THE F.B.I.

As multiple political and law enforcement embroglios engulf us, I’m going to indulge, very briefly, my fears and mixed feelings about the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Bureau’s credibility has unquestionably been compromised by the domestic security missions it has undertaken. It has come to light, for instance, that agents were infiltrating and investigating Catholic Latin Mass-goers as potential terrorists. On what evidence did they undertake such a thing?

It remains, as far as we know, a bureacracy still capable of remarkable achievements in the area of criminal investigation. Of that I feel certain.

But it has been assigned contradictory missions. This has generated problems. It has revealed incompetence, malfeasance and political bias in its ranks. This has hurt its reputation. We know supervisors tapped into partisan sources in their investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged Russia ties, such as uncorroborated Hillary Clinton campaign opposition research. Prior to that, by contrast,agents had cleared Mrs. Clinton of any wrongdoing in her email scandal despite finding that she had recklessly mishandled classified information and destroyed government records. It’s true, the investigation tarnished her image. She lost the election — and blamed the F.B.I. She might be right. But, here again, should such investigations be in the perview of the F.B.I.?

You might ask – who else should handle them? Well, frankly, I don’t know. But where the target of the investigation is an elected official, trouble in the form of political bias seems to ensue. Is it impossible to de-politicize the Justice Department? One would hope so.

Meanwhile, can we have any faith the Bureau is doing any better handling the multifaceted Trump investigation into, among other things, mishandled classified files? You can be certain Trump supporters don’t think so.

An agency like the F.B.I. lives by its reputation and credibility. It is just one of the federal agencies many Americans have ceased to trust.

That’s a problem for all of us.