The Story Behind Bill Barr's Unmarked Federal Agents

[LiberalArkie]

Few sights from the nation’s protests in recent days have seemed more dystopian than the appearance of rows of heavily-armed riot police around Washington in drab military-style uniforms with no insignia, identifying emblems or name badges. Many of the apparently federal agents have refused to identify which agency they work for. “Tell us who you are, identify yourselves!” protesters demanded, as they stared down the helmeted, sunglass-wearing mostly white men outside the White House. Eagle-eyed protesters have identified some of them as belonging to Bureau of Prisons’ riot police units from Texas, but others remain a mystery.

The images of such military-style men in America’s capital are disconcerting, in part, because absent identifying signs of actual authority the rows of federal officers appear all-but indistinguishable from the open-carrying, white militia members cosplaying as survivalists who have gathered in other recent protests against pandemic stay-at-home orders. Some protesters have compared the anonymous armed officers to Russia’s “Little Green Men,” the soldiers-dressed-up-as-civilians who invaded and occupied eastern Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday demanding that federal officers identify themselves and their agency.

To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Snip

As large as the public show of force on D.C.’s streets has turned out to be—Bloomberg reported Thursday that the force includes nearly 3,000 law enforcement—it still represents only a tiny sliver of the government’s armed agents and officers. The government counts up its law enforcement personnel only every eight years, and all told, at last count in 2016, the federal government employed over 132,000 civilian law enforcement officers—only about half of which come from the major “brand name” agencies like the FBI, ATF, Secret Service, DEA and CBP. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which serves as the general academy for federal agencies who don’t have their own specialized training facilities, lists around 80 different agencies whose trainees pass through its doors in Georgia, from the IRS’ criminal investigators and the Transportation Security Administration's air marshals to the Offices of the Inspector General for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Railroad Retirement Board. Don’t forget the armed federal officers at the Environmental Protection Agency or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement, whose 150 agents investigate conservation crime like the Tunas Convention Act of 1975 (16 USC § 971-971k) and the Northern Pacific Halibut Act of 1982 (16 USC § 773-773k).

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https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/05/protests-washington-dc-federal-agents-law-enforcement-302551

[doc03]

1. What happens if they open fire on the protesters.

Nobody will know who it was or even if they are military. They could be just MAGAts with guns it's like 1930s Germany.

[LiberalArkie]

2. I really don't think they care. Since the administration figures have gotten off lying to congress

or not showing up and not being arrested by congresses police. Then I doubt they even worry about saying anything. They know that they could tell a house committee that the tooth fairy did it and there would not be any contempt of congress or anything happen.

[doc03]

3. I hate to even think this but it may take a shooting

like at Kent State to finally wake the damn Repubilicans in the Congress up.

[LiberalArkie]

4. They would lie before congress and congress would tell them to be more careful listening to

the tooth fairy or what ever voices tell them to do.

[doc03]

5. It would no doubt concern Susan Collins a day or two. nt

[crickets]

6. Ridiculous. There's no need for such numbers of armed forces in all of these agencies.

Somebody's going to have some reorganizing and pruning to do. Add it to the long, long list.

[LiberalArkie]

7. Remember when the Obama administration was criticized by the right wing because the

IRS purchased 10 million rounds on ammo etc. Now we know what that was all about. A way to keep an army off the books.