Dive into the dark side of law enforcement as we uncover the most controversial and shocking actions taken by the FBI throughout history. From Ruby Ridge to COINTELPRO, these incidents reveal a disturbing pattern of power abuse and constitutional violations.
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00:00We really had to catch this guy, to establish credibility after all the other issues,
00:05and it was just a matter of bringing this guy back to Boston.
00:08Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're discussing 12 times the FBI proved that power corrupts.
00:14This legislation is essential not only to pursuing and punishing terrorists,
00:19but also preventing more atrocities in the hands of the evil ones.
00:25Handling of anthrax attacks in 2001.
00:28The way that it was done was about control. It was about fear, intimidation, and control.
00:35Following the September 11th attacks, a series of letters laced with anthrax
00:39were mailed to news offices and senators. Five people died and 17 fell ill. It quickly
00:45turned into one of the most complicated FBI cases ever, involving more than 10,000 witnesses.
00:51The case's conclusion was highly contentious. Initially, the FBI falsely accused Stephen
00:56Hatfield, and the resulting media frenzy destroyed his reputation. He later successfully
01:01sued the bureau and was awarded $5.8 million. That case was settled when the FBI agreed to
01:07pay him almost $6 million. In 2008, the FBI claimed Bruce Ivins was the real culprit,
01:13a man who had volunteered to help their investigation. Not long after,
01:17Ivins took his own life in fear. Many have contested the FBI's accusation,
01:22arguing that significant evidence suggests they had the wrong man.
01:27I'm still hoping somehow, because of the investigation, supposedly,
01:32that we will get some answers. And for seven years, I've been waiting for that.
01:36Ruby Ridge Standoff
01:38It was bad. People, whatever views they have, whatever illegal activities they have,
01:44should not be shot down. In 1992, the FBI made a severe
01:48deviation from its standard rules of engagement. During the Ruby Ridge incident, Randy Weaver
01:53gained heat from selling illegal weapons, specifically, sawed-off shotguns, to an
01:58informant. A trial was arranged, but things went south when the date was changed and Weaver wasn't
02:04informed. I told Randy, I said, you don't really understand what the full weight and power of this
02:11government is, and what it would really mean if you want a confrontation with it.
02:17When he didn't show up in court, an arrest warrant was put out. The FBI handled this abysmally,
02:22breaking the rules of engagement by using deadly force when it wasn't justified,
02:27shooting Weaver's dog, wife, and teenage son during the standoff at the family's cabin.
02:33Civilian negotiators eventually convinced Weaver to surrender. It was a total blunder
02:38on the FBI's part, who instigated violence and made no effort to de-escalate the situation.
02:43You know what I hope people take away from this is that all of this could have been prevented if
02:48Randy Weaver just would have showed up in court. Nobody wanted to go up there and kill anybody,
02:52we just needed to have him show up in court. Whitey Bolger. I suggest you think these things
02:57through before you make unfounded accusations against me. It's commonly known that the FBI
03:04uses informants. James Whitey Bolger Jr., a notorious Boston mob boss, was one of their
03:09most controversial. Whitey employed brutal tactics to achieve dominance. In 1975, he became
03:16an informant. Because James Bolger had such a strong and influential reputation, his name had
03:23value as a commodity for the Department of Justice. They needed search warrants to take down
03:29the mafia. The FBI gave him complete protection, allowing his reign of terror to continue
03:35consequence-free. The DEA didn't care for his immunity, however, and in 1994, he became a fugitive.
03:42His FBI handler was arrested and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Whitey, on the other hand, wouldn't
03:47be caught until 2011, when he was 81 years old. He received two life sentences. In 2018, the cycle of
03:55violence came full circle when he was killed by fellow inmates. It's been said that one of the
04:00reasons it took so long to catch Whitey Bolger is that people were looking for a gangster,
04:05and Bolger, whether he liked it or not, had ceased to be one. Systemic forensic fraud. There are so
04:12many file cabinets now with Frederick Whitehurst's name on them. At FBI headquarters, they fill an
04:17entire office suite, and there are so many case files to be reviewed because of Frederick Whitehurst
04:23that 30 FBI agents and clerks are assigned the task for the next 12 months. Dr. Frederick Whitehurst
04:29was an FBI whistleblower who exposed serious issues in the agency's forensic procedures.
