How the FBI Increased Its Power After 9/11 and Helped Put Trump in Office
By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept
15 September 19
Mike German, a former FBI special agent, had four years on the job when he
took an assignment that would change his life forever. It was 1992. A jury
in Simi Valley, California, had just acquitted a group of mostly white Los
Angeles police officers for the videotaped beating of a black construction
worker named Rodney King. Decades of pent-up anger directed at one of the
nation's most notoriously racist police departments spilled out on city
streets in a six-day convulsion that left more than 60 people dead. Amid the
unrest, white supremacists in southern California saw an opportunity,
believing that the riots could be used as cover to launch a race war.
The FBI's Los Angeles office got wind of the plans, and when his supervisor
floated the idea of infiltrating the groups, German, who was in his late 20s
at the time, enthusiastically volunteered. For more than a year, German
lived undercover, embedded in a network of neo-Nazi skinheads plotting the
bombing of a popular African-American church and the assassination of
prominent Jewish and black figures, including King himself.
German's investigation led to multiple prosecutions on federal weapons and
bomb-making charges and marked the beginning of a series of undercover
operations inside the world of far-right American extremists that spanned
more than 12 years. It was a critical time for the FBI, with the trifecta of
Ruby Ridge in 1992, Waco in 1993, and Oklahoma City in 1995 having called
into serious question the bureau's domestic counterterrorism tactics and the
blowback they had incurred. By the time the new century rolled around, it
seemed that the FBI was on track for critical reforms.
A bright, clear morning in September 2001 changed that.
German was assigned to the FBI's Atlanta office when the planes hit the Twin
Towers. Three years later, he was a civilian, having resigned from the FBI
after he blew the whistle on a terror investigation gone wrong and became
the target of an internal retaliation campaign. In the decade and half
since, he has emerged as a critical voice in the post-9/11 era, challenging
the war on terror at home and abroad.
As a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, German has been a go-to
source for journalists (The Intercept included) on the civil liberties beat,
consistently providing nuanced analysis on matters of law enforcement and
justice, often as they pertain to his old employer. In his new book,
"Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy," German
brings his insights to a wider audience, telling the story of how FBI
leadership capitalized on the September 11 attacks, escaping a much-needed
internal reckoning to become the most powerful and secretive domestic
intelligence agency the country has ever known.
In an interview with The Intercept, German explained that the idea for the
project began taking shape years ago, as he grew increasingly concerned
about the media's coverage of the FBI. "It was very sporadic," German told
me. "An abuse here, an abuse there." Nobody seemed to be digging into the
structural problems in the FBI. If they did, German explained, they would
see that these seemingly one-off events were indicative of patterns linked
to the bureau's institutional history, its self-perception and attitude
following September 11, and the demographic composition of its workforce.
While his personal experiences are deployed as needed, the real story in
"Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide" is German's methodical and damning account
of a powerful American institution chronically failing to live up to its
mission. The book comes at a critical moment. Driven by a series of
high-profile attacks and the president's ties to white nationalism, the
FBI's relationship to German's old beat - domestic counterterrorism
investigations involving white supremacists - has returned to the media
spotlight. At the same time, former FBI directors Robert Mueller and James
Comey, who ran the FBI during its troubled post-9/11 years, have ascended to
near god-like status in some liberal corners for their respective roles in
the Russia investigation affair.
"We live at an interesting time where there's such polarization over every
issue but particularly over the FBI and what role it plays in our society,
where liberals who previously had been skeptical of the FBI now are sort of
champions of the FBI, and conservatives who were full supporters of
empowering law enforcement are now skeptical," German said. "I'm hopeful
that a more nuanced view that isn't influenced by the politics of either
side, but is rather just presenting facts on how this agency actually works,
and the problems that are created as a result, will be helpful to a larger
effort to conduct a comprehensive examination of where we are almost 20
years after 9/11."
Targeting Political Dissent
As an army brat who came of age during the Vietnam War, German writes that
he "had no illusion that the government always did the right thing, or did
it well." Still, from the time he was a kid, an FBI agent was all he ever
wanted to be. German was moved by President Theodore Roosevelt's original
1909 vision of a Department of Justice investigative agency established to
"secure the conviction of the wealthiest and most formidable criminals" in
the country, especially those protected by "wide political and social
influence." He writes: "The idea of using the law to protect the most
vulnerable in society is what drew me to the FBI."
