By Glenn Harlan Reynolds
USA Today
“I’d rather have a sister in a whorehouse than a brother in the FBI.” That quote from Alabama Securities Commissioner Thomas Krebs appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal in 1980, referencing the feds’ unwillingness to go after financial criminals. But it’s a sentiment that could be shared by a lot of people given the FBI’s recent record.
Bureau Director James Comey’s news conference, in which he laid out an extended record of misconduct by Hillary Clinton but then announced that he wouldn’t recommend prosecuting her, was just the latest in a series of very visible FBI failures.
The FBI had interviewed Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, after being warned by the Russian government that he was a threat, but still did nothing. Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured as a result. The FBI also investigated in advance but failed to prevent mass killings by Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan and Arkansas shooter Carlos Bledsoe.
The FBI made a “mistake” in the background check for mass shooter Dylann Roof, Comey has said. Roof should have been prevented from buying the .45-caliber weapon used in Charleston, S.C., in what officials called a hate crime. The political repercussions of the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church led South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from its statehouse grounds last year. Said Comey, “The thought that an error on our part is connected to this guy’s purchase of a gun that he used to slaughter these good people is very painful to us.”
It was also painful to the families of the nine people who were killed.
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