Given the choice between seeing and hearing John Ashcroft, not hearing him is the lesser of two evils.
Because he really doesn’t understand the depth of incompetency displayed by the FBI Internal Affairs office, he thinks that it’s really fantastic that the FBI moved “quickly” to capture Robert Hanssen, a 25 year veteran agent that spent 15 years of his career selling out his government.
That’s 60% of his tenure. Nearly two-thirds of Hanssen’s days at the Federal Bureau of Investigation were spent putting agents in danger and the nation at risk.
Maybe Ashcroft should have taken some of his own medicine. The FBI has a serious problem and internal restructuring is sorely needed. Maybe firing all of management and getting new people would be a good start.
That would be an Ashcroft recommendation if Janet Reno were still Attorney General.
So where was the fire today? Where was Ashcroft’s list of impossible demands? Why didn’t he recommend a full and thorough investigation of procedures and policies at the FBI?
The answer is that he now runs a lion’s den. Like any group of cats, the FBI won’t be easily herded. Particularly by a loud-mouth, ignorant politician who lost his first choice job to a dead man.
It’s the responsibility of the FBI to perform background checks on all government officials. They probably know a lot more than just his holy rolling political career and would be happy to leak it if he got too tough on the Bureau.
But that’s giving the FBI far too much credit for knowing what they are doing.
If they really knew how to do Oliver Stone-type blackmail, they would have figured out that Robert Hanssen is a nutcase. One of Hanssen’s many handlers, Russian KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugen, Hansen’s handler, said as much on CNN’s Spin Room: “I tried to offer him more money but he would just say ‘old man, you know I’d never take a dime from you.”
Not a dime more than $1.4M, anyway.
Robert Hansen romanced about spying and dedicated his life to it. He read books where the hero–not the villain–betrays his country. Did that not set off any alarms in the background check office? Is everybody in the FBI illiterate or just lazy?
Go to any university and you will find that English majors rival roaches in sheer numbers. Is there no one at the FBI who knows about literature or is, at the very least, paid to read and interpret all books ever read by agents? It can’t be very difficult.
Just because nobody at the FBI knows how to critically interpret literature, doesn’t mean that skill is lacking in the rest of the population.
Back to Kalugen. Granted, the guy probably has diplomatic immunity on U.S. soil but why is a handler of Robert Hanssen working the talk show circuit less than 24 hours after the story breaks?
Either the Russians want to rub in their intimate knowledge of the situation or this espionage case is truly insignificant. This espionage case smells like another display of media grandstanding and “experts” crawling out from under their rocks.
The Hanssen espionage case is either important or unimportant. If it’s important, the Russians should shut up while the U.S. sorts everything out. They don’t need to talk because they clearly won this round. Similarly, Ashcroft should figure out where his bravado went and give the FBI and Justice Dept. a good public body slam.
If it’s unimportant, there’s nothing left to be said.
