AMERICAN POLITICS 0.06--SUMMER READING FOR LAW STUDENTS--AMERICA'S SECRET POLICE(?)

Tim Weiner, Enemies: A History of the FBI (New York: Random House, 2012) ("Obama gave the FBI control over the toughest al-Qaeda captives, the high-value detainees. He entrusted [FBI Director] Robert Mueller and his agents with the task of arresting and interrogating terrorists without mangling American laws and liberties." 'The FBI was now a part of a growing global network of interwoven national security systems, patched into a web of secret information shared among police and spies throughout American and the world. The Bureau trapped more suspects with more stings, and more sophisticated ones. It sometimes worked at the edge of the law, and arguably beyond, in the surveillance of thousands of Americans who opposed the government with words and thoughts, not deed or plots. . . . " "On the home front, Americans had become inured to the gaze of close-circuit cameras, the gloved hand of airport guards, and the phalanx of cops and guardsmen in combat gear. Many willingly surrendered liberties for a promise of security. They might not love Big Brother, but the knew he was part of the family now. . . . " "The FBI, which still has no legal charter from Congress, had been fighting for a century over what it could do in the name of national security. Attorney General Edward Levi had been the first to try to goven the Bureau thirty-five years earlier, in the wake of Watergate. He had acted in the tradition of Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, the pillar of the law who first appointed J. Edgar Hoover, and who had warned that a secret police was a menance to a free society." Id. at 446-447. Also see Kevin Baker, "Foiled Again," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/1/2012.).