Frei and Barnes explain the Whitmer kidnap case, entrapment law, and the track record of the FBI (plus, I take a foray into the history of the Mark Felt prosecution)
I know I’ve already written quite a bit about the Whitmer defendants and the issue of possible entrapment, but this discussion by Viva Frei and Robert Barnes on the topic is particularly good and not all that long:
And this is something I came across last night. I was looking up Mark Felt, aka “Deep Throat,” who was second in command of the FBI at the time of Watergate. I had forgotten – if in fact I ever even knew – this incident in his life:
By 1972 Felt was heading the investigation into the Weather Underground, which had planted bombs at the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department building. Felt, along with Edward S. Miller, ordered FBI agents to break into homes secretly in 1972 and 1973, without a search warrant, on nine separate occasions. These kinds of FBI operations were known as “black bag jobs”. The break-ins occurred at five addresses in New York and New Jersey, at the homes of relatives and acquaintances of Weather Underground members. They did not contribute to the capture of any fugitives. The use of “black bag jobs” by the FBI was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the Plamondon case, 407 U.S. 297 (1972).
The Church Committee of Congress revealed the FBI’s illegal activities, and many agents were investigated. In 1976 Felt publicly stated he had ordered break-ins, and recommended against punishment of individual agents who had carried out orders. Felt also stated that Patrick Gray had also authorized the break-ins, but Gray denied this. Felt said on the CBS television program Face the Nation he would probably be a “scapegoat” for the Bureau’s work. “I think this is justified and I’d do it again tomorrow,” he said on the program. While admitting the break-ins were “extralegal”, he justified them as protecting the “greater good”. Felt said:
“To not take action against these people and know of a bombing in advance would simply be to stick your fingers in your ears and protect your eardrums when the explosion went off and then start the investigation.”
Griffin Bell, the Attorney General in the Jimmy Carter administration, directed investigation of these cases. On April 10, 1978, a federal grand jury charged Felt, Miller, and Gray with conspiracy to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens by searching their homes without warrants…
Felt told his biographer Ronald Kessler: “I was shocked that I was indicted. You would be too, if you did what you thought was in the best interests of the country and someone on technical grounds indicted you.”
Note Felt’s attitude towards illegal searches of people who were only related to the suspects. He seemed to think that the prohibition against such searches is a mere technicality, and that his motives – “the best interests of the country” – should justify a federal agency such as the FBI breaking the law. Not only that, but Nixon testified in the trial for Felt’s defense, saying that the Nixon administration had authorized Felt to do it, and that in doing so “was acting on precedents established by a number of Presidential directives dating to 1939.”
So this was apparently commonplace. The 1939 date indicates to me that it may have started in connection with the war in Europe and then our own entry into the war, and investigating possible spies or enemy agents in the US. In addition, during Felt’s trial:
…former Attorneys General Mitchell, Kleindienst, Herbert Brownell Jr., Nicholas Katzenbach, and Ramsey Clark, all of whom said warrantless searches in national security matters were commonplace and understood not to be illegal. Mitchell and Kleindienst denied they had authorized any of the break-ins at issue in the trial. (The Bureau used a national security justification for the searches because it alleged the Weather Underground was in the employ of Cuba.)
So in these older cases – which featured illegal searches by the FBI rather than possible entrapment scenarios orchestrated by the same agency (although the latter also occurred and are discussed by Barnes in the video above) – there was ostensibly a foreign country involved, and the permission was given by the president.
Felt was convicted, but the sentence was light – just a fine, and no prison time. Meanwhile, Reagan had just been elected, and not long after he took office he pardoned Felt (and Miller, who had worked under Felt and had also been convicted). Reagan said that they acted in the interests of the country and “in the belief that they had grants of authority reaching to the highest levels of government.”
I don’t think I followed the case at all at the time. One reason is that I was a new mother with a young baby, and I don’t think I was even watching the news. Even if I had followed it, I would never have understand that Felt was Deep Throat and the FBI source for the Watergate story as told by Woodward and Bernstein; his identity was unknown for many years.
I do recall, however, being perturbed by government overreaches. There is always a conflict between the need to apprehend actual plotters and terrorists, and the need to protect individual rights. Our legal system used to be based on the idea that it was okay if at times a guilty person went free in order to keep the government from infringing too much on the liberty of its people.
But of course, as is often said, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Terrorists are sometimes real, and are willing to commit great violence.
By now, though, the government and agencies such as the FBI have amply demonstrated they have little to no respect for liberty, and that they consider infringements on liberty and rights to be mere “technical grounds” that are unimportant as long as the rights of the correct people are being violated. But the rules that are being flouted are not arbitrary. They are there to preserve against just that kind of government tyranny, which always employs rhetoric such as “the best interests of the country” as an excuse for doing whatever it wishes.
