G-Men Want Mike Rogers to Lead FBI

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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.

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6 replies
  1. TarheelDem says:

    OMG, the ghost of J. Edgar just came back zombie-fied. The White House is likely to bite on an open House seat. Another institution that should be stripped of its historical institutional culture if we are to have a working democracy again.

    I’m not as concerned about Rogers as about the fact that the FBI Agents Association has inserted itself into the nomination process as gatekeeper.

  2. P J Evans says:

    @TarheelDem:
    I suspect there’s a certain amount of bias involved too: the old boys’ network has a hard time with women having actual authority.

  4. Phoenix Woman says:

    @TarheelDem: If I were in the White House, I’d be tempted to make like Brother Rabbit and profess support for Monaco for a little bit longer (maybe a week or so) whilst lining up some financial backers and checking out the local talent for a special election. Then I’d oh-so-regretfully allow myself to be tossed in the Rogers patch, just to see how many Teapublicans choke themselves over his nomination.

  5. TarheelDem says:

    @Phoenix Woman: Be careful what you wish for. Sometimes the reverse logic doesn’t draw the response expected.

    I think that Tom Hayden might be a good choice, if he’s available. Or Keith Ellison. I would bet that Barbara Lee might meet the President’s goal of opening up a House seat.

    Or he could really throw a curve and appoint Ron Paul.

  6. orionATL says:

    Has to be a republican, right?

    And, one would hope, a decent republican, scarce as they are.

    Where might one find such an one?

    Well – there is patrick fitzgerald. Straight arrow. Law-and-order guy.

    But why would he want to upend his life and family for such a thankless chance?

    Or worse for being confirmed and thereby committing himself to serving 10 yrs?

    See the problem?

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