[Townhall] Crimes against children are inexpressibly evil. For decades, the FBI has been uniquely situated to identify, investigate, and arrest the people and groups involved in the trafficking and sexual abuse of our most vulnerable. And, FBI agents do this critical work in-spite of the tremendous personal costs incurred by close proximity to a crime of such horrific aspect. The men and women of the FBI work these kinds of cases as well as a gambit of violations that would quail people of lesser commitment. It was my honor to serve for twenty years alongside the best and brightest that our country has to offer.
However, the good that FBI case agents do on a daily basis is obfuscated by the fog of infamy created by the malfeasance of some in FBI leadership. To ignore this is a betrayal of the integrity and bravery of those who defend America from her enemies both foreign and domestic. Agents hold themselves to the highest standards and still demand the same from their leadership. It is a disservice to them and an affront to their sense of integrity to excuse, blunt, or cloud the facts surrounding the current culture of partisanship.
It is no easy thing to objectively analyze a beloved institution, the G-man sanctum, and come to the inescapable conclusion that the core FBI values of fidelity, bravery, and integrity have been betrayed to political masters. An agent’s fidelity is to the constitution and to no other. Agents do not swear an oath to a political party or to a political leader. To pander to party, in an attempt to subvert the democratic process, is an existential threat no less dire than the threat posed by agents of espionage. Hyperbole? Selling classified secrets to a foreign power may result in grave damage to national security, but to destroy the nation’s faith in the franchise and in its critical institutions is to diffuse a poison without antidote — it’s an act of fratricide and severs the fundamental bonds that unite a federation of states. No foreign power could strike so grave a blow as that perpetrated by those charged with the duty to preserve, honor, and champion our civil rights.
A few days ago, Brian O’Hare — President of the FBI Agents Association — penned a Fox News opinion piece admonishing the public to "pay attention to facts, not politics." O’Hare produced a few paragraphs in defense of the work of the FBI and suggests that the political weaponization of the FBI is fiction. |