Saturday, February 25, 2012

The Bureau

Tim Weiner. Enemies: A History of the FBI. 537 pp. Random House. New York. 2012

In Federalist 8 Alexander Hamilton wrote:
"Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct....Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort to repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free."


Of course the counterargument from Benjamin Franklin runs along the lines of "they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." This is the eternal debate. But this is not the place for it.
Enemies deals with the agency tasked, among other things, with protecting the US from enemies foreign and domestic who seek to subvert our way of life [as opposed to our lifestyle]. Most works regarding the Federal Bureau of Investigation fall into two camps: Saviors or Devils. Related to that is anything regarding the man who was the Bureau for fifty years: J. Edgar Hoover, either a hero or a crossdressing, deeply conflicted, villain. Weiner presents what is perhaps the most objective history of the FBI to date, a treatment that shows the War on Terror is not a recent phenomenon.

No comments:

Post a Comment