The FBI was organized by Hoover a million years ago to investigate criminals who crossed state lines which circumvented state authorities. Sounds good on paper and they were helpful in interstate criminal justice. Hoover had an open-ended mandate and the manpower to accomplish more, quietly. He was able to protect himself and his queen by assembling a dossier on everyone in government, quietly. After 30 or 40 years you can assemble a bullet-proof shield around you, quietly, when the people you are investigating are rich, egotistical, self-indulgent, disdainful of laws they write, -just like the kind of personality that draws people to run for public office and ~serve~ the public. Self-service, that is, and Harry Truman was only partly right when he said that, "Nobody gets rich serving in public office". ~Serving~ being the operative word here, look how well Joe serves his paymasters, -and you don't own the range of properties or loyalties in high places on the so-called peanuts he made as a government ~servant~. It's a living, considering that you need two abodes of one form or another, one where you get votes and one in Washington where you shake down whoever comes in the door.
Once Hoover's henchmen figured out what they were doing, the 7th floor filled with the tools of real government control. You don't need to control everyone, just enough to constitute a majority in any vote on the issues of your choice. There will always be some key people voting the "right" way for you, and if you have dirt on a few more you can turn the issue your way just by whispering in the ear of someone who strays from good behavior behind closed restroom doors, misappropriates assets, cheats on a spouse, taxes, constituents, etc. Anyone with something to hide is putty in their hands. You can prevent good people from getting an appointment to office, or make sure an ally gets that appointment. After a while everyone in key places is putty in your hands. How much of Washington is rotten? "All" is such an exaggeration that is must be certainly false, after all there are gardeners and maintenance men in DC who might be straight and honest. "Most" is another of those generalizations that overstates cases, in most other cases. "Too many" is probably a better choice for a quantity word but with the volume of government servants in DC as the number you multiply by "too many", the quotient is still a vey big number.
There's a new man in town in Argentina, of all places, where they have been in the grips of bad government for a hundred years. He's talking like he's going to just shut down agencies that are not necessary to run a clean government. (Be still, my heart) We can only hope he does and shows the world that government doesn't have to be a giant stone on the chest of mankind. If you compare education now with education before the Department of Education was formed in 1980, you will see that all that has been accomplished is they have spent trillions of dollars and lowered scores. Are lowered scores the fault of the Department? Would they take credit if the scores were up? There is an inverse correlation between the ability to operate and serve the customer well and the size of a unit. When a company or agency gets to some size it can't make decisions without a whole bunch of people and departments putting in their two cents. It can't move fast on anything and the customer becomes too distant for feedback to filter up to decision makers. It has rules made to cover every contingency and that always means there are built-in conflicting mandates, so they need to hash out which needs are superior and must be served to the contravention of other needs. If that sounds convoluted, it is. We were fine without it and could be again. Shutting down this one is not my only choice, just first. We had a clean-and-getting-cleaner environment before EPA and adequate-and-increasing energy before DOE. My list is too big to list here, but think of all the taxes they wouldn't have to collect! Speaking of which...