The FBI can't tell you how many people white supremacists killed in the United States last year

because they don't even collect the data.

From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Emerson Sykes, a staff attorney here at the ACLU and your host.

The FBI is an agency that looms large in the American imagination and popular culture.

It's our nation's top law enforcement organization.

It's supposedly there to keep us safe, protect our rights, and defend the rule of law.

Yet its history has been rife with abuse.

For more than a century, the FBI has aggressively targeted dissidents, gone after minorities,

and overstepped its authority in ways that have defined American policing.

Today, we're speaking with Mike German, an ex-FBI agent, a fellow at the Brennan Center for

Justice, and a former ACLU lobbyist.

Mike recently published a book called Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide, How the New FBI Damages Democracy.

We'll discuss how a post-9-11 FBI has exacerbated divisions in American society by targeting minority groups, even as it ignored

the rise of white supremacist violence. Mike German, thanks very much for coming into the studio.

Thanks for having me here. Really, my pleasure.

So I have to start by asking you a basic question. Why on earth did you join the FBI?

It was actually the realization of a childhood dream. When I was about five years old,

my parents asked me what I was going to do with my life, and I said I would go to law school and

join the FBI. Wow. And my mother heard law school and said, that's it. You're going to do it. And my dad,

who was an army officer, heard the FBI, and they were like, that's it. And so I never thought

about any other kind of career path. And it turned out, luckily, that law school was one of the

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