Whistleblower: FBI has "bought in 100 percent" to January 6
FBI
Special Agent Kyle Seraphin has been in counterintelligence since the
mid-2010s, first in the Washington field office, then in the Special Ops
surveillance group. But he is now suspended, in so-called career limbo, after
realizing the FBI was violating its own policies and deciding to become a
whistleblower. He has quite the inside story to tell.
On Thursday, he told it, or
the first half of it, during Dan Bongino’s podcast. Part 2 airs Friday.
As background, he offered
some description of what the investigation process is generally like. Once a
case is deemed worthy to be “briefed up” to the counterterrorism level, he
said, the field office agent becomes essentially an order-taker. Headquarters sends
in the folks they prefer to have on it. But guys like him who “have a pulse and
can sit in cars for a long time” can pick up a lot of useful information, and
that’s mostly what he did. “A lot of times, it’s just containment, as much as
anything else,” he said. It’s essentially “babysitting,” to make sure the guy
“doesn’t do the thing you think he might do.” And they do this because “it
briefs well” in their reports.
There’s a fundamental
misunderstanding of what the FBI is, he said. Americans might see the FBI as
America’s premiere law enforcement organization, but it sees itself primarily
as an INTELLIGENCE AGENCY. So these are “intelligence analysts, intelligence
people,” who have a totally different mindset than you find in a criminal
investigative group. Their job was on-background, and, unlike many in the
Bureau, he “couldn’t grasp the idea of knowledge for the sake of knowledge that
was non-operational.” So he worked as more of a support agent, as opposed to
being an active case agent.
He made the important point
that “it’s not about getting the case done anymore.” Cases rarely end; the
focus is more on intelligence-gathering as an end in itself. Many agents
reaching leadership roles come from that background and “have never touched a
criminal case.” (!) They know FISAs and NSLs (national security letters), but
not law enforcement.
Kyle got the impression
they feel entitled to the information they gather. (To be fair, it’s often used
to clear people.) But it’s open-ended; people can be surveilled, totally
unaware, for years. The first several cases he got in 2017 had been open for
“6, 7, 8 years.” Every 90 days, some “new paper” had to be generated on these
cases --- it’s called “papering the file.” So, “these cases just exist to meet
an administrative burden.” But he’d look through them and think, there’s really
not anything more to do here, as there’s no indication of wrongdoing.
So he’d do a “ruse
interview” with the subject, getting close enough to the topic to pick up what
he needed to. Then he’d close the case. (When FBI agents drop by for a chat, he
warned, “they’re probably not really talking about what they’re talking
about.”)
What might cause a case to
be opened? It could be something very subtle, not necessarily indicative of
crime. You won’t know you’re being checked on. Maybe you’re just in someone’s
circle of contacts, maybe you just “had breakfast once or twice,” or “wrote a
term paper together.” Maybe you’re slightly connected through FB or LinkedIn.
So, they want to find out: are you receiving money from somewhere? Do you have
any contact?
Tips get called in to the
National Hotline, etc. “One way or another, it ends up on your desk as an
agent.” Hopefully, an agent just does a little research with the “tools” in the
toolbox –- again, the target doesn’t know –- and determines these aren’t
federal cases and tosses them.
My question: Since,
according to Kyle, “none of these things even touch criminality at all,” does
the FBI have to get a subpoena to check you out? Because it’s not a criminal
investigation, the answer appears to be...no, they don’t.
When you’re doing a
criminal investigation, he said, you have to show probable cause. For CT
(counterterrorism), “the bar is different.” It’s “not meant for public
consumption.” But those CT methods are “building blocks.” If you do find
something criminal, you have to retrace your steps to rebuild the case, so as
not to reveal sources and methods.
After years of this, the
agent comes to a crossroads. He either thinks, “This is disgusting” and bails
(“and there are a lot of really good people that have left the FBI”), or he
thinks, I’ve done 10 years, I can retire in another 10 and get a pension of
$50-60,000 a year plus benefits (this is called “the Golden Handcuff” for
agents with a mortgage and kids), so, what the heck, I’ll play along.
But Kyle said there are
more agents leaving than we might think. As for himself, he was indefinitely
suspended on June 1, “just shy of 6 years.” Here’s how he got there:
In October 2021, while
working in the New Mexico field office, he heard a couple of agents talking
about an email and got it forwarded to him. This was the email sent to Jim
Jordan about using the “Patriot Act tools” (counterterrorism resources) to
“threat-tag” parents at school board meetings (an EDUOFFICIALS “threat tag”
would initiate an investigation). He knew the attorney general had denied they
were doing this.
