‘Black Identity Extremists’ and the Dark Side of the FBI | The Marshall Project
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/10/17/black-identity-extremists-and-the-dark-side-of-the-fbi
▻https://d1n0c1ufntxbvh.cloudfront.net/photo/6b1980b4/26872/1200x
Recent political developments have helped put the FBI in a favorable light. The agency and its leadership have been praised for its performance throughout the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Former director James Comey affirmed the agency’s fundamental goodness in a letter to his colleagues after he was relieved of his post President Trump.
“I have said to you before that, in times of turbulence, the American people should see the FBI as a rock of competence, honesty, and independence,” wrote Comey. “It is very hard to leave a group of people who are committed only to doing the right thing.”
While Comey might only have good things to say about the FBI, newly leaked documents suggest he shouldn’t. Despite the agency’s new, upstanding image, it might be back to its Hoover-era dirty tricks—if it ever really departed from them.
Foreign Policy reported recently on the existence of a document that circulated within the FBI’s counterterrorism division. Just nine days before the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, it named a major threat to public safety: not organized white nationalists, but “black identity extremists.”