James Comey has recognized a kindred spirit in Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who in 1951, penned the immortal lines, “Do not go gentle into that good night … Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” To wit, the former FBI director confidently strode up to microphones following two days of contentious testimony before House lawmakers, and let it all hang out. Comey, the man some sympathetic media-types have referred to as a humble servant-leader, seized the opportunity to settle some old scores as he pilloried Fox News and the Republican Party.
“The FBI’s reputation has taken a big hit because the president with his acolytes has lied about it constantly,” Comey lectured reporters following the final closed-door session with the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees on Monday. Recognizing a unique opportunity, Comey paused for effect … and then continued: “At some point, someone has to stand up and face the fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement but stand up and speak the truth.”
His shot across the bow at House Republicans was his latest in a recent line of partisan snipes at a political party with which he once publicly claimed affiliation. During his long government career, Comey played the near-perfect nonpartisan actor, earning accolades from both sides of the aisle. His behind-the-scenes, self-serving planting of a story that highlighted his “courageous nonpartisanship” during a now well-chronicled hospital bedside standoff with the George W. Bush White House on March 11, 2004, during the Stellar Wind reauthorization battle, is legion — and earned him former President Barack Obama’s nod to become the seventh director of the FBI.
It is also a window into the public career of a man who self-professes his own humility and sacrifice at every turn. I once counted myself among his staunchest defenders. In the immediate aftermath of his less-than-graceful termination (by a narcissistic president ill-equipped to handle a position that demands temperance, equanimity, and grace), I bristled at Comey’s mistreatment. Liberals cheered me, a lifelong conservative (but only because I criticized their foremost enemy, President Trump).
But then James Comey began to talk, and talk, and talk some more. His testimony in June 2017 sickened me. This was an FBI director who shrank in the face of politicized Obama administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch while she ran political cover for the Clinton campaign and then melted in front of a newly elected president, who Comey claims asked him to do untoward things. He somehow couldn’t find the cojones to challenge this neophyte politico to his face. Instead, he leaked FBI memos, through a surrogate, to the cozy confines of the New York Times.
It was disgraceful — full stop.
After Comey’s latest visits to Capitol Hill, I set out to query my former colleagues at the FBI, of differing ranks and across numerous investigative disciplines, to assess James Comey’s tenure at the FBI.
Let’s begin with the obvious question: Has James Comey damaged the reputation of the FBI? Questioned on that very topic by Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge on Monday, Comey snapped: “No.”
But many of my former colleagues say otherwise.
Retired FBI Special Agent Joaquin Garcia, serving 1980-2006, (whom you may know from his 2008 book, Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family) was the agent who taught me how to be an undercover agent in New York City during the early 1990s. He told me:
Retired FBI Hostage Rescue Team Unit Chief Dave Shellenberger, serving 1987-2014, a legendary HRT counterterrorism operator I served with on the team during the late 1990s, also weighed in:
Chris Swecker, serving 1982-2006, who retired as the assistant director of the Criminal Division at FBI headquarters during Comey’s tenure as deputy attorney general, wrote a scathing rebuttal of Comey’s leadership in a recent piece for Fox News opinion titled, “Ex-FBI Assistant Director: Comey is a disgrace to the FBI, won’t answer key questions on Clinton email scandal.” “Chris,” I said to him in a late night telephone call, “You described James Comey’s tenure as director of the FBI as ‘profoundly disappointing,’ and went on to further describe his time at the helm as ‘a brief aberration in the bureau’s distinguished 110-year history.’ You stand by those harsh quotes?” His response didn’t disappoint:
Bobby Chacon, serving 1987-2014, a well-respected former colleague and retired FBI Dive Team leader in New York and Los Angeles, told me this:
I asked Stephen Bucar, serving 1991-2014, retired FBI Counterterrorism Section chief (a man I’ve never met or served with) for his thoughts:
Lest you think it’s just people in my orbit who feel this way about Comey, read what Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in a June report on Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation:
But there are counterpoints. Two days after Comey’s firing on May 9, 2017, his former deputy director had assumed the acting director position and was called to Capitol Hill to testify about the state of the FBI. Andrew McCabe had once served on the FBI SWAT team I led in the New York Office, and now, the Senate Intelligence Committee had questions about a particular line being promoted by the White House that rank-and-file agents had lost confidence in Comey’s leadership. McCabe pushed back hard on that narrative, characterizing it as “not accurate,” and he appeared emotional as he defended the former director:
We are a large organization, we are 36,500 people across this country, across this globe. We have a diversity of opinions about many things, but I can confidently tell you that the majority — the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.
But then it gets complicated. Two men I have immense respect for, and both, in a way, that I cut my teeth under as a young agent, shared with me divergent views. Members of New Agent Class 79-10, entering on duty on Sept. 9, 1979, Tom Fuentes and Kenneth Maxwell are friends and retired agents I have immense respect for.
Fuentes, who retired as an assistant director in 2009 and currently serves as a law enforcement analyst at CNN, shared with me his dealings with innumerable former FBI colleagues who share “overwhelming shame and disgust at the reports of misconduct and potentially illegal acts committed by then Director Comey, et al.”
Fuentes’ classmate, Ken Maxwell, was one of my first inspirational leaders at the FBI. I met him in 1991 and eventually succeeded him as the supervisory senior resident agent for the Hudson Valley Resident Agency in upstate New York. A former New York State Trooper and retired FBI assistant-special-agent-in-charge, Maxwell is an unabashed Comey defender and described him as a “wholly honorable, decent, and principled man,” as well as a “paragon of virtue,” during our nearly hour-long conversation.
“Jimmy,” he calmly advised me, “I applaud the courage [Comey] has shown in publicly defending the rule of law and the FBI.”
And maybe that’s where I come down — somewhere in-between on the question of Comey and whether he’s done irreparable damage to our beloved FBI. He, like all of us, is a fallible human being. He is a decent man, an honorable actor who many of us feel simply didn’t possess the chops for the job.
To steal his phrase, the “500-year flood” arrived. And maybe, James Comey just wasn’t the ideal man to be at the helm of the boat.
James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He worked in the FBI for 25 years. Gagliano is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University.
