In any movie or TV show about crime you know things are serious when the FBI shows up. The FBI is like the big leagues of criminal investigation, none of this amateur junk dealing with small time crime. This is for serial killers and organized crime and international drug smuggling. Yep, the FBI are the real professionals. Except for when they screw up really, really badly.
10. For Decades the FBI Produced Flawed or Altered Evidence in Hundreds of Trials
Many people in the Western world have a passing familiarity with the criminal justice system not by firsthand experience but through fiction. Shows like Law and Order and CSI have routinely been in the most watched television shows for decades with hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. CSI even spawned the idea of the “CSI Effect,” which blames the show for skewing the way jurors expect evidence to be presented in trials, despite the fact that real world evidence of the effect is harder to nail down.
Whether the effect is real, the anecdotal ideas that come with it are generally accepted. Agencies like the FBI should collect forensic evidence that can be used at trial to help put bad guys away! Except we have evidence that the FBI bungled that harder than you could ever imagine.
In 2015, the FBI admitted that, for nearly two decades leading up to the year 2000, almost all the evidence given at trial by almost all of their experts in the microscopic hair comparison unit was utter trash. Twenty-six of the 28 experts overstated matches, which is a fancy way of saying they lied, in a way that favored the prosecution. They did this in 95% of nearly 300 trials that were reviewed.
This scandal was part of a much larger issue with FBI abuses of evidence that was kicked off all the way back in 1994 by a whistleblower named Dr. Frederic Whitehurst. Whitehurst noted systemic abuses including altered reports, alterations of evidence and people testifying outside their areas of expertise.
Because he was reporting the FBI to itself, it was years before anything came of Whitehurst’s revelations. A full decade passed before the Justice Department finished their own investigation, which only took place after the FBI ignored Whitehurst and he had to go to outside sources.
Some cases Whitehurst brought up with flawed practices included the OJ trial, Oklahoma City, and the first World Trade Center bombing.
9. Counterintelligence Agent Robert Hanssen was a Russian Spy
Any organization probably doesn’t want a spy on the payroll. That’s as true of a weapon’s manufacturer as it is of KFC, what with that secret recipe of theirs. But a place like the FBI needs to be really careful about moles or else it triggers a whole Mission: Impossible scenario that probably even Tom Cruise can’t fix.
Luckily, the FBI is on top of this kind of thing as has people on staff whose job it is to hunt down moles and eliminate them. People like Robert Hanssen who, ironically, turned out to be the mole he was hunting. What are the odds?!?
Hanssen became an agent back in 1976. Over the course of his career he provided the Soviet Union and later Russia with an abundance of top secret info for which they paid him $1.4 million. Some of that was even in diamonds, which is very James Bondian. He was caught in 2001.
Hanssen was a counterintelligence agent, which made him very effective at being a spy since it was his job to detect people doing what he was doing. He even got a CIA agent investigated for two years as both agencies knew someone was leaking info, they just did not know who.
When he was finally caught, it was the result of 300 other agents actively investigating him. He ended up being sentenced to life in prison where he died in 2023. The FBI called him “the most damaging spy in Bureau history.”
8. The FBI Had Trouble Finding Cybersecurity Experts Because Of Their Own Policies
While one stereotype of the FBI sees them as an elite crime-fighting agency, another depicts them as kind of lame. A little bit square, if you will. By-the-book, suit-wearing sticklers for rules and protocol. And that may not be 100% true all the time, it has been true enough that it bit the agency in the butt publicly at least once.
When cybercrime became more than just a weird Hollywood idea for suspense, law enforcement needed to get on board with the new reality that a lot of crime was going to happen virtually. Since “old” agents were not as up to date on technology, they needed newer, tech savvy recruits to head up burgeoning cyber crime units. But that was a problem because of FBI rules.
To be in the FBI you can’t do things like smoke weed, for instance. They’ll drug test to make sure. But when you’re trying to hire hackers from a civilian population, this is an issue because nearly everyone they were interviewing smoked weed.
In 2014, FBI Director James Comey stated they were having issues hiring and expanding the division because so many of the best people smoked weed and FBI rules wouldn’t allow them to be hired. They were forced into a corner where loosening that restriction was their best option. Later he pulled back and said he was just joking when called out by a senator because weed is bad, kids.
7. Burglars Once Robbed An FBI Office After Asking the FBI to Leave the Door Unlocked
You would assume it’s very rare that anyone breaks into the FBI offices, Tom Cruise and Scientology (again) notwithstanding. Any regular burglar would have to be very crafty, indeed. Bold and smart and with nerves of steel. How would they even get on premises in the first place?
If you guessed “by leaving a note asking people not to lock the door” then you’d be correct. In 1970, a group looking to explore the secret spying of J. Edgar Hoover was planning raids on FBI field offices and hit a snag in Delaware. They couldn’t pretend to be locksmiths replacing the lock and no one had the skill to pick it. Instead, one of them wrote a note asking for it to be left unlocked. When they returned in the night, it was unlocked. They stole their files and left.