[NOTE: It’s also interesting that back in 1980-1981 someone as high up in the FBI as Felt was actually tried and convicted of anything. Of course, the trial was instigated by a later administration controlled by a different party, one that was reacting to Watergate and what was seen as abuse by the executive branch during Watergate. As far as I can tell after reading about Felt, even though he was Deep Throat and helped to bring down Nixon (who apparently was aware by the time of the 1980 trial that Felt had been Deep Throat, and yet testified in his defense), Felt was essentially on the right rather than on the left. And his illegal searches were in the service of apprehending terrorists on the left. Perhaps that’s why the Carter administration was intent on prosecuting him.]
The FBI’s black bag jobs and other harassments were the storyline in the 1965 Nero Wolfe novel “The Doorbell Rang” which sprang from the real 1964 book by Fred J. Cook, “The FBI Nobody Knows.”
All of this raises obvious questions about the Jan. 6 events and the FBI’s possible involvement, none of which will surface as part of Pelosi’s Star Chamber committee hearings.
The Plamondon case mentioned is also Michigan. “Pun” Plamondon was one of the founders of the Michigan “White Panther Party” which was active in the 60’s in SE Michigan.
The FBI investigation led by Felt against the Weather Underground tainted their case so severely that most of the Weatherfolks got off — including Bill Ayers, who afterward famously remarked:
Guilty as hell, free as a bird.
huxley:
Ah yes, and Ayers then went on to reform American education to the far left.
Of course, it’s not just the FBI. Local police also have been known to do break-ins, or to be the local help for national police break-ins. In the 1969, our house was broken into, searched and all belongings scattered around (nothing of value taken). It was a chance for “them” to look for stuff and to put a shot across the bow (“we got our eye on you!”). We were anti-war activists.
But Black nationalists, drug dealers, criminals, and the occasional purely innocent will get special treatment from time to time.
It’s a gray area.
The difference today is that the transgressions are far more common and far less morally ambiguous in my opinion. They’re far less targeted to crimes and instead the targets are guilty of wrong-think.
“I was shocked that I was indicted. You would be too, if you did what you thought was in the best interests of the country and someone on technical grounds indicted you.”
The technical ground being that he had broken the law.
I don’t believe it was mentioned in the video because Viva is keeping things separated but I am happy to hear David Freiheit is running for the Canadian Parliament. I hope he wins and I hope it doesn’t change him for the worse.
“While admitting the break-ins were “extralegal”, he justified them as protecting the “greater good”. Felt said:”
Throughout history executing the family of a traitor, including very young children… has not been uncommon. It can be argued that it too was for the greater good… in that it eliminated potential future ‘disagreements’ by familial descendents of the ‘traitor’.
Felt was a hypocrit as he told on Nixon’s Black Bag jobs while he was doing it himself. I looked at the 4th amendment, I saw nothing there talking about National security. This is how we lost our republic one assumption at a time.
Huxley beat me to a comment about Mark Felt causing Bill Ayers to be “free as a bird.” Not a jailbird.
Of course, Felt really didn’t “turn in” Nixon because of some loyalty to a higher moral calling. He was pissed he was passed over for head of the FBI, so he was just exacting his revenge.
Gringo, neo:
Felt’s tainted investigation of the Weather Underground also helped rehabilitate Timothy Leary’s counter-cultural reputation. The story goes like this:
For possession of a few joints Leary wound up sentenced to 20 years in a low-security California prison. The Weather Underground successfully engineered his escape. Leary lived as a fugitive for a few years, before the US managed to extradite him from a Kabul airport.
Leary was then sent to Folsom for 25 years. They put him in solitary confinement literally in the next cell to Charles Manson. Fun and games were over. They were trying to break Leary and they did.
Leary agreed to cooperate with the FBI and gave them 400 typewritten pages of information on the Weather Underground.
Meanwhile word got to the street that Leary was snitching and many people, including close friends, were publicly unhappy with him.
But Leary got his deal and got out of prison. Fortunately, the Weather Underground case collapsed because of Felt’s illegalities. Therefore, Leary could truthfully say that no one went to jail because of anything he said to the authorities.
So, happy ending for Dr. Tim.
Too bad the good guys never seem to win. Of course that might be because there are so few good guys.
huxley:
Your comment prompted me to look at Leary’s Wiki page. What a life! It reads like picaresque fiction. Among other things, he was let out of prison by Jerry Brown, later went on the lecture circuit with G. Gordon Liddy, and also became a Ron Paul supporter – and that’s just scratching the surface.
