Another day, and yet another front-page New York Times piece detailing the inner workings of a sensitive national security investigation. This one, entitled, “Agents Tried to Flip Russian Oligarchs. The Fallout Spread to Trump,” appeared in print on Saturday, and contained leaked information describing case decisions and law enforcement operational maneuvers. The purpose of these unauthorized disclosures should not be construed as any effort to safeguard American lives or fulfill any moral imperative that necessitated their release into the public domain. Those who disclosed classified information here did so for pure partisan political purpose.
And with the virulent anti-Trump fever sweeping the nation and applying “justification” to indefensible conduct and actions by supposedly apolitical government actors, the New York Times journalists made no efforts to conceal the intent of those sharing sensitive and classified information and intelligence. Their reporting shed any pretense of cover for those who might question the impartiality and motives of the leakers. Describing some of their sources as “current and former officials” of the FBI and DOJ, reporters Kenneth P. Vogel and Matthew Rosenberg outline a “broader, clandestine American effort” that sought to gauge the viability of recruiting a half-dozen Russian oligarchs, including Oleg V. Derispaska, with deep financial ties to Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.
This should come as no surprise. These type of FBI operational efforts in the criminal and counterintelligence realms targeting susceptible cooperators occur every damn day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
Efforts by law enforcement to impel cooperation from subjects involved in, or with knowledge of criminal activity are nothing new. Government sources are motivated by a host of public and personal interests that include greed, retribution, sentencing considerations, and just plain, old decency and virtue.
And, there are always careful considerations that go into the decision-making processes for if, and when, a potential cooperator is to be approached. FBI agents and federal prosecutors tend to err on the side of avoiding tipping their hands, and a question-recipient can learn as much from an investigator’s questions as the government stands to potentially glean from their answers.
But that isn’t really what any of this is about. That’s simply a pedestrian debate on investigative tactics. No, what should trouble all of us — not just this grizzled, retired FBI agent who spent a quarter-century engaged in and approving others’ efforts to recruit sources onto what we only half-jokingly referred to as “Team America” — is the brazen way members of the law enforcement and intelligence communities are leaking information to the press with impunity during the Trump presidency.
Consequentialism, the theory that the end justifies the means, explains how many former law enforcement personnel are dismissing the troubling conduct of our brethren who have leaked information to the press — and in the instance of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, actually perjured themselves during investigations of same. Fired FBI Director James Comey famously leaked some of his memorandums detailing interactions with the president to the New York Times through a surrogate — and then tried to justify his actions in a book.
But regarding the current FBI/DOJ officials who served as sources for the New York Times piece on Russian oligarch cooperation cultivation, here’s how Vogel and Rosenberg described their intentions:
Allow me to translate: Despite acknowledgment from the leakers that they, themselves, were undermining national security and potentially putting sources and methods at risk with these disclosures, they did so because they felt that President Trump was damaging national security.
Allow that bit of arrogance and hypocrisy to sink in for a moment.
Some will reflexively smear me as a “Trumpist.” I’m not. I voted against him in both the primary and the general elections in 2016, and it wasn’t but two weeks ago that I criticized him for acting like a mob boss.
Others will astutely recognize my background — I spent two decades in the FBI’s flagship office located in New York City. They’ll snark that I should be calling out whomever it was that Rudy Giuliani claimed leaked to him in the run-up to the 2016 election, whereby he promised a “pretty big surprise” related to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Of course, two days later, James Comey sent his infamous reopening of the Clinton email case letter to Congress. Some use this inference as indication that Giuliani was somehow privy to investigation updates by disgruntled agents in the New York office, who were dissatisfied with the manner in which FBI headquarters appeared to be slow-walking the Clinton private server investigation.
I have written extensively about Giuliani’s sad Second Act as political surrogate and apparent house counsel for Donald Trump, and outline how reckless and deleterious to the FBI’s reputation his comments were here. Giuliani, himself, has admitted to being interviewed as part of a leak inquiry. And just as the attorney for Michael Cohen and Democratic operative Lanny Davis had to do of recent with his comments to CNN, Giuliani appears to have walked back his comments. Both cases appear to the “popping off” by once relevant and respected public figures.
I personally do not believe that Giuliani had any inside knowledge of the doings of the New York office, but if he did (and the leak investigation bears this out) the FBI employees involved should be sanctioned.
If proven this occurred, their actions would be considered detestable. But the recent leakers to the New York Times admittedly shared truly classified, not simply sensitive, information. That raises the stakes, and should engender the initiation of yet another in a seemingly long, recent list of leak investigations.
The wave of sensitive and classified information leaks to the media to embarrass or undermine the current president are not noble and heroic. They are partisan in nature and some may ultimately rise to the level of criminal disclosures. An envisioned good outcome simply does not excuse FBI personnel committing wrongs to attain it.
The “I” in FBI has always stood for Integrity. Agents should never exhibit immoral, unethical, or criminal behavior, even and especially in the pursuit of someone they feel may be unworthy of the office or potentially engaging in same.
If we dare do so, haven’t we have become what we profess to loathe?
James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University.
