You underestimate the power a boss has over his subordinates when he is part of the in-group. You’re coming at it from a perspective of Barr being the out-group and him having to use his explicit power to get things done, when in reality a lot of what goes on in government (and corrupt corporate orgs) is done with tacit power. Few DOJ, CIA, and FBI officers have a full picture of just how their work is misaligned with the interests of America. But most all of them have a general understanding that they are to be more loyal to the organization than they are to America.[1] Through his familial and otherwise corrupt connections, Barr is part of the in-group at the US corrupt apparatus. It can be as simple as most inferior officers knowing he’s with them.
So Barr doesn’t have to explicitly tell the guards to look the other way, he doesn’t have to tell the FBI to run a poor investigation, he doesn’t have to tell the DOJ to continue being corrupt. As long as it becomes known internally that the big boss wants the Epstein situation cleared up it’ll be done. Lower-level bosses who have the full faith and confidence of their inferiors put small plans into place to get it done. It’s what the boss wants and the boss looks out for them.
Picture Musk’s possible purchase of Twitter. Do you think that if Musk bought Twitter, even as a private owner, he would suddenly have full control of the whole apparatus? Of course not. The people with real power would be his inferiors who have been there for a while and are part of the in-group. The only way for Musk to get a hold of Twitter would be to fire quite a lot of people, many who are integral to the organization. If Musk gave a directive to unban all the conservatives Twitter banned in the past, it would take months to years to get that done. The employees with their hands on the buttons capable of doing it in a day will drag their feet. Their superiors will pretend their department doesn’t handle that problem. Reports will be written saying they’re, ‘Getting it done.’ And some employees will resign in protest.
An executive that is part of the in-group of his organization can get a lot done more quickly and secretively than an executive who is considered an outsider.
This is most clearly evinced by CIA hiring practices. They are incredibly insular and make much of the hiring process about having strong loyalty to the organization. They intentionally search for blackmail and anything in an agent’s history they can use against them. The interviews are highly subjective and applicants are restricted from discussing anything they’re questioned about. The CIA even outwardly say that their goal is to create their own community. Anecdotally, I had two friends apply to different US intelligence agencies, both of which were rejected even though they were highly qualified (both now work in highly-skilled private jobs earning six figures). From their description of the interview process it seems as if they were rejected for lacking the required ideology. Both friends are decidedly un-ideological, but that is not enough for the US intelligence agencies, you must be willing to toe the line or they won’t accept you.
As far as principles go I agree with pretty much everything you said; my analysis entirely depends on how much power and influence a potential leader has over his subordinates in practice. As a trivial case, Stalin basically was the federal government of Russia. And getting your subordinates to break the law by giving a neutral measure, say reducing the number of reported roberries, without explicitly enumerating the ways they’re supposed to cheat can be an extremely effective technique for preventing any actual legal troubles, because we’re not in Dath Ilan and don’t convict people based on probabilistic reasoning.
However what Bill Barr needed to do was make these very indirect subordinates do these very particular things, like turn off cameras and then say nothing to the FBI. I’m not coming from the perspective of Barr as an in- or out-group member, I’m coming at it from the perspective of his limited ability to do things that put his subordinates at risk of prison time. Saying “get this Epstein thing over with” doesn’t accomplish that, just like saying “I’d really like to know what they’re talking about” didn’t do that for Nixon.
Saying “get this Epstein thing over with” doesn’t accomplish that, just like saying “I’d really like to know what they’re talking about” didn’t do that for Nixon.
Nixon also said things like “Can you please give me the files of what happened around the Kennedy assassination?” which made him pretty unpopular with the CIA and FBI. The US government is currently violating laws to not give the citizens access to those files on the ground that releasing those files would have important real-world implications.
The idea that Mark Felt was mainly driven by moral considerations about Nixon’s failings seems strange given how Mark Felt himself was responsible for highly illegal operations like COINTELPRO.
The idea that Mark Felt was mainly driven by moral considerations about Nixon’s failings seems strange given how Mark Felt himself was responsible for highly illegal operations like COINTELPRO.
Perhaps there’s some critical difference between the kind of criminal activity inherent in things like COINTELPRO, or NSA surveillance, and the kind of criminal activity inherent in what Nixon did, and that that difference would also apply to covering up Epstein’s murder. The existence of such a distinction between agency-wide abuses of power that plausibly have some relation to its charter, and explicitly self-serving corruption on behalf of individual political appointees, would also explain why Mark Felt did what he did in lieu of another explanation like “Nixon asked for files from the Kennedy assasination.”
I know this is an old thread but I think it’s interesting to revisit this comment in light of what happened at Twitter. Musk did, in fact, fire a whole lot of people. And he did, in fact, unban a lot of conservatives without much obvious delay or resistance within the company. I’m not sure how much of an implication that has about your views of the justice department, though. Notably, it was pretty obvious that the decisions at Twitter were being made at the top, and that the people farther down in the org chart had to implement those decisions or be fired. That sort of thing is less often true in government, especially when the actions are on the far end of questionably legal.
