Steven Hatfill has gone to war with the FBI. I’m listening to his latest press conference right now. Good for him. I hope he wins, and I hope that the blogosphere supports him in his fight.

I think that the FBI has long outlived its usefulness as a government agency. The culture is so screwed up, and its population of prima donnas and people contemptuous of the rights of ordinary citizens so entrenched, that it’s hopeless to think that it can be reformed.

This case was another Waco in kind (though with much less horrendous consequences). It was grandstanding for the purpose of burnishing the agency’s image, rather than performing legitimate law enforcement. Whoever has been leaking these details to the press should be fired immediately. And at this point, I think that includes the Attorney General himself.

If Mr. Bush wants to show seriousness in going after terrorists, he will do a thorough housecleaning. He should do it before the election, and the Congressional Republicans should back it wholeheartedly. It would include tumbrels for, at a minimum, the following: Ashcroft, Tenet, Mueller, and Mineta.

He should also take it as an opportunity to reopen some festering national wounds from the nineties, expose them to sunshine, and finally cauterize and heal them, because it is the same incompetence and coverup mentality that has recently persecuted Mr. Hatfill, that resulted in them as well. Perhaps even by many of the same people. We have to ask, at this point, why the FBI should have any credibility on anything.

A short list of issues to be reopened would be, again at a minimum, Waco itself, the investigation into TWA 800, what really happened to Vincent Foster, and who helped Tim McVeigh.

But Bush won’t do it. Or if he does, it will be a much different George W. Bush than the one that we’ve seen in the first year and half of his administration.

[Update at 1:04 PM PDT]

Here’s a link to the MSNBC story on the filing of the complaint against Ashcroft.