04:34These flaws involved the FBI prioritizing support for the prosecution rather than adhering to
04:41objective science. This bias undermined the principle of neutrality, making many trials
04:46unfair. Instead of addressing these glaring issues, they promptly disputed Whitehurst's
04:51claims and fired him. They're not going to crucify me. I'm an American citizen. I'm an FBI agent, and
04:57they can't touch me because they're going to sit off and throw stones at me. Well, OK, so what?
05:02Whitehurst battled them in court, where he received 1.16 million dollars from the FBI.
05:07The bureau would eventually implement some reforms, but their mistakes have already done
05:12irreparable damage. Due to these flawed practices, many people sentenced to death
05:17were wrongfully convicted. I think that people that go into court should be should be assured
05:24that they've got a fair justice waiting for them, and that's what's important. Infringements on
05:29press freedom and credibility. Freedom of the press is protected by the First Amendment of the
05:33United States Constitution, yet that hasn't stopped the FBI from infringing on it. One example is
05:39antiwar.com, a website critical of U.S. foreign policy, which was directly targeted by the bureau.
05:45In 2001, the site's manager received a hacking threat and reported it to the FBI. However, the
05:51FBI mistakenly believed the manager was the one who posed a threat. What followed was a difficult
05:57six-year period of investigation and surveillance. In addition to targeting websites, the FBI has
06:02also impersonated journalists before, harming actual journalists as a result. For example, in 2007,
06:09they sent a high school student a fake article containing malware, allowing them to track his
06:15activities. No-fly list blackmailing. All right, hold on, hold on. I got a primary
06:21on a target. Where? Rapidly descending. You see that right here? After the September 11th attacks,
06:27Bush's administration created the no-fly list to prevent future attacks. The FBI is able to add
06:33and remove people from the list, a power which they've abused. Multiple individuals have claimed
06:39that they were falsely added to the list, which contains tens of thousands of names. Hundreds or
06:44possibly thousands of innocent people are stopped and detained at our airports because of their
06:50name, when in fact all of that does nothing to improve security. Not only that, but the FBI then
06:55blackmailed them, saying they would only be removed if they became uninformant. Critics
07:00argue this is extortion and that the list should serve to protect citizens rather than to blackmail
07:06them. It's incredible to see this win with the Supreme Court ruling, but it's important for us
07:13to recognize that there are still thousands of American families who are impacted by the no-fly
07:19list or the terror watch list, both lists that are unconstitutional. Framing innocents for murder.
07:26At first it used to reach me, the informant at Canary Bay. It doesn't reach me anymore
07:31because I have a purpose in life. Joseph Barboza, also known as the Animal, was a mobster who caught
07:37the FBI's attention. The mob hitman became an FBI informant in 1967 and helped frame four men for
07:44the murder of Edward Deegan. Barboza himself was involved in the murder, but he was too valuable
07:50to the Bureau to send him to jail. The FBI even suppressed evidence that could have proven the
07:55four men's innocence. They received life sentences and were only cleared in 2001. By then, the damage
08:02was irreversible. Two had died in prison and the others had lost decades of their lives. There was,
08:08in fact, a conspiracy at the top of the United States government to keep Joe Salvati in jail
08:15in order to protect informant murderers and liars and so forth. Patriot Act abuse. Before anyone
08:23had a chance to understand what went wrong, he proposed fixes that went far beyond fighting
08:30terrorism. After 9-11, the Bush administration introduced the Patriot Act, aiming to tighten U.S.
08:36national security by preventing and responding to terrorism. While this is a noble goal, the FBI
08:41has massively abused the Act. It allows them to conduct broader surveillance, which they've used
08:46to collect information on countless American citizens. In theory, this requires court approval,
08:52but the Bureau frequently bypasses this in practice. What we were doing by all of these roundups is
08:58alienating those communities and making them more distrustful of law enforcement, less inclined to
09:05be cooperative, less inclined to volunteer and to come forward. National security letters, NSLs,
09:11let them gather people's private information. The FBI insists these are vital tools. However, out of
09:18the 143,071 NSL requests, only 154 criminals were tried, a roughly 0.1 percent success rate,
09:28raising questions about how vital they truly are. Trent Lotz said the day the bill was introduced,
09:35maybe now we can do things we've wanted to do for the last 10 years.