At its heart, German's book is about the FBI's failure to reflect those
principles.
He documents how in the wake of 9/11, FBI leadership embraced a discredited
theory of radicalization that had the convenient side effect of ignoring the
bureau's own shortcomings in the run-up to the attacks, while simultaneously
laying the groundwork for demands for expanded powers and authorities. The
FBI also turned on its own, particularly in cases when agents raised
concerns about the legality of operations or failed to match up with the
bureau's overwhelmingly white male demographics. In case after case, German
offers examples of the FBI zeroing on agents, particularly Muslim agents and
those of Asian descent, as potential threats and would-be turncoats,
railroading promising careers without a whiff of evidence.
German chronicles the FBI's shift from a law enforcement agency concerned
with criminal investigations, to an intelligence agency primarily concerned
with counterterrorism. He focuses heavily on the bureau's impact in Muslim
communities, where civil society groups were targeted as supporters of
terrorism, precarious immigration status became a tool to push people into
becoming informants, and agents used their expanded authorities to open
"assessments" on individuals in the absence of suspected crimes. It was
during this same period, German observes, that the FBI began accepting and
integrating the discredited theories of an "Islamophobia network" in its
official training materials, sending a message to bigots across the country
that anti-Muslim hatred was a government-condoned philosophy.
While the September 11 attacks brought new powers, the FBI of the last two
decades has also carried on its longstanding tradition of targeting
leftists, anarchists, and environmental activists, German writes. So-called
eco-terrorism, he points out, was for much of that time the FBI's No. 1
domestic terrorism priority, despite the fact that the movement has never
claimed a life. For German, that contradiction is precisely the point of the
book. While the FBI has devoted enormous time, energy, and resources to
filling unconstitutional watchlists with Muslim names and directing its
agents to focus on bogus national security threats such as "black identity
extremists," important crimes that the bureau is supposed to enforce have
fallen by the wayside.
War without end, the impotence of Congress, and the financial collapse have
all contributed to Americans' plummeting faith in the government, German
notes, but the FBI's post-9/11 evolution also deserves a place on that list.
"I believe the FBI contributed to this breakdown of public trust in
government institutions, not just by who it chose to target for disruption
but, just as important, who it didn't," he writes.
Take the torture program. German writes that experienced FBI interrogators,
who understood that torture produces unreliable information in addition to
being illegal, were well-positioned to take the investigative lead following
9/11. Instead, the FBI took a back seat to the CIA, even as it became clear
- at times through concerns raised by its own agents in the field - that the
intelligence agency was breaking the law. But it's not just the classified
programs devised behind closed doors in Washington, D.C. The FBI has a
mandate to enforce civil rights violations by police officers. According to
German, if data on police killings and violence disproportionately impacting
people of color says anything, it's that the FBI could keep itself quite
busy investigating police abuses - if that's what FBI leadership wanted to
do.
Instead, recent history has shown the FBI targeting Black Lives Matter and
partnering with a private intelligence company that infiltrated the Standing
Rock protests. In the case of Standing Rock specifically, German notes, it's
worth remembering that it's also part of the FBI's mandate to prosecute
crimes against Native Americans on reservations - there, too, the bureau has
fallen short. "Though too often ignored as crime victims," German writes,
"Native Americans draw unwarranted law enforcement attention when they
protest government policies that negatively impact their communities."
From Pine Ridge to Wall Street, the FBI's prioritization problems run deep,
German argues. In 2004, he writes, FBI headquarters received repeated
warnings that mortgage fraud was an "epidemic" with the potential to trigger
an economic crisis. As FBI director, Mueller had transferred hundreds of
white-collar crimes investigators to counterterrorism. "Congress denied the
FBI's requests for more agents," German writes, meanwhile, "Mueller refused
to reprioritize his national security assets." Even when there was evidence
that financial institutions were engaged in actual criminal activity, German
writes, executives didn't go to prison.
"Like J. Edgar Hoover's bureau," he argues, "The new FBI saw protecting the
establishment as its mission and disrupting the political mobilization of
dissident and disenfranchised communities as its most potent weapon."
The Rise of the Right
In 2016, German witnessed something disturbing. A Ku Klux Klan rally in
Anaheim, California, was interrupted by a group of anti-racist protesters.