Let’s take NSA surveillance of American phone records as an example—plenty of people felt that it was unconstitutional. Without getting into any details, the end result was that it ended up being a political decision whether this sort of thing is acceptable. As far as I know, nobody at the NSA got fired, let alone charged, for allowing such a program. Contrast that with convincing someone to bury the results of an autopsy. They know perfectly well that if that comes out they’ll be charged with a crime; formal authority is basically useless. Even if that person is generally loyal to the organization, that loyalty is contingent on a belief that the agency’s goals are aligned with the person’s goals. And that alignment can change very quickly. Then the person in charge is left with the option of threatening to fire people (do you know how hard it is to fire a civil servant?) or maybe just not promote them (until the next administration comes around), and even that would require a paper trail that I don’t think they would risk. Soft power can go very far, but almost never as far as covering up a murder.
This is most clearly evinced by CIA hiring practices… They intentionally search for blackmail and anything in an agent’s history they can use against them… From their description of the interview process it seems as if they were rejected for lacking the required ideology. Both friends are decidedly un-ideological, but that is not enough for the US intelligence agencies, you must be willing to toe the line or they won’t accept you.
If you are suggesting that the CIA intentionally accepts people with dark secrets, I think you are badly mistaken about something you heard about the top secret clearance process, namely that they filter out those people. Everybody in the U.S. government, no matter what department, that has to get a top secret security clearance is checked for blackmailability. The CIA needs officers that are invulnerable to blackmail from the foreign intelligence agencies that attempt to do that to officers as a full time job. They don’t actively look for people with huge debts or a sexual fetish for children and then somehow ensure their loyalty by promising not to snitch; that would be insane.
Ideological loyalty to the United States is also an unironically important trait to have in your intelligence analysts and service members more generally. I know that’s an unpopular thing to say, but at some point in the chain every country has to have a department full of people who are reliably not going to jump the fence because of some galaxy brain argument about how the they’re the real global villains.
When the CIA violates the US constitution most CIA officials side with the CIA and are not working to protect US from the attacks of the CIA on the constitutionally guaranteed freedom. There’s little loyalty towards the constitution.
The ideological loyalty that CIA analysts have is loyalty to CIA orthodoxy.
When the CIA violates the US constitution most CIA officials side with the CIA and are not working to protect US from the attacks of the CIA on the constitutionally guaranteed freedom. There’s little loyalty towards the constitution.
I agree.
The ideological loyalty that CIA analysts have is loyalty to CIA orthodoxy.
To some degree, yes. To some degree, no. Every government bureaucracy possesses a moral maze-like loyalty to itself. But you’re making broad-based statements about the motivations of all CIA officers that I am fairly certain don’t happen to be true.
You underestimate the power a boss has over his subordinates when he is part of the in-group. You’re coming at it from a perspective of Barr being the out-group and him having to use his explicit power to get things done, when in reality a lot of what goes on in government (and corrupt corporate orgs) is done with tacit power. Few DOJ, CIA, and FBI officers have a full picture of just how their work is misaligned with the interests of America. But most all of them have a general understanding that they are to be more loyal to the organization than they are to America.[1] Through his familial and otherwise corrupt connections, Barr is part of the in-group at the US corrupt apparatus. It can be as simple as most inferior officers knowing he’s with them.
So Barr doesn’t have to explicitly tell the guards to look the other way, he doesn’t have to tell the FBI to run a poor investigation, he doesn’t have to tell the DOJ to continue being corrupt. As long as it becomes known internally that the big boss wants the Epstein situation cleared up it’ll be done. Lower-level bosses who have the full faith and confidence of their inferiors put small plans into place to get it done. It’s what the boss wants and the boss looks out for them.
Picture Musk’s possible purchase of Twitter. Do you think that if Musk bought Twitter, even as a private owner, he would suddenly have full control of the whole apparatus? Of course not. The people with real power would be his inferiors who have been there for a while and are part of the in-group. The only way for Musk to get a hold of Twitter would be to fire quite a lot of people, many who are integral to the organization. If Musk gave a directive to unban all the conservatives Twitter banned in the past, it would take months to years to get that done. The employees with their hands on the buttons capable of doing it in a day will drag their feet. Their superiors will pretend their department doesn’t handle that problem. Reports will be written saying they’re, ‘Getting it done.’ And some employees will resign in protest.
An executive that is part of the in-group of his organization can get a lot done more quickly and secretively than an executive who is considered an outsider.
