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We're back with another edition of the
Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Joshinsky,

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culture editor here at the Federalist.
As always, you can email the show

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at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.

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Make sure to subscribe wherever your download
your podcasts, and to the premium

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version of our website as well.
We are joined today by Thomas J.

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Baker. He is an FBI veteran
and the author of the new book The

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Fall of the FBI. How a
once great agency Became a Threat to Democracy?

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Such an important topic. Thomas,
thank you for joining us. Rachel

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b with you, Emily, I'm
so eager to dive into this. I

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want to start by asking you to
give us a little bit of background on

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your career. When did you join
the FBI, Why did you join the

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FBI, and what did your time
there look like. Well, Emily,

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I was in the FBI for thirty
three years and did a variety of things,

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and in the year since my retirement
from the FBI have stayed very engaged

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with them and with law enforcement,
with the criminal justice system in general through

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my consulting work, and I served
on the board of directors of the Department

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of Justice, Federal Credit Union alongside
FBI and DOJ executives. What attracted me

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to the FBI, Well, I
came from a family that had a bit

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of a law enforcement background in New
York City. My maternal grandfather was a

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policeman in New York and two of
his sons my uncles, who I was

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close to, a policeman, and
they inspired my interest in justice as well

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as law enforcement. And then I
got some very good advice in counseling,

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and I was a director towards the
FBI, and I'm very glad that happened,

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and I had a wonderful career.
But I founds, as have others,

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what's happened to the FBI in the
last half dozen years, particularly to

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be not only of great concern to
our nation and our liberties, but also

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personally heartbreaking. And you are a
special agent, Can you tell us a

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little bit about what that means.
Yes, I was an FBI special agent.

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They're the people who do the investigations. They're the ones who have contact

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with the public. You know,
can out there with the public, conducting

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investigations, doing interviews, doing searches. By the nature of their work,

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they impact or could impact on people's
liberties. And that's why, and I

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really stressed this in the book.
In the past, we were really inculcated

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more than even trained or instructed in
the US Constitution. Most of our classroom

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work for those three or four months
when you first became a new agent was

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spent on the Constitution. Outside the
classroom, yes, there was a firearms

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training quite extensively, and arrest tactics
and things of that nature. But in

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the classroom it was the Constitution,
most specifically the Bill of Rights, the

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first ten amendments to the Constitution,
and we were taught to cherish them and

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embrace them, and most of us
did. We were taught part of our

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role was to guarantee the civil rights. That's the term that was used in

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those days of Americans, and that
the fourth, fifth, and sixth Amendment

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particularly, and those are the amendments
having to do with search and seizure and

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the right of people's counsel and the
right against self incrimination. That we should

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not see those amendments as an obstacle
to be overcome, but we should embrace

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them. And in fact, when
we finished our new Agents training, one

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of our legal instructors gave us a
pocket sized copy of the Constitution, told

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us to keep it in our breast
pocket, and that when we were interviewing

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an American citizen or searching someone's home, if we had the Constitution with us,

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it was very unlikely that we'd go
astray and do anything wrong. And

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that may sound corny to some today, but we did embrace that, and

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we did accept that as our role, and that sacredness of the Constitution and

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that concern for people's civil rights.
Civil liberties as the term we used today,

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kept coming back to me and echoing
back to me when we learned of

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the abuses in the Russian collusion investigation
and more recent undertakings. It is shocking,

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and my initial training just kept coming
back to me. We'd never I

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mean, we'd be admonished if someone
came up with an idea to do some

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seeing that infringed on citizens civil rights
or on their particularly their religious rights.

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That was just beyond the pale.
That made me really sad when you mentioned

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the point about the Constitution, and
I want to get into some specifics,

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but what jumped to my mind was
the messages between Peter Struck and Lisa page

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as you were explaining that, and
it brought me to the conclusion of the

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Durham Report, and maybe we can
say at the thirty thousand foot level here

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for a moment, because I want
to ask about John Durham's final thoughts and

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the report, which were essentially the
way to change the FBI is by reinforcing,

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reinvigorating. The only thing you can
do is is to reinforce among the

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personnel the importance of the Constitution,
of their fidelity to the Constitution, the

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rule of law, respect for what
they do. What did you make of

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that, mister Baker, how does
that strike you? Well, Emily,

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you you expressed it exactly as John
Durham did. And the three hundred and

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some page report you've obviously read some
of it, or maybe all of it.

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I read all of it. What
I found in it was that it

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actually vindicated and validated much of what
I said or suggested in my book.

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And it's nice to be vindicated.
It's nice to be validated. But it

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also was very sad and shocking because, as you know, the conclusion of

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Durham's report, one of the principal
conclusions was that there was absolutely no none

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probable cause, reason, no predicate
information to embark on that the Russian collusion

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investigation, which the FBI code named
cross via Hurricane, that the whole thing

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was premised on nothing. And he
emphasizes that, and he said, what

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the FBI has to do, they
have to be constantly reminded of this and

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return to fidelity to the Constitution.
And maybe that's what clicked with you.

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That's one of his plauding phrases in
his summary at the end, and it

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rang true to me, fidelity to
the Constitution. And if we talk about

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maybe some more specific things, and
know you address in your book FISA and

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PISA's at the center of the crossfire
Hurricane controversy, and Durham walks through some

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of it, Muller walks through some
of it. We've seen people talk about

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this for years now, and I've
always wondered, you know, I imagine

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when you joined the FBI. It's
sort of in the aftermath of the Church

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era, the Church Committee which basically
gave us FISA. FISA was already in

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its inception, was supposed to be
a guard rail and if anything, we

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saw it acting as you know,
the gate the gateway to corruption and crossfire,

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hurricane, And again, I know
you addressed this in your book.

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What can be done to FISA,
what can be done specifically, because reform

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should be on the table. Republicans
are in the House, certain things are

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up for reauthorization, like I'll ask
you about Section seven or two in just

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a bit. But on phis IT
in particular, is there a way to

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transform fies it into the guardrail that
it's supposed to be for the FBI that

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lawmakers should look at. Absolutely,
Emily, and you said a lot of

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that very correctly. The reform of
FISER is one thing that the Congress can

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undertake. In fact, the Congress
has to undertake so many of the other

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things I suggest have to be done
internally by the FBI and by the DOJ.

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But just to step back for a
second. You're obviously familiar with this,

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but a lot of people aren't.
It's a major thing in American history.

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We had the Pike and Church Committees
back in the mid and late seventies

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exposed abuses not just by the FBI
but by other intelligence agencies and by the

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federal government in general, and a
number of reforms were undertaken internally. The

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behind the DOJ set up guidelines which
which Durham references in his report the original

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guidelines, the Leavy guidelines, and
that they have they still stand and should

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be followed. But specifically, the
Congress passed the Fiser Act. Now,

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what the Fiser Act did, It's
set up a legal mechanism for the surveillance,

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the electronic surveillance mainly of foreign entities
and other words, foreign spies resident

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in the United States. Now in
the past in American history, going back

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to President Fdr. Truman Eisenhower,
Lyndon Baines Johnson, they had all looked

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for turned to the FBI cast upon
them without much guidelines that they wanted intelligence

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on what our enemies were doing in
this country. What Fieser did it set

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up a legal framework for that to
be done under the authorization of a court

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new court that was established, the
Secret Court, the FISA Court, the

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FISK as we call it. That
came into action in nineteen seventy eight.

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Happened to be the same year that
Judge Webster became the director of the FBI

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and Judge William Webbs to set the
get Gold standards for the use of FISER.

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It was very restricted. It was
followed very closely. But as its

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name implies, it was only meant
to gather intelligence, not to gather evidence,

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and to gather intelligence on foreigners.
And that's the way it operated for

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several decades until the unfortunate, the
tragic crises of the attacks of September eleventh.

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After the September eleventh attacks, FISER
was amended and amended again and again

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several times, and it allowed for
the surveillance under of US citizens, which

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was never the intent. And this
old to light, of course, in

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the car to Page surveillance or a
four FISER warrants issued against car to Page,

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a US citizen who it turns out, did absolutely nothing wrong, and

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the pier surveillance of him, which
went on for a year, it turned

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up nothing that he was doing wrong. The most fundamental reform that could be

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undertaken is to restore PISA to its
original purpose, that is, using it

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to gather intelligence, but to gather
intelligence on foreign entities in this country,

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not on US citizens. If a
US citizen is suspected of being engaged in

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espionage or terrorism, there are ways
under the Criminal Statute to surveil that US

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citizen. There is no need to
use PHIZER and this is also a huge

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problem with seven O two, which
I believe is actually under the purview of

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the NSA, but we know has
been in part really sort of tapped by

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people at the FBI the CIA for
a long time. It's up for reauthorization

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again this year and does have some
bipartisan opposition, although maybe not too much

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bipartisan opposition, although you would think
in the aftermath of crossfire Hurricane it would

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get some more bipartisan opposition. Is
that similar in the sense that it's another

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tool that may have proper predication,
you know, like FISA, this is

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something that can be helpful to national
security, if not essential to national security.

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But in order to have something like
that, you have to trust the

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personnel to use it appropriately because they're
able to operate without transparent you see it

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and again for some necessity, but
that involves a huge measure of trust.

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Is that similar to FAISA in a
sense? Well, Emily, it's such

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a pleasure to talk to you because
you're very well informed on these topics,

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which most people, even journalists and
all of this who have interviewed me in

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the past, they're really not familiar
familiar with the substance of this, and

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you're also right, and it is
disappointing that there's so little bipartisan support for

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some of these reforms, and there
should be. There really should be.

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Some of the Democrats, quite frankly, are so obsessed with their their hatred

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of Donald Trump that they see any
attempt to reform the FBI or reform DJ

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is somehow going to help him,
and that's not the case at all,

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because these abuses of authority threatened people
on the left as well as on the

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right. There are a few in
Congress, and I saw it in the

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House Judicial Committee who who get a
little Democrats who get a little concerned about

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this issue. And also the issue
of the monitoring under the direction of the

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FBI and other federal agencies, but
specifically the FBI, the monitoring of the

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censoring, if you will, of
free speech through Twitter and others, and

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that's been well documented by the Twitter
files, and that's something else that needs

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to be addressed and should be addressed
in a bipartisan way. Hey, y'all,

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this is Sarah Carter, investigative columnist
and host of The Sarah Carter Show.

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It's Yeah. The entire structure of
these organizations has always been somewhat controversial.

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There have always been people, and
I think this might even be part

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of Ronda Santas's reform plan for the
FBI, who have said you shouldn't have

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the same agency that's doing the intel
collection also be doing the enforcement. I

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don't have a particular opinion on that, because I didn't spend decades in the

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trenches as you did, but I
want to ask about that. It's it's

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a fundamental question that so many people
have had for years and now as you

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were writing about you know the forms
that can fix the FBI, is that

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among them? What should I mean
in your broad plan, we've talked about

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FISA, what should happen to the
FBI in the future. Well, thank

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you for that question. And Ron
de Santis has some standing for what he

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speaks about. A lot of people
don't realize in his background, he was

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a prosecutor in the Navy, and
then he was a special assistant US Attorney

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in Florida, and so he's somewhat
familiar with the proceeds the process. For

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years, I and many others and
in speaking to public groups when I was

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in the FBI, as part of
my role in public affairs and the FBI,

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we always used to point out that
the United States is blessed, blessed

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to have as its domestic security agency
an organization that's a law enforcement agency,

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because then it operates within the guidelines
of the Constitution. And this is very

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unique even in Western democracies. Other
countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom,

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they have a civilian intelligence agency operating
as a domestic intelligence agency, removed

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from law enforcement, removed from those
legal guidelines and restrictions. And I've always

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suggested that we are blessed in the
United States to have the FBI doing the

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domestic security work. Unfortunately, when
we've had people leaders go off the track,

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beginning in the direction that Mulla put
us in and then under James Coby's

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disastrous leadership, we may now have
a situation where we are cursed, not

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blessed, cursed to have a domestic
intelligence agency with police power. So that

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does have to be looked at.
The whole thing goes back to the FBI's

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culture and and that requires a lot
of work internally by the FBI, and

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d J. Durham certainly pointed the
way for that, and it's hard for

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I think a lot of members of
the public to trust that Christopher Ray is

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the right person to write the ship, so to speak. What do you

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make of raised tenure and raise capacity
to help the FBI actually become the institution

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to have the culture that it desperately
needs. Well, an old fan,

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as Chris Ray, didn't get us
in this mess. This mess started with

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Bob Muller changing the culture and then
Comy's disastrous leadership. But what, unfortunately

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a lot of us are disappointed in
is over the past five years, at

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least every time some malfeasance is discovered, Chris Ray points out, either in

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a public statement or before a Congressional
committee that, well, the bad actors,

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the rotten apples, if you will, have been shown the door.

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They've gone on. Theyre no longer
with us looking again and again as if

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it's the work of a few bad
apples, when there's an underlying cultural change

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that's happened. I've spoken to many
FBI executives in recent years. Some of

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them are aware of it, but
they really can't haven't seemed to come to

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grips with it. And I think, Emily it all traces back, and

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I explained this in great detail in
the book to decisions made by Bob mullet

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in the wake of the September eleventh
attacks, which we're now commemorating, ironically,

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twenty two years ago today. You
mentioned that point earlier, and I

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was really eager to ask you to
flush it out, because, as you

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mentioned, we're recording this on September
eleventh, twenty twenty three, as the

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country is grieving the events and the
events of nine to eleven, And it

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does seem to me that communism was
the stress test. The Cold War was

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the stress test that culminated in the
Church Committee and the reforms that came out

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of it. Nine to eleven was
another stress test, and after that we

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saw DHS and say we saw the
vast expansion because of technology of surveillance.

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We don't look back necessarily fondly at
what Jedger Hoover was doing to, for

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instance, every Black Panther group.
You know, there was some reason to

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be paranoid of how communists lurking in
some of these very important corners of American

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society and culture. But we don't
look back fondly at the accesses of those

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powers, those muscles being flexed in
the way that they were. I feel

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like we should be in a similar
moment right now, we don't seem to

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be. Can you tell us a
little bit about how specifically Bob Mueller and

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the aftermath of nine to eleven really
changed the culture of the FBI in ways

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that we seem to not have awoken
to until just the last couple of years.

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Emily, that's a very good summary. You used the term stress test.

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I used the term crises. Looking
back at American history, this has

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happened before. Every time there's a
crisis, there winds up being even coming

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from some very well intentioned people,
in fact, some great people, abuses

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of civil liberties, and in the
past they were later corrected. We haven't

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corrected the recent abuses yet. Specifically, look back to the American Civil War,

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there was a major crisis if their
revel was one and Lincoln, who

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I think almost everybody agrees was a
great president and as a beloved president,

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but Lincoln engaged in abuses of civil
rights. He is suspended the rid of

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habeas corpus. He was proved wrong. Historians think he was wrong, and

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ultimately the Supreme Court pointed out that
Lincoln was wrong. When we had the

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attack on Pearl Harbor, another crisis
comparable with the September eleventh attacks, Franklin

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Delano Roosevelt A. Montachu later issued
an executive order in turning locking up Japanese

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Americans. The problem with that was
many of those Japanese Americans were US citizens.

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Their civil rights were totally suspended,
and many of them wound up sitting

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in prison camps in the interior for
three or four years. Everybody now agrees

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that was a gross violation of civil
rights, but was done by this very

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great president in response to a crisis. So we have now not unfamiliar to

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us, the crisis of September eleventh. Bob Muller, Bob Mueller of Special

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Council fame, had been the FBI
director only for a few days when the

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attacks occurred September eleventh, then being
a Tuesday, he was summoned to the

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President's President's retreat in Camp David,
Maryland, where George W. Bush was

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hunkered down with his national security advices. The country was in a crisis comparable

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to Pearl Harbor certainly and Mula,
and it was only three and a half

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days essentially went by between the attacks
on Tuesday and that early Saturday morning in

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Camp David. Mullah had with him
the FBI's report of their investigation. The

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FBI code name pent Bomb for Pentagon
Pennsylvania to bombing, and the FBI had

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done what it does best, investigate
and in only three and a half days,

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the FBI had identified all nineteen hijackers
that travel they're financing their kind connections

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back to al Kada, and Mulla
presented this report and he's told us this

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many times, presenting expecting praise or
thanks from George W. Bush, and

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instead, as he got to the
end, Bush simply looked at him and

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said, I don't care about that. I just want to know how you're

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going to prevent the next one.
Muller, a proud man, was humiliated.

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He left that meeting and he said
this many times. Bound into to

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change the culture. And that's the
word he used of the FBI, from

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that of a law enforcement agency to
an intelligence organization. It may have been

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understandable at the time, in the
midst of that crisis, but that had

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a lot of unintended consequences, and
we know now bad consequences. Did you

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sense that at the time that this
was a foot, that the culture really

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was about to change significantly pretty quickly? A number of people spotted the change

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in culture and had had everything used
to be predicated on probable cause or if

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it was an intelligence matter, at
least articulable facts. But more and more

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things were changing outside the FBI.
At the same time, we had this

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change that you briefly talked about earlier
in Fizer. Fizer was amended so that

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it could be used against Americans.
Then we had brought into the FBI.

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As part of this change, they
adopted a model which a lot of FBI

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managers at the time didn't what didn't
fit. They tried to take the model

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that principally the CIA used, where
they had a cadre of you could say

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workers in the field, their officers, but they had this cadre at home,

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so very significant in the CIA of
intelligence analysts who do just what the

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name implies, analyze information and in
the broadest sense, actually speculate on things

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and possibilities. And they tried to
take that model and transferred into the FBI.

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Well, the problem when you allow
these intelligence analysts to do this wide

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speculating, which it can be all
right for the CIA, when you're trying

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to figure out what might be happening
in Africa. But when you transfer it

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to an organization that has police power, just doesn't fit. And the examples

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come up again and again when you
have these crackpot ideas, and that's what

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I call them, that's come forward
from several field officers now to investigate in

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the most prominent or recent example is
traditional Catholics who prefer to worship using Latin.

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Well, you may may not agree
with that, but that's not a

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threat to our democracy. And there
was no ar ticketable facts and those memos

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that came out of those field officers
Richmond, Portland, Los Angeles that indicated

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these groups of traditional Catholics were in
any way advocating or engaged in violence.

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And that's the standard, and Durham
said it in his report, You've got

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to go back to the Leavy standards
if speech, if you can say anything

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you want, so long as you
don't engage in violence or advocate violence.

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And yet you have these crackpot ideas
coming up from these intelligence analysts. That's

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a basic change in the FBI.
Even as it happened. People have told

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me recently who were right there when
it was happening in the counter Terrorism Division,

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that it just didn't fit our model
of law enforcement. That's what has

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to be restored. The culture has
to be changed. We've got to get

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back to the guide rails of the
constitution, God rails of the Constitution.

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I was going to ask about this
issue of informants, because it comes up

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more and more when we're looking at, for instance, January sixth, if

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you look at the plot to kidnap
Gretchen Wittmer, even though that turned out

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people were convicted in court for their
roles in the plot, what we learned

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through that case is that there was
an FBI informant who seemed to be heavily

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prodding the conspirators along. We don't
know how much that happened on January six

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yet we do know thanks to the
reporting in the New York Times and some

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other places, that there were a
handful of informants. Some people put them

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in the double digits based on the
tallies from the various news reports. And

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again it's understandable because we saw that
devolve into violence. The Whitmer plot devolved

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into violence. Whether or not that
would have happened without the FBI, I

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don't know, hard to say,
but you understand why there would be some

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informants and genuine domestic extremist organizations.
But a lot of people look at the

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FBI right now and say, it
seems as though under Christopher Ray, they

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have decided to focus on domestic extremism
in this overly broadway that lumps in you

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know, traditional Orthodox Catholics superfer Latin
Mass and say this is a domestic this

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is potential for domestic extremism to the
point where we need to monitor and surveil.

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Do you think that characterization is accurate, that the FBI has sort of

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turned its mission in large part to
this issue of quote, domestic extremism in

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00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:04,920
ways that are implicating maybe Conservatives,
Christians, average Americans. Is that a

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00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:10,680
serious threat as you see it?
It absolutely is. And that's the subtext

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of my book. Our once great
agency became a threat to democracy because we

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used to hold that First Amendment for
free speech and freedom of religions sacred.

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You didn't mess with it. Look, you mentioned the Witmer case. That's

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a good example in point how the
mistakes of the past have been forgotten and

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now we had to relive them.
If I may just step back and say

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this for a second, some people
remember and some remember it from the movies

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and that have been done about it, the Abscam investigations, which was actually

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00:29:44,839 --> 00:29:51,119
a series of investigations rather than one
case. And in Abscam, which happened

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back in the early eighties, we
wound up having six congressmen in one US

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00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:03,480
senator, among many other people convicted
and sentenced to prison. Well, a

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00:30:03,559 --> 00:30:10,359
defense was raised at that time that
entrapment was involved because there was a lot

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of recordings, a lot of undercover
agents up against these corrupt politicians and others.

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But that particular case withstood scrutiny and
those convictions held. But as a

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00:30:22,440 --> 00:30:26,000
result in the FBI, and I
was there then and I was very involved

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in this, and I talked about
it in the book. There was a

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great undertaking to train agents, particularly
and undercover operations, that we were not

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to entrap people. Entrapment was to
be avoided, so you were never to

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00:30:40,279 --> 00:30:45,839
go up against someone who was quote
unquote not otherwise inclined to commit these crimes.

356
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They had to demonstrate an inclination to
commit these crimes before you could approach

357
00:30:52,079 --> 00:30:56,799
them. That training was so strict
and so specific, and the levels of

358
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:02,039
reviews because this was all done in
the field office and then reviewed at headquarters.

359
00:31:02,039 --> 00:31:07,279
The levels of a review was such
that incrapment as a defense in an

360
00:31:07,359 --> 00:31:14,480
FBI case was never seriously raised for
three decades from Abscam to the present day.

361
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And then lo and behold, we
have the Wittmer case, and things

362
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:22,839
just got completely off the track.
There were agents involved in that case,

363
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:30,279
two or three at least, who
were egging these characters on. There were

364
00:31:30,319 --> 00:31:34,839
a numerous informants. It turns out
there were more informants in that case,

365
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:44,680
this has all come forward in court
than there were subjects. So it entrapment

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00:31:44,839 --> 00:31:48,160
was raised as a serious defense at
that point. In the end, two

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00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:52,759
or three people were convicted, but
a lot were not convicted in that case.

368
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And once again when Christopher Ray was
asked about it, he pointed out

369
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:07,440
that at least two of the agents
involved, the real miscredence well dismissed for

370
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:12,960
good reason. And and that's again
his explanation of the Whitman case. Well,

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00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:16,559
those guys aren't with us anymore,
but let's look at why this happened,

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what the under aligned culture is.
That's the point I get back to.

373
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:24,640
Yeah, and you know, as
we're wrapping up, I think you

374
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:30,119
know, James Comey has taken very
seriously and political circles here in Washington,

375
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:34,680
DC to this day, Peter Struck
gets to go on MSNBC despite you know,

376
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:37,279
sort of big clowning himself in full
view of the public for a long

377
00:32:37,319 --> 00:32:42,000
time. Same thing with Lisa Page
and others. It's just even the media

378
00:32:42,039 --> 00:32:45,559
is not here to hold the FBI
accountable. And Jaeger Hoover certainly had an

379
00:32:45,559 --> 00:32:50,160
interesting relationship with the media too.
It's hardly unprecedented. But I want to

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00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:52,240
ask you know, some some people
I've talked to experts over the years have

381
00:32:52,359 --> 00:32:55,359
said, you know, the people
at the top and the FBI, you

