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Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Littman. A quick announcement. Senator Adam Schiff is coming to San Diego on Friday, July 3. I'll be speaking with him that morning as the latest event in our Talking San Diego series. You can find tickets@talkingsandiego.net I hope to see some of you there. Today we've got a special roundtable focused on the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Like the Department of Justice, the Bureau has suffered huge hits to its institutional health. But it's gotten substantially less focus in the national media. Instead, attention has centered on the FBI's chaotic director, cash Patel. Patel has developed a reputation for erratic leadership, political favoritism, and startling indifference to the Bureau's traditions almost since the moment he took the reins. Observers in Washington and within the Bureau have expected his tenure to be brief. But somehow, after 16 months and a number of high profile mistakes, Patel remains in charge. In the meantime, the supervisory ranks of the Bureau have been hollowed out and even the rank and file have absorbed the impact the morale among the remaining FBI professionals and is reportedly abysmal to bear down on the state of play at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the tumultuous Cash Patel era. I'm thrilled to be joined by three deeply insightful veterans of the Bureau and they are Andrew McCabe. Andrew is a former deputy director of the FBI and served as acting director after Trump fired James Comey. He is CNN's senior law enforcement analyst and he co hosts the podcast Unjustified. Andrew, it's been a minute. Good to see you.
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B
Hey, Harry, thanks for having me, man. It's good to be back.
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C
Michael Feinberg, his first time on Talking Feds. He's a former assistant special agent in charge who spent most of his career in counterintelligence work. He was, I think it's fair to say, forced out of the Bureau just over a year ago and he is now a senior editor at Lawfare and the director of the Justice Connections FBI Support Network and a frequent guest on Ms. Now and other cable TV programs. Mike, honored to have you here for the first time.
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A
Thanks.
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C
Thanks for having me and Asha Rungapa, a former special agent in the FBI who worked counterintelligence cases in New York. She now teaches national Security Law at Yale and she's also got a great substack, the Freedom Academy. Asha, good to see you.
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D
Good to see you too.
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C
Well, I think we have to start with the K word. Kash Patel's leadership here. And we've had a just as as we're taping a new controversy. Secret Service officials say that Patel prematurely announced details of an ongoing criminal investigation into a supposed plot to attack Trump's UFC event last weekend. Tell us a little about what that kind of premature disclosure can do to ongoing investigations and what the episode tells you anyway about Patel's judgment as FBI director.
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B
I guess this is a pretty practiced response because we've seen this a couple of times now over the last year. Never thought I'd be talking about the propensity of an FBI director to basically kind of gaff the timing on a public announcement, but here we are. You know, on the purely legal side, this is the kind of thing that can really have a negative impact on an ongoing investigation, which from all the reporting I've read, this plot is certainly still in the middle of an ongoing investigation. I think the Secret Service complaints include the fact that Patel made his announcement on social media before the other co conspirators, some of them anyway were even arrested and possibly while some of these charges were still under seal. So yeah, this could have immediate repercussions for the investigations and any follow on prosecutions. But what you're seeing in the Secret Service's response is the impact it has on your partners. And if there's one thing we learned in this post 911 era, we all survive and thrive together like the age of task forces and establishing relationships even with those departments or, or agencies that historically you've kind of bumped elbows with. You got to put that aside to get the job done, particularly when the job is protecting America. So if egos are bruised and people are angry at the service, this is something that the people who work for Patel are going to have to deal with on a person to person basis for a while when they try to, I don't know, secure the next inauguration or do any of the kind of NSSE national security special event work that the Bureau does very closely with the service in D.C. on a regular basis. And that stuff can be really bogged down when people don't like each other or are pissed off about the way the last investigation was handled.
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A
I'd Also chime in that indicting somebody and arresting them under seal is not a complicated or a rare procedure. I would imagine that all three of us did it multiple times in our career. And it's reasonable for the workforce to now ask that. If the director cannot follow process on something as quotidian and pedestrian as a simple arrest, where you're trying to keep it quiet so you can apprehend the remaining suspects, there's going to be a sort of crisis of faith, even more than there already has been, about whether he can really handle other sensitive matters that are not so run of the mill. Is he going to blare out over Twitter or in a press conference about a double agent operation? Is he going to reveal a recruitment in place in a terrorist organization or in a foreign intelligence service? No line level agent or analyst or mid level executive should have to worry that the director of the FBI is going to jettison operational security for the sake of a lot of likes on a Twitter post. But that's now the situation that the United States is in.
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D
I would add that this is why things like his alleged drinking problem is an issue. Right. The reason that people get screened for things like that before they come into the bureau is that it evinces a predisposition to other types of character traits and particularly things like impulsivity, a lack of self control, you know, the reactivity, all of these things. In fact, if you read the FBI's adjudicatory manual for when they do background checks, that's what it lists for, you know, alcohol abuse or use. And we see that. So to Mike's point, it's clear that he has no self restraint. Right. Like, I don't know that he actually has the wherewithal to control himself if he wanted to. Because we see this excess in so many other areas. It's not just running to prematurely talk about investigations. It's the chugging at the Olympics. It's the, you know, throwing cash around. We haven't even throwing the, the small C cash around, but we haven't even talked about the slush fund. You know, how many slush funds are there in the government now? You know, can I have one? But you know, so I think we're talking about a bigger character issue about that centers around a lack of restraint. And I think we see this across the administration.
