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The word “oversight” has two definitions: "supervision," or "an omission or error due to carelessness." When it comes to Congress’s oversight of the FBI, our elected officials seem to rely on the second one.
On Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray publicly testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee — a rare opportunity for Congress to grill one of the most powerful leaders of the U.S. intelligence community. I had hoped sparks would fly over the FBI’s role in responding to the student protests at least once or twice during the three hour long hearing. But what I got instead was effusive agreement with the Bureau’s solemn warnings about the elevated threat of terrorism (a major reason it’s asking for more funding), backslapping expressions of gratitude for the Bureau’s patriotism, and hollow theater.
Senator Collins asking about weed farms and black mold
Susan Collins, the 71-year-old senior Senator from Maine who looks like the sun-dried corpse of Barry Keoghan, spoke in a distressingly quavering voice so slow that it sounded like the audio had been slowed to 0.5x speed. (Seriously, listen to it.)
“I share your assessment that everywhere we look, the lights are blinking red, to quote you previously,” Collins said in her opening statement, referring to Wray’s December warning of the possibility of a terror attack.
“I see blinking red lights everywhere I turn,” Wray said in December, alluding to the early warning signs before 9/11. “Yes, the threat level has gone to a whole other level since October 7.” (No such attack has materialized, and Wray acknowledged in his testimony Tuesday “that we have no information to indicate that Hamas has the intent or capability to conduct operations inside the United States…”).
Catastrophizing of this sort was a motif of the hearing and it seemed at times that they were running out of superlatives to heap on the mountain of threats — which again, are the centerpiece of the FBI’s budget request.
“When I sat here last year, I walked through how we were already in a heightened threat environment,” Wray said. “And since then, we’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorism rise to a whole ‘nother level.” Wray judged that international terrorism, domestic terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism “are all simultaneously elevated.” (There was no word on what the elevated “domestic” terrorism signs were since last year, certainly a question one would have thought Congress might have asked about.)
Despite all the ominous talk of terror attacks, Collins seemed most animated about, of all things, weed farms and black mold.
Collins spoke of the “the absolutely stunning increase — the shocking increase — in illegal marijuana growing operations in rural homes in Maine that are often run by Chinese nationals,” adding that, “the houses are filled with black mold” and asking what role the Chinese might play in all this.
This is what Collins, the ranking member of the committee, chose to press the head of the U.S. government’s premier law enforcement agency on. And because he’s testifying under oath to the committee charged with determining the FBI’s budget, Wray responded.
“Speaking in my intelligence community role, we don’t yet see…any direct ties between these grows and say, the Chinese government itself,” Wray said.
This part was particularly painful for me to watch because it reminded me of the awesome power Congress has to request or even compel testimony from the intelligence community and this is how it uses it.
What the Jason Bourne conception of the intelligence community gets most wrong is its insistence that the spy agencies have run roughshod over our elected officials. In reality, Congress, with its constitutionally endowed power of the pursestrings, could bring the hammer down on these agencies just as hard as your employer could on you.
They just don’t feel like it.
Senator Manchin asking the FBI Director “if there’s any help you’re needing”
The Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, displayed obsequiousness during the hearing that reminded me of what LBJ said he expected of his staff: “I want someone who will kiss my ass in a Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses.”
To be clear, Congress almost never goes hard on the national security state, but Manchin doesn’t even pretend. Manchin started by thanking “each and every one” of the FBI’s “35,000 plus members who protect us every day and put their lives in harm’s way for us.”
35,000 refers to the Bureau’s entire staff headcount, less than half of whom are special agents. The other half “perform professional, administrative, technical, clerical, craft, trade, or maintenance operations,” per the FBI’s website; so I’m not sure they’re all in harm’s way, unless the Senator is referring to carpal tunnel.
(And speaking about Manchin, the Senator is particularly grateful for all of those FBI people stationed in his state, where one of the largest FBI divisions were located as a result of Congressional port controls.)
I’m only partly trying to be a smartass because there’s a serious point to be made here: Congress, like so much of the society, has a reflexive deference for the national security community. We see it most obviously in how they talk about the troops, but this extends to the FBI, CIA and so on as well. The result is lazy performances of reverence, like, say, thanking the Bureau’s HR personnel for putting their lives in harm’s way for us.
Anyway, that is perhaps the attitude that makes Manchin think he can abandon even the pretense that he’s going to exercise oversight of the Bureau.
Instead, here are some of the things Manchin had to say:
“and if there's any help that you're needing, please let me know.”
“If you want to go ahead and brag on the people of Clarksburg, West Virginia [the FBI center] and all the good work they do I appreciate that very much and I’m very proud of them too.”
“making sure you have the necessary funds and budget to enact that properly, that we can continue to grow”
How’s that for oversight?
Senator Kennedy’s Jeffrey Epstein Theater
The only spicy exchange came when the Senator from Louisiana, John Kennedy, asked if the FBI was going to investigate the “prominent people” involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking.
While the tone was confrontational, this was, in my view, the most depressing part of the hearing because it quickly became clear that the confrontation was a cynical performance. Even worse, people seem to be buying it.
Kennedy repeatedly asked if the Bureau was going to investigate Epstein’s patrons — something either Kennedy or his aides would know the FBI cannot answer. The Bureau, like other law enforcement agencies, as a matter of policy does not confirm the existence of investigations because doing so undermines the cases by tipping off the targets.
That’s not to say there aren’t ways to ferret out information about Epstein. Kennedy could have, for example, requested records, like the confidential human source documents other Republican congresspeople spent months pushing for, ultimately successfully, about Hunter Biden. But Kennedy didn’t do that, instead haranguing Wray about Epstein’s clients getting off “scot free” and whether “these people are above the law” — exchanges that make for exciting video clips but which will yield nothing in the way of new information.
As an experiment, I decided to post the video to X (formerly Twitter) in order to see if Kennedy’s performance would be rewarded. It quickly went viral, with most of the replies thanking Kennedy or condemning Wray — apparently unaware that he isn’t permitted to answer the question.
And that’s how Congress gets away with not conducting oversight: a public that doesn’t know any better.
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