the accuracy of Wray’s testimony during a Senate hearing. In fact, FBI leaders even questioned Allen’s “allegiance to the United States” before suspending his security clearance even though Allen served tours of duty during the Iraq war after the Sept. 11 attacks,

Another agent, Garrett O’Boyle, said that he joined the FBI to catch “bad guys,” but “Bad guys are running part of the government now.” He testified about the FBI prioritising investigations into anti-abortion protestors in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned the constitutional right to the procedure – even though it was pro-abortion protestors who hit the streets.

Special Agent Stephen Friend also testified about his experience blowing the whistle. He made a complaint to the Office of Special Counsel alleging that he was suspended for raising concerns about the bureau’s alleged manipulation of crime statistics, its treatment of Jan. 6 defendants, and its use of SWAT teams:

“At each level of my chain of command, leadership cautioned that despite my exemplary work performance, whistleblowing placed my otherwise bright future with the FBI at risk. Special agents take an oath to protect the US Constitution,” he will say. “The dangers of federal law enforcement overreach where hammered home to me when I was required to attend trainings at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and MLK Memorial. I cited my oath and training in my conversations with my FBI supervisors. Nevertheless, the FBI weaponized the security clearance processes to facilitate my removal from active duty within one month of my disclosures.

In addition to an indefinite, unpaid suspension, the FBI initiated a campaign of humiliation and intimidation to punish and pressure me to resign,” his statement continues. In violation of HIPPA, individuals at the FBI leaked my private medical information to a reporter at the New York Times. In violation of the Privacy Act, the FBI refused to furnish my training records for several months.

The FBI denied my request to seek outside employment, in an obvious attempt to deprive me of the ability to support my family. Finally, the FBI Inspection Division imposed an illegal gag order in an attempt to prevent me from communicating with my family and attorneys”

The treatment of all these men is in direct violation of whistleblower laws.

Meanwhile other whistleblowers have revealed details of how the FBI has been leveraging the J6 incident:

A new House Republican report said whistleblower testimony reveals the FBI is categorizing cases stemming from the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, in such a way as to mislead about and artificially inflate the rise in domestic terrorism in the United States.

Whistleblowers assert that the FBI pressured agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism (DVE), and even manufactured DVE cases where they may not otherwise exist, while manipulating its case categorization system to feign a national problem.’

Looking at the way those men were treated by their own, as well as the Durham report and the FISA violations, reporter Clarice Fieldman, described the FBI as A Cabal of Sociopaths. But it’s not just reporters who are thinking along these lines. The U.S. House’s Republican Judiciary Committee Staff Report of November 4, 2022, concluded that:

The FBI’s Washington hierarchy [is] ‘rotted at its core,’ maintaining a ‘systemic culture of unaccountability,’ and full of ‘rampant corruption, manipulation, and abuse.’ . . . The FBI has abused its law-enforcement authorities for political purposes…

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) was even more blunt. He’s given up on investigations into the FBI and Directors like Wray telling people that they’ve reformed policies:

We need to end the FBI as we know it. It needs to be broken up. I mean, clearly, it has become corrupt. The leadership is corrupt. You can talk to FBI agents in the field. I was just doing this in this past week. Great folks in my home state all over the place. But they are not served by this leadership. This leadership has become totally radically politicized, and we have got to change it.”

When you have a senior and respected GOP Senator saying that you know things are getting serious. That idea of breaking the agency up seems to be the main one under discussion and this article dwells less on detailed recommendations than the philosophy behind it:

A radical, impactful, but also politically workable solution is to instead break up the FBI into many smaller components—at least one-dozen separate agencies. These smaller components would have less power and prestige, and allow Congress greater oversight over the specific results and actions at each newly independent organization. Further, Congress would have far greater ability to tweak funding for these separate smaller agencies based on results, and the priorities of the American people.

Most important, splitting the FBI into smaller and more focused organizations would allow the White House—the president, elected by the people—direct control over the goings-on of each individual agency. This is more desirable because politicians are answerable to the people, while the bureaucracy is not.

And if the FBI thinks they’re going to get the support of the rest of the GOP and the Right as they did for almost twenty years after the 9/11 attacks they’re in for a shock:

The solution to the abuses we now endure is not just to subject the FBI to another fruitless inspector general investigation but to dismantle it completely. The bureau cannot be the focus of yet another congressional hearing. FBI Director Christopher Wray, like his predecessors, is more than happy to sit smirking while a handful of grandstanding congressmen and senators pound the table and yell on C-SPAN. Then he’ll jet off for a holiday vacation on a taxpayer-funded private jet while the same congressmen vote to increase his budget. Again.

No, the FBI must be rendered into component parts and distributed to the four winds.

That article does have some specific suggestions:

  1. The FBI’s crime lab, statistical services, and National Crime Information Center service could be pulled out and left as independent agencies with the sole job of supporting other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies with their scientific and data capabilities.
  2. Parcel out the FBI’s criminal justice division and its tasks to the various state-level bureaus of investigation. Provide direct federal funding to compensate for the extra workload. Let them primarily make state-level cases, in state court, for the crimes committed within the physical boundaries of their states.
  3. White collar, financial, and cybercrimes can be handled by the U.S. Secret Service.
  4. Federal crimes whose perpetrators directly cross state lines can be given to the U.S. Marshals Service to track down. Unlike the FBI, the U.S. Marshals are largely scandal-free, and have a long history of cooperating successfully with state and local law enforcement.
  5. For the disgraced national security division, divide up the FBI’s counterterrorism portfolio among the remaining federal law enforcement and homeland security agencies with a role to play, and the various state and regional JTTFs (Joint Terrorism Task Forces).
  6. The FBI’s responsibility for counterintelligence should be taken away and vested in the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX). Its mandate would be policing the intelligence services themselves, rooting out evidence of foreign penetration within their ranks, exploiting and manipulating foreign intelligence services for American national security interests. They do not need law enforcement powers or wide-ranging FISA Court warrants for this job.

As the saying goes: it’s a start. How the corrupted minds of so many FBI agents get re-programmed is not discussed.