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C
Yeah, I just want to second what Andy said about the other people in the field. It's really true. The next time this comes up, and it's not the first time that he's Been out front. And remember here, this is a case that, to my eye, from afar, seems like could be something serious, could be something not serious. There's a particularly compelling reason to try to honor the normal protocol, as Mike says, of letting it play out and not blowing the whole investigation. Not to mention the notion that's part and parcel of this, of not dirtying up people prematurely. And to Asha's point, about the whole administration, right away this morning, we have a submission to the D.C. circuit from the head of the civil division saying, oh, look at this terrible thing that happened. Guess what? What? We must have the ballroom. And right away.
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D
Harry, can I. Can I just interject on that point?
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C
Yeah.
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D
I don't understand how the ballroom gets invoked for every security. Like, does that mean they were going to have the UFC fight in the ballroom? I don't think so. I mean, you know, I don't know if they could even put that big structure in the, you know, Bud Light advertisements or whatever everywhere in there that would. They probably would lose the sponsorships, to be honest. But, like, I don't understand how the ballroom is connected to the security concerns, because unless he's going to literally hole himself into the ballroom and never leave, which could be the end game here, I don't see how that you can ever reduce the risk. Right. Of the security risk, really. He has to go around and be in public.
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C
I don't either. And what this case turns out to be, at a minimum, has a lot to do with that. They've done this now, what, three or four times, you know, including with the White House Correspondents Dinner, which is, of course, at a hotel. I was just using it to kind of echo your point about how this is administration wide. But I do want to stay with Patel. Are there adults in the room around him? We now know there are these two. These co deputies, at least one of which has some operational experience, but whose job was it to say, boss, you cannot do this, and try to hold him back? And is there no effective break on Patel's erratic conduct?
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A
I think I was the one who was there most recently and the only one who was there under Patel. So let me take the first hack at this, and the answer to your question is no, there really is not anybody. There was a mass tranche of individuals who were forced out. We can quibble about whether they retired, were fired, or were constructively fired, but they're no longer there. And they represented cumulatively centuries of experience. And when I'm talking about experience, I don't just mean investigative Acumen or tactical knowledge. I mean, the situational judgment and emotional maturity that you need to have with you. Every time you make a choice as a senior executive of a law enforcement or national security organization, the ranks have been decimated. They are purposely promoting people who are not yet eligible to retire. So there is a financial disincentive to them standing up to Patel or to the White House because they know they're going to get fired and lose their pensions if they do. And as a result, you have, at least at some levels, at least among some individuals, what I think you have to categorize as a failure of integrity, where to reach that milestone to get to age 50 and 20 years of service. People are willing to just keep their heads down. And that might be defensible at the lower levels, but at the senior executive levels, if you are not speaking the truth to the director of the FBI or to the National Security Council or to the White House, you're not doing your job. If they're making the right decisions, they don't need you. That's not what you're there for. You're there to remind them of second or third order consequences that their experience might not allow them to see you. You're there to bring up Murphy's Law, which has an ugly habit of rearing its head into every opportunity. You're there as the steward of an organization that for 117 years has meticulously guarded its integrity and its reputation because it knows that public trust is the only coin of the realm it really has for being effective. And with the sheer number of people who have been forced out, there just aren't as many executives who have internalized those lessons.
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C
Andy, you've had this very job, so I wonder if you can speak to that. I just wanna say to the doj, which we know a little bit more about the numbers, even understate the problem, because there's been a disproportionate forcing out of the people who really were the kind of sober heads that you went to for judgment and the like within individual divisions? And that kind of leadership is now ravaged. We hear a lot less about the Bureau. I wonder if you can speak to Mike's point about is there no one there to kind of corral Patel? And more generally, what do the rank and file that remain think about this whole mess?
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B
I think there's many more people. There are many more Mike Feinbergs, none quite as eloquent, but Mike Feinberg's people who have been treated the way that Mike Feinberg was than we're aware of. It's not getting the sort of reporting that it got initially. And, you know, for everyone we hear about, I'm sure that there are more that we're not hearing about. So the ranks are decimated, as Mike said. And when you particularly looking for people who are retirement eligible and who are very senior and you're getting rid of them first, you're losing that judgment, that experience, the ability to look back, and quite frankly, the courage that comes, that you build over time, that experience being in these different jobs where working with different directors and deputy directors, assistant directors or whatever, you start to get your voice and the.
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C
Are people scared there now, would you say?
