Posted on 06/19/2002 6:55:52 PM PDT by kattracks
Many in Congress are so terrified the FBI will blackmail them, they are afraid to criticize the Bureau.
A top aide to Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) told the New York Times that many Congressmen and Senators won't speak out against the FBI "because rightly or wrongly, they think the FBI will find dirt on them, and it will wind up in the public domain."
Kris Kolesnik, who was Grassley's chief investigator for 18 years, told the New York Times that the Iowa Republican has been more vocal than other Senators "because he's such a Boy Scout; he has no skeletons in his closet."
The Times reported today how little criticism about the FBI has emanated from Capitol Hill, with the sharpest criticism of the FBI and CIA "has not come from liberal Democrats but from two conservative Republican senators," Grassley and Richard Shelby of Alabama.
"Mr. Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, speaks almost daily nowadays about the 'culture of arrogance' and the 'cowboy mentality' at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, tells anyone who asks that George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has failed in his job and should resign."
Grassley said: "I consider myself more a watchdog than a critic. The FBI seems to be the one now that needs some watchdogging."
The two senators aren't especially close, the Times says, but "speak almost as one when they blame Congress for being too deferential over the years" to the FBI and CIA.
"Everyone's in awe of them," Grassley scoffed. "Everyone just melts in their presence, and so they have always gotten a long leash. I think that may change now."
"You can be too cozy with the people you are supposed to have oversight of," Shelby said. "I don't think that's healthy. And I think that after Sept. 11, it's going to be different."
Kolesnik's comments are sure to spark speculation about which Capitol Hill power brokers fear being blackmailed by the FBI, and why. Here's one case where lame-duck Rep. Gary Condit is not alone.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
NOW you tell me!
Years ago when I had a high-level security clearance, I reported to the FBI that I had witnesses a number of congressional aides doing drugs in the capital-building parking lot. I was dating a Democrat at the time -- the perps were her friends.
The FBI agent threw up his hands and said that the FBI knew of a lot of criminal abuses on Capital Hill, but was powerless to do anything.
Congress has protected its own very well.
FBIfiles:
Names on the 1000+ FBI files Clinton obtained for political ...
FBI files Bill Clinton obtained illegally “I would
never condone or tolerate ...
Letters to the Editor
... Charles Colson goes to jail for reading one FBI files.
Clinton administration reads at least 900 FBI files. ...
Letter From A Friend - #49: January, 1999
... exposing their past immorality. (There is question that his information is coming
from the FBI files Clinton pulled and examined.) That's great! Larry Flynt is ...
The Nationalist Times -- June 2000
... noise. If any of them threaten to squeak too loudly, there are all those lovely FBI
files Clinton's operatives have at their disposal to keep them in line. Yes ...
<Investigation Into The White House and D...
The FBI does keep detailed files. Clinton used those files to have his way with his enemies in Congress. I suspect that is the means by which the Senate was prevented from a fair hearing on the impeachment.
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