[American Thinker] J. Edgar Hoover must be turning in his grave at what is happening to his venerable FBI. Then again, given Hoover's own proclivities to abuse his powers as the director of that agency, perhaps the predicament in which the bureau finds itself is a natural stage of evolution on an arc of governmental hubris.It's increasingly clear that the FBI is taking on water at an accelerating rate as new revelations come, fast and furious, in the political scandals engulfing Washington. This week, for example, we see two adolescent-minded senior FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, involved in virtually all aspects of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation and the Donald Trump "Russian collusion" (or is it "obstruction of justice" now?) investigation, acting like hormone-fueled high school lovers, discussing a "secret society" of Trump-haters one day after President Trump's remarkable election. We learned of this only because two patriotic congressmen, representatives Trey Gowdy and John Ratcliffe, former federal prosecutors both, revealed this stunning exchange to Fox News. Was the "secret society" a tongue-in-cheek reference? Given the mind-boggling behavior of the top echelons at the FBI and DOJ these days, one can't be too sure.
The keel of the USS Federal Bureau of Investigation is starting to rise out of the water, like the RMS Titanic about 30 minutes after striking the iceberg. One can almost hear the bodies of top law enforcement bureaucrats crashing against each other, like so much china on a dying vessel sinking under the waves, as the embattled organization faces exposure after exposure of truly outrageous and un-American, if not illegal, conduct.
This sad state of affairs represents the depressing collapse of a pillar of American culture for many of us who grew up revering it and the "G‑men" who populated it. It did a wonderful job of cultivating that aura through the media and entertainment industries, often providing technical assistance to the producers of movies like The Silence of the Lambs.
For those of us over 40, who can forget watching the tough, suave FBI agent Lewis Erskine played by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. in the eponymous television show, The FBI? He was the epitome of cool and integrity.
This crafty self-promotion in popular culture has occurred over many decades, spawning countless such television series, movies, and books exalting the bureau. My youngest, college-aged daughter is a devotee of Criminal Minds, yet another slick Hollywood rendering of hip, brilliant FBI agents solving complex serial murders through cunning and derring-do ‐ all in the space of an hour, with commercial breaks, of course.