By Jeff Jacoby
Sunday, August 11, 2013
There is no connection, of course, between the
prosecution of notorious gangster James "Whitey" Bulger and the
recent spate of scandals and revelations roiling the Obama administration. Or
is there?
Law enforcement and criminal justice are essential
functions of government. No civilized society could survive for long if it
lacked tools to combat lawlessness or make dangerous villains answer for their
crimes. And Bulger was certainly dangerous — "one of the most vicious,
violent criminals ever to walk the streets of Boston," as Assistant US
Attorney Fred Wyshak called him in summing up for the prosecution last week.
But Bulger wasn't the only one on trial in Boston's
federal courthouse. So was the government trying him. Bulger and his henchmen
may have been the degenerates who physically committed the gruesome murders and
other crimes that jurors learned about during 35 days of sometimes
stomach-churning testimony. But it was other degenerates, in the FBI and the
Justice Department, who for so long enabled Bulger's bloody mayhem. They
enlisted Bulger as an informant, protected him from police investigations, and
warned him to flee when an indictment was imminent. "If the FBI had not
made Whitey its favorite mobster, broken the rules, and rigged the game to his
benefit," reporter David Boeri has concluded, "Bulger would never
have reached as high as he did."
The corruption of the federal government was a key
element in Bulger's trial, as it was in so much of his sadistic career.
Officials charged with defending the public from gangsters like Bulger used
their considerable influence to defend the gangster instead.
It would be comforting to believe that this was a one-off,
that law enforcement agencies never abuse their authority, that the immense
powers of the federal government are always deployed with scrupulous integrity.
But no one believes that.
As Bulger's racketeering prosecution was playing out in
Boston, other stories of federal overreach, secrecy, and obstruction were
making headlines: The scandal at the Internal Revenue Service, which for more
than two years had targeted conservative grassroots groups for intimidation and
harassment. The Justice Department's unprecedented designation of
national-security reporter James Rosen as a "co-conspirator" in order
to trawl through his personal email, and its surreptitious seizure of telephone
records from up to 20 Associated Press reporters and editors. The disclosure
that the National Security Agency's collection of domestic communications data
is far more intrusive than was previously known, with the NSA reportedly
collecting billions of pieces of intelligence from US internet giants such as
Google, Facebook, and Skype.
President Obama insists that none of this should
undermine confidence in the federal government. "You've grown up hearing
voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate,
sinister entity," he told Ohio State's graduating class in May. "You
should reject these voices."
At a press conference in June, he likewise assured
Americans that they needn't worry about the NSA's vast data-mining operation
being abused. "We've got congressional oversight and judicial
oversight," he said. "And if people can't trust not only the
executive branch, but also don't trust Congress and don't trust federal judges
to make sure that we're abiding by the Constitution and due process and the
rule of law, then we're going to have some problems here."
According to Gallup, nearly half of Americans believe
that the federal government "poses an immediate threat to the rights and
freedoms of ordinary citizens." A Rasmussen Poll asks whether the NSA's
metadata is likely to be used by the government to persecute political
opponents; 57 percent say yes. Maybe we do have some problems here.
Or maybe Americans are remembering that government is
always dangerous, regardless of the party in power. "If men were angels,
no government would be necessary," James Madison famously wrote. Alas, men
are never angels, not even those entrusted with political authority. "In
framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great
difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the
governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
The Bulger trial, the IRS scandal, our gigantic
surveillance state – they are only the latest reminders that even the best government
in the world depends on human beings, with all their human vices and appetites.
Politicians, regulators, and law enforcement agents are as capable of villainy
as anyone else. Government is dangerous, and should always be handled with
care.
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