The FBI is in crisis.
After weeks of speculation that one or more senior officials played favorites in the last presidential election, in one day it was revealed that the bureau had completely failed in two separate and nationally significantincidents.
Those involved the third-deadliest school shooting in our history, and the efforts of a hostile foreign power to incite social discord and delegitimize a national election.
The FBI has demonstrably failed to remain politically neutral, to prevent domestic crime, and to detect and deter foreign attack.
That’s huge.
And it leaves the nation’s preeminent federal law-enforcement agency reeling.
Or at least it ought to.
Because if you can’t get the job done, you need a housecleaning that will make sure in the future that you can.
The thunderclap came Friday with the back-to-back announcements that the FBI had failed to effectively follow up on two warnings on the Florida school shooter, and that Russian intelligence operatives had been able to plan and implement an operation on American soil that funded demonstrations and social media efforts in order to foment social division and discord.
The Russians ran a psychological operation against us in our own homeland and the FBI – the agency primarily charged with running counterintelligence operations in defense of the United States – failed to detect it in its planning or execution. Russian intelligence agencies spent millions backing Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, opposing Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton, and funding demonstrations on both sides of the gun, immigration and Black Lives Matterissues.
And they seem to have deeply compromised Facebook and Twitter in doing it.
With social media an important part of the American Main Street, the Russians played it as a weapon against American sovereignty and democracy, and the federal government found about it after the fact in the investigation of a special prosecutor.
It was an audacious act of modern warfare of which the nation’s primary homeland defender was completely oblivious.
The FBI’s ignorance of this Russian attack indicates its lack of connections inside Russian intelligence, its lack of signals intelligence against the Russians, and its lack of ability to detect operational activity by Russian intelligence agencies and operatives – even when they are on American soil.
That’s three failures, any one of which should be nationally concerning.
And on top of them, on the same day, we find out that the FBI blew off two opportunities to investigate or confront Florida school murderer Nikolas Cruz.
At a press conference on the murders, an FBI special agent in charge said that he hoped his agency’s lapse didn’t add to the pain people were suffering.
Add to? No.
Cause? Quite possibly.
In September, a citizen saw something and said something – Nikolas Cruz posted a comment claiming to be a school shooter – and though the FBI took notes, it took no action. It took no investigatory follow up to identify and contact Nikolas Cruz.
In January, a person close to Nikolas Cruz contacted the FBI with fears he was about to be violent. The source provided his address, armament, history, threats and social media outbursts.
And the FBI did nothing.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The report was neither passed on, acted upon nor entered into any sort of data base – where it might have synched up with the earlier report, had the earlier report itself been entered into any sort of data base.
And then people died.
And the FBI stands there in the worst light in its history.
And the American people are apparently without the protection it is supposed to offer.
It’s one thing to be punked by Soviet-style spies. It’s another to be punked by a 19-year-old loser who everybody knew was going to go off.
And all of a sudden the FBI of James Comey doesn’t seem to be such a noble thing. I guess the director was good at playing politics – and the bigwigs were good at banging each other and swapping emails all day long – but the enemy at the gates didn’t quite make the radar.
And now, under Christopher Wray, the simplest of procedures are simply blown off.
When your agents don’t follow the most basic of policies in the most blatant of situations, you’ve got an institutional problem.
Maybe the director should go on Amazon and buy a quart of command and control or quality assurance.
Because right now his agency is in the wind.
And high school kids are in the morgue.
And Russians are in our elections.
And it’s the FBI’s fault.