This is most clearly evinced by CIA hiring practices. They are incredibly insular and make much of the hiring process about having strong loyalty to the organization. They intentionally search for blackmail and anything in an agent’s history they can use against them. The interviews are highly subjective and applicants are restricted from discussing anything they’re questioned about. The CIA even outwardly say that their goal is to create their own community. Anecdotally, I had two friends apply to different US intelligence agencies, both of which were rejected even though they were highly qualified (both now work in highly-skilled private jobs earning six figures). From their description of the interview process it seems as if they were rejected for lacking the required ideology. Both friends are decidedly un-ideological, but that is not enough for the US intelligence agencies, you must be willing to toe the line or they won’t accept you.
As far as principles go I agree with pretty much everything you said; my analysis entirely depends on how much power and influence a potential leader has over his subordinates in practice. As a trivial case, Stalin basically was the federal government of Russia. And getting your subordinates to break the law by giving a neutral measure, say reducing the number of reported roberries, without explicitly enumerating the ways they’re supposed to cheat can be an extremely effective technique for preventing any actual legal troubles, because we’re not in Dath Ilan and don’t convict people based on probabilistic reasoning.
However what Bill Barr needed to do was make these very indirect subordinates do these very particular things, like turn off cameras and then say nothing to the FBI. I’m not coming from the perspective of Barr as an in- or out-group member, I’m coming at it from the perspective of his limited ability to do things that put his subordinates at risk of prison time. Saying “get this Epstein thing over with” doesn’t accomplish that, just like saying “I’d really like to know what they’re talking about” didn’t do that for Nixon.
Nixon also said things like “Can you please give me the files of what happened around the Kennedy assassination?” which made him pretty unpopular with the CIA and FBI. The US government is currently violating laws to not give the citizens access to those files on the ground that releasing those files would have important real-world implications.
The idea that Mark Felt was mainly driven by moral considerations about Nixon’s failings seems strange given how Mark Felt himself was responsible for highly illegal operations like COINTELPRO.
Perhaps there’s some critical difference between the kind of criminal activity inherent in things like COINTELPRO, or NSA surveillance, and the kind of criminal activity inherent in what Nixon did, and that that difference would also apply to covering up Epstein’s murder. The existence of such a distinction between agency-wide abuses of power that plausibly have some relation to its charter, and explicitly self-serving corruption on behalf of individual political appointees, would also explain why Mark Felt did what he did in lieu of another explanation like “Nixon asked for files from the Kennedy assasination.”
I know this is an old thread but I think it’s interesting to revisit this comment in light of what happened at Twitter. Musk did, in fact, fire a whole lot of people. And he did, in fact, unban a lot of conservatives without much obvious delay or resistance within the company. I’m not sure how much of an implication that has about your views of the justice department, though. Notably, it was pretty obvious that the decisions at Twitter were being made at the top, and that the people farther down in the org chart had to implement those decisions or be fired. That sort of thing is less often true in government, especially when the actions are on the far end of questionably legal.
Let’s take NSA surveillance of American phone records as an example—plenty of people felt that it was unconstitutional. Without getting into any details, the end result was that it ended up being a political decision whether this sort of thing is acceptable. As far as I know, nobody at the NSA got fired, let alone charged, for allowing such a program. Contrast that with convincing someone to bury the results of an autopsy. They know perfectly well that if that comes out they’ll be charged with a crime; formal authority is basically useless. Even if that person is generally loyal to the organization, that loyalty is contingent on a belief that the agency’s goals are aligned with the person’s goals. And that alignment can change very quickly. Then the person in charge is left with the option of threatening to fire people (do you know how hard it is to fire a civil servant?) or maybe just not promote them (until the next administration comes around), and even that would require a paper trail that I don’t think they would risk. Soft power can go very far, but almost never as far as covering up a murder.
Also, I still don’t see any positive reason to give any credence to proclamations of the FBI. They are clearly as corrupt as the CIA if not more so.
Second comment to respond to footnote:
If you are suggesting that the CIA intentionally accepts people with dark secrets, I think you are badly mistaken about something you heard about the top secret clearance process, namely that they filter out those people. Everybody in the U.S. government, no matter what department, that has to get a top secret security clearance is checked for blackmailability. The CIA needs officers that are invulnerable to blackmail from the foreign intelligence agencies that attempt to do that to officers as a full time job. They don’t actively look for people with huge debts or a sexual fetish for children and then somehow ensure their loyalty by promising not to snitch; that would be insane.
Ideological loyalty to the United States is also an unironically important trait to have in your intelligence analysts and service members more generally. I know that’s an unpopular thing to say, but at some point in the chain every country has to have a department full of people who are reliably not going to jump the fence because of some galaxy brain argument about how the they’re the real global villains.
When the CIA violates the US constitution most CIA officials side with the CIA and are not working to protect US from the attacks of the CIA on the constitutionally guaranteed freedom. There’s little loyalty towards the constitution.
The ideological loyalty that CIA analysts have is loyalty to CIA orthodoxy.
I agree.
To some degree, yes. To some degree, no. Every government bureaucracy possesses a moral maze-like loyalty to itself. But you’re making broad-based statements about the motivations of all CIA officers that I am fairly certain don’t happen to be true.