jlf1961
Posts: 14840
Joined: 6/10/2008 From: Somewhere Texas Status: offline
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While I will withhold total judgement on this waiting to see who President Trump nominates, I will point out that it is customary to fire such a prominent agency head in person, then making the announcement. In this case, Comey found out he was fired while he was addressing some people in LA, by a news break on NBC. Of course, the fact that Comey was due to testify again in a congressional hearing is also suspect. In other words, like some of the non partisan folks responding in this article, something may be fishy about this. Now in response to some of these: quote:
ORIGINAL: Kirata ~ FR ~ Good riddance. 1. Before he bombed the Boston Marathon, the FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev but let him go. Russia sent the Obama Administration a second warning, but the FBI opted against investigating him again. 2. Shortly after the NSA scandal exploded in 2013, the FBI was exposed conducting its own data mining on innocent Americans; the agency, Bloomberg reported, retains that material for decades (even if no wrongdoing is found). 3. The FBI had possession of emails sent by Nidal Hasan saying he wanted to kill his fellow soldiers to protect the Taliban -- but didn't intervene, leading many critics to argue the tragedy that resulted in the death of 31 Americans at Fort Hood could have been prevented. 8. The father of the radical Islamist who detonated a backpack bomb in New York City in 2016 alerted the FBI to his son's radicalization. The FBI, however, cleared Ahmad Khan Rahami after a brief interview. 9. The FBI also investigated the terrorist who killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Despite a more than 10-month investigation of Omar Mateen -- during which Mateen admitting lying to agents -- the FBI opted against pressing further and closed its case. 10. CBS recently reported that when two terrorists sought to kill Americans attending the "Draw Muhammad" event in Garland, Texas, the FBI not only had an understanding an attack was coming, but actually had an undercover agent traveling with the Islamists, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi. The FBI has refused to comment on why the agent on the scene did not intervene during the attack. Source K. Item 2, this has been going on since long before these two scandals broke, neither agency director was the first to do this, and they will not be the last. Data mining in and of itself is not unconstitutional (perhaps it should be) since it uses a key word search bot that was first developed in the early 90's. Item 3 the FBI does not have investigation powers over any branch of the military, unless so directed by the department of Justice per request by the specific branch involved. Information such as this is routinely turned over to the JAG office of the branch in question who then passes it on to the branch's own Criminal Investigation Division. Considering that the JAG officer who receives the information uses his own discretion to determine how vital an investigation priority should be, and since the information had been turned over to the US Army prior to the shooting, it is not the fault of the FBI. One more point, had the FBI acted on its own, the lawyers representing Nidal Hasan could have had all the evidence gathered by the FBI thrown out as on various grounds under the UCMJ. Items 1, 8 and 9 this was not the failing of the director, but the failures of the Agents in charge of the specific office. Again this is not a new problem, since Lee Harvey Oswald was investigated no less than 3 times prior to his shooting of JFK in Dallas, for his activities in New Orleans, the attempted shooting of a retired army General, and due to questions raised after Oswald took a trip to Mexico City and visited both the Soviet and Cuban embassies, within a month of the assassination. He was also dismissed as a non critical individual and deemed a zero threat. Item 10 the agent in question (per information released after the CBS news story) was working deep cover and assigned investigate more than the two involved. Had he done anything, his cover would have been blown and all information gathered to that point would have been useless since the rest of the group would have vanished like the proverbial fart in the wind. Similar incidents have occurred in the past, during investigations involving organized crime, various biker gangs in relation to narcotics trafficking, and others. An agent working deep cover is basically stuck in a no win situation. Any action could result in the total collapse of the investigation, his/her own death, the death of other agents, etc. Finally, the FBI has over 10 thousand agents working bureaus in all 50 states, with satellite offices in every major city, each under the direction of a local unit director. It would be impossible for the Director to know what each agent is working on, how or why something was not followed up on, since the local director is only required to file the information locally and forward it along with shit tons of other basic bureaucratic bullshit monthly and every quarter. Each city office sends it to the state director who's office forwards it to the regional director who's office forwards it to Washington DC. Every quarter when the hard copies of all those reports that were dead ends (or assumed to be dead ends) are boxed up and put on either a US Mail truck or a contracted courier, starting again at the local office. For example, last year when the D. B. Cooper case was declared administratively closed, the Seattle FBI office boxed up all the physical evidence and all the paperwork generated in the years since the hijacking. The total weight was over 3,989 pounds of paper work and 200 pounds of actual physical evidence. Now, k, how in the fuck is one man supposed to go through all that information and still be directly involved in any investigations he has been directed by the department of justice to look into? It would be physically impossible. No one held J. Edgar Hoover personally responsible for the failures of the FBI when JFK was shoot by a man the agency had investigated no less than three times prior to his pulling the trigger, so how is Comey different? And the Warren Commission had over 6000 documents released to them by the FBI on the JFK matter. Seriously dude, you used to have better arguments than this.
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Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think? You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of. Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI
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