Goodbye to All That - Michael Feinberg. Top FBI agent given little choice but to resign because he knew Pete Strzok [View all]

[highplainsdem]

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-

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!