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<\/a><\/p>\nPolitifact\u00a0delivered a \u201cpants on fire\u201d slam\u00a0<\/a>to Fox News on Friday because one of its commentators asserted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation \u201chas become America’s secret police.\u201d The FBI has legions of new champions nowadays among liberals and Democrats who hope that its probes will end\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a><\/span>\u2019s presidency. This is a stunning reversal that may have J. Edgar Hoover spinning in his grave.<\/p>\n In order to boost the credibility of the FBI\u2019s investigations of the Trump team, much of the media is whitewashing the bureau\u2019s entire history. But the FBI has been out of control almost since its birth.<\/p>\n A 1924 American Civil Liberties Union report warned that the FBI had become\u00a0\u201ca secret police system of a political character<\/a>.\u201d In the 1930s, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court feared that the FBI had bugged the conference room where justices privately wrangled over landmark cases, as Tim Weiner noted in his \u201cEnemies: A History of the FBI<\/a>.\u201d In 1945, President Harry Truman noted that \u201cWe want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction.<\/a>\u201d And FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover compiled a list of 20,000 \u201cpotentially or actually dangerous\u201d Americans who could be rounded up and\u00a0locked away in one of the six detention camps the federal government secretly built in the 1950s<\/a>.<\/p>\n From 1956 through 1971, the\u00a0FBI\u2019s COINTELPRO program<\/a>\u00a0conducted thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to smear innocent people by portraying them as government informants, to sic the IRS on people, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, communist, white racist, antiwar, and black organizations (including\u00a0Martin Luther King Jr.).\u00a0<\/a>These operations involved vast numbers of warrantless wiretaps and illicit break-ins and resulted in the murder of some black militants. A Senate Committee chaired by liberal Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) issued a\u00a0damning report on FBI abuses of power\u00a0<\/a>that should be mandatory reading for anyone who believes the bureau deserves deference today.<\/p>\n According to Politifact, the FBI is\u00a0not a \u201csecret police agency\u201d because \u201cthe FBI is run by laws, not by whim.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>But we learned five years ago that the FBI explicitly teaches its agents that \u201cthe FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others<\/a>.\u201d No FBI official was fired or punished when that factoid leaked out because this has been the Bureau\u2019s tacit code for eons. Similarly, an FBI academy ethics course taught new agents that subjects of FBI investigations have “forfeited their right to the truth<\/a>.” Are liberals so anxious to get Trump that they have swept under the rug the 2015 Washington Post\u00a0bombshell about\u00a0false FBI trial testimony that may have sentenced 32 innocent people to death<\/a>?<\/p>\n Politifact absolved the bureau because\u00a0\u201cThe FBI doesn\u2019t torture or carry out extrajudicial executions.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Tell that to the Branch Davidians \u2014\u00a080 of whom<\/a>\u00a0died after the FBI assaulted their ramshackle home with tanks and\u00a0pyrotechnic devices\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0collapsed much of the building on their heads<\/a>even before fires burst out.<\/p>\n Politifact quotes a professor who asserts that \u201cany use of unnecessary violence (by the FBI) would be met with the full force of the criminal law.”<\/a>Is that why an internal FBI report claimed that\u00a0every one of the 150 shootings by FBI agents<\/a>\u00a0between 1993 and 2011 was faultless?<\/p>\n FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi\u00a0gunned down Vicki Weaver in 1992\u00a0<\/a>as she stood in her Idaho cabin doorway holding her baby. After I\u00a0accused the FBI of a coverup in a Wall Street Journal oped<\/a>,\u00a0FBI chief\u00a0Louis Freeh denounced me\u00a0<\/a>for twisting the truth. But after a confidential Justice Department report leaked out revealing the FBI\u2019s deceits and unconstitutional rules of engagement, the\u00a0feds paid a $3 million wrongful death settlement<\/a>\u00a0to the Weaver family.\u00a0When an Idaho County sought to prosecute the FBI sniper, the Justice Department\u00a0invoked the Supremacy Clause\u00a0<\/a>of the Constitution to torpedo the case.<\/p>\n Politifact asserts that\u00a0\u201cjust because the FBI sometimes operates in secret does not mean that it\u2019s a \u2018secret police.\u2019”<\/a>\u00a0But the FBI\u2019s secrecy is profoundly skewing American politics. More than a year after the 2016 election, Americans still have no idea the true extent of the FBI’s manipulation of the presidential campaign. Did the FBI wrongfully absolve\u00a0Hillary Clinton<\/a><\/span>\u00a0on the email server issue? What role did the FBI have in financing or\u00a0exploiting the Steele dossier<\/a>? Will we ever learn the full truth?<\/p>\n The so-called fact checkers insists that any comparison of the FBI and KGB is \u201cridiculous\u201d because the FBI is \u201csubject to the rule of law and is democratically accountable.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>But there is little or no accountability when few members of Congress have the courage to openly criticize or vigorously cross-examine FBI officials. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs admitted in 1971 that\u00a0Congress was afraid of the FBI<\/a>: \u201cOur very fear of speaking out (against the FBI) … has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny … which is ensnaring that Constitution and Bill of Rights which we are each sworn to uphold.\u201d The FBI is currently scorning almost every congressional attempt at oversight. Thus far, members of Congress have responded with nothing except press releases and talk show bluster.<\/p>\n Politifact repeatedly scoffs at the notion that the FBI is \u201ca secret police agency such as the old KGB<\/a>.\u201d And since the FBI is not as bad as the KGB, let\u2019s mosey along and pretend no good citizen has a right to complain. A similar standard could exonerate any American president who was not as bad as Stalin.<\/p>\n In the 1960s, some conservatives adorned their cars with \u201cSupport Your Local Sheriff\u201d bumper stickers. How long until we see Priuses with \u201cSupport Your Secretive All-Powerful Federal Agents\u201d bumper stickers? But those who forget or deny past oppression help forge new shackles for the American people.<\/p>\n James Bovard is\u00a0<\/em>a USA Today columnist<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and the author of 10 books, including \u201c<\/em>Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty<\/em><\/a>\u201d (St. Martin\u2019s Press, 1994).<\/em><\/p>\n