The last time the internal politics of the Federal Bureau of Investigation got deeply entangled in a presidential election was in 1972, and that election wasn't remotely close. Nonetheless, as depicted vividly in Tim Weiner's book, Enemies, the incumbent Nixon Administration was trying to push out J. Edgar Hoover but were terrified to do so directly, in no small part because Nixon was a lot of big talk about being tough but generally choked when it came time to be tough. Hoover and the FBI had been involved in the larval stages of what would generally be summarized one day as "Watergate," including illegal wiretapping, but Hoover balked at any assignment that seemed to compromise his total control over the Bureau.

For example, after Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers and then turned himself in, the Nixon people wanted Hoover to investigate Ellsberg preparatory to an indictment under the Espionage Act. Hoover refused. Nixon got pissed, and sent his own people into the fray to, among other things, break into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. And, at that point, we were pretty much off to the races as regards to what John Mitchell ultimately would call "the White House horrors."

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For the next year, the FBI went into turmoil as Nixon tried to find a way to kick Hoover to the curb. William Sullivan, the FBI official who had helped develop the FBI's COINTELPRO domestic surveillance program, and who, as Weiner reports, was considered at the time to be Hoover's heir apparent, was infuriated at Nixon's meddling and, for the next year, as the White House geared up for re-election, Nixon and Hoover were at knifepoint and the morale in the Bureau tanked badly.

Sullivan and Hoover split when Hoover pulled the plug on COINTELPRO. Hoover was devastated by what he saw as Sullivan's betrayal and he died in May of 1972. Nixon replaced Hoover with a pliable doofus named L. Patrick Gray, who managed to stumble into involvement with the Watergate cover-up. A career FBI man named Mark Felt was passed over in favor of Gray and Felt was not happy. Soon, he was meeting in a parking garage with Bob Woodward of The Washington Post.

Anyway, the recent history of the FBI's involvement with presidential elections is not a promising one.

It's hard to keep up with what's going on. Clearly, there are FBI sources dissatisfied with decisions made not to keep investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton's e-mails and/or the Clinton Foundation. They're talking. There also seem to be FBI sources who are frustrated with what they see as the too-close-by-half relationship of the Donald Trump campaign to Russian oligarchs up to and including Vladimir Putin. They're talking. And there are people completely outraged by the bungling attempts by FBI director James Comey to involve himself so directly in the presidential election, and they're all talking. The FBI, in short, is out of control.

It's hard to know what to believe. Reputable reporters are producing contradictory information by the bucketful, and there's just enough ambiguity in it to make great ammunition for the completely unprincipled and truthless campaign being run by one-half of this election. This has exacerbated distrust within the electorate and, I would suspect, within the FBI itself, which is not something any of us should like to have going on as a new president enters office.

But we know from sad history that electoral politics is one area from which the FBI, and every other institution of the surveillance state, should stay away—or be kept away—at all possible costs, because they can do more damage by accident than any terrorist can do on purpose. Like it or not, and I don't, the FBI is a player in the 2016 presidential election, and the agendas that are roiling it at the moment are as big a part of it as the electoral college or Scottie Nell Hughes.

This is damage that will last.

Update (6:25 PM): Like I said.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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