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| The graduation ceremony for the FBI Citizens Academy takes place at the bureau’s North Chicago Regional Firearms Training Facility, a fun outing where we saw bomb disposal demonstration and the boys got to fire a Thompson submachine gun. |
When the FBI called, I hesitated.
Their request was simple enough. They wanted to bring me into headquarters, for briefings, once a week, for a couple months. Something called the FBI Citizens Academy.
Why me? Agents in the Chicago office were readers. Flattering, though, the way my mind works, I instantly saw that this wasn’t necessarily a compliment — it was entirely possible that my perspective was seen as so woefully ignorant of the world of law enforcement, they felt duty bound to help me get a clue.
Or maybe they just wanted to get me in their clutches. I’d end up handcuffed to a metal chair in a basement, a bright light shining in my face.
One evening a week, for a couple hours, at their Roosevelt Road field office, learning the ins and outs of the department, the problems they face. Battling international terrorism, tracking cybercriminals and bank robbers.
“It sounds like traffic school,” I told my wife.
But I have a personal rule: if you don’t go, you never find out. Plus they would feed us — dinner from a different restaurant each week. Being fed always helps. I signed up.
This was in 2010, so the specific program details do not pop out in mind. There were guest lecturers, short films, tours of their facility. I knew several of the attendees, and the academy was pretty much the entirety of my social life for a while.
What’s strongest is the sense I took away about the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were good people, working hard, battling bad guys. I’m sure that was the point. Not that the bureau’s often checkered history was whitewashed. Anyone who read Jonathan Eig’s recent Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Martin Luther King knows how the FBI bugged King’s hotel rooms, using the transcripts to try to blackmail him into silence, to urge him to kill himself, generating dirt they fed to his enemies. Knows that the FBI often strayed from protecting America to protecting a narrow right wing racist image of America.
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What does that photo at the top of some kind of machine shop have to do with the local FBI?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't — a scene from Neenah Foundry, by the way. It was late, I was rooting around for a photo, and I thought it was interesting, the small man, the enormous machine.
DeleteI'm always astonished at how filthy yet spotless such machine shops are.
DeleteAn informative column and it's good you got to get up close with the FBI some time back. I think they may be able to weather the fool Patel's years, with time.
ReplyDeleteSo many fools in this administration for the country to weather. I think maybe we should be glad that a lot these Trump appointees do seem to be so foolish: imagine the additional harm if they were highly competent. Hopefully, the electorate will rise-up and the midterms will leave a whole lot more impediments for these damaged souls to navigate.
ReplyDelete2010 was a long time ago. It's clear that much has changed at the FBI in those 16 years. Not the least of which is the appointment and confirmation of a drunken fool as Director. I am sure there are still many fine FBI agents who take their oath to the Constitution seriously. But they are not in charge and they are being ruthlessly winnowed out.
ReplyDeleteAs is the case with most things in my life, I never know how to feel.
ReplyDeleteShould I be sad that there isn't an internal uprising to oust patel? That wouldn't protect good people during good times.
Electing Democrats is important. Electing good democrats is also important, but I believe we need to vote out every republican (center and right) and start anew. This country of ours needs some serious educational help.
How do you get through to people who refuse to read, refuse to accept fact, and live on another planet mentally? You don't just sow a field, you have to tend to it.
Waiting for the election results. How big will the Democratic Party win? What will Patel, Miller, Hegseth, Blanche, Mullin, et al do to discredit or overturn the results?
ReplyDelete