This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, July 24th, 2008. I'm

Keila Brown. Not long after the FBI came into its own, it became the

investigative arm of the White House for good or ill,

often conducting opposition research on the President's political rivals, blatantly violating

federal law.

On the agency's 100th anniversary, how much currency does it have with the public?

Aethon Theo Harris, author of the FBI and American Democracy tells us.

The FBI files were completely closed until the passage of the

Amendments of the Fear Information Act in 1974 so you

couldn't research the Bureau and the result of that is that what we knew about

the FBI was what the FBI was willing to disclose. And for example, there was this FBI history

written by Don Whitehead that was based on privilege

access to FBI files, and clearly the FBI

determine what files he would see, and so that it was a fairly

positive and so the the sense that most Americans had of the FBI was of this

organization that was highly professional that always got its man,

got its man, the concept of the G-man

is he always got his man,

and that it did not violate individual rights

and respected the law.

What's interesting post 1975

was that you begin to have FBI files released

...