Three protesters were stabbed by a Klansman. Initially, five Klansmen were
arrested, though the police later released them, taking the position that
they had acted in self-defense. Meanwhile, seven of the protesters were
charged with a variety of crimes.
In years past, law enforcement would keep racist groups and anti-racists
apart. In this case, they didn't. As this pattern repeated itself again and
again through the election and after Donald Trump's inauguration, it became
clear to journalists and researchers that the same far-right figures, some
with records of serious criminal violence, were popping up again and again
at the events. And yet the FBI appeared loath to take action. With scenes
from Ferguson and Standing Rock still fresh in the public consciousness,
German writes, "It was perplexing to watch convicted felons engaging in
unpoliced violence at these white nationalist rallies and, rather than being
arrested, becoming featured speakers at the next rally."
In telling the story of the FBI's failure to confront the threat of white
supremacist violence, German argues that it's not a lack of authorities, but
an absence of institutional interest in recent years to take basic steps to
understand the problem - let alone bring and close cases. "After 9/11, I
noticed the FBI officially de-emphasizing white supremacist violence,"
German writes, despite the fact that extremists typically described as part
of the far right "kill more people in an average year than any other
terrorist groups."
During the Obama administration, which saw a surge in far-right group
membership and activity, FBI analysts were reporting a decline in white
supremacist violence even as outside researchers, like the Combating
Terrorism Center at West Point, were reporting the exact opposite. For
German, the resurgence of far-right violence and Trump's rise to power
cannot be divorced the security politics and failures of post-9/11 America.
"The Trump campaign grasped that fifteen years of political polarization and
constant terror warnings had created an appetite for a strongman candidate,
which he could whet with messages of fear and anger," he writes.
Bound up in the narrative of Trump's ascent is, of course, one of the
biggest FBI stories of all time: the Russia investigation. Here, German
argues, the FBI's running list of post-9/11 failures ascended to new
heights. German's assessment of former director Comey's actions through this
period is perhaps the most withering section of his book. Not unlike Trump,
Comey had a tendency to take a blowtorch to the norms and obligations he was
bound by. On top of that, German writes, "The available evidence suggests
Comey's FBI did not pursue allegations that Russia was illicitly supporting
the Trump campaign with the necessary urgency, at least if you believe that
a hostile foreign nation's effort to influence a U.S. presidential election
presents a national security threat of the highest dimension."
In German's view, the Russian government either successfully conspired with
the Trump campaign to undermine the most important presidential election in
modern American history, or it didn't. "If it did, the FBI's and its partner
agencies' inability to interdict the plot before a corrupted election
elevated an illegitimate president to power is an intelligence failure of a
magnitude rivaled only by the failure to quickly bring the conspirators to
justice afterward," he writes. "If not, the FBI and other intelligence
agencies have used their covert intelligence powers to undermine a duly
elected U.S. president and his administration in ways that would make J.
Edgar Hoover blush. Either possibility suggests a significant part of our
government has forfeited its legitimacy and is no longer serving in the
public interest."
As for Trump himself, German sees in the president a man whose entire life
and business history, not to mention his associates, reeks of potential
criminal liability. And still, he seemed to generate a considerable amount
of wealth and obtain the most powerful position in the world without a
serious look from the FBI along the way. "The practical immunity Trump and
his retinue enjoyed as they amassed wealth and power also gives lie to his
supporters' contention that Mueller, Comey, and the FBI somehow had it in
for Trump and manufactured a case against him," German writes. "The failure
to prioritize the economic crimes of the politically powerful left the
nation vulnerable to a hostile foreign nation's effort to delegitimize U.S.
elections. This is exactly the sort of threat a domestic intelligence agency
is supposed to protect against."
German still believes in the FBI's capacity to be a force for good. At the
same time, he recognizes that many people in the advocacy community he's
become a part of in the last 15 years do not. "It's easier for me to have
more confidence in the ability to reform law enforcement institutions
because I'm not the prime target of abusive law enforcement actions," he
acknowledged. German sees his role in building a more just future as
discreet - he knows the FBI and has a deep understanding of where its
problems come from. What members of civil society do with that information
is up to them.
"We can't work on effective solutions if we don't really understand the
problem," German said. "My goal with this book was to make sure that we're
understanding the structural and attitudinal problems that allowed the FBI
to be a threat to democracy rather than protective of it."
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