David Frum (“The Atlantic”)
From David Frum’s podcast entitled “The Wrecking of the FBI,” sub-titled “How President Donald Trump is destroying U.S. counter-intelligence from the inside, published in “The Atlantic” on July 16th comes a disturbing picture of the FBI in Trump 2.0. The interview lasted an hour (and can potentially be heard in its entirety on YouTube.) This is only a small segment, with editorial comments.
Frum was a speechwriter for George H Bush who coined the term “axis of evil” and a stalwart in the neo-Conservative movement from Reagan through McCain. In 2016, Frum announced that he was voting for Hillary Clinton and subsequently became one of the founding members of the No Labels movement and a Never Trumper. He is now an Editor at “The Atlantic” and also has a podcast.
Summarized below are some snippets from the interview with former FBI counter-intelligence officer Peter Strzok. As someone who has actually been inside the FBI offices in New York City (as part of a Book Expo America presentation for writers of crime fiction), the entire interview is informative and absolutely terrifying in its implications. It makes me even more convinced that those born when I was born (Baby Boomers) have gotten the best this country has to offer, whether that means weather, salaries, progress towards equality for all, leadership, or, as in this interview, a competent FBI protecting United States citizens.
The interview led off by admitting that the FBI of the past had some notable excesses, especially under J. Edgar Hoover, as when he pursued Martin Luther King or during the McCarthy Era hearings of the 50s. However, in the 70s, safeguards were put in place, which Frum enumerates. Whether any of those guidelines and rule changes are being adhered to by the current Trump 2.0 group, which seems to feel that no set of rules (including the Constitution) applies to them, is a relevant question. And one that the interview answers with a negative slant. These appointees who are spectacularly ill-suited for their job(s) need to be relieved of their positions, whether as Secretary of Defense or as the non-medical person causing measles to come back with a vengeance. (And there are many more…too many to list them all. In fact, during the interview, Strzok did discuss the “play acting” that people like Kristi Noem seem intent on displaying, dressing up in outfits and sharing all with social media—even if what is shared is inaccurate or an outright lie,)
You won’t sleep well at night if you listen to the entire interview…and this is only about 10% of the interview’s content.
Former FBI agent Peter Strzok.
Strzok: “All of those people you see having these different sorts of formal and informal pressure placed upon them to move them out of the way, either by resignation, retirement, firing whatever the case may be,” said Peter Strzok, former FBI counter-intelligence officer, currently involved in two lawsuits against the Department of Justice for unfair firing (much like the daughter of James Comey, Maurene Comey).
Strzok was interviewed by David Frum, the 65-year-old Editor of the “Atlantic” on July 16th on his podcast, and the news from behind-the-scenes on the current state of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not encouraging. Strzok sketched an agency that has lost its experts and is promoting totally unqualified people into top positions, people who Strzok says are unqualified, lazy and have no idea what they are doing.
David Frum: This question from Frum made me laugh (and then it made me cry): “The special genius of Kash Patel is he just doesn’t care. He has no regard for the FBI as an institution. No, I mean, if we say there’s a special Nobel Prize for Bobby Kennedy Jr. as maybe the worst Cabinet secretary, not just of this administration but of all time, the most inappropriate, the most “who shouldn’t have the job,” Kash Patel may not quite match a pro-polio secretary of Health and Human Services, but he’s an honorable mention, right?” (And let’s not forget Patel’s truly Crazy Eyes!) Trying to pick the most tragically unqualified among the Trump appointees is difficult, since 90% are so inept. (I had a few moments where I thought Marco Rubio might acquit himself with honor, but those moments passed.) We are now a kakistocracy.
Strzok responded: “And it’s not only malevolence and lack of care; it’s also lack of competence.” He went on to say, “Clearly Donald Trump is the motivating force and at the FBI, it’s Kash Patel and to a certain extent Dan Bongino who are motive force, but there are people around them who are taking care of the particulars or informing them of the particulars to be acted on. But for Kash, it’s not just a lack of caring; it’s an utter lack of knowledge.”
Oh, good. A Know-Nothing is calling the shots at the FBI.
How does that stack up with the mission to keep our country safe that the FBI faces?
Strzok: “There are not enough FBI agents and analysts and investigators to counter all the threats of terrorism, counterintelligence, white-collar crime, public corruption, gangs—all of it. You name it, there’s not enough. So it is very much, one, you’re having to prioritize which threats you do work, and it is essentially very much a zero-sum game. If you take people off of one topic, you’re putting them on another, but you’re losing somewhere else…Look—if we move these people to work immigration, you’ve got to understand we’re going to not be working on this or not be working on that, and your exposure and your threat in those areas, your call at the end of the day, but if you do this, this is the cost that you’re gonna have to pay in the way that trickles out down the line.”
Oh. Great, (she said sarcastically.) So, with Iran mad as a wet hen about our bombing of their nuclear facilities, the FBI is not fully staffed and not totally on alert for terrorist actions aimed at U.S. cities and U.S. citizens?
Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic book cover by David Frum
Frum soldiered on, asking the question we should all be asking about all of the agencies that DOGE and DJT have attacked and attempted to destroy. “What is the state of our counterintelligence facilities? There are a lot of reports that suggest there have been important resignations, that there are less qualified people running counter-terrorism. How does that look to you?”
Strzok: “Well, I think there is very much a greater vulnerability than there was prior to Kash Patel showing up…The people who arrive, traditionally, at the senior level of the organizations have gone through a variety of assignments, both in the field as an investigator, as well as at headquarters doing a variety of things to gain expertise, to run larger programs, to interact with the inter-agency community and to understand, say, you’re a counter-terrorism agent.”
As you can imagine, this former counter-intelligence agent thinks the current crop of agents is woefully under-prepared and, on top of that, they may be lazy. (That rumor has actually gained credence with Bongino, the former podcaster, complaining about how “hard” the job is.)
Strzok: “I don’t want to turn this into a gripe session about the senior management of the FBI—Dan Bongino goes on Fox News and he acts astonished that everything we face is a 10 out 10, like the nines out 10, we don’t even hear about. And says ‘I barely get home to see my wife and it’s like we’re divorced.’ Dude, what the hell do you think has been going on for the past 20, 30, 40 years by all the people at the FBI and you’ve been on the job for five minutes and you’re complaining?” (Italics Frum’s).
Strzok: “Yeah, and I think they’re fundamentally lazy, and I’m talking about Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. I think Kash Patel has spent the entirety of his life cozying up to political figures that he could hitch his wagon to, whether it’s Devin Nunes and then Donald Trump and otherwise selling God knows what on various podcasts, whether it’s, you know, things that are not of substantive value.”
Buttressing the basic argument that the current crop of agents may not be the most qualified or experienced is this further Strzok quote: “And so by the time it gets to the point where you’re on that senior staff advising the director and deputy director what to do, you’ve had probably 20 years of various experience learning this and doing this. Well, when you come in with purges, and you’re Patel and Bongino and trying to get rid of everybody so you can bring in (loyalist) people…The deputy director of the FBI traditionally has always been an agent—Dan Bongino is the first in memory who isn’t—who has a deep understanding of how the bureau works and an accomplished track record within that organization.”
BEE GONE book by Connie Wilson
So, who’s minding the FBI store?
Strzok: “We are supporting in many ways Israeli efforts against Iran—that when it comes to a potential Iranian response, whether that’s through proxies, whether they have sleeper personnel here, whether they have visitors capable of coming into the United States, whether they have established capabilities out of the Iranian intersection or the mission to the UN. The people who know that, the people who are on the street who have that knowledge, one, at a senior level may be gone; two, at a street level, may have gotten pulled to go work elsewhere (and declined a reposting to Alabama, in Frum’s example).”
The expertise drain, either through re-settlement as a form of firing, or by actual firing of qualified agents (see the Maureen Comey story this week) is hurting the FBI.
Strzok: “Part of what you do is, there’s a continuum of that sort of lesson as a baby investigator, as a probationary agent learning to understand what things are worth doing and what things are kind of spinning your wheels.”
But things are improving, right? We don’t have to lose sleep at night about the FBI being completely ineffectual?
Strzok: “And the problem is: If you don’t have that expertise, you are going to tend to flail. And if you’ve gotten rid of all the other people who can act as sort of wise consiglieres to tell you, Look, boss—it sounds bad, but this really is probably not what we should be focusing on. Let whoever run this out. Here are the things that you really need to focus on. Those people, those voices don’t exist anymore. And there’s only so much you can do to reach down and pluck somebody up—again, there are a lot of really great agents and analysts, but they just, they don’t have that benefit. You can’t suddenly bestow on somebody an extra five years of senior experience. You can’t do that.”
scales of justice
“All of those things are going on. And so when you say we’re going to take 30 percent of our workforce and move it over to rounding up immigrants, not even violent immigrants—we’re just going to round up immigrants so we can get our numbers up—those people come, not entirely, but one of the places they come from are all those folks who are doing it. So not only do you have,,, a brain drain, particularly at a senior level of people who are getting forced out because a lot of them, by the way, senior counterintelligence people happen to be involved with the investigation of Donald Trump allegedly maintaining illegally classified documents at his place at Mar-a-Lago but you have any number of people who were in some way, shape, or form looking at combating foreign influence in our elections.”
“And so whether it was 2016, whether it was things like the Hunter Biden laptop, perhaps it was whether or not the Chinese were or weren’t trying to influence our election, the people who had the expertise and knowledge to do that are getting forced out. Units are getting disbanded. In the case of foreign influence, there’s an entire task force that was disbanded with a corresponding set of folks at DOJ reportedly that were all reassigned somewhere else. And so you’ve got both expertise loss, and on the ground you’ve got investigative-manpower loss. And so those things, there’s no question in my mind that we are more vulnerable than we were.”
