Frank Figliuzzi: The FBI Way – Inside the Bureau’s Code of Excellence

The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau’s Code of Excellence – Frank Figliuzzi – 9780062997050 – hardcover – HarperCollins – 272 pages – $27.99 – January 12, 2021 – ebook versions available at lower prices

If you have been paying attention to the news for the five years since the US elevated Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States, with the help of Fox News, the Mercer family, the Koch brothers and their associates, Facebook, Twitter and other social media, aided further by the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican Party, the vapidity of the mainstream media, years of inattention to the teaching of American history and civics in schools everywhere, undergirded by a calculated, systematic conspiracy with the Russian government (that no doubt, was surprised by how easy it was to game the greatest democracy in the history of the world), you have seen and heard the former FBI agent, Frank Figliuzzi, on MSNBC and other news outlets, talking about the visible public corruption that was going on throughout this painful period of our lives.

For many of us who remember the fifties, sixties and seventies, when the FBI was a witting tool of a repressive political state, it has been more than disconcerting to suddenly see the FBI as an upstanding exemplar of a rule-abiding democracy – that is under attack from a right wing political party that used to (over) value the rule of law in service to the capitalist enterprise. That attack, surreal as it would seem, is a symptom of the “down is up” necessities of authoritarianism, which is where the Republican party has traveled to over the past few years. Trump was and is not the head of the beast, he was and is simply a tool used by a particular power center that found him as he found them, willing partners in a plan that serves their various contiguous but-not-entirely-shared needs and goals. Do not underestimate the war being waged against reality still going on in full force, even though the dumpster is no longer the head of state.

Which brings us back to the matter at hand. Frank Figliuzzi is a throwback to a world that too often does not still appear to be with us. The three words on the cover of his book are at the core of the FBI’s training and belief system: “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.” These principles mean everything to him. Cynical as so many of us are today, it is novel, and even heartening to meet someone who believes so deeply and completely in a moral system at a time when even honor systems all too often are not honored (West Point is a good example) and when elected officials so readily ignore their oaths of office. We need people who can remind us by the example of their behavior (and their words), that fairness, honesty, and justice can still exist in our society.

Figliuzzi is aware of this. He aims his book at leaders in businesses and other institutions, to demonstrate to them and all of us, the enduring power and value derived from following principles that honor and respect the people that work there, their stakeholders at every level, and the institutions themselves. As I started to read this book, I wondered how the FBI, as a law enforcement organization, could be stood up as a model for profit-making businesses and non-governmental organizations, but Figliuzzi is persuasive, and the ideas he communicates are indeed powerful. Many of the examples he provides to document why the FBI should be viewed as a model for others are surprising, as they demonstrate a commitment to deeply moral values, and to treating individual employees as human beings rather than simply as cogs in an inhumane machine.

“It’s times like these” that make books like this one crucial and important. It’s impossible not to be deeply affected by this book in ways that you might not have expected.

Figliuzzi is a smart guy, and as an experienced media figure, he knows how to tell a compelling story. I find myself somewhat surprised to say that The FBI Way is a useful and maybe even an important book for our times. I very much enjoyed our conversation and I trust you will as well, though I doubt anyone listening here will be signing up to join the FBI anytime soon.

“Figliuzzi’s war stories of hunting terrorists are spellbinding, but equally important is his playbook for how the FBI’s methods for achieving excellence in performance can be duplicated by a wide variety of organizations. This should be required reading in business schools across America.” – Andrea Mitchell, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, NBC News

Author website here.

Buy the book here.

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Stanley Flink: Due Diligence and the News

Due Diligence and the News: Searching for a Moral Compass in the Digital Age – Stanley Flink – Center for Media and Journalism Studies at Indian River State College – paperback – 978-0-578-60291-2 – 214 pages – $19.95 – 12/7/2019 – ebook editions available at lower prices.

I was recently introduced to Stan Flink by a mutual friend. I’d known of him for many years as he was a Yalie of some renown, a journalist for many years who later became the editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine and taught journalism at Yale and at other institutions of higher learning.

With his long experience, as a reporter, editor and lecturer, Stan knows and understands the importance of the news media to the functioning of American democracy. Still active at 95 years of age, Stan has worked as a journalist and editor for many years, in many different venues and platforms.

Flink recognizes that democracy has no life without truth. In fact, democracy is predicated on there being an educated and active citizenry, that tries to know as much as possible the truth and nature of events and human affairs. In Due Diligence and the News, Stan reviews, succinctly and gracefully, the relationship between the press and American civic life from colonial days to the digital age. In a series of interlocked essays, he demonstrates succinctly and clearly that while opinions may differ, facts are not optional. He discusses the important question of how it can be possible to assure publication based on verifiable facts without curtailing differing opinions. This is a central issue for us all to face – understanding and resolving the difference between fact and opinion. We need both elements to have equal weight in our political discourse, and we cannot dismiss either.

Some of the questions he raises include:

How can the media restore the trust of the reading/listening public?

Is it ever possible for the news media to create mechanisms, like the Hutchins Commission, that can make workable rules of self-governance and professional standards for itself?

