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Goodbye to All That - Michael Feinberg. Top FBI agent given little choice but to resign because he knew Pete Strzok
Ran across this today thanks to a recommendation from David Corn, who called this "a dose of true patriotism."
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/goodbye-to-all-that
-snip-
I’m not going to rehash or relitigate Pete’s story here; it’s been told ably and comprehensively by others, not the least by himself. I’ll simply note that we worked together in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division roughly a decade ago, and we shared a number of mutual acquaintances before we ever even met (the counterintelligence world being not that large). Our own friendship began with a discovery that we liked the same bands and shared an interest in trying new restaurants; the notion that I was his “protégé,” as one X account stated, was news to us both. Most of our conversations since he left the Bureau have involved debating the relative merits of New Order versus Joy Division. If the fact that I sang along to “Every Day is Like Sunday” while he stood next to me at a Morrissey concert actually represents an imminent danger to the Bureau’s integrity, then, for the first time in nearly a half-century on this earth, I’m truly at a loss for words.
Yet under Bongino’s reign, it was apparently enough. My SAC informed me in a moment she described as “brutally honest,” that I would not be receiving any promotions; in fact, I needed to prepare myself for the likelihood of being demoted. She gave me no details about what position or office I would be sent to once my time as a leader prematurely concluded.
Furthermore, she told me, I would be asked to submit to a polygraph exam probing the nature of my friendship with Pete, and (as I was quietly informed by another, friendlier senior employee) what could only be described as a latter-day struggle session. I would be expected to grovel, beg forgiveness, and pledge loyalty as part of the FBI’s cultural revolution brought about by Patel and Bongino’s accession to the highest echelons of American law enforcement and intelligence.
-snipping to get to his resignation letter-
-snip-
I’m not going to rehash or relitigate Pete’s story here; it’s been told ably and comprehensively by others, not the least by himself. I’ll simply note that we worked together in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division roughly a decade ago, and we shared a number of mutual acquaintances before we ever even met (the counterintelligence world being not that large). Our own friendship began with a discovery that we liked the same bands and shared an interest in trying new restaurants; the notion that I was his “protégé,” as one X account stated, was news to us both. Most of our conversations since he left the Bureau have involved debating the relative merits of New Order versus Joy Division. If the fact that I sang along to “Every Day is Like Sunday” while he stood next to me at a Morrissey concert actually represents an imminent danger to the Bureau’s integrity, then, for the first time in nearly a half-century on this earth, I’m truly at a loss for words.
Yet under Bongino’s reign, it was apparently enough. My SAC informed me in a moment she described as “brutally honest,” that I would not be receiving any promotions; in fact, I needed to prepare myself for the likelihood of being demoted. She gave me no details about what position or office I would be sent to once my time as a leader prematurely concluded.
Furthermore, she told me, I would be asked to submit to a polygraph exam probing the nature of my friendship with Pete, and (as I was quietly informed by another, friendlier senior employee) what could only be described as a latter-day struggle session. I would be expected to grovel, beg forgiveness, and pledge loyalty as part of the FBI’s cultural revolution brought about by Patel and Bongino’s accession to the highest echelons of American law enforcement and intelligence.
-snipping to get to his resignation letter-
It should go without saying—to anyone who cares about the Constitution and rule of law—that this is not right. Our organization’s motto is “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity,” but over the past six months there have been too many signs that our current leadership does not understand the last of those words. Earlier this year the ranks of our senior executives were decimated by forced retirements, and many others were willing to take their places without voicing concern or dissent. The Department of Justice has been ordered to open cases on individuals solely for having the temerity to say that the 2020 election was not stolen, or for having carried out their lawful duties as state level prosecutors; few people have pushed back. We sacrificed the names of every Special Agent who investigated the events of January 6, 2021, and an entire public corruption squad in our nation’s capital was disbanded for having worked on a related matter. Within our own field office, we shirked our national security obligations in order to move personnel to immigration task forces; our area of responsibility does not actually have a significant population of illegal immigrants, but our leaders wanted press release-ready roundups, so we pulled people from congressionally mandated counterterrorism and counterintelligence duties. I could go on.
-snip-
He does intend to go on, as he wrote after quoting the entire resignation letter. He intends to talk about the issues he raised "over the next few months in writing, in engagements with the public, and by other means." He considers that a continuation of his service to the United States.
Bravo!
18 replies
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Did the FBI’s Charles McGonigal Help Throw the 2016 Election to Trump?
The shocking indictments against the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI in New York raise many dark questions.
By Craig Unger
The National Review, February 1, 2023
In the course of writing two books on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the same question occurred to me again and again: How is it possible that I knew all sorts of stuff about Donald Trump, and the FBI didn’t seem to have a clue? Or if they did, why weren’t they doing anything with it?
Specifically, I knew that:
* Starting in 1980, an alleged “spotter agent” for the KGB began cultivating Trump as a new asset for Soviet intelligence.
* The Russian mafia laundered millions of dollars through Donald Trump’s real estate by purchasing condos in all-cash transactions through anonymous corporations that did not disclose real ownership.
* Trump Tower was a home away from home for Vyacheslav Ivankov, one of the most brutal leaders of the Russian mafia, and at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the mafia held the deeds to, lived in, or ran alleged criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties.
* Trump was some $4 billion in debt when the Russians came to bail him out via the Bayrock Group, a real estate firm that was largely staffed, owned, and financed by Soviet émigrés who had ties to Russian intelligence and/or organized crime.
Much of my material came from FBI documents. A lot came from open-source databases. It made no sense. There was an astounding amount of data on the public record. The FBI had launched enormous investigations of the Russian mafia in the 1980s. They had staked out a New York electronics store that was a haven for KGB officers. They knew that’s where the Trump Organization bought hundreds of TV sets. They had their eyes on Ivankov and other Russian mobsters who were denizens of Trump’s casinos and bought and sold his condos through shell companies. They had to know that Trump laundered money for and provided a base of operations for the Russian mafia, which was, after all, a de facto state actor tied to Russian intelligence. They had to know that the Russians repeatedly bailed Trump out when he was bankrupt. They had to know that Russia owned him.
Snip…
As FBI director, Freeh had warned that Russian organized crime posed a grave threat to the United States that far transcended mere criminality. It is not clear how much he was paid by Prevezon after he switched sides, but Freeh later bought a $9.38 million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, just a 10-minute drive from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
Then there was the late James Kallstrom, who ran the FBI’s New York office in the mid-’90s and oversaw successful investigations into both the Italian Mafia and later the Russian mob. Kallstrom had developed close friendships with two key players in the Trump-Russia saga. He worked closely with then–U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani in the investigation of the Cosa Nostra network that led to the famed Mafia Commission Trial of 1985–1986. Going even further back, Kallstrom had also been friends with Donald Trump since around 1973, when Kallstrom was putting together a Trump-funded parade in New York to honor Vietnam veterans.
Continues…
https://newrepublic.com/article/170328/charles-mcgonigal-throw-2016-election
Unger has been on to the BFEE gangsters since they were in business with the bin Laden clan.
Response to highplainsdem (Original post)
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