US Department of State. Photo: Counter Punch/File photo.
By Melvin Goodman – Aug 27, 2025
The mainstream media are describing John Bolton as an experienced diplomat and a serious analyst. He was neither. Many members of the media are also giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation credibility as a fair-minded bureaucracy that would not raid Bolton’s office and home without honoring the requirement that at least two magistrate judges accept the case for Bolton’s guilt. Over the past hundred years, there have been numerous examples of the FBI doing the dirty work of Democratic and Republican administrations, particularly violating laws to protect immigrants and dissidents. The racism of J. Edgar Hoover over a period of more than 50 years stands out.
First, let’s look at the FBI in terms of the Palmer Raids of the 1920; the Hoover period; Japanese internment during World War II, and the policy of Cointelpro, a counter intelligence program that broke legal and constitutional grounds throughout the Vietnam War. The Palmer raids were conducted by the Department of Justice and the FBI without arrest warrants. FBI agents directed officers to seize documents at will and permit
ted unrestrained force. These acts led to numerous deportations of so-called radicals and communists who were suspected of threatening the security of the United States. Currently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is similarly targeting international students in the United States, particularly at elite institutions.
The FBI played a direct role in the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII, conducting surveillance and wholesale arrests of community leaders and suspected sympathizers after the attack on Pearl Harbor. FBI efforts directly contributed to the mass removal and confinement of over 120,000 people of Japanese descent. Today’s paranoia about people of color is very reminiscent of the earlier fear of the “Japanese hand playing the powerful yet silent note” behind the “negro movement” and other “agitory elements.” There was no protest then; there is insufficient protest today.
Seymour Hersh’s excellent reporting in the 1970s exposed the illegal domestic spying of the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency to disrupt the anti-war movement. The FBI actively disrupted lawful activities of numerous individuals and organizations, including Martin Luther King, Jr. Trump’s identification of “antifa” as the “greatest threat to our internal security is reminiscent of Hoover’s designation of the Black Panther Party as a similar threat. Of course, there was a Black Panther Party; there was no such thing as an “antifa” party.
Second, there is the sordid government service of John Bolton, who was more than willing to do Donald Trump’s bidding before he wasn’t. Bolton, who used student deferments to avoid serving in Vietnam, is the classic Chicken Hawk. Just like Trump. Bolton supported the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and the recent U.S. bombardment of Iran’s nuclear facilities. He endorsed preemptive military strikes in North Korea and Iran, and lobbied for regime change in Cuba, Iran Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. When George W. Bush declared an “axis of evil” in 2002 consisting of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, Bolton added an even more bizarre axis of Cuba, Libya, and Syria. Hardly the work of an “experienced diplomat.”
When Bolton occupied high-level positions at the Department of State and the United Nations, he regularly ignored assessments of the intelligence community and made false arguments regarding weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Cuba and Syria in order to justify the use of force. As Bush’s undersecretary of state for arms control and disarmament, Bolton issued his own white papers on WMD that were challenged regularly by the intelligence community. He used his own reports when testifying to congress in 2002 in order to make the case for use of force in Iraq. Hardly the work of a “serious analyst.”
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Even the former chief of intelligence at the Department of State, Carl Ford, told the Senate intelligence committee that Bolton was a “serious abuser” in pressuring intelligence analysts. it’s important to remind ourselves who Bolton really is. In Ford’s words: “I’ve never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton…in terms of the way he abuses his power and authority with little people.” In my 25 years as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, there was never a high-level official who politicized intelligence as frequently as John Bolton.
In other words, Trump and Bolton are in many ways two peas in a pod. Even a right-wing former toady becomes an enemy when he jumps ship.
It is important that the Bolton affair does not distract us from the current threat to American governance, particularly in view of next year’s congressional elections. There is an authoritarian president in the White House with no interest in the rule of law; a strong advocate for presidential power in terms of the Attorney General of the United States, toadying loyalists heading up the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, and even serving as the Director of National Intelligence. How is it possible for any U.S. citizen to have faith in law enforcement with the FBI under the “leadership” of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino?
In sending agents from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to the streets of so-called “sanctuary cities,” we must recognize the potential harm to peaceful demonstrations and even elections. Washington, DC has already surrendered. Additional cities in blue states who happen to have Black mayors, such as Chicago and Chicago, are also being targeted. It is essential that these cities do not become petri dishes for studying the death of American democracy.
Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.