Can government—international, national, state or local—serve as a watchdog on the media without violating the Constitution?

Can the news media, assuming it is truthful, do less than full due diligence in commenting on a public official?

These questions are addressed thoughtfully throughout this well-written book, but no one, not even Stan, can answer them conclusively and for all situations. Ultimately, as Stan takes a look forward into the digital age, the age of learned intelligence, he poses what may be as yet unanswerable questions about the future of the press in our fast-changing society. I think we have alot to learn from this book and the questions that Stan provides are ones we should be discussing far and wide as we try to heighten the importance of truth among our fellow citizens.

STANLEY FLINK grew up in a New Jersey. He entered Yale University a few months after Pearl Harbor and soon after enlisted in the Army. After service in the Pacific, he returned to Yale to continue his education. He graduated in 1948 and became a correspondent for Time, Inc. in New York and then in California, where he reported on such people as William Randolph Hearst, Richard Nixon, and the first appearances of Marilyn Monroe.

In 1958 he transferred to television news at NBC and later CBS. In 1962 he took up a series of assignments in London where he lived for eight years. In 1972 he returned to Yale to become the founding director of the Office of Public Information. From 1980 to 2010 he taught an undergraduate seminar called “Ethics and the Media.” In 1994 he was awarded the Yale Medal.

Stanley Flink is the author of many articles and profiles, and among his books are a novel called But Will They Get It In Des Moines? about television, published by Simon & Schuster; and Sentinel Under Siege, an historical analysis of freedom of the press in America, published by Harper Collins.

Mr. Flink and his second wife (of 45 years) Joy, live in a retirement community in North Branford, Connecticut, where he still lectures on the media. Through it all, he has never lost his deep affection for golden retrievers. He celebrated his 95th birthday in May, 2019.

Watch this video of Stan talking about the ethics of journalism here.

Support independent bookselling by buying the book online from our friends at R.J. Julia Booksellers.

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Charles Kaiser: The Cost of Courage

The Cost of Courage – Other Press – Hardcover – 288 pages – 9781590516140 – $26.95 (ebook versions available at lower prices)

I read this beautifully written book about one family’s experience of World War II in France just before our recent election. At that time, I was not expecting to have to think about it in the context of our own political situation. Even without understanding that the incredible courage of his subjects may be instructive to us today, this book is about an incredible story of bravery and sacrifice. As of this moment, The Cost of Courage must be read in a new context.

All of us need to consider the lessons learned from the experience of everyday people in horrible circumstances like those of the French in occupied France. These were times of brutal repression and daily violence for individuals who constantly made momentous moral decisions with life and death consequences.

The Cost of Courage recounts the true story of the three youngest children of a bourgeois Catholic family, who worked heroically in the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France. Charles Kaiser was lucky enough to know this family from the time he was a small boy, because his uncle was billeted with them after the liberation of Paris by Allied forces.

In 1943, André Boulloche was working underground as General Charles de Gaulle’s military representative in Paris, coordinating Resistance activities in northern France. Unfortunately, he was betrayed by one of his associates, arrested and taken prisoner by the Gestapo. His two younger sisters continued to fight against the Germans until Paris was freed in 1944. André Boulloche managed to survive his time in three concentration camps through sheer force of will.

The  elderly Boulloche parents and the oldest brother were also arrested when the Gestapo tried to capture the two sisters. Tragically, these three were on the last train the Germans ran from Paris to Germany before the Allies liberated the city, and they died soon after in Nazi concentration camps.

After the war, the Boulloches remained silent about their terrible wartime. Ultimately, Charles was able to convince the last surviving sister to finally tell her family’s incredible story. The Boulloche story is moving and powerful, and we are fortunate it could be told to us by this fine and sensitive writer.

It was a true pleasure for me to be able have this opportunity to talk to Charles about his book and his experience of writing it. Charles and I were in high school together, but have had very little contact since then, and while I have followed his outstanding career as a journalist and author, we have not talked often over these many years. I am gratified to have read this book, and have been inspired by its story. I urge my listeners to read The Cost of Courage, as we are ourselves now live through times that will challenge our own willingness to pay the true cost of courage.

Charles Kaiser started writing for The New York Times while still an undergraduate at Columbia. He spent five years at the Times as a reporter, and after that was the press critic at Newsweek for two years. After writing about media and publishing for the Wall Street Journal, he wrote his first book, 1968 in America, published in 1988. His highly praised book, The Gay Metropolis was published in 1997.

His writing has appeared in New York, the New York Observer, Vanity Fair, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Manhattan,Inc. among many other publications.

Kaiser was a founder and former president of the New York chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. He has taught journalism at Columbia and Princeton, where he was the Ferris Professor of Journalism. To learn more about his work, visit his website here.

“In this poignant personal tale, Kaiser explores the emotions and breaks through the silences that haunted an amazing family after their experiences in the French resistance to Nazi occupation. The result is a compelling and heart-wrenching book about courage, love, and the complex shadings of heroism.”
—Walter Isaacson

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