{"id":56,"date":"2017-05-19T01:41:34","date_gmt":"2017-05-19T01:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/melangedmaculateme.wordpress.com\/2017\/05\/19\/the-imperial-bureau\/"},"modified":"2023-07-28T16:21:57","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T20:21:57","slug":"the-imperial-bureau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/2017\/05\/19\/the-imperial-bureau\/","title":{"rendered":"The Imperial Bureau"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In the 1950s, for example, the National Lawyers Guild, an association of progressive lawyers formed as an alternative to the segregated, anti\u2013New Deal American Bar Association, was preparing a report detailing the FBI\u2019s illegal wiretaps and dirty tricks. The FBI, after discovering the plan through its surveillance of the organization, drafted a report asserting that the National Lawyers Guild was an agent of Moscow. Only a tool of the Soviet Union, after all, would assert that the FBI engaged in illegal surveillance. The House Un-American Activities Committee published the report under its own name.<\/p>\n

A couple decades later, the hubris of HUAC\u2019s most famous alum \u2014 forever immortalized in his utterance \u201cwhen the president does it that means it\u2019s not illegal\u201d \u2014 would send scholars scrambling for a new term to describe Nixon\u2019s power grabs. Arthur Schlesinger Jr responded with the idea of the imperial presidency.<\/p>\n

Two key components of Schlesinger\u2019s concept were the president\u2019s increasingly unilateral war-making \u2014 Nixon bombed Cambodia without congressional authorization \u2014 and the political uses of intelligence. The FBI is not merely a law enforcement agency; it is also an intelligence agency. Its domestic intelligence capabilities are the direct fruit of its role as a political police, and have been useful for thwarting domestic antiwar sentiment.<\/p>\n

With his brazen actions, Nixon crossed an important threshold. He investigated his establishment opponents and illegally surveilled his counterparts in the Democratic Party. His crime was not subverting the democratic process \u2014 electoral subterfuge, suppression, and criminal prosecution of radical groups were and are a venerable American tradition \u2014 but instead harassing elected Democrats.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Imperial Bureau<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 1950s, for example, the National Lawyers Guild, an association of progressive lawyers formed as an alternative to the segregated, anti\u2013New Deal American Bar Association, was preparing a report detailing the FBI\u2019s illegal wiretaps and dirty tricks. 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