The FBI’s independence must be protected from the threats by President Donald Trump that endanger it, former FBI and CIA director William Webster wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Monday.
Webster wrote that “the president’s thinly veiled suggestion that the director, Christopher Wray, like his banished predecessor, James Comey, could be on the chopping block, disturbs me greatly,” stressing that “The independence of both the FBI and its director are critical and should be fiercely protected.”
Webster, the only person to head both the FBI and CIA, warned that the integrity of these crucial institutions are "under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them."
“I know firsthand the professionalism of the men and women of the FBI,” Webster wrote. “The aspersions cast upon them by the president and my longtime friend, Attorney General William P. Barr, are troubling in the extreme. Calling FBI professionals ‘scum,’ as the president did, is a slur against people who risk their lives to keep us safe.”
Webster added that "The country can ill afford to have a chief law enforcement officer dispute the Justice Department's own independent inspector general's report and claim that an FBI investigation was based on a 'completely bogus narrative,'" insisting that “This is not about politics. This is about the rule of law. Republicans and Democrats alike should defend it above all else.”
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