How Trump is sending the FBI back to the 1960s

Speaker 1 ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.

Speaker 2 The perfect target for a serial killer.

Speaker 3 They know the route, they know the system. They know their victims.

Speaker 4 I pushed the curtain back.

Speaker 1 My God. What's going on?

Speaker 3 Who did this?

Speaker 5 A former nurse has been charged with murdering two elderly people at a Newcastle nursing home.

Speaker 4 I maintain my innocence.

Speaker 2 The Invisible Killer, an all-new series by Background Briefing.

Speaker 1 Hear it now on the ABC Listen app.

Speaker 9 In May 2024, Donald Trump was at his lowest.

Speaker 11 He's free for now, but jail time is a possibility as Justice Swan Mashan decides what punishment Donald Trump deserves for his crimes.

Speaker 12 He had become the first former U.S.

Speaker 14 president to be convicted of a felony.

Speaker 16 34 felonies, to be exact.

Speaker 18 He could get some form of incarceration. That could be house arrests, that could be weekends in jail, or it could be up to four years in a state prison.

Speaker 12 In the lobby of the courthouse in Manhattan, a tired and deflated Trump claimed to be a victim of a corrupt justice system.

Speaker 21 This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt.

Speaker 4 an opponent, a political opponent.

Speaker 24 He had spent the entire process from raid to arrest to trial to verdict railing against the Justice Department and the FBI.

Speaker 21 This was a rigged disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people.

Speaker 26 And the real verdict from the people was

Speaker 27 not guilty.

Speaker 28 We agree with Trump.

Speaker 8 It was rigged and corrupt and we want him back in power to fix it.

Speaker 26 So, how do you do that?

Speaker 12 How do you fix something that you say has been weaponized against you? Well, you put people in charge who describe the investigations and prosecutions you faced as...

Speaker 31 The biggest criminal enterprise the FBI had ever perpetrated against a political enemy by breaking the justice system and using it to their advantage for partisan politics.

Speaker 10 This is Cash Patel, a regular contributor to Steve Bannon's podcast.

Speaker 35 Talkbuster news for this audience, our own Cash Patel, just named the director of the FBI.

Speaker 37 He has spent years railing against the weaponization of the Justice Department against Donald Trump and has called for the use of a constitutional guillotine, which he says is a literal metaphor.

Speaker 38 And the term constitutional guillotine is meant as a metaphorical term to literally slice the head off of the deep state swamp monsters that have lied to you from Russia Gate to Jan 6 and all the way through all of the Trump trials.

Speaker 14 Cash Patel is one of two people Trump has put in charge of enforcing federal law under his new administration.

Speaker 36 The other person, Pam Bondi, is one of Trump's former defense lawyers.

Speaker 6 Now, in a month where U.S.

Speaker 15 government departments are being marked by Elon Musk for elimination, it can be hard to keep an eye on what's going on inside the Justice Department and the FBI.

Speaker 12 But these two appointments are incredibly significant.

Speaker 36 We're going to take two episodes to look at them.

Speaker 8 And we're going to start with Cash Patel, because the job he has now been confirmed to, director of the FBI, has a complex and sordid history.

Speaker 36 For almost 50 years, it was the job held by a figure many considered to be the most powerful man in America, FBI Director J.

Speaker 7 Edgar Hoover.

Speaker 24 He used the FBI as a political weapon, and successive presidents let him.

Speaker 20 In the 50 years since his death, the American justice system has been desperately trying to transform the FBI into a beacon of fidelity, bravery and integrity, which Hoover always claimed it was.

Speaker 36 Now, with Patel's appointment, that work is at risk of being undone.

Speaker 17 And that could have terrifying consequences.

Speaker 9 I'm Matt Bevan, and this is if you're listening.

Speaker 7 How should you respond when a comment is published in the media about you or your organization that you think is unfair or incorrect?

Speaker 41 There's a whole spectrum of options from ignoring it all the way up to a defamation lawsuit.

Speaker 24 Or, if you are FBI Director J.

Speaker 27 Edgar Hoover, you can embark on a years-long crusade that ends with you trying to get the guy who made the comment to kill himself.

Speaker 9 Hoover liked to think of himself as an open-minded man.

Speaker 46 The FBI welcomes constructive criticism, but I think we ought to always consider the source from which criticism comes.

Speaker 6 In November 1962, the source from which criticism came was civil rights leader Dr.

Speaker 15 Martin Luther King Jr.

Speaker 47 Now, I had five decades of Hoover stories to choose from, by the way, to give a sense of what sort of power the FBI can have when it isn't operating with independence and integrity.

Speaker 19 This episode could genuinely be seven hours long, but I'm going to focus on one story that really makes your jaw drop.