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B
I mean, they have to be. They have to be, right? And even with that, when you have had that perspective and experience and you're confident in your job, it's still hard to tell a director of the FBI you're wrong. That's your job, and you have to do it. And if the director is a good, courageous person and a humble person themselves, they will hear that sort of feedback and not hold it against you personally to take it in the way that it's meant. But it's almost impossible to interact with a director of the FBI in that way when you've just been dropped into this job, you know, with. With 10, five years left to work. You have never worked at headquarters before. You've never run a field office, whatever. You're putting these people in a really untenable position. And it doesn't, you know, for the FBI director to run roughshod over the organization and do stupid things without ever being told not to do them. You don't have to break all 37,000 people. You just have to break the ones around you. And the example of that flows down across the entire organization. Even the crustiest criminal agent out in the field, who's been there his whole career and has no desire to go to headquarters, even that guy or that gal, they look very closely at how the director conducts himself, what they do, how they speak. Do they actually live up to their word? Are they living up to the expectations of FBI agents, much less FBI directors? And so they see this nonsense brewing every day. The alleged abuse of the FBI aircraft, the alleged abuse of alcohol, the slush funds, like the list goes on and on and on, and they see themselves being held to some kind of standards, and they just lose confidence and faith in the organization and its leadership. And that is a terrible place for America. We can't afford to have this workforce become disillusioned and afraid, looking over their shoulders, afraid they're going to get fired and therefore not doing bold and courageous things, not going out and pushing this person, this witness, to become an informant and taking that person's testimony and building a case against, you know, a high level politician who has lots of friends and influence but yet is committing crimes you believe, you have reason to believe, evidence to believe. Those are really tough, tough times, tough cases of work, hard things to do. And the only way they get done well is if FBI employees believe that they're supported, that they're working for good people who back them up. That begins to erode the their performance goes down and we all become less safe.
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C
Hey, everyone. Harry here. As the weather heats up, I wanted to give another shout out to Quint's Clothing. Their organic cotton crew neck, their Traveler 5 pocket pants, and their Pima cotton T shirts have been great parts of my wardrobe. And they're breathable enough to feel fantastic on mild or warm summer days. They look good, fit well, and are inexpensive to boot. And I'm looking forward to checking out their new European linen pants and shirts for even more summer comfort. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com talkingfeds for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U-I-N-C-E.com talkingfeds for free Shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com talkingfeds I want to serve this up to you, Asha, because you've kind of played different roles. But as a former prosecutor, Blanche, the now nominee for he really has a special kind of contempt among DOJ alums because he obviously knows better. It's clear that he's transgressing boundaries, that he was schooled in. Patel's kind of a weird figure, right? He comes in as this almost crazed sort of critic of the FBI. So, I mean, I just wonder, you know, I think Blanche's legacy is certain to be really opprobrious. Does the fact of his being just such a weird figure from the start mitigate the view of the people who remain or really only aggravate in the sense that, like, this guy came here not knowing the first thing about what the bureau is about.
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D
So, I mean, I would push back on just calling him weird. I mean, weird suggests, you know, he's quirky and it's eccentric. No, like, J. Edgar Hoover was kind of weird. Okay, like, that's weird.
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B
I don't know if you need the kind of there. But, okay,
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D
you know, Kash Patel is juvenile. Like, he is not a serious person.
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C
Right.
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D
He is not a serious person. He does not actually understand the mission of the agency. He actually has contempt for what this agency does because before he took this job, he was disparaging it, undermining it. And he clearly does not see himself as a steward of this institution. He sees it in much the way that other cabinet members see their agencies, that a. That they are the agency that somehow it's, like, personalized to them. The resources are theirs, the jet is his, the money is his to dole out.
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C
And his girlfriend.
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D
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, you know, Barb McQuai just has her book out that's about, you know, how Trump acts like a mob boss. And I think these cabinet members are largely doing that in their same way. But I think the thing that differentiates Cash Patel from Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche, I think, actually is pretty serious and intent on you know, getting the president's agenda. I think, like, Kash Patel is really about himself, and he's not a serious person. I want to address one thing that Mike said about people's retirements and the incentives and fears that they have. You know, I'm writing a book right now about complicity and why people go along. And there are many reasons that people will go along with things they know are wrong or with bad behavior and unethical, illegal, etc. Sometimes it's because they're completely on board and, you know, their ideologues, and it's like a part of their agenda, but a lot of times it's because of fear. And I think, like, when we get on the other side of this, I think we need to think about restructuring these agencies to remove these disincentives, to honor your duty to your principles. Right. You know, like, people should be able to leave and then later come back and still have their federal years count towards their, like, things like that. I'm just throwing that out there as a policy thing because I think we don't think about how these different institutions are structured in a way to make themselves vulnerable to being weaponized in the ways that Mike mentioned. And we need to remove those and rethink those.
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C
And if you'll permit me to do a quick tout, the book. We're all really looking forward to it, but. But uncompromised. Activating your moral compass in an age of complicity. Still got a while to go, maybe a year and a half, but I know Asha's been working on it. Week in, week out, can we move to what the hell is this slush fund, and where does the money come from? And what is he doing with it? I've never heard of anything quite like this. Is everyone else flummoxed as I am?
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A
We need to come up with a new word, unless the Germans already have one, for something that totally shocks your moral conscience and is beyond the pale of acceptable behavior, but is also completely unsurprising, given the circumstances, because there's this weird combination of. This slush fund that he's using, apparently to pay his ersatz Praetorian Guard is 100% noxious and antithetical to the FBI's ideals and quite possibly out of policy, depending on how he's doing it. But it's also not remotely surprising that he's embarking on this sort of. Like, was anybody in this conversation remotely surprised when you found out that Cash Patel was allegedly funneling cash to his favorite agents?
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D
So what. What do you guys. Is this truly, like, a pot of cash, or are we. Are they talking about things like incentive awards and, like, kind of your grade? You know what I'm saying?
