Reply #8: "How could the Feds have gotten it so wrong?"

[struggle4progress]

It's really quite simple. The Bushistas political hacks are in charge, and they have a simple strategy: threaten the lives and livelihood of anybody who doesn't follow their agenda. In every agency, the Bushistas thus find and cultivate gutless folks who do what they're told. In this case, the instructions were to get Mayfield, because of a tenuous connection to somebody else the F.I.B. was looking at.

The Bushistas haven't completely won yet, but they're trying hard to subvert all of our institutions.