In what is presumably an attempt to forestall a Lisa Monaco nomination, the FBI Agents Association just endorsed Mike Rogers to be their next boss.
The FBI Agents Association is expected to announce its endorsement of Rep. Mike Rogers (Mich.), a former agent, and urge President Obama to nominate him when Mueller’s term ends in September.
“His unique and diverse experience as a veteran, FBI agent and member of Congress will allow him to effectively lead the men and women of the bureau,” Konrad Motyka, president of the FBI Agents Association, said in an interview. Motyka said the association’s representatives met with Vice President Biden’s staff about two weeks ago to push for Rogers’s nomination.
Rogers, who has served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee since 2011, said he was “humbled” by the endorsement of the FBI agents group and would be interested in the job.
The nomination has me laughing my ass off for several reasons.
First, there’s the issue of the MI Senate seat. The GOP believes Rogers is their best hope to beat Democrat Gary Peters for the seat. The fact that Rogers is shopping for another job that is not a well-paying lobbying gig (though it would surely lead to well-paid lobbying gigs in retirement) tells me Rogers doesn’t think he can win the Senate race.
Then there are the comments Former MI AG, Mike Cox, had about Rogers a few weeks back.
Former GOP Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox downplayed that motivation, saying Rogers’ ambition for higher office trumps his desire to make a meaningful influence in foreign policy. “If [Rogers] lost, he could make a lot of money in D.C. as a lobbyist,” Cox said last week. “He’s so full of [expletive] to begin with. He tells all these stories about being an FBI agent, and he was in the FBI for two years. Like he was J. Edgar Hoover.”
Sadly, the Senate Judiciary Committee is too polite to ask Rogers whether he is, in fact, full of shit. I do hope they ask him whether he aspires to be J Edgar (which I would believe). I guess I shouldn’t laugh that an aspiring J Edgar wants to take J Edgar’s old job.
Ultimately, though, I have to laugh because I doubt Rogers is really prepared to take the same kind of accountability that Congress currently holds the national security establishment to. Any single terror attack, no matter how crude, is a failure in the post-Cheney era. Rogers may say he wants the job, but I’m not quite convinced.
I guess I should be a lot more worried about the possibility an aspirational J Edgar is talking about taking over at FBI and I may well get there. But for the moment, at least, I’m just laughing.