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C
That's my question, too. There is such a thing. But this feels like, here you go. Buy yourself something pretty, and thanks for the alcohol.
- [24:35]
A
So there is such a thing. But at least as of a year ago, the highest cash award you could get as a GS employee was the Exceptional Performance Award, and they've since massaged the name into the Director's Medal of Excellence. But essentially, you get a huge chunk of the percentage of whatever your GS yearly salary is. I mean, we're talking, like, enough money to do an addition on your house, depending where you live or take your family on a vacation. But there have always been strict limits on how many of those are given any year. There are strict limits on how often you can receive them. And even the most generous denomination that they're given in is considerably less than the $8,000 a month that Representative Raskin is alleging multiple agents have received multiple times.
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C
It's also my understanding, by the way, even if you have them, you're not. As a former U.S. attorney, you are not supposed to give them, with rare exceptions to political appointees.
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B
Oh, my God, no.
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C
And it really does seem. I mean, slush fund is not an inaccurate term. I mean, at least to hear Congressman Raskin. We'll find out more about this. This is really used to kind of further the juvenile behavior. Can I use that word. That Asha and others have pointed out about what he's doing well.
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B
I don't know about that. I mean, I think it's an effort to purchase loyalty and silence. I mean, like, that's what it is. It's a payment because nobody there feels loyal to you. You need their loyalty to cover up the misdeeds and the nonsense that you're involved in. And so you're appealing to them in the way that they are most vulnerable, and that is their income. You know, we have always had, I don't know if they still have this or not, on the spot awards. These are like awards that a supervisor could give to someone on their squad or their unit at headquarters for, like, if you came in and worked the entire weekend by yourself to get a FISA up on a, on an FCI target or something, your, your supervisor might put you in for an on the spot award of like $500 or something like that. Like they were capped absolutely directly tied to a work performance issue. And your supervisor deal had to get how to get that approved up several levels and then you couldn't be eligible one again for, I don't know, long time. The awards Mike is talking about are even more rare than that. I never gave, I don't think I gave a single one of those out ever. I certainly never did it as, as deputy or acting director. It's absurd. It is absurd to think that the director of the FBI is walking around with a bag of money and throwing it to people who are doing his errands, basically covering up for his indiscretions on his personal time, or executing his political agenda and running people out of the organization for disloyalty. This is like Hoover wasn't this blatant, but this is kind of a return to Hoover rule, right? The sort of retaliatory transfers and demonizing people and kind of terrorizing them with this power of the director.
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D
I would argue that it's worse though. I mean, because this is the flip side of the fear, right? This is the opportunist part. This is, you know, you, you have the carrot and you have the stick. This is how like these complicit systems work. And the fear part we've talked about, you know, people don't want to lose their pension, they don't want to lose their job, etc. As much as, I mean, I think it's like atrocious that, that Patel is doing this. I think it's terrible that there are agents that are taking it, you know, of all agencies. Agents must understand what they're signing on to when they get on board. And they should. They should have the backbone to not do it. And that. That's what worries me. Because that is corruption. That's just corruption.
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B
But imagine this, Asha. Like, let's imagine you're on the director's detail. And I'm not alleging that they're taking this money. I don't know that. I'm just creating a hypothetical here. Let's say you're on the director's detail and you're observing this stuff in the course of your duty.
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A
This.
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B
Whatever Patel does at night, wherever he goes, whoever's with him. And then all of a sudden, everybody who's on your little team on the night duty gets handed eight grand a month. You're going to be the one person that says no. I mean, you have to be the one. You have to say, this is what
- [28:58]
D
you screens for when you can become an agent. This is exactly what you were trained to resist, consequences.
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B
This is literally like Reservoir Dogs in
- [29:07]
C
the Hoover built or Serpico. Yeah, right.
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B
I mean, it's insane that this could even exist.
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A
But, Andy, isn't that the point of the oath? The point of the oath is that you're right. You do the right thing, regardless of what the personal consequences are.
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B
100%.
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A
I'll say for me, like, the biggest disappointment, the biggest source of illusionment I've had over the past year is I really thought the FBI would be the agency where that was the most ingrained. I mean, as part of our training, we went to the Holocaust Museum. And I'm not violating Godwin's law here. That's not where I'm going. I'm just saying, like, we had specific blocks of instruction to help us navigate when something might be technically legal and in policy, but still violative of your oath and the moral underpinnings of what you're supposed to be doing. Nobody seems to be making that calculus at the higher levels right now. And, you know, it's been heartbreaking for me, I don't know any other word. To realize that so many people were willing to put time, personal ambition, or safety over those lessons we were taught within the first few weeks of joining the FBI. It's just a breakdown of a sort of superstructure that was supposed to give the organization independence and integrity that turned out to be much more fragile than any of us thought.
- [30:49]
D
I remember as a new agent, my partner and my training agent, I don't remember, we went somewhere and it was a place that offered a law enforcement discount for whatever it was. And I was like, cool. Let me take out my creds. And he's like, don't do that. He's like, don't do that. And I was like, why is that against the rules? He's like, well, I mean, there's nothing explicit, but it's just. It's unbecoming. It's unseemly. You never want to look like you are ever trading on your position as an agent. You never know what could come up that might involve this, you know, establishment, these purple whatever. Just don't do it. And so I think to people to kind of emphasize what Mike is saying. Another story, which might be apocryphal. I remember at Quantico, which is that there was a broken Coke machine and there were some trainees who would go buy it and like bang on it. And you could like get like your free Coke out wherever.
