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| The Ten Most Wanted |
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| Oh, please! |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, June 10, 1998. Right after I got divorced in the late 1970’s, a new roommate moved in. One of her compelling attributes was that she had been an extra in a pilot for a television show to be called, dramatically, CBI!, which of course stood for Colorado Bureau of Investigation. It never made it, possibly because at that point hardly anyone in Colorado, much less the various focus groups, had heard of anything called the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. And, also, the title, like the namesake, was a tad too, well, silly. In the blatant rip off of the more famous FBI, a little agency of a remote state was trying to sound big time, like something called the Rhode Island Bureau of Land Management, or the Nevada Commission for Higher Education. Remnants of this social climbing remain. In the Four Corners area, two cop killers have been sought for about a week now, and every day microphones are thrust into the faces of the local police officials. Apparently caught in a time warp, these charming but literally clueless individuals have been giving off threats and homespun silliness to a media bedazzled, as ever, by that deep stupidity of rural stereotypes. The police, upon cross examination, are apparently not sure the suspects are even in the area. They think they are, and after all, they did find the body of one of the original three suspects. But now, apparently, the suspects have really annoyed the combined muscle of all the local police, and they have released the threat of the big gun with the help of a local Congressman, a Republican, natch. They have asked the FBI to put the fugitives on their Ten Most Wanted list. Whew. It is difficult to say whether such a move in and of itself fully justifies impeachment of the Congressman for actual, letter sweater stupidity, or whether such a touching threat is the proof science has been seeking that time travel to the past is indeed possible, at least in the Four Corners area which is, after all, not that far from South Park. For virtually everyone now knows, thanks to at least three best selling books in the last decade alone, that the Ten Most Wanted List, the creation of fashion savvy Director J. Edgar Hoover, was a public relations tool. We now know, if there was any doubt, and that those on it were not by any means the most dangerous criminals facing the nation, nor even the most dangerous sought by the FBI. It turns out that the Ten Most Wanted are really the Ten Most Likely to Be Caught by the FBI Under Circumstances Favorable to the Agency and the then Director. That is why Al Capone, for example, was never on the list. Or John Gotti. Not only were they not in hiding, the FBI, possibly and truthfully because Hoover was afraid organized crime had extortionable photographs of himself and his homosexual lover and second in command, Clyde Tolson, never admitted there was a Mafia. Who made the list? Oh, absolutely forgettable and rather minor criminals. There are children under the age of 16 in many of our major cities who have killed more people than Baby Face Nelson or John Dillinger or Machine Gun Kelly. These way too cute templates of American crime can hardly be upgraded to insignificant crooks, but Hoover made them evil incarnate in the press, and then, when four hundred federal officers swooped down upon them, breathlessly announced their capture as if Hitler or, well, Capone had been caught. In the years since, the ten most wanted fugitives has become a much more realistic and helpful tool, this concurrent with the FBI’s toning down its self-congratulations and at least going after the Mob and people capable of both shooting back and waging a war. But if you honestly made a list of the biggest crooks of the last ten years, even the ones actually fugitive, you will find that few of them ever made it on to the list. Why? Because Hoover liked to brag in statistics. At one time, every person who made it on the list was caught, because that was the key quality Hoover looked for. Even today, the FBI and their shills point out that 94% of the people on the list are captured. Would you like to be the first FBI Director in your yearly appearance before Congress to answer for, say, a 50% decline in the success rate of the Ten Most Wanted? Answering truthfully to some posturing Congressman that the list is a publicity sham and under that under your leadership the list is an accurate composition of the most dangerous fugitives in America rather than a list of those merely likely to be caught would endear you to the powers that be? After all, the FBI found its greatest support among those members of Congress who were clearly out of their depth in Washington and needed some publicity and sense of accomplishment. They are the ones who thump the tub about crime and support for law enforcement apropos of nothing. Gee, I wonder if the local Republican Congressman from the Four Corners Area, the one clamoring to include these two suspected cop killers on the Ten Most Wanted List, has finished preparing his comprehensive Tax Bill, or is ready with a speech on Education, or indeed, is qualified to have an opinion on much of anything. If tradition holds, this individual’s sole imprint on history will be his insistence that his district have the glory of 20% of the Ten Most Wanted. If he succeeds, it will be a clear indication that the FBI knows they will soon be caught. If he fails, we can be sure the two men will vanish into the Colorado Mountains and from the coverage of their press shills with the surety of four, five hundred pound bombs. And if lists of dangerous fugitives are to be compiled by idiot Congressmen for prestige rather than legal necessity, we’ll deserve it. |
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