{"id":11245,"date":"2018-02-03T05:13:01","date_gmt":"2018-02-03T05:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=11245"},"modified":"2018-02-04T05:15:50","modified_gmt":"2018-02-04T05:15:50","slug":"trump-and-nunes-torch-tradition-of-trust-between-congress-and-fbi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/trump-and-nunes-torch-tradition-of-trust-between-congress-and-fbi\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Nunes torch tradition of trust between Congress and FBI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Douglas M. Charles<\/a>, Pennsylvania State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s attacks on the FBI may have reached a climax.<\/p>\n

In an apparent attempt to discredit Robert Mueller\u2019s Russia probe, staff of the House Intelligence Committee on behalf of its chair Republican Devin Nunes of California, wrote and on Feb. 2 released a four-page memo<\/a> based on confidential information made available to them by the FBI. It outlines alleged improprieties in the FBI\u2019s investigation, specifically the monitoring of Trump\u2019s former campaign adviser Carter Page.<\/p>\n

Nunes in 2017 was forced to step aside<\/a> from the committee\u2019s Russia investigation because he was seen as taking direction from the Trump White House. <\/p>\n

Page was a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign and a person of interest<\/a> to the FBI beginning in 2013. He became the subject of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrant in 2016.<\/p>\n

As an FBI historian<\/a>, I find the congressional effort to discredit the FBI\u2019s investigation startling. Trump\u2019s involvement reminds me of Nixon. Between 1972 and 1973, President Richard Nixon attempted to contain the FBI\u2019s Watergate investigation as it zeroed in on top White House figures.<\/p>\n

Congressional committees and the FBI<\/h2>\n

The behavior of congressional Republicans in this matter is unprecedented.<\/p>\n

This view is shared even by GOP senators John McCain and Jeff Flake.<\/a> The FBI has a long history, going back to the J. Edgar Hoover era, of providing congressional committees with sensitive FBI information and assistance \u2013 provided they keep that information and relationship confidential.<\/p>\n

For example, the FBI provided information to<\/a> the House Un-American Activities Committee, singling out suspected communists and anti-communist witnesses \u2013 like Ronald Reagan<\/a>. The FBI cooperated with the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee<\/a> between 1951 and 1954. And it even provided Sen. Joe McCarthy with information and advice to keep his anti-communist cause alive until he violated Hoover\u2019s rules in 1953 by revealing his relationship with the FBI. <\/p>\n

In the years after Hoover, the FBI behaved more properly in sharing sensitive information with Congress. It began restricting itself to sharing information with its congressional oversight committees to keep them abreast of FBI activity and in line with the Justice Department\u2019s investigative guidelines. <\/p>\n

In the current Congress, Nunes\u2019 House Intelligence Committee was provided with sensitive FBI information about its Russia probe based on the understanding that the committee would not publicly reveal any of it without first asking the FBI to advise and redact classified information. <\/p>\n

The committee didn\u2019t wait for redactions, however, and instead chose to reveal select nuggets of the FBI\u2019s intelligence in its four-page memo. Trump-nominated FBI Director Christopher Wray<\/a> publicly spoke out against Trump\u2019s wishes about releasing the memo after he failed to convince the White House to block it. Wray is concerned<\/a> the Nunes memo contains \u201cmaterial omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo\u2019s accuracy.\u201d <\/p>\n

Nixon asks CIA to stop FBI<\/h2>\n
\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Nixon and Haldeman at the White House, 1969.<\/span>
\n AP Photo\/File<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While Congress\u2019 behavior in trying to discredit the FBI is unprecedented, President Trump\u2019s interest and efforts in stopping an FBI probe of the White House is not.<\/p>\n

In June 1972, Nixon discussed<\/a> with his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, how to use the CIA to stop the FBI\u2019s Watergate probe. The idea was to have the CIA director and deputy director assert that the FBI\u2019s investigation threatened national security. Though he never explained his reasoning, Nixon thought CIA Director Richard Helms owed him and would comply. He also thought it was embarrassing enough to the agency that some of the Watergate burglars were connected to the CIA<\/a> for Helms to follow through. In the end, the effort failed.<\/p>\n

Nixon had selected L. Patrick Gray as FBI director following the death of J. Edgar Hoover, and also hoped that he<\/a> could maneuver the FBI away from Watergate. He was Nixon\u2019s man at the FBI. Gray provided Watergate-related documents to White House Counsel John Dean, who monitored the FBI in the cover-up. In 1972, Gray destroyed Watergate-related documents that he had kept concealed for the previous six months<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Nixon\u2019s Oval Office tapes confirm his concerns<\/a>. In June 1972 Chief of Staff Haldeman told Nixon, \u201cThe FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn\u2019t exactly know how to control them \u2026 their investigation is now leading into some productive areas, because they\u2019ve been able to trace the money.\u201d <\/p>\n

After his 1972 re-election and as the Watergate investigation closed in, Nixon then said about Gray<\/a>, \u201cI don\u2019t believe that we oughta have Gray in that job \u2026 he\u2019s too close to us.\u201d <\/p>\n

Incredibly, Nixon even pondered the idea<\/a> (listen at 21 minutes into the tape) of naming Associate FBI Director Mark Felt as FBI director because \u201che\u2019s a good man\u201d and would be, as Haldeman commented to Nixon, \u201cyour guy\u201d who would know how to pull the levers at the FBI.<\/p>\n

What Nixon and Haldeman didn\u2019t know was that Felt was busy leaking Watergate information to various reporters, including to The Washington Post\u2019s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as \u201cDeep Throat.\u201d He hoped to undermine Gray and eventually take the top FBI job for himself. This effort backfired, and Nixon had no idea that he had briefly contemplated making Deep Throat his FBI director.<\/p>\n

In Nixon\u2019s day, interfering with the FBI happened out of view and behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

Today, Trump\u2019s concerns with the FBI\u2019s investigations are blatantly public. He has allies in Congress who share his concerns about the FBI. Nixon had no such congressional committee backing him.<\/p>\n

Where this ends, we do not yet know. Given FBI Director Wray\u2019s pushback, will Trump seek a more compliant FBI director in the mold of Gray?<\/p>\n

Will he fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein? <\/p>\n

\"TheCurrent events have the feel of a pending political and Constitutional crisis perhaps not too dissimilar from Watergate in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Douglas M. Charles<\/a>, Associate Professor of History, Pennsylvania State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Douglas M. Charles, Pennsylvania State University President Donald Trump\u2019s attacks on the FBI may have reached a climax. In an apparent attempt to discredit Robert Mueller\u2019s Russia probe, staff of the House Intelligence Committee on behalf of its chair Republican Devin Nunes of California, wrote and on Feb. 2 released a four-page memo based on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":11246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[2375,3963,989,2887,1602,1988],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11247,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245\/revisions\/11247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}