Glenn Harlan Reynolds

“I’d rather have a sister in a whorehouse than a brother in the FBI.” That quote from Alabama Securities Commissioner Thomas Krebs appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal in 1980, referencing the feds’ unwillingness to go after financial criminals. But it’s a sentiment that could be shared by a lot of people given the FBI’s recent record.

Bureau Director James Comey’s news conference, in which he laid out an extended record of misconduct by Hillary Clinton but then announced that he wouldn’t recommend prosecuting her, was just the latest in a series of very visible FBI failures.

The FBI had interviewed Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, after being warned by the Russian government that he was a threat, but still did nothing. Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured as a result. The FBI also investigated in advance but failed to prevent mass killings by Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan and Arkansas shooter Carlos Bledsoe.

The FBI made a "mistake” in the background check for mass shooter Dylann Roof, Comey has said. Roof should have been prevented from buying the .45-caliber weapon used in Charleston, S.C., in what officials called a hate crime. The political repercussions of the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church led South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from its statehouse grounds last year. Said Comey, “The thought that an error on our part is connected to this guy’s purchase of a gun that he used to slaughter these good people is very painful to us.”

It was also painful to the families of the nine people who were killed.

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And the FBI was warned about Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, but not only did he manage to kill 49 people after the bureau determined that he was “not a threat,” the FBI somehow managed to "lose" Mateen’s wife (and possible accomplice) after the shooting. And now it turns out that the bureau asked Florida agencies that dealt with the Orlando shooting to stonewall records requests from the news media about what happened.

This has to be very painful to the many hardworking non-political people at the FBI. The bureau has always had the reputation of employing first-rate worker bees but suffering from politicized shenanigans at the top. A fish rots from the head, and it’s hard to see how the sort of high-level assault on the rule of law that Comey’s decision in Clinton's case can fail to trickle down, with the bureau’s reputation among Americans in general inevitably, and justifiably, suffering.

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In this, of course, the FBI is just one of many federal agencies whose reputation for professionalism has taken a hit during the Obama years. The IRS, complicit in targeting Tea Party groups for their political views, is one. The Secret Service, which has figured in numerous sexual scandals and failures to protect, is another. And, in fact, the notion of a “non-partisan” and competent civil service has taken quite a knock, as one agency after another has seemed ready, willing and able to be compromised by politics.

Politicians have a short-term focus, seldom looking past the next election. But for those of us with a longer view, this is a serious problem. As The Atlantic recently noted, trust in government is collapsing around the world. The reason for this, I’m afraid, is that government isn’t trustworthy. We used to try to do better in the United States, but lately the powers that be seem to be rubbing our noses in their untrustworthiness and their ability to avoid the consequences. This, I predict, will not end well.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

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