OPINION:
Would the FBI protect VIPs from sex crimes allegations? If history is any guide, the answer is yes (“Epstein ‘client list’ doesn’t exist, Justice Department says, walking back theory Bondi had promoted,” Web, July 7).
In 1967, a “reliable” FBI informant reported that Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, as a high-profile Washington lawyer, had sex with a teenage boy. This allegation was buried in then Director J. Edgar Hoover’s “Official and Confidential” files for decades despite my Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits to unearth such files.
Hoover ended up blackmailing Fortas and solidifying Fortas’ role as an informant about Supreme Court business.
During my decades-long FOIA litigation against the FBI, Justice Department lawyers claimed no such files existed. A similar response today by the FBI regarding the Jeffrey Epstein client list should be met with suspicion until a full congressional investigation or scorched- earth style lawsuit is completed.
ALEX CHARNS
Author, “FBI Snitches, Blackmail, and Obscene Ethics at the Supreme Court” and “Cloak and Gavel: FBI Wiretaps, Bugs, Informers and the Supreme Court”
Durham, North Carolina
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