Speaker 48 It all started in the FBI branch in Atlanta, Georgia.

Speaker 40 The local paper in Atlanta had republished an article from the New York Times in which Dr.

Speaker 23 King said that the FBI wasn't doing enough to get rid of racial bias in their forces.

Speaker 6 His accusation was that FBI officers in the South, particularly in the city of Albany in South Georgia, were staffed with white southern-born agents who were too friendly with local police and segregationists.

Speaker 51 I can easily understand that Dr. King, in an emotional moment, might have made the statement.

Speaker 24 This is Deke DeLoach, the third highest-ranked official in the FBI at the time.

Speaker 51 The fact was that four out of five agents in Albany, Georgia at that particular time, were northern-born, reared, and educated.

Speaker 8 The FBI special agent in charge of the Atlanta office read this in the newspaper and typed up a memo to the FBI director.

Speaker 20 The memo listed where the five agents at the Albany office were born, and it noted that Dr.

Speaker 22 King had got his facts wrong.

Speaker 8 But it ended with, recommend no further action in this matter.

Speaker 36 And maybe in a normal intelligence agency, that's what would have happened.

Speaker 32 But this wasn't.

Speaker 41 a normal intelligence agency.

Speaker 52 In a way that is true of few organizations, J. Edgar Hoover is the FBI, and that is our story.
The story of a man, an organization, and their service to the nation.

Speaker 52 A story of fidelity, bravery, integrity.

Speaker 42 Well, we'll have to see about that.

Speaker 51 But this touched off a feud between Mr. Hoover and Dr.
King.

Speaker 51 In my opinion, it was a very unfortunate feud.

Speaker 23 Fidelity, bravery, integrity, and very unfortunate feuds.

Speaker 19 See, Hoover was not happy with how this had gone down.

Speaker 39 He ordered his men to get the record corrected.

Speaker 50 I was responsible for trying to contact Dr. King.
Dr. King would not return my calls.

Speaker 7 Now I'm definitely on MLK's side in this story, but also I do reckon if the FBI calls you, you should probably call back.

Speaker 14 Hoover became furious.

Speaker 13 He thought this proved that Dr.

Speaker 7 King was a liar who wasn't interested in the truth.

Speaker 55 I don't share the feeling that has been advanced by some extremists that a man because he's born in the South can't conduct or won't conduct a fair, impartial investigation.

Speaker 41 Extremists.

Speaker 47 After the article came out, Hoover wanted to start spying on Dr.

Speaker 16 King with bugs and wiretaps.

Speaker 19 He began pressuring his boss, Attorney General Robert F.

Speaker 32 Kennedy Sr.,

Speaker 46 to allow him to do it, despite his claim that the FBI taps telephones only with the authority of the Attorney General and only in cases involving kidnapping where a human life may be endangered or in internal security cases.

Speaker 46 And as of this morning, there are but 90 wiretaps in the entire United States and in the

Speaker 27 months of hassling, Bobby Kennedy agreed to allow the taps.

Speaker 27 The FBI tapped Dr.

Speaker 8 King's phones, installed microphones in his home, and also installed them in every hotel room he stayed in while traveling around the country.

Speaker 8 They didn't find evidence of connections with communist spies, but they did apparently hear Martin Luther King having a lot of extramarital affairs.

Speaker 14 Meanwhile, Hoover just could not stop ranting about the Albany office story.

Speaker 53 I've seen some fantastic statements that made that practically all of our agents in the Deep South offices are men who've been born and reared in the Deep South.

Speaker 29 Two years after Dr.

Speaker 32 King ignored his calls, he was still going on about it.

Speaker 55 I can say that 70%

Speaker 55 of the agents in the 23 southern offices were born in the north.

Speaker 10 Finally, Dr.

Speaker 6 King decided that that it was time to sit down face to face with Director Hoover.

Speaker 55 I have had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Hoover this afternoon and I might say that the discussion was quite amicable.

Speaker 7 The meeting might have been amicable but as they had that meeting there was a parcel sitting in Dr.

Speaker 25 King's mailbox.

Speaker 6 Inside was a tape recording which appeared to be of Dr.

Speaker 23 King having sex with women who were not his wife in various hotel rooms.

Speaker 7 It was a supercut of sorts.

Speaker 6 Alongside the tape recording was a typed note.

Speaker 13 The note used horrific racist insults, threatened to expose King's affairs, and then implied that the only way King could save his reputation was to kill himself within 34 days of the letter being sent, before Christmas Day, 1964.

Speaker 6 The package was unsigned, but Dr.

Speaker 25 King knew it was from the FBI.

Speaker 26 They are out to break me, King said.

