So the FBI Has a Foreign Policy Now?

Isn't There a Charter or Something?

What better way to mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine than with a sinister and imperious act of overreach on the part of the US security services? In an official press release on February 24th, the FBI seems to have taken on it’s own foreign policy posture.

Since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine one year ago today, the FBI has successfully disrupted criminal, cyber, and hostile intelligence activities from Russia that endanger Ukraine, our partners, and American citizens.

Ok. Echoes of the Russia-gate addiction in the Bureau notwithstanding,…

The FBI has surged personnel and technical resources in field offices across the country and our legal attachés overseas to protect the Ukrainian people and infrastructure, U.S. assets, and anyone threatened by the Russian government. We aren’t alone: The FBI is joined by our partners in this fight—whether from the private sector, the KleptoCapture Task Force, or our international law enforcement partners—because this threat requires everyone’s cooperation.

Yes. Fairly humdrum security state bumpf, but the striking part of the statement comes in the next paragraph that quotes directly from the Director…

“It has been one year since Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of its neighbor, but the FBI has been working with our Ukrainian partners for years to battle Russian aggression there—and we aren’t going anywhere,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “The FBI's commitment to Ukraine remains unwavering, and we will continue to stand against Russia at home and abroad.”

With the exception of the phrase “at home”, which seems thrown in pro forma as a knee-jerk counterpart to “and abroad”, there is no mention of the domestic sphere in this sabre-rattling extract. It’s all about the FBI’s presence and role in “Ukraine” and over “there”. One would expect this to raise some questions in the mind of the constitutionally sensitive reader.

Why should the FBI have a “commitment to Ukraine”, when it’s a domestic agency within the executive branch? In what way does its remit cover the protection of “anyone threatened by the Russian government”, when its domestic priorities limit it to the protection of either US Citizens home and abroad or non-citizens currently within the United States? Is it appropriate for FBI personnel to declare that they “aren’t going anywhere” in regard to a specific foreign policy? The FBI serves the president, so what if the next president were to have a different policy? Does the FBI now have an autonomous foreign policy independent of its elected master, a foreign policy position that will endure regardless of electoral inconvenience, a foreign policy that extends beyond the United States and its citizens abroad?

In its statement, the FBI takes the opportunity to list a number of activities it has already undertaken as part of its now explicit foreign policy agenda.

“[The FBI has] Identified two luxury yachts: the Tango, a $90 million yacht owned by sanctioned oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and located in Spain at the time; and the Amadea, a $300 million mega-yacht owned by Suleiman Kerimov and recovered from Fiji”.

These are clearly not domestic activities, for the property was seized in other countries. What was the nature of international cooperation that allowed the FBI to “recover” these yachts, and does “recover” mean they were sent to the US? If so, then why and on what legal basis?

“[The FBI has] Partnered with the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office to boost collaboration in the investigation and prosecution of crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine!”

Are crimes committed in other countries by third-party governments, organizations, and individuals now a matter for the FBI, even and especially when they do not involve any US Citizens or organizations? Is the FBI breaking any rules, laws, or guidelines here? What does the FBI Charter say? Well, actually surprisingly little. A browse through The Attorney General's Guidelines for FBI Operations will also disappoint anyone expecting clear parameters to be established separating the foreign and the domestic in the FBI’s sphere of action. The fact is that the FBI has a remit to conduct operations and engage in activities outside of the United States, but that remit is quite closely curtailed.

“This includes the lead domestic role in investigating international terrorist threats to the United States, and in conducting counterintelligence activities to meet foreign entities' espionage and intelligence efforts directed against the United States” (p. 5).

There is actually no single document laying out the extent of legal authority that the FBI has beyond the domestic space. But we don’t have to get lost in the labyrinthine back passages of the law, in order to grasp that something is off here. We do not have to resort to chapter and verse to have a right and proper sense of where the powers arrogated to the FBI should begin and end. The FBI might be enabled to operate outside the United States to some degree on the assumption that borders have a certain porous quality, but we should be able to draw the line quite clearly when it comes to any attempt by the FBI to develop a foreign policy of its own. Just consider this summarizing statement from the FBI press release and tell me that it is not a foreign policy statement:

“The FBI will continue to use our unique expertise and authorities to strengthen the resilience of our partner, Ukraine; protect U.S. national security; and inflict severe consequences on Russia and its enablers”.

If I had told you that this statement came from the State Department, you would not have doubted it for a second. This is no longer foreign activity as ancillary and contributory to clearly defined domestic responsibilities, but the statement of an autonomous foreign policy that has little or nothing to do with domestic US law enforcement.

Perhaps this deficiency needs to be rectified and a more clear set of parameters written for an FBI that is rather predictably developing imperial pretensions of its own. It should be obvious how this kind of thing is worrying. The creeping politicization of the FBI has become glaringly obvious, whether it be the Russia-gate dissimulation or the embedding of FBI personnel into establishment media organs. Something needs to be done to rein in this particular node of an Intelligence-IT-Media complex that is getting out of control.