Don’t forget ‘Come Together’.
neo:
Leary can be justly accused of many things, but not living a dull life!
Several years ago I read the big Greenfield bio of Leary. I understood Leary was a complicated guy with a complicated life, but the part I couldn’t get past was that Leary seemed so preoccupied with himself, his family withered into self-destruction.
His first wife committed suicide. His daughter shot her boyfriend then hung herself in jail. His first son survived as something of a basketcase.
If you’re the Dad in that situation, IMO you have some answering to do.
He did have a second son late in life, but he separated from the mother and had little to do with the child, who became a successful menswear designer.
https://twitter.com/MARLONGOBEL
Marlon did get his father’s looks and seems to have adopted the smile.
“Several years ago I read the big Greenfield bio of Leary. I understood Leary was a complicated guy with a complicated life, but the part I couldn’t get past was that Leary seemed so preoccupied with himself, his family withered into self-destruction.”
I attended a book signing by Greenfield in Palo Alto when the bio came out. The first words out of his mouth were to the effect: “I’m sorry to have to say this but I’ve investigated thoroughly, searched every source I could find, but I have to conclude that Tim was a bad guy.” Probably everyone in the room was there because psychedelics had given them something positive and valuable so the reaction was complex, as you can imagine.
I was listening to a podcast today on crypto currency and the host talked about bias. If you own Bitcoin, you’re implicitly biased by that ownership. If you don’t hodl Bitcoin, you’re biased by your lack of insight/experience.
Tim Leary expressed the exact same point about LSD.
I attended a book signing by Greenfield in Palo Alto when the bio came out.
JimNorCal:
Somehow I imagine that was at Kepler Books… Did Greenfield expand on his judgment of Leary?
In the early days after an impactful LSD trip it does seem like there was You Before and You After, as well as Those Who Have and Those Who Haven’t. You want to believe it made a difference and you are much the better for it.
However, the world rushes back in so fast. Whatever insights you may have gained become vague memories and maybe beliefs. The molten, fluid experience is gone. You’re back to being the social robot you were before.
Most LSD veterans then voted for Biden now. I admit I find that discouraging.
John Lilly, the Caltech-trained scientist who threw himself onto the sixties barricades in his way, said that a trap of psychedelics is to overvalue the insights obtained with their use.
The trap of psychedelics is you think that you are improving on every front while your friends around you watch helplessly as you fall apart.
Been there! Done that! Only one of the group alive to testify
“Too bad the good guys never seem to win.” Ray+Van+Dune
A few thoughts on that theme;
“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.” James Russell Lowell
“It always seems impossible, until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela
“It’s always darkest before the dawn.” (self-evident truth)
The good guys don’t always lose; Thermopylae, Charles Martel at Tours, Polish King John III Sobieski @ the Battle of Vienna, the American Revolution and WWII.
In each of those conflicts, the bad guys seemed to have the winning hand…
In each of those conflicts between freedom and tyranny, the good guys were willing to die to defend freedom.
Which leads me to my conclusion that, the greater the evil, the greater the sacrifice required of good, in order to overcome evil.
Thanks Geoffrey.
Sometimes, we need to remember that stuff. FYI, Sobieski’s rescue of Vienna was always my favorite of the bunch. Imagine the sight of the Polish king’s winged Hussars charging the Ottoman horde with the afternoon sun at the backs!
Reply to Geoffrey Britain:
One small point: At Thermopylae, the “good guys” DID lose, which is kind of the point of their immortality. Their sacrifice bought the time for the eventual victories at Salamis and Plataea (sp?). Which means that your larger point is 100% right on.
Fractal Rabbit: You are invited to read “The Drawing of the Dark” by Tim Powers, which is a delightful rethinking of the siege of Vienna, IIRC.
werewife,
I have read The Drawing of the Dark! Tim Powers is a favorite of mine.
Drawing of the Dark is my favourite telling of the siege of Vienna too. ?
Sienkiewicz’s (sic) trilogy comes a close second.
I need a graphic novel version of both so I can introduce my nine year old to this tale before his school indoctrination takes hold.
I was inoculated by watching Friedman’s free to choose on pbs when I was eight
“Most LSD veterans then voted for Biden now”
It’s hard to know for sure. Perhaps. Certainly the ones who speak loudest.
Dick Adler, sounds crushingly frightful. Still, there are many rivulets in that stream.
JimNorCal:
I’m pretty sure. Easily 75% of my ex-hippie friends vote Democrat and are strongly progressive. Those who are now conservative or independent are all men.
