[seee-I-Told-you]

My perspective is this, and disclosure: I've been working with the FBI on numerous occations.. The FBI is a large organization of around 35 000 - 40 000 employees with 50+ field offices.

The FBI's mission is to uphold the consitution and protect the U.S from foreign intelligence, espionage and terrorism. Note that the U.S. population is ~ 332 million right now.

I think the FBI's dilemma is "damned if you do, damned if you don't", constantly having to find the right balance with regards to "what is too little, what is too much?".

There is also the classic services-dilemma of.. if you get attacked.. everybody will yell "where was the FBI??". If an attacked is stopped in it's tracks the majority of times you won't even know about it.

[twic]

> I think the FBI's dilemma is "damned if you do, damned if you don't"

It's more "tutted at if you do, damned if you don't", so they are strongly incentivised to do.

[photochemsyn]

Another (equally flawed) take on the FBI is that it's main job is serving as the enforcement arm for the organized white-collar crime cartel known as Wall Street. This is supported by the fact that so many FBI executives get lucrative jobs on Wall Street after they retire, and that very few executives are ever prosecuted or investigated for criminal behavior (see 2008 subprime fraud - in contrast, Iceland sent 39 bankers to jail over that).

A nice case example is the HSBC drug cartel laundering scandal, in which HSBC laundered $2 billion in Central/South American drug cartel money and yet noone in that organization ever served prison time for it, due to decisions made by the FBI and the US Justice Department. Indeed, James Comey (later FBI head) got a job as an HSBC consultant.

However, if we didn't have some kind of federal legal enforcement system, then American corporations would start acting like drug cartels, e.g. if Goldman Sachs could steal from JPMorganChase without any consequences, then JPMorganChase might retaliate with violent attacks on GoldmanSachs offices (which is how cartel wars play out in Mexico, and see also alcohol prohibition in the 1920s).

The problem is that the FBI doesn't limit itself to legitimate law enforcement issues, but also tries to manipulate and destroy political movements that are not aligned with the interests of Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, and their corrupt Washington politicians, using illegal surveillance and infiltration tactics, etc., rather like the Gestapo/STASI outfits in German history.