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Comment by rt4mn | Hacker News Reader

> The FBI enforce laws, not write them.

Technically correct but in practice the FBI does actually write and repeal laws in 2 incredibly important ways that I constantly see people forget about.

First every law enforcement body in this country has to prioritize which laws it wants to enforce, to many laws on the books to do otherwise. By prioritizing some crimes over others, they change the nature of the law itself, at least insofar as it impacts the lives of regular people. A law is not a really a law if its not enforced (just like a right is not really a right if it does not protect you in practice).

Second, and even more directly, the FBI in particular has a massive political influence in congress over which bills are written and which bills die and which bills get passed. Its difficult to overstate how powerful the law enforcement lobby is in this country, and a big part of that big tent is the FBI.

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Yes and no insofar as the Attorney-General and the Director of the FBI are both political appointees hired and fired by the President of the United States.

You’re meshing the appointed leadership with the field agents, but rank and file FBI and most of their bosses are law enforcement whose assembly line is Justice, not policy, and they’re the guys with the guns, not the creatures with the pencils.

> Attorney-General and the Director of the FBI are both political appointees hired and fired by the President of the United States.

That's only a part of it. The FBI as an institution pushes for and against legislation, and when they push they can shove. They play a meaningful role in the actual drafting of the law.

This is not like an inherently evil thing, usually their political agenda, such as it is, it to strengthen laws that make it easier for them to do their work, and push back against laws which restrain their power. They work to protect the interests of their institution, which is understandable, but that necessarily enters into the policy realm.

> You’re meshing the appointed leadership with the field agents, but rank and file FBI and most of their bosses are law enforcement whose assembly line is Justice, not policy, and they’re the guys with the guns, not the creatures with the pencils.

I'm not. When I say "the FBI", I speak of the institution as a whole. Everyone from the rank and file to the bosses.

Okay, let me reframe: there is only one part of the FBI that is involved in policy, and it’s the part that is involved in setting policy for the FBI. That’s management and the chain of command runs up through the POTUS. The actual policy of which laws are written can be lobbied for by the institution, same as anyone else (and people complain about corporate lobbyists all the time so you know there’s competition), but it does not make laws.

Yes, we understand. Many of us understood ~6 messages ago. Some of us understood even before that. Anyhow, the horse is very much dead.

AG and Director, as political appointees who come and go, have much less say in what and how these agencies operate than career bureaucrats technically under them. Those have goals only ever glancingly related to nominal policies.

That is not to say that appointees have no influence; they can have a lasting effect through hiring practices and other personnel actions, effects that may outlast administrations. Appointees certainly do not learn of all activities of their underlings, if only because they only have so many hours in the day to read. What they do get to read is filtered for them by those same underlings.

Correct, people have goals. However leadership sets the agenda, goals, priorities and the direction of the organization.

If the leadership is weak, uninterested or unengaged, then yes, middle management can take their stab at steering the ship (and compete with each other to do it). On the other hand, they can also just be fired if they get uppity, and if leadership has someone stepping on their toes or undermining them, well rank has it’s privileges and anyone can be replaced. Make the distinction between a working stiff with law enforcement power and a pencil pushing swamp creature with political power.

Leadership can try to set agenda, goals, priorities, and direction. How effective these efforts will be depends entirely on whether and how they match those of the people working there.

The appointees have literally no way to know how well their orders are being followed, except as by reported by those who they hope are following them.

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