09:39No, I've always, you know, a dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier. There's no question
09:43about it. Threatening letter to Martin Luther King Jr. King and his associates, when they listen
09:49to the tape after reading the threatening letter, have no doubt whatsoever that this
09:55is from the FBI. Some people believe the FBI was secretly responsible for the assassination of
10:01Martin Luther King Jr. While this claim remains unconfirmed, they certainly had it out for him.
10:06In 1964, they sent him a suspicious package containing a letter and an allegedly incriminating
10:12tape recording. It was an attempt at blackmail, perpetrated by the Bureau. Many, including King
10:18himself, argued that the letter was intended to pressure him into taking his own life.
10:23When President Johnson stood to present Dr. King with another ceremonial pen,
10:27he did so with a full knowledge of the compromising information the FBI had gathered
10:33on him over the previous 18 months. It included infidelity accusations and multiple uses of the
10:38word fraud. This was a failed attempt to discredit King after extensive surveillance. King and his
10:45wife correctly guessed who sent the letter and refused to give in to the demands. King, there is
10:50only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it.
10:57This exact number has been selected for a specific reason. It has definite practical
11:01significance. It was 34 days before the award. Racial and ethnic mapping. They've never been
11:06in a situation where they've had to wear a tactical vest. They've never been in a situation
11:12where they've had to actually apprehend someone and take them into custody in a safe and effective
11:18manner. The FBI dedicates significant resources to mapping American communities by race and ethnicity.
11:24The 2008 Attorney General's Guidelines on Domestic FBI Operations provided broader
11:30surveillance powers, which the Bureau has since employed. These practices have been criticized
11:34for being based on racist stereotypes about criminal tendencies. Essentially, the whole
11:40issue boils down to the principle that before you can use deadly force, you have to have probable
11:45cause that the subject of that force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical
11:50injury to yourself or somebody else. For instance, in 2009, the FBI collected information about
11:55Muslim communities in Michigan. Despite no indications of criminal activity, the American
12:01Civil Liberties Union took them to court, seeking to make their mapping information public and
12:05challenging the constitutionality of this practice. Many believe it to be unconstitutional and grossly
12:11offensive. It's also prohibited by FBI guidelines, proving they don't even always follow their own
12:17rules. It is an imperative for all of us in law enforcement to try to reflect the communities we
12:23serve. Staging terrorism. In fact, the bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the FBI in a six-month
12:31sting operation. You'd expect law enforcement to prevent domestic terrorism, not actively
12:36participate. Well, the FBI sometimes subverts expectations. On numerous occasions, they've
12:42targeted unstable individuals and encouraged them to commit terrorist attacks. One of the
12:47most well-known cases involved Mohammed Osman Mohammed, who was influenced by an FBI undercover
12:53operation to carry out a car bombing in Portland in 2010. The FBI says the teen had no known
12:59terrorist ties. He may have become radicalized through the Internet. The fake bomb attempt was
13:05foiled as the FBI had provided Mohammed with an inoperable bomb. They arrested him at the last
13:11moment. A 2014 Human Rights Watch report reveals that nearly 50 percent of federal counterterrorism
13:17convictions in the previous decade were based on informant-led cases, with almost 30 percent
13:23involving sting operations where informants played an active role. Well, according to
13:28FBI officials, they gave him several other options along the way. They had been in contact
13:35with him since June of 2010, and they met in person. They emailed, they had emails with him.
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13:58COINTELPRO. The blunt fact is that for millions of decent and loyal Americans,
14:05the Federal Bureau of Investigation has become the Federal Bureau of Intimidation. What do you
14:11do when someone's beliefs are different from yours? Will you keep cool and agree to disagree
14:17or blow a gasket? Well, the FBI likes to go one step further, as shown by COINTELPRO. This
14:23involved mass surveillance, infiltration, and disruption of organizations it considered
14:28subversive. Targets of this scheme included feminists, civil rights activists, and communists,
14:34among others. It began in 1956 and finally ended in 1971, but not after doing irreparable damage
14:42to innocents. COINTELPRO had started back actually in 1956 with a program that J. Edgar Hoover had
14:50initiated involving the Communist Party. One notorious incident was the murders of 21-year-old
14:56Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and 22-year-old member Mark Clark in 1969. This was only the tip
15:02of the iceberg. COINTELPRO was responsible for countless atrocities and abuses of power.
15:08I am a revolutionary! I am a revolutionary! I am a revolutionary!
15:18What do you think was the most heinous FBI crime? Let us know in the comments section.
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