Counterterrorism Agents Were Told They Could Suspend the Law 369
politkal writes "According to the FBI's internal inquiry on counterterrorism training, the FBI taught agents that the Bureau 'has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedoms of others;' that agents should 'never attempt to shake hands with an Asian;' that Arabs were 'prone to outbursts' of a 'Jekyll & Hyde' nature."
Even better: "That review, now complete, did not result in a single disciplinary action for any instructor. Nor did it mandate the retraining of any FBI agent exposed to what the Bureau concedes was inappropriate material. Nor did it look at any intelligence reports that might have been influenced by the training."
Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:5, Informative)
Not so much with the shaking spear, but I did get in trouble when I tried to shake hands in Ghana. As both I and the person I met were carrying luggage in our right hands, I extended my left. The left hand is often used in lieu of toilet paper, so that's an insult. The man understood my mistake, and explained it to me, but I was much more aware of my left hand for the next few months.
Re:FBI (Score:5, Informative)
A judge recently ruled, in a cop abuse case, that the victim had every right to shoot the cop, since the victim's life was in mortal danger. And the judge would have found the victim "not guilty" by reason of self-defense.
Well, the judge was actually the US Supreme Court, and the summary of that decision is basically "We can't ask people to go against human nature, and when someone threatens another's life, that person has every right to fight back because that's instinctual and primal -- no law can stand against that." Exact quote follows...
The law has grown, and even if historical mistakes have contributed to its growth, it has tended in the direction of rules consistent with human nature. Many respectable writers agree that, if a man reasonably believes that he is in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant, he may stand his ground, and that, if he kills him, he has not exceeded the bounds of lawful self-defense. That has been the decision of this Court. . . . Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife. Therefore in this Court, at least, it is not a condition of immunity that one in that situation should pause to consider whether a reasonable man might not think it possible to fly with safety or to disable his assailant rather than to kill him.
J Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Brown v United States, 256 US 335, 343 (1921).