Clint Eastwood Exposes the
Scum That Is the FBI and American Media
Clint Eastwood Exposes the Scum That Is the
FBI and American Media
Clint
Eastwood Ahead of the Curve on the FBI
by Curtis Ellis
Sharp-eyed
viewers will catch the foundational message of “Richard Jewell” in the caption
on a poster hanging on the wall in a defense attorney’s office: “The government
scares me more than terrorists.”
From Spaghetti Westerns to Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood has carved out an image
as the righter of wrongs, settling scores and protecting the innocent. In
Eastwood’s latest outing as a director, “Richard Jewell,” he’s protecting us
from our protectors.
Twenty
years before Carter Page there was Richard Jewell.
Jewell’s
all-too-true story serves as a cautionary tale about the FBI’s casual abuse of
power, and also as a not so esoteric commentary on the “Crossfire Hurricane”
debacle.
Paul
Walter Hauser plays Jewell, the security guard originally lauded as a hero for
discovering pipe bombs that killed two and injured over 100 others in Atlanta’s
Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympics.
Within
three days, the FBI had fingered Jewell as its prime suspect. The real culprit
was captured six years and several bombings later.
Sam
Rockwell plays G. Watson Bryant, Jewell’s lawyer and long-time friend. Jon Hamm
plays the imperious FBI agent who led the investigation.
There
are those who would believe a few bad apples were responsible for the monstrous
abuses we see in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016
campaign and presidency.
But
watching “Richard Jewell” makes one wonder if there’s not a manual of sleazy
practices passed down inside the bureau since the days of J. Edgar Hoover. We
see how the FBI played the same dirty tricks on Jewell that it used on Carter
Page, Michael Flynn, and the rest.
The
bureau chose Jewell as its target based on the flimsiest of evidence: A
profiler decided Jewell was a law enforcement wannabe who planted the bomb so
he could get attention for having discovered it—the “profile” of a lone bomber.
Confirmation bias took over, and investigators distorted everything to fit
their pre-ordained conclusion.
The
parallels between Jewell, Page, and the others caught up in the Trump
investigation don’t end there.
Just
as the FBI did with Flynn in January 2017, agents used a false pretext when
they interviewed Jewell.
They
told Flynn he didn’t need a lawyer for what was a routine interview when in
fact they were gathering evidence for their Crossfire Hurricane con job.
They
told Jewell they wanted him to be in a training video about bomb detection they
were making. “For the sake of authenticity,” they then asked him to sign away
his constitutional rights to have a lawyer present “since this is how we’d
actually do it with a real suspect.”
A
Justice Department internal investigation later said the deception was ”a
major error in judgment” but concluded there was
“no intentional violation of Mr. Jewell’s civil rights and no
criminal misconduct” by the FBI agents. No intent, no bias, no criminal
wrongdoing. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The
worst the agents faced was a temporary suspension or letter of reprimand. As
Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) said, it’s “easier to divorce your spouse” than to
get fired from the FBI.
Agents
wired Jewell’s friends and sent them in to record “friendly” conversations with
their target. They also ignored exculpatory evidence, just as Inspector General
Michael Horowitz found they did with Carter Page.
They
conducted highly visible searches of his home while the media watched, akin to
the televised raid of Roger Stone’s home.
The
media is Eastwood’s other villain. As Jewell’s lawyer says in the film, the two
most powerful forces in America, the government and the media, targeted his
client.
We
know James Comey and others used leaks and a complicit media to foist the
Russia hoax on the public and whip Washington into a frenzy. Similarly, agents
leaked Jewell’s name to a media eager to perpetuate the myth of the FBI’s
infallibility.
Non-spoiler
alert: A controversy over the film’s depiction of a reporter using sex to get
information from the FBI agent does not detract from the larger point.
We
hear Tom Brokaw declare authoritatively: “The speculation is that the FBI is
close to making the case. They probably have enough to arrest him right now,
probably enough to prosecute him, but you always want to have enough to convict
him as well.”
The
Bryant Gumbel stand-in in a reenacted “Today Show” interview asks why would the
FBI investigate Jewell if he weren’t guilty of something.
In
contrast, we hear Nadia, the Russian-born assistant to Jewell’s attorney,
say, “Where I come from if the government says someone is guilty you know
they are innocent.”
The
unholy alliance between the FBI and the media predates even Richard Jewell—it
is straight out of the J. Edgar Hoover playbook.
For
decades, Hoover’s FBI harassed and gathered dossiers on Martin Luther
King, civil rights activists, antiwar leaders, and others. He regularly would
feed dirt on them to friendly reporters. Civil libertarians warned that the
FBI’s secret machinations threatened our democracy.
In
the 1970s, the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee discovered intelligence
agencies and the FBI kept files on thousands of Americans and peddled
disinformation to the news media.
Such
abuses led Congress to establish Senate and House Intelligence Oversight
committees—and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—to protect us from
our protectors. For all the good they’ve done.
It
shows profound ignorance, misunderstanding, or disregard for history for
Democrats to invoke the name of Martin Luther King as they’ve done in
their recent impeachment putsch.
Security
operatives of our government used the same tactics against King—surveillance,
leaks, guilt by association—they used against the Trump campaign and his
presidency.
Democrats
and anyone else needing a refresher course on history and abuse of government
power need to see “Richard Jewell.”
Early
in the film, we see Jewell abusing his authority as a campus security guard
just as the FBI would do later. The message is clear: Power corrupts.
The
temptation to abuse power dwells in everyone’s heart. Ask Stanley Milgram.
Sharp-eyed
viewers will catch the foundational message of Clint Eastwood’s film in the
caption on a poster hanging on the wall behind Jewell’s attorney in his law
office: “The government scares me more than terrorists.”
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