New York Times Slams Obama Praise For FBI

Hear Hear!

October 21. 2009

U.S. President Barack Obama and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller

The New York Times slammed President Obama's decision to praise corrupt FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and co. yesterday. Mr. Obama should be careful in his dealings with Mr. Mueller. He and others routinely provided former President George W. Bush with illegally obtained information and a very false sense of security, whilst engaging in wrongdoing and telling the world, "Trust me, I'm the President."

Where did that get George W. Bush? He is now ensconced in the anus, excuse me, annals of world history as the worst president ever. When you stand with criminals, you will fall with them as well.

In Praise of Help That Hurts

Published: October 20, 2009 - Give a president — any president — seven minutes in the office of a law enforcement agency, and you are bound to be splattered by the praise words flying everywhere.

You are not, of course, in any danger of being clubbed with candor.

So on Tuesday, when President Obama stopped by the F.B.I.’s offices in Lower Manhattan on his way to a political fund-raiser, the accolades were lavished on all present, like a middle-school soccer league awards ceremony where everyone is a winner.

Just a few weeks ago, a team of F.B.I. agents and New York police investigators arrested a man who they said was planning a bomb attack. Others were charged with lying to investigators.

This was an example, Mr. Obama said, of cooperation among federal and local authorities, a state of grace much discussed and rarely achieved, given the enduring attachment to turf.

“You’re showing us what focused and integrated counterterrorism work really looks like,” Mr. Obama said.

Well.

Actually, there are serious, unsettled questions about whether “integrated counterterrorism work” is really all that we saw with those arrests last month...

So was the city’s intelligence division working with the F.B.I., and did it just happen that a reasonable decision to question the imam turned out badly? Or did the division simply jump into another agency’s investigation?

That depends on whom you ask.

In Congressional briefings, two competing narratives have emerged, according to an official who was present and, because of the elephantine institutional egos involved in the dispute, did not want to be named.

The police department said that it was working all along with the F.B.I., through a joint terrorism task force that includes both F.B.I. agents and city police officers, according to the official. But some federal agents were outraged, the official said...

For now, the full facts about the questioning of the imam also remain unanswered. Even so, the gloss of unambiguous success was laid on by the presidential visit on Tuesday.

“Your collaboration earned the respect and gratitude not just of New Yorkers but of Americans everywhere,” Mr. Obama said.

Well, maybe not everywhere.

http://www.nytimes.com