6. The FBI Tried To Infiltrate Mosques Which Then Reported Their Informant as a Terrorist
The events of September 11, 2001 changed the way the FBI did a lot of things. One of their big changes involved a much heavier focus on surveillance of American Muslims. For years afterwards and probably to this day the FBI has focused on infiltrating mosques and other Muslim gathering places in search of intelligence on terrorism.
In their fervor to find the next bin Laden, they seriously stumbled and no place worse than in Irvine, California. It was there that the FBI sent an undercover informant named Craig Monteilh. His job was to get into the mosque, record anyone saying terroristy things, and have the FBI come and take away the trash!
The problem was that there were no terrorists in the mosque, just people minding their business. Monteilh seemed to fit in at first, converting in front of others and making friends. But as he proceeded to secretly record video and audio of his new friends, he was such a creepy disruption to everyone, talking constantly about violent jihad, that the people of the mosque went to law enforcement to report him and get a restraining order.
5. The 1986 Miami Shootout Was a Blundered Operation That Led to Several Deaths
April 11, 1986 was the date of one of the bloodiest shootouts in FBI history. Agents in Miami were chasing a pair of known armed robbers. They were known to use high powered weapons, and they were violent, so many agents were in pursuit of them – eight in five cars.
The agents tried to run the criminals off the road, and all hell effectively broke loose. The two men had far superior firepower and unloaded on all five cars. The agents were using standard issue weapons and ammo with standard issue bullet proof vests. They did next to nothing.
Two agents died in the firefight, three were grievously wounded, and two more sustained less severe injuries. Only one didn’t get hurt at all. The assailants had ammo that blasted through the cars and through the vests of the agents and eventually led to improved ammo for law enforcement as a result.
While new ammo is maybe an upside, so many things went wrong to get there. Agents in the pursuit were not communicating their position well. Backup was late as a result. Agents on scene also reported a variety of physiological effects like time distortions, auditory problems like not hearing warnings and tunnel vision, all brought on by the intense stress they were not prepared to endure. Better preparation and training could have saved lives and while the incident led to those things, it was too late for the slain and injured back in 1986.
4. It’s a Wonderful Life Was Investigated by the FBI
The FBI runs on your tax dollars so it’s good to know they’re spending money wisely. Like how the Bureau investigated the movie It’s a Wonderful Life for being communist propaganda back in the day.
What set them off? The banker character, Mr. Potter, is portrayed as bad in the film. To the FBI that meant the movie was suggesting capitalism is bad. And the movie also focuses on the main character’s depression, which was also considered anti-American.
During the investigation, agents noted the screenwriters had been observed having lunch with known Communists. They deemed the movie subversive and then, you know, that was it.
3. The FBI Allegedly Tracked Falafel Purchases to Find Terrorists
So if you’re in the FBI and you need to find potential terrorists, what do you do? Talk to informants? Dig into people’s background or communications? In 2007, it was reported that the agency was hunting down people who bought falafel and tahini.
According to reports, which the FBI denied, there was an effort in 2005 and 2006 to data mine purchases of Middle Eastern ingredients in stores in California to see if there was a spike in sales of things like falafel. This, combined with other data, would be used to focus on targets. That was the story, anyway. Again, the FBI denied this happened despite other sources claiming to have found evidence of it that later mysteriously disappeared.
2. The FBI Framed Four Men for Murder
A good way to make yourself sound paranoid is to talk about how you think the FBI is setting you up. Because that’s crazy talk, right? Why would the FBI ever set up someone for a crime when it’s their job to solve crimes? Heh!
Turns out that yes, the FBI have absolutely set up people for crimes they didn’t commit. In 2007, the FBI was ordered to pay $101 million for framing four men for murder. Why did they do such a thing? To protect the actual murderer who then agreed to become one of their informants.
The story dates back 40 years prior to the payout, after released documents showed the FBI was trying to cozy up to a pair of mobsters and let them frame the four men to cover their crimes. Only two of the four men were still alive at the time the story broke. All four had been convicted and given life sentences, three of which were commuted from death sentences.
1. The FBI Tried to Build a RICO Case Against the Wu-Tang Clan
Watch enough shows about organized crime, like The Sopranos or Sons of Anarchy, and you’re going to learn about RICO cases. RICO stands for “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act” which is specifically used to target gangs. If law enforcement can prove a gang of people conspired to commit various crimes, not only can they be charged with those crimes but RICO as well which makes it a Federal crime with much stiffer prison sentences.
For a while, the FBI was investigating the Wu Tang Clan under RICO at the behest of the NYPD. The Wu Tang Clan as in the musicians, not a group of criminals who were using the same name.
Far be it from us to suggest that Ol’ Dirty Bastard was not prone to bending the odd law, but the man was no Cosa Nostra, either. Despite that, during the 90s and beyond, the FBI was investigating the group for ties to drugs, guns, murder, carjackings and more. They were fully convinced the Clan was up to no good.
The story came to light after an FOIA request following ODB’s death and it seems like the FBI eventually gave up on their attempts since none of the rest of the crew were ever put away from organized crime-related charges.