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:
They can smear you. A congressman has to get re-elected the FBI and liars don't. Remember this one;
"More often, the unjustly accused have no recourse. In the immortal words of Ray Donovan, Ronald Reagan's labor secretary who was acquitted of corruption charges in a court of law after a prolonged trial by media, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?"- Tom
Do they know there is dirt and afraid the FBI just might find it?
For an activist site, there sure is very little activism anymore!IMHO...many former activists have been 'moderated away'. AND...the moderators allow too much pablum posted that is totally outside the FR 'mission statement'. These 'chatty articles need to be regulated to the chat forums and/or deleted. Most worthwhile articles/op-eds (posted within the FR guidelines) get buried within minutes by the everincreasing minutia that has crept unto this forum the last two years.
This has diminished and possibly has even negated the once potential FR effectiveness.
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