JOHN KIRIAKOU: The FBI Deserves Kash Patel

After all the bureau’s crimes, Americans need somebody who is willing to tear this organization down to its bare studs.

By John Kiriakou
Special to Consortium News

On the surface of things, Kash Patel is the kind of person most of us would want to keep out of government.

A MAGA true believer, and Donald Trump’s choice to head the F.B.I., he’s the tip of the spear of Trump’s apparent effort to use the courts to go after his perceived enemies in the media and on Capitol Hill. 

The mainstream Democratic-oriented press is apoplectic about the appointment.  The Christian Science Monitor said it most clearly when it wrote that,

“Democrats invoke (the notorious late F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover) as they warn about Mr. Patel, suggesting he will target political enemies.  Republicans, though, compare Hoover’s tenure to what they say is a modern ‘deep state” resisting and harassing Mr. Trump.” 

That’s the bottom line. Democrats compare him to Hoover while Republicans argue that he’s the anti-Hoover.

I’m here to argue that Kash Patel is exactly what Americans need right now at the F.B.I.  We need somebody with the guts and the political authority to burn the F.B.I. down, at least figuratively.

First, I’m under no illusions that Kash Patel is a good guy. According to former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Patel is “salivating” at the opportunity to investigate and, apparently, charge former Rep. Liz Cheney with some sort of crime because of her work on the Jan. 6 Committee. 

This is not only wrong, it also ignores the fact that Cheney had congressional immunity for her work because she was serving in an official capacity for the committee. Nothing will come of any investigation.  

The press also has opined that Patel will target police officers who arrested protestors at the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol for investigation.  Again, the police have qualified immunity, and nothing will come of the idea. 

He has also called for the prosecution of a wide range of political figures, including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and outgoing F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray.  Again, they have immunity, and nothing will come of Patel’s rhetoric.

With that said, my view is that it’s the F.B.I. that’s the “bad guy” here.  Here’s just a sampling of F.B.I. crimes over the years; 

• The F.B.I. over the years has spied on thousands of Americans simply because they have held progressive political views.  Some of these Americans included music star Elvis Presley (a well-known Republican, actually), crooner Frank Sinatra, comedian Groucho Marx, entertainer and former Republican Congressman Sonny Bono, musician Bob Dylan, “King of Pop” Michael Jackson, and even baseball star Mickey Mantle.  Why?  Nobody knows.  
• A 1985 congressional report found that the F.B.I. had conducted electronic surveillance against more than 7,000 Americans without any legal authority to do so.
• COINTELPRO, the F.B.I.’s illegal Counterintelligence Program, targeted groups and individuals that the bureau had deemed to be “subversive,” including such “dangerous radicals” as Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a myriad of anti-Vietnam War groups, black political groups and women’s rights groups.

• In 1964, the F.B.I. wrote an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King, Jr., meant to blackmail him for alleged sexual dalliances and urged him to commit suicide.  
• In 1965, a white civil rights worker, Victoria Liuzzo, was murdered by a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Gary Thomas Rowe.  Rowe also happened to be an F.B.I. informant at the time. So the F.B.I. spread a rumor that Liuzzo was a Communist and heroin addict and that she had abandoned her children to run off with a black man. F.B.I. documents show that J. Edgar Hoover personally briefed this lie to President Lyndon Johnson.  
• In a 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, F.B.I. agents seeking to serve a warrant on Randy Weaver shot and killed Weaver’s wife, son and dog.  Weaver in turn shot and killed a U.S. Marshal in what a court later deemed to be self-defense. The F.B.I. was forced to pay Weaver a settlement of $3.38 million.  

• In 2007, a Caltech grad student found that the F.B.I. was changing Wikipedia entries related to the bureau so that they contained only pro-F.B.I. information.  

All of this is to say nothing of the F.B.I.’s involvement in the 2016 election with its investigation of Hillary Clinton, in allegedly using electronic surveillance against the 2016 Trump campaign and in infiltrating and disrupting such groups as Occupy Wall Street, racial justice and environmental groups, and pro-Palestine peace groups.

The bureau also investigated candidate Trump and participated in the Russiagate fiasco in Operation Hurricane Crossfire.

I’ve had my own negative experience with the F.B.I. In 2009, the bureau secretly opened a criminal case against me in response to my having blown the whistle on the C.I.A.’s torture program. 

In the end, I was charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage.  I hadn’t committed espionage, of course, and those charges were dropped, but not until I had declared bankruptcy.  

To make the case go away, I pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and served 23 months in a federal prison.  I had been facing 45 years.  In the intervening years, three F.B.I. agents have reached out to me to apologize for their role in the case, saying that it was political in nature and that they were ordered to target me. 

That’s the F.B.I. That’s what it does.

And that is why we need Kash Patel at the helm of the F.B.I. right now. 

We need somebody who is willing to tear this organization down to its bare studs.  The F.B.I. is a criminal organization.  It should be dealt with like a criminal organization.  There should be a price to pay for its crimes against the American people.

John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act — a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

Please Support CN’s
Winter Fund Drive!

Make a tax-deductible donation securely by credit card or check by clicking the red button: