'Irreparable damage to the bureau': Former FBI agents sound off on James Comey

Opinion by James Gagliano | December 20, 2018 12:26 PM

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.

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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:

James Comey has done irreparable damage to the bureau we love. His conduct, specifically his leaking, has divided the bureau, and it will take years to regain our hard-earned reputation.

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:

I wanted to believe Comey was doing the right thing, but then he stepped in front of those microphones on July 5, 2016, and uttered that infamous statement — 'No reasonable prosecutor would bring these charges,' and we all cringed and said, ‘Why is he announcing that?’ Hey, it wasn’t his place, and he damaged our reputation afterward by not accepting responsibility for his actions.

Sauce: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/irreparable-damage-to-the-bureau-former-fbi-agents-sound-off-on-james-comey

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