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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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https://cha.house.gov/2025/1/chairs-loudermilk-massie-release-january-6-2021-pipe-bomb-report

"The FBI’s Investigation into the Pipe Bomber: The FBI did not receive “corrupted data” from one of the major cell carriers in connection with its investigation into the pipe bomber. A former senior FBI official testified that the major cell carrier companies provided “corrupted” cell data to the FBI and suggested that that “corrupted” data may have contained the identity of the pipe bomber; however, in responses to letters from the Subcommittee, the major cell carriers confirmed that they did not provide corrupted data to the FBI and that the FBI never notified them of any issues with accessing the cellular data."

I'm not sure the corrupted cellphone data thing is as you're describing it.

Based on this report, it seems like either

  1. There was no corrupted data and the FBI guy just said something completely erroneous out of incompetence.

  2. The cellphone companies are not aware of the corrupted data, but it's real.

  3. Some sort of miscommunication based on different definitions of the term "corrupted data" between the FBI and cell phone companies.

I can understand not wanting to doubt the sterling moral character of the US intelligence agencies, but this explanation is actually less realistic than the conspiracy approach. The FBI failing to follow a lead on a person who was potentially trying to blow up the president/vice president) because of a miscommunication with a telecom company is a level of incompetence that beggars belief. This is the sort of excuse that would get someone fired from their job at a supermarket or furniture store, and yet there was no corrective action for an investigation into someone attempting to blow up the president during the inauguration? Every single one of the points you raised could have been corrected within a few minutes by someone who actually wanted to investigate the situation, and yet nothing of the sort has happened - this is substantially less realistic than the idea that the FBI is malicious.

I think one of us has misunderstood the other. I'm saying what if there never was any corrupted data and the FBI guy was just talking out of his ass?

That's the original conspiracy theory claim - the FBI lying to cover up something else (most likely that the person planting the pipe bomb was working for intelligence).