I am an advocate of FBI reform. Unlike many of the bureau’s other champions-turned-critics, I’ve identified what I believe is the problem that has corrupted the FBI in the 21st century — namely, its conversion from a police into an intelligence agency — and I’ve proposed a remedy: removing the FBI’s foreign-counterintelligence (FCI) mission and making it solely a law-enforcement agency (with the FCI mission handed off to an intelligence agency that is vested with no police powers, à la Britain’s MI-5).
There is, as I’ve conceded, a sweeping-reform argument that seeks root-and-branch dismantling of the FBI, stressing that the bureau began as the embodiment of its creator, J. Edgar Hoover, and has never renounced that disreputable legacy (indeed, its headquarters is the J. Edgar Hoover Building). My friend Charles C. W. Cooke makes this case with his customary persuasive force in a recent column. Ultimately, I am not convinced. At this point in history (with the federal government’s law-enforcement role so much more extensive than it was in the early 20th century, when the FBI emerged), we need to have a principal federal law-enforcement agency. The main objective, I think we all agree, is to change how the bureau does business, not the name on the door. As Charlie often points out, he comes at things from a defense perspective, and his proposed reforms (in addition to scrapping the FBI) are consistent with that perspective. I’ll address those proposals, from my admittedly pro-prosecution perspective, in a separate column.
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