“In the real FBI,” he said,
“there’s no time for threats from some guy who’s yelling at a school
board...mostly, this is a state and local issue.” But when he opted not to
participate, that’s when things started getting awkward (my thought: it must’ve
been like many Thanksgiving dinners in this hyper-partisan age). He told
Bongino the order had been signed by assistant directors of both the criminal
and counterterrorism divisions.
Fortuitously, he had just
completed his whistleblower training, and ended up being one of two people who
disclosed the order. He went to his congresswoman with email in hand and said
he wanted to make a protected disclosure. This was new to her and her staff, as
she was a freshman in Congress, so they brought in a law enforcement contact
(now one of Kyle’s best friends), who likewise was unfamiliar with it. Kyle
explained that he had a right to petition and wanted to disclose the email to
show a violation of their policy in targeting these parents.
They had “a long
conversation” with lots of note-taking. “The one that was published was not
mine,” he said, adding that this made no difference to him. Anyway, the word got
out in mid-November.
Around this time, he
started building a group to share information, on this issue and also the FBI's
COVID vaccination policy (a story for another time). They now number almost
400, and he still talks to them daily, going through intermediaries for some, he
said, trying to protect their identities. Yes, he’s concerned about
retaliation, especially after hearing from the chiefs of staff of two members
of Congress who advised him to reconsider. “You should assume that people will
come after you,” they said, though they were talking about social media, etc.,
not necessarily physical danger.
The day someone came into
his office and casually asked, “Hey, you’re a whistleblower, right?,” he
decided to just own up and say “Yeah.” As he told Bongino, “The fastest way to
lose your job is lack of candor.”
Bongino made the point that
what would’ve sounded wacko 10 years ago is now real. Kyle does worry, but he
said that if senior levels retaliate against him, all it will do is prove what
he’s saying. He noted that some of the supervisors’ names on his cases were the
ones we know: Peter Strzok, Andy McCabe.
When Kyle and his
colleagues sit around at lunch, he said, there are three topics: 1) “bitching
about management,” 2) complaining about structure, and 3) “It’s not like it
used to be. This is not what we signed up for.”
There was political
pressure to do this stuff, he said, and “that’s when you get political hatchet
jobs, and I didn’t sign up for that. And nobody I know signed up for that,
either.”
“I think this country broke
on January 6,” he said, “in so many different ways. The FBI has bought in, 100
percent, to the hype of January 6.” It’s the biggest investigation they’ve ever
done, including 9/11. Kyle was given the leads that came out of those cases in
the days afterwards. “I have friends who were gonna go down there,” he said,
“...and just for logistical reasons didn’t make it.” So just because of that
“mishap,” they’re able to retire safely instead of being put under
investigation themselves. He said he knows two agents who simply attended the
rally and have been suspended without pay and their security clearances revoked
“because they showed up to hear the President of the United States.”
https://bongino.com/ep-1857-interview-with-fbi-whistleblower-kyle-seraphin-part-1
RELATED NEWS: In light of
the above story, take a look at this opinion piece from JUDICIAL WATCH about
the latest “open letter” from former government officials, this one signed by
eight former U.S. defense secretaries and five former chairmen of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. The title: “To Support and Defend: Principles of CIVILIAN
CONTROL and Best Practices of Civil-Military Relations.” [Emphasis ours.]
As JUDICIAL WATCH points
out, “This letter comes five days on the heels of President Biden declaring,
‘MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the
rule of law,’ and condemning half the American electorate as ‘represent[ing] an
extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic.’”
JW’s piece cautions us by
citing the very order FBI Kyle Seraphin blew the whistle on, the one done in
collaboration with the National School Board Association in which agents were
supposed to investigate angry parents speaking up in school board meetings as
if they were domestic terrorists. Is that the kind of “civilian control” our
military wants to see?
One particular sentence in
the “open letter” should leap off the page: “Politically, military
professionals confront an extremely adverse environment characterized by the
divisiveness of affective polarization that culminated in the first election in
over a century when the peaceful transition of political power was disrupted
and in doubt.”
Ah, we get it. Trump
supporters are the problem. If it’s true that the FBI has bought in, 100
percent, to January 6, it appears the military has, too. See for yourself…
https://www.judicialwatch.org/
opinion/?utm_campaign=action+ alert&utm_term=members
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