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B
Free soda.
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D
They got fired. They got fired. Yeah, they got fired because they were like, that's stealing, actually. And so just to kind of get to. I think this is worse than Hoover because at least Hoover had the mantra, you need to always be above reproach. Like no one can. Should ever be able to question your integrity or and your honesty. And so I agree with Mike that it is. It's very troubling if this is happening.
- [32:14]
B
I don't disagree. You guys are right. You're 100% right. But the repercussions of offering a bribe like that to the people who are closest to you, but who are GS13s predominantly is just. It's like injecting this virus of corruption and questioning your loyalty and your oath. And like, my God, what happens if I do this? Like, it's. It's just. It's a brutal thing to do to those people. I mean, it's. And the fact that this guy has no idea, or maybe he does and doesn't care is just yet another reason why he is absolutely unqualified for this job.
- [33:01]
C
And I just want to report to the Fed heads here and everyone else. When the word oath came up, Mike and Andy and Asha all were completely animated. So this idea, so important to the bureau of doing the right thing and the terrible position there being put in newcomers largely to essentially recipients of the slush fund non recipients. It's all pretty ugly. I want to move, however, to. You've all drawn a portrait of Patel as pretty. I'll stick with juvenile or self involved when we think about doj. And I'm really glad to have this episode because there's been so much more focus on DOJ than FBI. But we do think about their work furthering Trump's personal agenda, the political prosecutions, the attempts, and we've had this with the FBI to have some kind of mischief in elections. I just want to ask you about that aspect. Where is the FBI under Patel with having the whole sort of support for the really corrupt parts of the Trump political agenda that Blanche is all in on?
- [34:19]
A
I think there's a distinction that doesn't often get made. It's really tough to talk about the FBI because what you're actually talking about is 57 FBI's. You have the 56 field offices, and then you have headquarters and its various divisions and off sites and outliers. And every one of those places, at least in traditional times, was run by a special agent in charge or an assistant director in charge who was really able to put the stamp of his or her personality and priority parties on the office. And that trickle down in a pretty good way. Most times, everybody in the FBI complains about leadership. It's like it's our hobby. But in general, you didn't get to one of those positions without having at least some accomplishments. And I think what you have seen is that some field offices have held up well under this and not getting drawn into the quagmire that is executing on the Trump's agenda. But you have offices like most recently in Ohio over the past week, where apparently the entire state, which has three field offices, I think three, it might be two, whatever. But they were all drawn into this effort to go intimidate the members of a voter registration organization. You had something similar happen in Wayne county in Michigan. You had something happen in Fulton County, Georgia. And the Fulton County, Georgia one is really interesting because this did not get a lot of press. The special agent in charge was forced out two days before the raid on the county offices occurred.
- [36:18]
C
That was a forced ouster, not a resignation. It wasn't clear to me.
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A
I'm not going to divulge confidence. I'm just going to say that the individual did not retire at the time he originally had.
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C
You would have expected. Sorry, go ahead.
- [36:32]
A
But, you know, so there's offices that still are relatively pure, for lack of a better word, with respect to having to execute on political vendettas and political priorities. But I do worry it's only a matter of time before. Before they're all drawn in. And what they did to that SAC in Atlanta, that I think was less about him than it was about his 55 peers across the country. They were doing something because it would have a salutary effect the next time they needed to act in an overtly political manner. And when I talk to people who are still in the bureau, with the midterms coming up and what we've seen in Georgia and Michigan and Ohio now and the comments that the U.S. attorney has made in the central district of California about voter fraud, agents and analysts are terrified that they are going to have to do something. Not that is an edge case where you could argue maybe this is okay, maybe it's not, but people are terrified that they are going to be ordered and expected to actually interfere with a federal election. And if the organs of state are worried about that, the populace should be terrified.
- [38:00]
C
Agree. So we're zeroing in on the election part now and we have seen them start to, for lack of a better word, really meddle in things. And there's kind of no limit to how, how much that could grow between now and November.
- [38:16]
D
I was just going to say to your earlier question Harry, that yeah, I mean we're talking that like agents have clearly got conscripted into an investigation into the former Director over seashells on a beach, right?
- [38:29]
C
What about that?
- [38:29]
D
Like that's kind of a we crossed
- [38:31]
C
the Rubicon or the river Styx maybe.
