Guffaw wrote:
Here are some other FBI failures to prevent crimes and terror:
- 1949 Camden, New Jersey residential neighborhood mass shooting
- 1955 United Air Lines DC-8 bombing
- 1960's Zodiac Killer
- 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination (or was this a FBI success? Enquiring minds want to know)
- 1966 University of Texas tower sniper
- 1969 Charles Manson family murders
- 1975 La Guardia Airport bombing
- 1980 Murder of John Lennon
- 1984 San Ysidro, California McDonald's Restaurant shootings
- 1993 Waco, Texas cluster-mess
Based on this and your theory its only logical to suppose the FBI has been crap after the Elliott Ness days.
or...
Maybe its not reasonable to expect the FBI to catch everything...
See my responses to Mr. Kevin and Mr. SH. According to the Department of Justice, the FBI's requested budget authorization for 2018 was $8,774,477,000. Of that amount, $8,772,582,000 is for Salaries and Expenses (S&E) and $51,895,000 for Construction.
The S&E covers the following:
-- 12,484 Special Agents (SAs)
-- 2,950 Intelligence Analysts (IAs)
-- 18,099 Professional Staff (PS)
More (pulled from the
DOJ FY 2018 Authorization and Budget Request to Congress):
The S&E program increases total $117,583,000, 470 positions (150 SAs, 50 IAs), and 470 FTE, for the following:
-- $41,474,000 for cyber investigative capabilities
-- $19,727,000 to support foreign intelligence and insider threat investigations and continuous evaluation
-- $21,636,000 to counter the threat of Going Dark and for Investigative Technology
-- $6,779,000 to combat transnational organized crime (TOC)
-- $8,242,000 to support physical surveillance capabilities
-- $7,375,000 for the Biometrics Technology Center (BTC) Operations and Maintenance (O&M)
-- $3,450,000 for the Violent and Gun-Related Crime Reduction Task Force
-- $8,900,000 to support the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)
That's quite a lot of resources given over to the FBI, and that's also saying nothing about the "black budget" surreptitious funding the FBI receives (something that in 2013 apparently amounted to $52.6 billion spread across a number of government intelligence agencies and the military, including the FBI,
according to the Washington Post). That particular aspect of the government budget -- which isn't normally available for scrutiny by the general public -- has helped build what the Post calls an "intelligence-gathering colossus."
So are we reaping the benefits of that capability, or not? On the face of things, with so many missed operations, attacks and opportunities since 9/11, it appears to me that we aren't. We're not getting the full bang for our bucks, in other words.
Here are just a couple media assessments of the FBI's work since 9/11:
Tsarnaev case raises questions about post 9/11 intelligence reforms (ed. the older Tsarnaev brother was investigated by the FBI in 2011)
The Orlando massacre: Why 15 + years after 9/11 the FBI still fails to connect the dots on terror It's not that I expect the FBI and the rest of the US Intelligence Community to catch everything. It's true that terrorists and other persons having a desire to commit heinous acts only have to be right once while the FBI has to be right 100-percent of the time. That's a metric that will never be met, speaking honeslty.
But I'd really like them to start catching the things that are thrown right into their lap, such as hopeful future Boston Marathon bombers or Orlando nightclub shooters or maybe even the next school shooter, when family and friends and acquaintances pick up the phone and call the Bureau to warn it that someone they know is likely to shoot up a school. Could they at least trouble themselves to send a near-retirement special agent out to interview that person, maybe?
"Politics is just show business for ugly people."