Article #48871

Former intelligence officers sound alarm over ‘devastating’ impact of president’s bid to overhaul US security agency

For generations they have borne the mantle of strength and authority inherited from J Edgar Hoover’s Depression-era G-men, a label supposedly affixed after the arrest of Machine Gun Kelly in 1933.

Now hardened veterans of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are projecting a different face as they seek to fight back against what many say is the systematic undermining of the bureau’s values under a drive by Donald Trump to turn it into an instrument of retribution.