- [38:33]
B
Yeah, I think Mike's right in terms of the fact that like 90% of what the FBI does, does not involve the Director. Doesn't come to the Director's attention. It's the churn and burn of mostly criminal cases in the field. Programs that are run in the field. SACs have so much authority with deciding what gets investigated, what operations get approved, that sort of thing. On the national security side, same thing. They're day to day scrum of national security cases. Maybe not the biggest high profile ones, those will end up on the Director's desk, but that work is still getting done by people in the field offices who at this point are just largely trying to turn away from dc, avoid anything to do with headquarters, don't ever put in for a promotion or anything. Don't go there, just try to wait this out, which is not a good prescription for, for the long term health of an organization. But you know, they got to do what they got to do. The problem with the voter thing that I see Harry, is like it only hasn't happened in more places because there's only so many swing states. It's going to keep happening every time they find an advantage, a potential advantage, a soft spot that they want to for sure poke particularly over this election nonsense. And so like, if I'm a SAC right now in the field, I'm thinking, like, they could be coming for me next. I have no idea why, but the next phone call I get from headquarters could be, we need you to put together a voter fraud task force, and we want you to go do xyz. And that's where I feel like it's really getting discouraging, because those are the people who should be. That's the day when, you know, you decide, okay, this is my red line. I'm not doing this. Now. It's time to quit. And it's not just time to quit. It's time to quit and tell the world why you're quitting. Like, you can't expect those legions of agents and analysts and support staff to stand up and take the bullet like that when no one at the top is doing the same thing. So you got to set that example to, like, open the case, even though you know it's going to get you fired, like Crossfire Hurricane, or don't open the case that they're asking for, even though you know the pressure is going to come down on you. If you're an sac, you're the guy, you're the girl. It's time to stand up and do the right thing and walk away if you can't go along with what they're doing. But I found this in my own personal experience when I was fired and investigated for two years. You know, and after the 2020 election, people were, like, patting themselves on the back, like, oh, look, you know, the institutions, they actually stood up. They're stronger than we thought. Look, DOJ Bill Barr said there was no fraud, and Rosen, you know, refused to go along with the schemes on the eve of the certification of the vote. Great. You know what Rosen did, did his job. That's what he was supposed to do. You're not supposed to break the law when you're the Acting Attorney General, the acting dag, whatever he was in that moment, what I found was that there were people at all kinds of levels and all kinds of positions who were going along and doing the politically expedient thing rather than saying no. In my own investigation, there were two Assistant U.S. attorneys in the D.C. u.S. Attorney's office who opened the case. They were told to conducted the investigation. It became so politicized. They were under so much pressure. One of them quit the case, walked away from it, and the other one quit DOJ entirely, left the department because it couldn't stand the pressure to do what they knew was the Wrong thing. But you know what? Other people came in and did it. People came over from headquarters, a name you would know very well left headquarters, came to the D.C. u.S. Attorney's office and took over supervision of the case and tried to force it through and of course ended up with a no. True, Bill, but you don't have to crack everyone. You just have to get a few people in a key places to submit to do your will and that's it. The corruption takes hold.
- [42:31]
C
That's such an important point. And you know, I'm thinking maybe one of the most chilling quotes in that big New York Times magazine was we're losing the ability for agents to conduct their work without fear or favor because the FBI won't protect you. And in my experience with the Bureau as a prosecutor, it's a very sort of dutiful top down organization. But they always depend that the superiors will have their backs and their backs with exactly what they're supposed to be doing. And it's not always the case here. All right, it is now time for a spirited debate brought to you by our sponsor, Total Wine and more. Each episode you'll be hearing an expert talk about the pros and cons of a particular issue in the world of wine, spirit and beverages.
- [43:25]
E
Thank you, Harry. In today's spirited debate, the question bubbles up around the difference between champagne and sparkling wine. And we're more than happy to explain. First things first. Champagne is a type of sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is champagne. We could leave it at that, but that's not our style. So here we go. A sparkling wine can only be called champagne if it comes from the region of champagne in France. Any other bubbly produced outside of Champagne is called sparkling wine. In this exclusive region of northern France, three types of grapes, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, come together to produce what will become the Champagne you know and love. Champagne production is controlled by strict laws. So all of those grapes we just mentioned must be hand picked. It's a labor of love, right? The other difference comes from the fermentation process. Specifically the second fermentation process that produces Champagne's signature bubbles. This time consuming fermentation takes place in the bottle and is known as the traditional method. Whereas some sparkling wines are fermented in a tank. Now take a wine like Cava, which is made in the champagne method, but because it's produced outside the region of Champagne, it's classified as. Yup, you guessed it, sparkling wine. So if it's sparkling wine, you want to Total Wine and More has a huge selection, including Prosecco, which comes from the Veneto region of Italy, Sec from Austria and Germany, and Cremont, which comes from France, just outside of the Champagne region. But all these sparkling wines have something in common. They're amazing bottles that are available at Total Wine and More for you to take home, pop open, and compare not only to each other, but to champagne as well. Happy shopping and happy popping. Cheers.
- [45:12]
C
Thanks to our friends at Total Wine and More for today's a spirited debate. Mike, I know you wanted to come in, and I also wanted to give you the opportunity because you have your own pretty riveting story about leaving the Bureau. Do you mind sharing it with us in broad strokes?
- [45:32]
A
Yeah. Because the point I was going to make, piggybacking off of Andy's remark, I think is actually illustrated by the way my own career ended.
- [45:41]
C
Yeah.
- [45:43]
A
I don't know that it's particularly riveting. I mean, when you actually just sort of go through it. Matter of fact, it's. It's more absurd than anything. It's petty, quite frankly. I came under attack. I don't know what the right phrase is, but Bongino decided he was going to come after me.
- [46:04]
C
The former Deputy Director of the FBI, also with no experience and an FBI hater. Yeah.
- [46:09]
A
Yes. Noted podcaster. Yeah. A lot of intellectual accomplishments led him to the position of a Deputy Director. A lot of academic credentials. Definitely the right man.