Speaker 44 We know this because he said it in a phone call picked up by wiretaps, transcribed, and sent to Hoover's office.

Speaker 37 Hoover didn't break Martin Luther King, but he wasn't alone on Hoover's enemies list.

Speaker 16 J.

Speaker 57 Edgar Hoover had a party trick of relating bits of juicy gossip about people in high places. Well, it turns out that the FBI director had a special squad prying into people's sex lives.

Speaker 26 So what can we learn from this incredibly disturbing story?

Speaker 16 Well, for 48 years, the United States of America had a secret police run by a single man on a mission to preserve what he saw as American values through a massive surveillance program.

Speaker 45 Congressman Moss believes that there's a fail on one out of every two Americans, men, women, and children.

Speaker 7 Hoover used the enormous power at his disposal to spy on, intimidate and threaten people he saw as threats to the status quo or public enemies.

Speaker 58 How does the Bureau decide who is an enemy of the state? Under J. Edgar Hoover, it was a combination of statute and personal taste.

Speaker 12 Sound familiar?

Speaker 59 When you report fake news, which CNN does a lot, you are the enemy of the people.

Speaker 60 Go ahead. I will say this.
Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, okay? She has to go to jail.

Speaker 44 Hoover operated almost entirely without oversight, and he didn't tolerate dissent from his staff.

Speaker 30 FBI upper management compromised their own morals to comply with Hoover's orders, knowing that the alternative was being demoted to resident agent in charge of the office in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Speaker 30 They anticipated his whims and acted accordingly, leading to a cultural rot from the top to the bottom.

Speaker 7 The public had no idea of who Hoover really was, and he remained incredibly popular right up until his death.

Speaker 52 From his office, J. Edgar Hoover has placed on the entire organization his own rigid code of service, integrity, and morality.

Speaker 6 But the eight presidents he worked alongside knew exactly who he was.

Speaker 12 Not only did they not fire him, they changed laws to make sure that he could stay on. On the 1st of January 1965, J.

Speaker 16 Edgar Hoover turned 70.

Speaker 14 By then, he'd been in office for 40 years.

Speaker 40 And that should have been the end of his time as FBI director.

Speaker 10 The law said that public servants had to retire at 70.

Speaker 53 And knowing you as I do, Edgar, I know you won't break the law.

Speaker 26 But President Lyndon Johnson, knowing that J.

Speaker 12 Edgar Hoover was a corrupt, deceitful blackmailer, said that the nation could not afford to let him retire.

Speaker 53 I have just now signed an executive order exempting you from compulsory retirement for an indefinite period of time. And again, Edgar, congratulations and accept the gratitude of a grateful nation.

Speaker 30 In the years since Hoover's death, as all these horrible stories came out into the open, there's been an inclination to portray him as an all-powerful villain who pulled the strings of America's political and cultural elite with blackmail.

Speaker 28 Mr. Hoover often told Mr.

Speaker 57 Nixon about stories he had on other prominent politicians. Perhaps he took the hint.

Speaker 24 But Hoover biographer Beverly Gage argues that the only reason he stayed in power so long was because the political elite liked what he he was doing.

Speaker 23 Presidents of both major parties relied on Hoover to keep subversive movements at bay and cover up any scandals that threatened their administration.

Speaker 53 I have asked Mr.

Speaker 61 J. Edgar Hoover to stay on as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and he accepted.

Speaker 23 By the end of the 1970s, the FBI had been significantly reformed.

Speaker 56 Part of that was thanks to the strengthened Freedom of Information Act, which gives citizens the right to request their files.

Speaker 9 But the main reason was new laws that gave the Attorney General and Congress the ability to actually find out what the FBI was up to.

Speaker 23 House and Senate intelligence committees were set up to keep an eye on the intelligence agencies.

Speaker 40 And decades later, this is where we come across Cash Patel.

Speaker 12 2016 and 2017 were extremely crazy times to be working for the FBI.

Speaker 5 The Republican presidential nominee got some good news. The FBI is once again investigating his opponent.

Speaker 62 A letter that the FBI director sent out yesterday.

Speaker 6 His extraordinary allegation that Barack Obama had ordered wiretapping surveillance.

Speaker 54 The Russians interfered in our election.

Speaker 5 Donald Trump sacked the FBI director today.

Speaker 18 By the end of 2017, Robert Mueller's investigation had charged former Trump campaign chiefs.

Speaker 23 If you want to know more about that, it's the subject of the first two entire seasons of this podcast.

Speaker 36 Understandably, this came under a lot of scrutiny from Congress, particularly the House Intelligence Committee.

Speaker 64 Cash Patel was the senior counsel for the chairman of that committee and spent his time there spreading misinformation about the FBI and Justice Department.

