How reliable is the FBI?
The FBI has a history of politically motivated repression and abuses. These date back to before World War I and through the 1920s, when they were charged with rounding up “anarchists and revolutionaries” for deportation. This was documented by the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (aka The Church Committee) in 1975. The Church Committee was setup to investigate deliberate FBI abuses between 1956 and 1971, referred to as COINTELPRO, the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program. “The inspector general’s review looked at the effect of a number of changes ordered by Mr. Ashcroft in his 2002 revamping of the bureau’s investigative guidelines… The changes overturned restrictions put in place in the 1970’s as a result of F.B.I. abuses in the monitoring of political dissidents [known as COINTELPRO].