382
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:59,039
might have some rotten apples there,
but in the rest of the bunch,

383
00:32:59,079 --> 00:33:04,759
there's some really good, hardworking folks
that actually do want to have that you

384
00:33:04,759 --> 00:33:07,440
know, quote fidelity to the Constitution
and actually do want to keep the country

385
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:13,640
safe and have only the best motivations. I want to ask you is that

386
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:17,079
what is the truth to that you
know, are there if we're talking about

387
00:33:17,079 --> 00:33:22,240
this department wide culture that has so
many negatives attached to it these days,

388
00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:27,240
what is the divide? You know, are there more good folks in the

389
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:30,279
FBI than bad? Are there good
folks who are in this bad system of

390
00:33:30,319 --> 00:33:36,079
conditioning. What's the truth about sort
of the average person at the FBI versus

391
00:33:36,240 --> 00:33:42,559
you know, Christopher Ray himself,
who's in this situation. Well, let

392
00:33:42,559 --> 00:33:45,880
me say two things about what you
just said. Number one is you mentioned

393
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:50,079
some of these characters that really got
the FBI off track and the Russian collusion

394
00:33:50,119 --> 00:33:55,119
thing. Call me Struck McKay.
All of them had written books and at

395
00:33:55,119 --> 00:33:59,480
no point in their books, and
this annoys people in the FBI today,

396
00:33:59,799 --> 00:34:04,079
at no point in their books that
they make an apology for the damage they've

397
00:34:04,079 --> 00:34:07,320
done to our country, and specifically
the damage they've done to the FBI and

398
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:13,880
its reputations. My book, in
a sense, is trying to refute their

399
00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:21,039
fiction. That's one thing. The
other thing I found there are still a

400
00:34:21,079 --> 00:34:23,679
lot of people in the FBI.
I've talked to executives who are grappling with

401
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:28,880
this problem. But I'll tell you
a personal experience I've had Emily recently.

402
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:34,079
I've not surprisingly, I've done a
number of book signings at Bonds and Noble

403
00:34:34,159 --> 00:34:37,320
and similar locations. And every time
I'm whatever city, i'm in, whatever

404
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:44,079
state i'm in, without exaggerating one
two or three people at each book signing

405
00:34:44,199 --> 00:34:46,880
walk up to me, men and
women, young and old, and identify

406
00:34:47,039 --> 00:34:54,599
themselves as current FBI employees or someone
who has recently resigned or retired from the

407
00:34:54,639 --> 00:35:00,000
FBI, and they all tell me, in so many words, Tom,

408
00:35:00,039 --> 00:35:05,280
thank you for having written this book. And then it's most scary and sad

409
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:09,039
of all. They say, it's
worse than you think. So there are

410
00:35:09,039 --> 00:35:14,719
a lot of people who are concerned
and who see this. I don't know

411
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:19,079
whether to be happy or sad to
hear that, because it's it's so good

412
00:35:19,159 --> 00:35:22,840
to know some people are still out
there who see the problem, but they'm

413
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:27,800
bad to know they feel they're surrounded
by people who aren't. That's exactly my

414
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:32,320
action, Emily. I feel it's
it's a validation for what I've said in

415
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:36,559
my book, but at the same
time, it's very sad to know that

416
00:35:36,559 --> 00:35:39,880
that's the state of affairs. Well. That book once again is called The

417
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:45,360
Fall of the FBI, How a
once great agency became a Threat to Democracy.

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00:35:45,519 --> 00:35:49,519
Thomas J. Baker is the author. Sir, thank you so much

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00:35:49,519 --> 00:35:52,840
for your time today. Thank you, Emily, and thank you for the

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00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:55,360
wonderful job you're doing. Oh well, Thank you. I appreciate that so

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00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:59,679
much. I'm Emily Jasinski, culture
editor here at The Federalist. We'll be

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00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:02,960
back soon with more Federalist Radio Hour. Until then, the lovers of freedom

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00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:12,320
and anxious for the Fray. You
got me right, What are you wrong?

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00:36:15,679 --> 00:36:15,480
Right? Right,