Speaker 12 He wanted everyone to believe that the real scandal wasn't Russia interfering in the 2016 election, but the FBI's conduct in investigating it.

Speaker 9 And that's basically what he's been up to ever since then.

Speaker 54 Spreading misinformation about everything from the Russia investigation to the 2020 election to the January 6th attack on the US Capitol building.

Speaker 38 Steve, the January 6th truth has finally entered the American bloodstream writ large. The insurrection that never was.

Speaker 49 And he spread this misinformation in some very creative ways.

Speaker 19 In 2022, he published a children's book about it all called The Plot Against the King, with a king that looks a lot like Donald Trump thinks he looks.

Speaker 20 It's actually a trilogy.

Speaker 33 There have been many plots against the king.

Speaker 15 In 2023, he published a book for adults with basically the same storyline called Government Gangsters, The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy, which included in the back a list of people that he thinks are deep state operatives.

Speaker 24 It's a super lazy list.

Speaker 7 Basically, if you searched online for people who criticized Trump or people who didn't do what Trump wanted them to do, these would be the top results.

Speaker 7 It includes Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton, as well as the last five U.S.

Speaker 48 Attorneys General and the last three directors of the FBI.

Speaker 63 The Senate has confirmed Cash Patel to be the next director of the FBI.

Speaker 65 We are going to remove the weaponization of the intelligence community for political purposes.

Speaker 63 Despite Democratic concerns, that he might look to operate as a Donald Trump loyalist and use the powers of the FBI to go after adversaries of the president.

Speaker 38 They are afraid that President Trump is going to come in and actually use the law to prosecute those who broke it.

Speaker 38 Whether they're in government, whether they're in the private sector, civilians, and yes, even if they're in the media, if they participated in a conspiracy to rig elections and break the law or do other corrupt activities, you'll be prosecuted.

Speaker 29 Days after Patel's appointment, it was announced that Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent-turned far-right podcaster, would serve as his deputy.

Speaker 29 If you're wondering who that is, here he is on his podcast six weeks ago.

Speaker 34 I am absolutely certain this is the biggest political scandal of our time and that the FBI has been hiding a massive fake assassination plot to shut down the questioning of the 2020 election.

Speaker 12 Yeah, so he is very much a conspiracy theorist, but that's not all. Here he is from that same episode.

Speaker 43 The left has a problem.

Speaker 34 You know what the problem is?

Speaker 43 Everybody hates you! You suck!

Speaker 33 So, that guy and Cash Patel at the head of the FBI.

Speaker 10 No one is more excited about all this than Steve Bannon.

Speaker 66 This is a glorious day. You know why it's glorious?

Speaker 66 Cash Patel's director of the FBI.

Speaker 19 And to be honest, that's the most chilling thing for me.

Speaker 16 A couple of months ago, when Patel was first announced as Trump's nominee, Steve Bannon engaged in a little bit of nostalgia.

Speaker 35 When I was a kid growing up in our parish in Richmond, Virginia, St. Paul's Catholic Church, and then St.

Speaker 35 Benedict's later, the most revered dads in the parish were not the doctors or the lawyers, but the revered guys were the... We had two FBI agents.
They were revered, the FBI, Jerry Gerhruva's FBI.

Speaker 7 Okay, but like...

Speaker 35 That's not the FBI today. The FBI today is thoroughly incompetent incompetent and corrupt.
It has to be taken apart brick by brick and Cash Patel is the guy to do it.

Speaker 7 If that's true and it is taken apart brick by brick, we all just have to hope that the thing that replaces it isn't Jerry Gerhoover's FBI.

Speaker 23 If you're listening is written by me, Matt Bevan.

Speaker 36 Supervising producer is Jess O'Callaghan.

Speaker 28 Audio production this week is by Adair Shepard.

Speaker 20 Next week, the other half of the federal criminal justice system.

Speaker 36 The US Justice Department and judicial branch are already under pressure from the Trump administration.

Speaker 25 There have been mass resignations over the new Attorney General Pam Bondi's decision to drop the prosecution of the mayor of New York City in exchange for him agreeing to back Trump's immigration policies.

Speaker 49 Meanwhile, Trump administration officials are threatening to fire judges who rule against them. In Donald Trump's first term, the judicial system pushed back against him.

Speaker 25 Will that happen this time?

Speaker 44 That's next on if you're listening.

Speaker 2 Hi, it's PK, host of Politics Now. And as the federal election looms, we've got you covered.
I'll be joined by the ABC's sharpest minds to bring you the latest news and analysis from the campaign.

Speaker 2 It's called Politics Now, and you can find and follow it on the ABC Illicit app.