Former FBI guy: "I helped destroy people"
They're from the government and they're not here to help
I highly recommend this piece in the New York Times Magazine about former FBI agent Terry Albury, headlined, “I helped destroy people.”
Every day was a slog through his own guilty conscience. He had joined the F.B.I. truly believing in its mission, and even after he realized that the bureau was imperfect, like every other institution, a part of him still clung to a belief that he was serving the greater good. But he felt increasingly betrayed by the F.B.I. and the rest of the “terrorism industrial complex,” as he’d come to see the national-security establishment…
After the FBI successfully stopped a bomb maker, Albury’s former supervisor said:.
“That case was an exception,” says Cook, who served as a supervisory special agent on the San Jose joint task force from 2002 to 2007. Very few terrorism investigations, he says, actually concluded. More often they went on indefinitely, with agents unable to gather the evidence needed to prosecute, despite working leads for years. “I’d say most of our investigations were based on very thin leads from questionable sources,” says one former agent on the San Jose joint task force. “But what was the alternative? The government was convinced that there were sleeper cells all over the country, and we had to find them.”
Readers of Digging In know that I am staunchly pro-law enforcement, but not blindly so. Local law enforcement officials are part of their communities, which can put a check on misbehavior.
Federal criminal justice officials, however, are a different animal — they’ve got unlimited funds and unlimited time. They often will prolong a case until they can produce a high-profile headline-grabbing arrest.
The most egregious case that comes to mind concerns former California state Senator Leland Yee.
You may recall the headlines in 2014 about Yee being indicted on weapons charges.
California State Sen. Leland Yee Indicted on Weapons Charges, Was Gun Control Crusader
Undercover agent says lawmaker offered introduction to arms trafficker.
By ALYSSA NEWCOMB
March 27, 2014, 11:05 AM
Or this from Forbes.
Senator Yee Knew Conspiracy Would Send Money To Islamic Militants And Arms To North Africa
Problem: The indictment against Yee included a charge of trafficking firearms for import to the Philippines. That charge was thin, although the feds did have a strong case for the charge that Yee accepted bribes.
The bribery case was made quickly and definitely, but if you read the criminal complaint, it becomes clear that the weapons charge was based on Yee’s talking tough rather than actual guns being moved. (That’s why they call it conspiracy.) And that federal authorities had a solid case against Yee for racketeering, and still they dragged their feet.
Worse, as I wrote years ago, the feds had freed Shrimp Boy Chow to help with their sting.
In 2003, the feds freed Chow, who was serving a 160-month sentence on racketeering charges involving murder for hire, conspiracy to distribute heroin and arson after he testified against a fellow gang leader who had fled to Hong Kong. It was an odd decision for a bizarre deal — free a violent offender in order to imprison another violent offender who had left the United States and had no reason to come back. Chow also had previous state felony firearms convictions — yet federal prosecutors released him from prison despite the risk that he might reoffend.
They also sat on their hands in 2006 while Chow was sworn in as the “dragonhead” of the Ghee Kung Tong after killing his predecessor.
They waited until 2014 when they could attach a big headline-drawing name — which spared them from a worse headline: Feds arrest for murder an informant they freed.
Debra J. Saunders is a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership. Contact her at dsaunders@discovery.org.
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Also, if anyone involved in the case has more to share, please email me at dsaunders@discovery.org