One reason so many people fear a “deep state” threat to their civil liberties is that officials with great power say and do things that directly threaten civil liberties.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who would be in a jail cell for lying to investigators if he weren’t a liberal celebrity, suggested this month that the FBI ought to treat “mainstream” conservatives — among them “business owners, white people from the suburbs, educated, employed” —
as if they are potential “domestic violent extremists.”
“I’m fairly confident from what little we’ve heard from the FBI that they have reallocated resources and repositioned some of their counterterrorism focus to increase their focus on right-wing extremism and domestic violent extremists,” McCabe
said
Jan. 6 at a forum at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. “And I think that’s obviously a good idea.”
“Now we know clearly,” he added, that the “white people from the suburbs” present “a threat of domestic violence.”
One need not be a conspiracy theorist to see this FBI attitude as profoundly dangerous. The FBI wields vast power and has a rich history of abusing it. Bureau mistakes have ruined lives, such as those of Olympic-bombing hero
Richard Jewell
and Dr. Steven Hatfill, who was persecuted by the FBI for anthrax terrorism that
he didn’t commit
.
McCabe himself, a man with rather obvious partisan biases in favor of Democrats, played a key role in approving an otherwise unjustifiable surveillance order based on the bogus Democratic-financed dossier compiled by
buccaneering
former British intelligence agent
Christopher Steele
. Thanks in large part to McCabe’s dishonesty, the Justice Department used the dossier to refocus its existing Russia investigation on Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency. This generated the destructive political hoax that roiled U.S. politics for the next two years.
So yes, be alarmed that McCabe, with his record of prosecutorial abuse and dishonesty,
is suggesting
that a nearly unaccountable FBI target ordinary “white people from the suburbs” with a “counterterrorism focus.” The potential for abuse of power and of civil liberties is real. On Jan. 11, just five days after McCabe spoke, the Justice Department announced it is establishing
a new “specialized” unit on domestic terrorism
. Its focus, according to Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, will be not only on racists but on those with so-called “extremist” beliefs that are “anti-government and anti-authority.”
Somehow, we don’t remember the Justice Department making a special announcement about domestic terrorism when left-wing rioters spent almost a whole summer looting and torching America’s cities.
A properly constrained FBI would be right to assess domestic terrorism threats proactively. But the FBI in recent years has not proven to be properly constrained. It has not earned the public’s trust. Statements by dishonest FBI vets such as McCabe add mightily to that distrust.
The FBI needs a thorough housecleaning and an ambitious round of depoliticization. It merits much more vigorous oversight. And if some of the new overseers turn out to be educated, employed people from the suburbs, then so much the better.
