Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI - Hardcover

Powers, Richard Gid

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684833719 ISBN 13: 9780684833712

Publisher: Free Press, 2004

Synopsis

A history of failures within the FBI describes the scandals that have marked the bureau since its inception in 1908, drawing on years of research and interviews to explain why the September 11 attacks were unforeseen. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

Reviews

Popular historian Powers, biographer of J. Edgar Hoover, has produced a timely and nuanced history of the legendary agency that puts its current struggles in appropriate context. Beginning with the debate about the need for a federal detective force in the early 1900s, Powers traces the evolution of a small unit within the Justice Department into the G-Men of lore. Despite some odd omissions (there is no mention of the bureau's role in investigating the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy or the first bombing of the World Trade Center) and a little sloppiness (Rudolph Giuliani passed on trying the Mafia Commission in order to try a political corruption case, not to handle insider trading investigations), Powers succeeds in showing how the FBI's handling of terrorist threats prior to 9/11 was the direct result of the public backlash against Hoover's excesses and a desire to better respect civil liberties. His balanced and reasoned defense of recent director Louis Freeh, who has become a convenient scapegoat in the eyes of many, will spark renewed debate, especially as the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and consideration of reforms of the intelligence community remain in the spotlight.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* The failure of our various intelligence agencies to unravel the 9/11 plot has now been well documented. Since the FBI had the statutory responsibility for domestic intelligence gathering, most of the blame has fallen on them. Powers, who has written extensively on issues of national security and law enforcement, asserts that the recent intelligence failures of the FBI can be traced directly back to a form of original sin. The FBI was idealistically launched under the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, with the purpose of investigating crimes by the rich, powerful, and politically well connected. Unfortunately, the bureau quickly became a political tool. Powers illustrates how the FBI misused its powers during the Red Scare of the 1920s and the campaigns against labor organizations and civil rights groups. He also describes J. Edgar Hoover's consummate skills of self-promotion as agents tracked down "public enemies" during the 1930s. Powers tends to gloss over some of the great achievements of both Hoover and the bureau, and his links between earlier and current failures is tenuous. However, as a history of the nation's most powerful law enforcement agency, this work is informative and engrossing. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684833719
• ISBN 13: 9780684833712
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528