- [46:20]
B
There you go.
- [46:21]
C
What?
- [46:23]
A
But, yeah, he found out that I stayed friends with Pete Strzok after Pete was fired from the Bureau. That was my sole sin. I was never accused of any violation of policy at any point in my career. I was never written up for investigative deficiency. I was somebody people generally liked to work for. I would put up my reputation among the agents and analysts I supervised at any point in my career against any other FBI leader. But that didn't matter. I knew Pete because we both worked counterintelligence a very long time and had mutual friends, and our paths crossed long before there was any controversy or scandal or Crossfire Hurricane even existed. And we became, like, you know, I don't want to sound like a teenager. We became concert buddies. We have similar music tastes and, like, used to go to the same shows.
- [47:26]
C
Name one. Just curious.
- [47:29]
A
I mean, I'll name a few. I mean, like, I think the most recent one would have been after. No, the most recent one after I left the FBI was Springsteen. The first one we ever saw was the Rolling Stones. And I'm just going to tell you, it's a little bit odd to see them open with Jumping Jack Flash while you're sitting next to the person who named Crossfire Hurricane.
- [47:58]
C
Check out the lyrics. Anyone for the. For. For what Mike's talking about? Go ahead.
- [48:02]
A
The opening line of the song is, I was born in a crossfire hurricane. But this was enough that Bongino called my new special agent in charge, who was on vacation on a Mediterranean cruise, to tell her to get to the bottom of my friendship with. With Pete. So she calls me on a Saturday morning, asks me about it in a very accusatory manner. And I said. I'm like, yeah, we worked together. He became a friend. I don't believe you cast off friends just because they become politically untenable. We don't talk about work since he left. Obviously we go to concerts and we go to a lot of the same restaurants in D.C. that's it. That was not satisfactory to her or to Dan Bongino. And over a series of phone calls that day, it became very clear to me because I was explicitly told the section chief job I was supposed to get was not on the table anymore. I would probably be demoted. Which, if you're in an ASAC and you get demoted, they involuntarily transfer you to somewhere else. My wife was seven months into a high risk pregnancy. I was not making my family up and move while that was going on. I was threatened with internal investigations and polygraphs probing the nature of my friendship with Pete, whatever that means. And I decided that night I was gonna walk away. I didn't want to, like, use a cliche like I bled bureau blue. I love the FBI. Pardon the language. It was a huge part of my identity. The reason I got up in the morning, it epitomized the ideals about America that I've had since I was a kid that I learned at the knee of my World War II veteran grandfather. But the organization I joined clearly no longer existed. And I was not going to be in a position where I was going to be able to pursue investigations without fear or favor. And I just. I couldn't stay in an organization where not to get like, overly legal, but since all four of us are lawyers, like my First Amendment rights, my freedom of association was under attack simply because they don't like the other person in the relationship. That's insane.
- [50:41]
C
And your idiosyncratic taste in music.
- [50:43]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [50:44]
C
Springsteen in the relationship.
- [50:46]
D
Excellent taste in music.
- [50:47]
A
But this gets back to what Andy was saying about the SAC and why the SAC needs to be the one to stand Up. The FBI is unique. It's not like the military, where there's an upper route rubric. You don't have to promote in the FBI, the overwhelming majority of people never do. So if you're running a field office, it's because you raised your hand at some point. And I really firmly believe if you're going to do that, you have to do it with the knowledge that it's not going to benefit you. On the contrary, it's going to result in more responsibility, more difficult decisions, and more of a moral imperative to do the right thing. Thing at the hardest of times. And so when I see field office heads, you know, I see ones like the one in Atlanta who clearly would not do the wrong thing.
- [51:45]
C
Right.
- [51:46]
A
And that is somebody I would use FBI parlance, walk through door with in a heartbeat. But then I see my own sac, who was perfectly happy and almost seemed to take amusement in my own defenestration.
- [51:59]
D
What happened to her? Did she get promoted? Like, what's happening? What's her story?
- [52:02]
A
She's still running the field office. She's still the SAC there. You know, it's just, there's. The issue is. The issue of moral compromise is incredibly complicated. Asha. Somebody should write a very good book about it.
- [52:18]
C
Asha, I really think this is your cue, and I want to serve it up because something that strikes me, you've really elaborate in valuable ways some of the transgressions and I would say triviality of Kash Patel, who I think, Asha, you said is, among other things, just not a serious man. But I'm really struck by how all three of you, you don't necessarily see this at the DOJ side, are really zeroing in on the position of not just the rank and file, but people in the leadership who you're disappointed in for not responding differently. You do, you are working on the book now about complicity. And so you've been thinking a lot about it in the Trump term. Who cooperates, who fights back. It's a different kind of theme from the people at the top. But how would you say that story is playing out inside the bureau?
- [53:13]
D
Yeah, And I want to be clear. I mean, I'm disappointed if there are people who are taking the outright bribes, which is what they are. You know, that that is what would say disappoint me. I think that these situations, when you look at various contexts where people are placed under these pressures, it's complicated. There is sacrifice involved. To be true to your principles when you're faced with this and you have to be willing to accept those sacrifices. It's not my place to be like, you should lay down your life, you know, to stand up to the dictator or whatever. That's a choice for everybody. But I will say this, that what is coming out in my research, it is very difficult to keep your red line in focus when you're in the situation. And the longer you stay, the more that your perception gets hazy. Right. You all know the Milgram experiment, the one where the subjects come in, you know, there's a person on the other side of the wall that they're giving shocks to. A guy in a white lab coat is like, give the shock. And it starts at 15 volts. It goes up like 20 levels to like, XX danger, you know, whatever.
