FBI search for domestic menace
fails to account for own threat
By David Codrea, April 25th 2014
JPFO writer contributor, © 2014.
It's hardly eyebrow-raising to read reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is systematically visiting gun shops in the hopes of identifying customers "talking about big government."
How could one not talk about big government?
But with a resurrected media interest in parroting the "domestic terrorists" meme, courtesy of Harry Reid's self-serving slander of Bundy Ranch supporters, it's no wonder the feds keep returning to that playbook. Instead of looking at those with connections to true extremist movements that conduct, support and promote murder and destruction to advance political, social and religious agendas, the government finds it politically expedient, not to mention safer, to send hither swarms of officers looking instead for such indicators as paying in cash, and a host of other factors that can have innocent explanations to all but those with mistrustful minds.
That, in turn, is hardly a new phenomenon. I've reported over the years how personal activities as innocuous as shaving a beard, traveling an "illogical" distance (hey, maybe someone is offering a deal on a unique item), sporting bumper stickers the powers that be view as personal threats, and even visiting/leaving comments at "pro-gun" websites can turn one into a person of interest. 
Bizarrely, even owning a giant inflatable pink pig -- I kid you not -- really -- can be enough to prompt Leviathan to view you as a "homegrown" threat meriting special monitoring and warnings to infrastructure "stakeholders."
Official law enforcement policies, particularly with the Department of Homeland Security doing its utmost to conflate patriots with "homegrown terrorist," the rise of "fusion centers," and the federalization/militarization of police, have taken on an absurd comic undertone beneath the police state dread the enforcement apparatus generates, recalling nothing so much as the unwitting admission of investigative incompetence from Inspector Clouseau: "I believe everything and I believe nothing. I suspect everyone and I suspect no one."
With that level of official paranoia permeating all levels of law enforcement dealings with the public, it's telling that, when asked to testify earlier this month in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Insider Threat program and the danger to national security their own agency and other federal government personnel pose, FBI agents "stormed" out of the hearing. It's also revealing that "the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions."
"FBI officials simply refused to discuss any whistleblower implications in its Insider Threat Program and left the room," Chuck Grassley, who was instrumental in ensuring protection of ATF "Fast and Furious" whistleblowers, complained. "These are clearly not the actions of an agency that is genuinely open to whistleblowers or whistleblower protection."
Is it any wonder FBI agents, who themselves are being watched and reported on if they don't spy on each other to the satisfaction of their masters, are also suspicious to the point of fixation of American patriots, who see the dysfunctional acting out of government and refuse to cooperate with obsessive disarmament edicts?
It really seems a case of "Who will guard the guards?" along with "The inmates are running the asylum." Functionaries who are themselves under official suspicion are officially suspicious of everyone else. And a government that is out of control is fixated on controlling everyone and everything, right down to the most ridiculous level of details.
Somehow, the news that the Klansman accused of shooting people at the Jewish facilities in Kansas was also a protected FBI informant elicits nothing so much as Gomer Pyle's trademark "Surprise, surprise, surprise!" exclamation.
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David Codrea is a field editor at GUNS Magazine, penning their monthly "Rights Watch" column. He provides regular reporting and commentary at Gun Rights Examiner and blogs at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance.
