OPINION:
Many lines of inquiry suggest that time may be ripe for a cleanup on the FBI aisle (“Salvaging the legacy of the FBI,” Web, Jan. 25). While the field agents of our most celebrated law-enforcement agency are above reproach, the politicized executive suite is soiled.
Erstwhile Director James Comey has to answer for a host of errors and puzzling decisions, while his right-hand man, Andrew McCabe, who became hopelessly entangled in partisan politics last fall through a loan to his wife from a big-time Democratic operative, must explain the meetings in his office involving an FBI couple who detested one of the 2016 presidential candidates and later served the special counsel investigating him. Former Attorney Gen. Loretta Lynch, Mr. Comey’s boss, should be called to account for her actions with respect to the Hillary Clinton email-server investigation.
What else lies hidden in the shadows? It’s time for some sunlight because some of us are beginning to suspect we are in a civil war between a transient elected government and the permanent government of bureaucrats in our civil service and intelligence agencies. The shock-and-awe of this struggle has become front-page, above-the-fold news since the Trump administration took office and leaks to anti-Trump media began. The “deep state” was relatively quiescent during the Obama interregnum, eight years of policy comity between the elected and shadow governments separating two Republican administrations.
That unelected apparatchiks of the permanent bureaucracy wield the power to delay, derail and/or deny prerogatives of the government elected by the people — and do so in secret and with encouragement of opposition politicians and media — should give us all pause. The hubris in the shadows is almost as great as the desire to nullify an election.
PAUL BLOUSTEIN
Cincinnati
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