- [54:23]
C
It's actors, it's actors.
- [54:25]
D
But the idea is that the subject is hearing this increasing distress of the other person. And depending on the variant of how it's done, compliance can go very high, up to 100%, even when they're hearing this distress. But one of the interesting things is this thing called gradual escalation. We kind of know it as the boiling frog. Right? Like, once you take the first compromise step, you're already kind of in at that point, you're. You're already starting your rationalization process, your self justification, and then it's easier for you to do the next and the next. This is. We all did counterintelligence. This is exactly how you would go and recruit someone. So, I mean, to Andrew's point, for the person to get the case and say, this is the one I'm not going to work on, I hope that that can happen. I worry that after, as a certain point comes, like, why would it be that case and not the one that was like five cases ago, you know?
- [55:22]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's a great point. I think you're right. In terms of human nature in general, it's very hard. And as soon as you have skin in the game, like, the math problem starts to change. And the longer you're there, you could argue the stakes are higher and higher and higher. You're getting closer and closer to the finish line, the pension, whatever it is, and you really want to get there. But that's why we have higher standards in law enforcement and intelligence. And that's why, you know, like you were telling that story earlier, you're talking about as a, as a new agent, your. Your training agent was like, don't ever do that. Even though it seems so minimal at the time, it is minimal. You talk about, like, you know, getting A dollar off your cheeseburger or something. I mean, that's why it's an absolute no, right? So I've been teaching for the last five or six years. And many of my students, I teach graduate school at George Mason University and their School of Government and Policy. And many of my students are seeking careers in government, many of them in the FBI. And they're worried. They see all this chaos, people getting fired, squeezed out the fork in the road, whatever it is, and they're like, wow, should I really do this anymore? And I tell them full on, it is still, even today, even under these adverse circumstances, it's the greatest. I think it's the greatest career in America. It's the most satisfying, it's the most rewarding, the most exciting. It's someplace where every day you can actually do something that makes your community, your state, the country better. And if you're drawn to that kind of work, then you should definitely do it. But. But before you start, you have to decide where those red lines are. You gotta define them for yourself early on. And then just keep that in the back of your mind. Because when the day comes, it's much harder to spot that if you haven't been very intentional and very obvious and truthful with yourself about, like, I'm an analyst. I am not going to change my conclusion on any product because somebody is pushing me to do so, to deliver the answer that the boss wants rather than the one that I know is true. Maybe that's your red line. That's the day you go, you know, that's the day you say, not doing it and you want to fire me, then you can fire me, or I'll just resign or whatever. It's a terrible spot to put people in. It's not easy. Nobody should have to be pushed to that point. But in this administration, what's going on, like, you have to know, I think, as clearly as you can what that day is going to be for you.
- [57:49]
D
And to that point, I also get students who are interested in this. And it's a lot to ask of someone so young, without the experience. Right. Like, I mean, I went in and like I said, like, I had somebody guiding me. And I think that's another cost, Harry, to the fact that this agency has been hollowed out, that you lose the socialization into the norms, the culture that this is built around. By the way, Mike and Andy, I don't know what you have heard. My understanding is that new agents do not go to the Holocaust Museum anymore.
- [58:20]
A
They cut it out fairly recently or the MLK Memorial.
- [58:25]
D
I think these were used to be like lessons learned. So when we get to the point where we're in reconstruction or whatever comes after this, that's going to be a challenge is you can't just hire a bunch of people without somehow finding a way to replace not just the knowledge but the norms. The, you know, this idea of never being above reproach and the integrity.
- [58:48]
B
Yeah, agree.
- [58:49]
C
Yeah. Which is the same with doj. And that's a whole nother episode and I hope we'll have it. And you said there's a cancer in the organization. FBI agents who preceded this era will never accept those people as co equal colleagues. I hope we can reconvene and talk about the future. For now, it's been a really illuminating conversation and a look into an institution that we don't look at clearly enough. Thank you so much Asha, Andy and Mike. Hope to see you again on Talking Fitz. Thank you so much to Andrew, Mike and Asha. And thank you very much listeners for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. Check us out on substack@harrylittman.substack.com where I'll be posting two or three bulletins a week, breaking down the various threads to constitutional norms and the rule of law. Paid Substack subscribers can now get Talking Feds episodes completely ad free. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube, where we are posting full episodes and my daily takes on top legal stories. Talking Feds has joined forces with the Contrarian. I'm a founding contributor to this bold new media venture committed to reviving the diversity of opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Find out more@contrarian.substack.com thanks for tuning in, and don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Lou Cregan and Katie Upshaw, associate producer Becca Haveian, sound Engineering by Matt McArdle, Rosie Dawn Griffin, David Lieberman, Hansam Hadranathan, Emma Maynard and Hallie Necker are our contributing writers and production assistants by Akshaj Turbailu. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Deledo llc. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later.