The FBI: Secularism, Service, and Security

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s website, the initials of the FBI “might well be our motto, for those initials also represent the three things for which the Bureau and its representatives always stand: Fidelity – Bravery – Integrity.”  

In recent years, that maxim has been turned on its head. Today’s FBI and its masters in the Department of Justice are increasingly seen as disloyal, cowardly, immoral, and not deserving of the public’s trust. 

I am a retired Special Agent for the Department of the Treasury. I had the pleasure of working with the FBI for decades both in the United States and on assignments overseas. Later in life, I enjoyed working with retired FBI Agents as we traveled the country teaching and mentoring state and local law enforcement officers about terrorism and threat finance. I was impressed by the intelligence, ethics, and patriotism of my colleagues. I was proud to call them friends.  

However, for old-timers such as myself, the once premiere law enforcement agency in the United States is now unrecognizable. Something changed during the Obama administration and the tenure of Attorney General Eric Holder. The Department of Justice (and other federal agencies and departments) became overtly politicized. The trend accelerated under the Biden administration. The FBI became the foot soldiers that carry out many of the political dictates of Democratic Party apparatchiks.  

Perhaps the most egregious example is the Bureau’s conduct in “Spygate” or the “Russian collusion hoax” (i.e., the FBI operation to conduct political surveillance against Donald Trump and the resulting cover-up). At least 40 FBI agents were involved in the Mueller-Weissmann probe to investigate the fraudulent construct created by Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign team. The Bureau knew in advance the allegations were a hoax but, for crass political reasons, contributed to the smearing of Trump and many of his close associates. 

Former FBI Director James Comey set a perjury trap for President Trump’s national security adviser and illegally leaked classified information. During questioning by congressional investigators and during formal testimony, he didn’t know or couldn’t recall key details hundreds of times. 

Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director, committed perjury under oath.

FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith falsified a document which was used to obtain a FISA warrant to help justify surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser.

The FBI embarrassed law enforcement with the shameless manner of arrest of Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro. FBI Agents publicly humiliated Navarro, arresting him at Reagan National Airport by putting him in handcuffs and, later, leg shackles. Standard procedure for a white-collar arrest of this nature would be to tell him he was going to be charged and simply request his appearance at the local FBI office.  

Similarly, former Trump adviser Roger Stone was arrested at dawn at his Florida home by dozens of FBI Agents in tactical gear with guns drawn. CNN was “coincidentally” at the scene, filming the arrest. It was a blatant abuse of power for political reasons. A simple phone call requesting Stone’s appearance would have been sufficient. 

Mark Houck, a pro-life activist, was arrested at home on spurious charges in front of his wife and seven children. Dozens of FBI Agents in tactical gear and guns drawn handcuffed and shackled Houck. According to his wife, the children were “traumatized.” 

In August 2022, approximately 30 armed FBI agents converged on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida to execute a search warrant regarding classified documents in the former president’s possession. During the raid, agents searched Melania Trump’s wardrobe. During the same raid, the FBI added documents to a nonexistent crime scene and doctored a photo released to the press in order to further smear Mr. Trump.  

In 2021, both the DOJ and FBI were heavily criticized when Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing the FBI to use counterterrorism tools and techniques in response to parents speaking out at school board meetings against transgender-related issues and critical race theory curricula.

An internal FBI memo was discovered that proposed infiltrating churches to deal with “radical traditional Catholics,” who were characterized as a domestic terror threat. FBI Agents interviewed clergy as part of the initiative and even used at least one undercover approach. The anti-traditional-Catholic campaign was more widespread than initially reported. The Bureau never offered an explanation as to the nature of the perceived traditional-Catholic threat or why Americans were targeted due to their religious beliefs in defiance of the First Amendment.

The FBI sullied itself with the entrapment of conspirators in the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case as well as seeding the January 6 demonstration with over two dozen paid informants and probable provocateurs. 

Biden’s DOJ and its FBI enforcers have prioritized threats from “domestic terrorists”—a euphemism for conservative white Trump supporters. The Bureau played games with case statistics in an effort to inflate a threat that isn’t. They spent four years harassing average Americans while thousands of real terrorists have entered the country and millions of illegal immigrants commit crimes against innocent Americans. 

Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the FBI held meetings with Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley to discuss “disinformation” on social media and to encourage the censoring of accurate information. Among other troubling aspects of this collaboration was the FBI laying the groundwork for the media and Big Tech to downplay the Hunter Biden laptop revelations that surfaced immediately prior to the election. It has been documented that the FBI knew well in advance of the public release of the information that the laptop’s contents were genuine and not a deep fake or Russian misinformation. 

There are many more examples of ethically challenged FBI behavior of different sorts that would not have been imagined only a few decades ago. 

Most of the troubling investigative techniques and overt weaponization of the FBI for political ends were undoubtedly mandated by political higher-ups. My overriding question is why didn’t the rank and file step up and simply say no? Yes, there have been a few brave whistleblowers.  Too few. But why didn’t the mass cadre of Special Agents honor their oath of office? Why did they betray the motto of the FBI and the principles on which this nation stands? Do concerns about a career and a pension outweigh one’s moral compass? Most of the troubling investigative techniques and overt weaponization of the FBI for political ends were undoubtedly mandated by political higher-ups. My overriding question is why didn’t the rank and file step up and simply say no? Tweet This

I believe the answers are found in the rise of secularism in the United States. Polling indicates that when it comes to three key tenants of religious life—belief, behavior, and belonging—all are lower than they have ever been in American history.

It is often said that “politics is downstream from culture” and that to change politics one must first change culture. An addendum to the above is that our once-respected civil service is only a bit further downstream.

Civil servants increasingly come from a population that has succumbed to the age of materialism wrapped in secular relativism. 

Instead of having God as the center of their lives, too many civil servants replace God with self or substitute religion for worshipping the tenants of a political party. These dangerous trends are compounded with an appalling lack of knowledge and pride in American history and the foundations of our constitutional republic. Further exacerbating the deterioration of the modern civil service is the shift away from merit and the embrace of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT).  

Modern American academia, the poison of Hollywood, and the superficiality of social media also indelibly form the modern civil psyche. 

Recruitment, performance, and professional standards have been lowered.  

Cumulatively, these factors have wreaked havoc on our once-respected civil service.  

Nothing better exemplifies the free fall of the FBI than the pictures of on-duty agents who knelt before Black Lives Matter protesters at the height of the George Floyd unrest and riots.  

BLM is a documented scam that has enriched its corrupt Marxist founders. 

The agents involved knelt before their false gods and were commended by their superiors and financially rewarded by the FBI Agents Association.   

To be sure, abuses are not limited to the DOJ and FBI. There are plenty of examples of truly troubling behavior elsewhere in the civil service. The culture of the bureaucracies reflects our culture. 

In my career, I was proud to serve as a covert Case Officer for the CIA. I worked in the Secret Service, U.S. Customs Service, the Treasury’s FinCEN, the Department of State, and Main Treasury. In varied assignments, I witnessed examples of managerial ineptitude and far too much government waste. There was the occasional incident of a colleague struggling with alcohol or other personal problems. These kinds of things are found in any large organization. But I never experienced the kind of unprofessional behavior and mass acquiescence in assaults on our values that seems to be acceptable and sometimes rewarded today.  

The incoming team under President Trump has much to address. Drastic housecleaning and reforms in the civil service will be a priority. The new Department of Government Efficiency will propose downsizing and accountability.

But none of this will matter if our society does not transform itself.  

There is a biblical aspect to what is happening in America. The Old Testament gives us stories where the people of Israel turn away from God. They are warned by prophets to repent. When they did so, they continued to be safe and flourish. But when their pride, self-interest, and lust for things of the world governed their lives, they eventually were overrun by their enemies and enslaved. 

The moral collapse of a citizenry comes before the fall of a nation. Will we Americans admit our mistakes and reform? The FBI and other government agencies that we depend on for our security cannot serve the American people they represent and be true to our founders’ ideals of a constitutional federal republic if the talent pool they draw from is not God-fearing. 

As John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”