◆ SpookStack

cane me a eer eee ce cheat 48 bn die THE FBI Something needs to be said about the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and then about the influence of the President of the United States, . There is a considerable amount of distrust among Albany Negroes for local members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, "They're a bunch of racists," a young Negro told me bitterly. Whether true or not, this is the feeling of many Negroes who have had contact with the FBI, and, even if distorted, it is a general reflection of the efficacy of the FBI's role in the area of civil rights, FBI men appear to Albany Negroes as vaguely- interested observers of injustice, who diffidently write down complaints and do no more, With all the clear violations by local police of constitutional rights, with undisputed evidence of beatings by sheriffs and deputy sheriffs, the FBI has not made a single arrest on behalf of Negro citizens, The oné arrest made by the FBI in connection with the Albany situation came in early September, and this when an FBI man himself was attacked by a white man near the site of a burned church, In its 1961 volume, Justice, the Commission on Civil Rights implied that the FBI may be fundamentally incapable of enforcing the civil rights of American citizens, _This is because of its natural attachments to local police of whom it is dependent for the solution of ordinary crimes, and because it is these same police who are the most frequent violators of the rights of Negroes in the South, The Commission suggested the posibility of "a new administrative arrangement within the Department of Justice to ease the problem of FBI agents having to investigate police officers with whom they work daily on other cases," One solution might be the creation of a special corps of federal agents -~ similar to the T-men used by the Treasury Department -- for the sole purpose of enforcing federally guaranteed constitutional rights in many parts of the country where they are consistently violated, Such agents need not be "out-siders," for there is a whole new generation of young Southerners -~ Negro and white -~ who are intelligent, courageous, capable, and genuinely concerned about civil rights, and from whom such agents could be selected, The FBI is most effective as an agency for the solution of ordinary crimes, and perhaps it should stick to that. .. . < # auee J/o3- 28 ad f f ENCLOSURE | ceo A ite: DEG 13 1962 ae ee a be Spee eeapnrrenes anernimntn mar = pea ar ome mans atm Leterme tenes elem meme eT