Union Stn. Massacre

After Timothy McVeigh went on trial for the terrorist murder of those who died in the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal office building, rumors began to leak out that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's crime lab was corrupt, from tailoring laboratory tests to favor the wishes of prosecutors to systematically building evidence that purposefully illustrates the guilt of the accused. Many were shocked by the revelations, wondering why and for how long such corruption existed. According to Robert Unger, Harvard professor and author of The Union Station Massacre, since the beginning of the FBI's existence. As Unger states about the Union Station Massacre, a killing spree in which federal FBI agents and an informant were gunned down, forever, "The FBI didn't go bad; it was born bad, right there in the blood of Union Station. The file doesn't speak of a proud birth. It describes original sin" (Unger 236).

Many acts of corruption are well-known about the modern FBI, from illegal wire-tapping and surveillance to evidence tampering. However, many argue that these corrupt acts were the product of the final years of J. Edgar Hoover's legacy, an era when his senility and obsession with power caused him to throw caution and justice to the wind. Unger's thesis contradicts this contention. He argues that corruption of all kinds was evident from the first "big" case handled by Hoover's infant FBI, and that it was intentional because Ho

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idn't know anything about the identities of the shooters Miller had recruited anyway. And Vi Mathias and Fritz Malloy were locked into Bureau-designed sweetheart arrangements that would keep them from ever saying anything publicly about the massacre if they wanted to avoid long jail terms." This was the case, even though a supposed wound scar on Pretty Boy Floyd that would have linked Miller to the murders was never identified by coroners in their autopsy. Thus, the FBI, in a case Hoover is determined to pin on someone, anyone, has to turn their energies to Adam Richetti. Richetti would prove to be no match for the agency because of the constant cover-ups, concealment, and outright perjury of many FBI agents themselves, or others coerced by one means or another into supporting the FBI's contention that Richetti was involved in the murders. Unger reveals illegal wire-tapping and surveillance, much of it loaded with Hoover's penchant for sexual detail irrelevant to the case. Ballistic experts and other forensic scientists who are viewed as the opposition to the FBI's case are prevented from having access to key pieces of forensic evidence. Finger-prints did not match or were lifted and transposed. Agents lied openly about th

Category: Literature - U