Just about all the voices in the psychedelic movement I’ve tracked remained progressive.
Maybe the glass quarter-full is a win.
Thought Experiment:
What if Felt hadn’t tainted his investigation of the Weather Underground and succeeded in putting its leaders in prison?
I’d like to think it would have made a difference, but those radicals who did go to prison usually did not pay much of a price in proportion to their crimes.
Jane Alpert (a bomber and ally of Weather, though not a member) only served 28 months.
Susan Rosenberg was on the hook for the murder of two policemen and a security guard during a robbery. She was caught with 750 lbs of explosives and firearms. She was also involved in the real bombing of the US Senate Building. She never showed any remorse. She was sentenced to 58 years, but only served 16 because Clinton pardoned her on his last day in office.
It seems our elite betters have been lenient towards domestic terrorism from the left for decades now.
Susan Rosenberg has surfaced lately as the vice chair of Thousands Currents, a non-profit which turns out to do fundraising for Black Lives Matter.
Watch Snopes dance around the question of whether Rosenberg was a domestic terrorist:
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In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of “terrorism,” it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of “domestic terrorism.”
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/
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Nauseating.
huxley, sorry, off topic but any observations on the association of growth in numbers of mentally ill Antifa Progs while at the same time a boom in drug experimentation in Portland?
Fractal Rabbit,
For me it shall always be the stand at Thermopylae. I’ve always had a powerful attraction to ancient Greece, starting with the Trojan war. I have an unprovable hypothesis that any time period that we inexplicably find particularly fascinating is due to having had a past life in that place & time.
werewife,
Yes, that’s why I included Thermopylae, the greatest loss/victory of them all and arguably the most important battle in history because if Leonidas and his fellow Greeks had not delayed the invasion, Greek democracy would have been stillborn.
“It seems our elite betters have been lenient towards domestic terrorism from the left for decades now.” huxley
Well, they do it for the ‘right’ cause. A cause that justifies any and all means, no matter how depraved. Besides, utopia isn’t built in a day.
any observations on the association of growth in numbers of mentally ill Antifa Progs while at the same time a boom in drug experimentation in Portland?
JimNorCal:
I haven’t been tracking that. Though googling “portland drug use” I found this:
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Today, Oregon became the first state in the United States to decriminalize possession of small amounts of all drugs and greatly increase access to treatment, recovery, harm reduction and other services.
https://drugpolicy.org/press-release/2021/02/drug-decriminalization-oregon-officially-begins-today
______________________________________________
I’m for legalization of marijuana, but this looks like one big invitation for homeless drug addicts — a disaster in the making.
Neo,
If you’re not already aware of it, I think you’d enjoy (or at least find interesting) some of the episodes of the podcast called “Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World.”
What brings it to mind is several episodes with oft-unknown instances of government misbehavior (especially by the FBI) which can be…disillusioning for those who’re apt to be overly trusting of the honesty of the system. (That, of course, is how it’s related to this thread.)
Here are some examples, :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iSzPhycoGc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4fOjKuvGPM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9lHkdf5jVk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI9cH6ZeJt0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5ruzotbtJc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6MDin_Ec5c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HINykG4QL4Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_FCSff37ZI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuMuD4i_6ZY
Now, the podcast in general is about “mysteries” of various kinds, past and present, and thus ranges widely from early-American ghost stories to UFO sightings, and picks up items like Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidians, and revelations of FBI misbehavior like those described in the above-listed episodes.
So, it’s a little bit like the old “In Search Of” and “That’s Incredible” television shows, with one important difference: Jimmy Akin does his best to scrutinize the “mysteries” in a reasoned way and derive some rational conclusions, when possible. And he tries not to over-sensationalize anything, save temporarily for dramatic effect when “telling the tale” at the outset. This, for me, ranks him above a Coast-to-Coast-AM kind of show. (And his cohost “Dom” does a nice job of being the “everyman” foil for these stories.)
Note: Jimmy Akin’s other job is with Catholic Answers, a Catholic apologetics website/broadcaster/publisher. Consequently, there will be times when he looks at things “also from the faith perspective” or takes on mysteries like the “Miracle of the Sun” at Fatima, Portugal. So, listeners should know at the outset that, on such topics, he sounds (surprise!) like a middle-of-the-road Catholic. That said, I find his breakdown reasonably evidence-oriented even when touching on topics of potential religious import, and I don’t think it’d detract from anyone’s enjoyment of the show, on most topics.
I suppose I should add: I have no affiliation with Akin or the show in any way. I just like it, and I like how he presents things, and those FBI-related episodes came to mind.
I thought you, and some of the other regular commenters here, might like it also.