Once you realize that the FBI went from being the world’s greatest law enforcement agency to just a band of dirty cops, you understand their logic and motives.
I’m not sure the FBI ever lived up to that billing. After all J. Edgar Hoover as Director-for-Life was blackmailing a succession of US Presidents so that he had leeway to enforce the laws and investigate the citizens as he, J. Edgar, saw fit. He did some great work during Prohibition against the Mobs, and superb stuff against the German spies landed during WW2. Buts let not kid ourselves... a lot of corners were cut then, too.
Then J. Edgar dies and an apparachik William Grey gets elevated by Richard Nixon. But another FBI lifer, Mark Felt, thought he should have gotten the gig. And, well, as ‘Deep Throat’ he used selective leaks to tie the Nixon Administration to the Watergate burglary and an administration was brought down.
Now the entire 7th Floor of the FBI seems to be of a single mind... the Left is Good... Republicans must be destroyed if they oppose. So, yeah, it’s much worse now. But to paraphrase a famous Democrat... “The FBI was never all that great.”
Huh? He did a great job protecting the American people from buying alcohol?
The Eighteenth Amendment (thank you Suffragettes) caused the Mobs just as the War on Drugs gave rise to our current gangs.
Oddly enough, now that certain prohibitions have been lifted, the sky remains intact.
People gonna do what people gonna do...
He did some great work during Prohibition
er no. Most of the prohibition stuff was done by T Agents. Hoover did a great job taking out the multi state gangs of bank robbers of the likes of Dillinger, Kelly, Floyd et al but he did not do much with the Mafia. They also recovered a lot of stolen cars i.e. get a report a car was found and take credit for it.
Really great work of the FBI happened during WWII. They were basically our army in south america, haven to Nazis and he was on to the red menace early on. About half the FBI agents in the 50s and 60s were working in the internal security branch distinct from law enforcement. They did a great job there too until some cracks started like that one guy, Hassen, who as a KGB spy did more damage to us then anyone wants to admit.
All IMO of course.