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--to me, the really disturbing thing about this and other cases is the culture of "shutup and sit down" that has happened to the federal police and intelligence communities. They have those folks thoroughly buffloed. I'd bet a box of donuts that there were many efforts to actually follow through and investigate this or that, and they were squashed on orders from higher levels. Motives for the squashing can be many, I can think of several easily, but it's the ability of those people to have such control over their employees despite the fact of it being of national importance and gravity. For instance, we are supposed to accept the fiction that the secret service was clueless for 8 years about crimes in high level executive branch offices. Well, to be fair, even longer than 8 years, take it way back, it's the same. That's just another along with the intel and police agencies.

I just don't buy it.

Although I want to still respect and have some hope that those agencies can do a proper job, until individuals there are stopped being threatened, or they develop enough courage to not care about their checks and jobs and are willing to go public when they have evidence of being ordered to 'stand down", then these sorts of incidents will just increase.

And it doesn't make it any easier for any of them when "revealing" what evidence they have is automatically considered a crime, and when they have no practical higher office to turn to to present their cases without fearing probable retribution. That exists now, it's a "crime' to reveal 'sensitive' information, even if said information reveals the crime! Catch 22 for anyone with insider information.

IF there can be some extreme high level managers actually busted, prosecuted and incacerated for either on purpose collusion or just from being "chicken" and not following their oaths, and passing 'being chicken" down their command chain as a matter of policy, then perhaps we can end this cycle of "coverups". The rank and file should not be afraid of doing the jobs they are actually hired for. I've just heard this over and over from cops in general when they get a chance to speak privately and off the record. Drug investigations that started to go extremely uphill into politics and bureaucracy, sliding into "official"people as opposed to private citizens-cop ordered to stop investigating. Stuff like that. Heard it from guys in the military as well, intel branches or in decent security areas where the intel branch orders them off looking at what they are looking at or discovered.

The last disturbing trend is the type and style of modern "police' training. I know some cops who have actually quit because they didn't want to particpate any longer, that policing has changeed for the worse, and they had no control over what was going on. so they quit rather than keep participating. I know another guy, a young man a few years ago was seeking to enter the police here in georgia. He is really quite the upstanding guy, someone you would actually appreciate being in some for of government 'service', educated, motivated, extremely loyal to the nation and honest, regular adult boy scout type of kid. His father is retired career army, and had given him a higher than average norm of interest and background in US history and the constitution. He gets accepted, gets into training, and sees it's not to be a cop like he thought, it's to learn to be a military person with a cop uniform on , and he was told to treat all civvies as the enemy, and the constitution isn't even mentioned in any practical way in the training. So, he quit, refused to even consider being a cop then.

But many thousands DON'T, they just accept the training, and then you see all these examples of apparent 'bad stuff' that happens that is scary. there's threads on this or that daily, and i bet it's the tip of the iceberg, it's happening all over, we only get to see the very high profile cases and that's already too high a number.

It's one thing to follow orders, it's another to follow orders so blindly and so consistently that you become part of an increasing problem. Being an efficient robot is not the mark of an intelligent or concerned human. It's possible to retain the qualities of great training and cohesivness, and it's possible to retain your "human-ness", UNLESS, you are ordered from the git-go to "not do that".

I don't have an easy answer other than to try and get it out that honest cops still got friends, and to tell them to try to be brave enough to do what's right even if what you have been ordered to do is clearly wrong or illegal or against national security or identiy.

Here's one, wouldn't it be nice if from every scrambled eggs on the cap guy on down in the military, they all refused to fight under any UN auspices? A big michael new effort? Just said "no, wouldn't be prudent, oath is to the US", said it politiely but firmly and stuck to it? That's another sort of bravery, there's fighting in combat, then there's that kind, too. We got lots of the first kind, not enough of the latter. Fighting in undeclared wars, there's another.

How about if a group of just mid level honest cops are ordered to stop investigating some crime that is headed up hill into the 'connected ones". As soon as they get ordered to 'stop looking", they arrest whatever 'superior" ordered them to do so under RICO or something else depending on the situation? Obstruction of justice perhaps. Literally slap the cuffs on them.

It's not "mutiny" when you are ordered to commit a crime, although I guess it can be argued that way. I think that argument is on shaky ground when you still have oaths that have lawful standing and are not just mumbled ritualistic words.

Besides that, i don't know. congressional oversight committess? We saw it in the impeachment, we have a design flaw in the constitution that is biting us now, it's obvious. The executive and judicial branch have guns and badges and armies of paramilitary police or the actual military, all following orders no matter what, the legislative branch doesn't, and there ya go. There's no effective check or balance any longer, PLUS we have a large standing army under the executive branch, something we were told to NEVER to do as it was too dangerous and subject to abuse. That was one of the clearest 'things' the founders warned about and tried to get carved in stone, because their memories were vivid. they noted the phenomenon that most people suffering persecution and abuse are not being abused by any foreign invading army, nope, they noticed that consistently it was various governments abusing their own populations and calling it "law". Last centyury many millions in wars around the planet killed for foreign armies, but the bulk of people killed in abusive manners were offed by their own governments, and the discrepancy in numbers is staggering.

Well, now we got "decades of past abuse". And following past historical trends and examples you can see which direction it's headed. And I just don't see the executive branch giving up this nifty power trip they have control over now,, no matter whichever R or D gets elected to head it.

When you have "law" by dictate and edict, what's that form of government called again?