Enemies
Enemies is the first definitive history of the FBI's secret intelligence operations, from an author whose work on the Pentagon and the CIA won him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. We think of the FBI as America's police force. But secret intelligence is the Bureau's first and foremost mission. Enemies is the story of how presidents have used the FBI to conduct political warfare, and how the Bureau became the most powerful intelligence service the United States possesses. Here is the hidden history of America's hundred-year war on terror. The FBI has fought against terrorists, spies, anyone it deemed subversive--and sometimes American presidents. The FBI's secret intelligence and surveillance techniques have created a tug-of-war between national security and civil liberties. It is a tension that strains the very fabric of a free republic.--Publisher description.
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What Hacker News says
- Read "Enemies" by Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Wiener. This is not that out of character for the FBI really.
http://www.amazon.com/Enemies-History-FBI-Tim-Weiner/dp/0812...
- It actually started with the British whose spooks taught it to the US' Herbert Hoover before WWII. Read "Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner" <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/30/enemies-fbi-his... for the definitive historical overview of how domestic spying and its abuse got started.
George Orwell foresaw the potential for abuse long before 1948 when he wrote "1984" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four>.
- > Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
This clearly states that the powers must be explicitly vested by the Constitution. They can't be made up out of thin air. The state governments != the Government of the United States nor are they Departments or Officers thereof. This passage clearly requires that all federal powers be explicitly granted in the Constitution, though they need not only come from Article 1. Either I'm ignorant of some amendment that grants the powers you're talking about (like the power to have an FDA) or you inadequately understand the meaning of the phrase "vested by". At the end of the day, all of this stuff is stuffed under "regulate interstate commerce" and it's clearly a bastardization of both the word and spirit of the law. If you want broader federal powers, you must amend the constitution, period, and congress has deceitfully snaked its way out of that over and over thanks to the "legislation from the bench" at the Supreme Court that has backed them up at the expense of our constitution's integrity.
Additionally, if you want to learn about all of the ways the FBI has broken the law throughout its existence, I'm talking about stuff outside of any conceivable constitutional allowance, I highly recommend reading this recent book on its history (http://www.amazon.com/Enemies-History-FBI-Tim-Weiner/dp/1400...)
- I’m not sure this follows. Intelligence and federal police services routinely “manage” crime to various ends. Go read Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes or Enemies for myriad examples.
- Tim Weiner's history of the FBI's intelligence operations, Enemies.
- That's not quite accurate, if you read the history of the FBI [1], they have been an intelligence agency as long as they've been a law enforcement one (pre-1950s, when it was called the Bureau of Investigation):
http://www.amazon.com/Enemies-History-FBI-Tim-Weiner/dp/0812...
They pride themselves in the idea hardly no one in the American public is aware of this fact.
9/11 made them focus their intelligence abilities on terrorism but those capabilities were hardly new to the FBI.
