We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Joshinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever your download your podcasts, and to the premium
version of our website as well. We are joined today by Thomas J.
Baker. He is an FBI veteran and the author of the new book The
Fall of the FBI. How a once great agency Became a Threat to Democracy?
Such an important topic. Thomas, thank you for joining us. Rachel
b with you, Emily, I'm so eager to dive into this. I
want to start by asking you to give us a little bit of background on
your career. When did you join the FBI, Why did you join the
FBI, and what did your time there look like. Well, Emily,
I was in the FBI for thirty three years and did a variety of things,
and in the year since my retirement from the FBI have stayed very engaged
with them and with law enforcement, with the criminal justice system in general through
my consulting work, and I served on the board of directors of the Department
of Justice, Federal Credit Union alongside FBI and DOJ executives. What attracted me
to the FBI, Well, I came from a family that had a bit
of a law enforcement background in New York City. My maternal grandfather was a
policeman in New York and two of his sons my uncles, who I was
close to, a policeman, and they inspired my interest in justice as well
as law enforcement. And then I got some very good advice in counseling,
and I was a director towards the FBI, and I'm very glad that happened,
and I had a wonderful career. But I founds, as have others,
what's happened to the FBI in the last half dozen years, particularly to
be not only of great concern to our nation and our liberties, but also
personally heartbreaking. And you are a special agent, Can you tell us a
little bit about what that means. Yes, I was an FBI special agent.
They're the people who do the investigations. They're the ones who have contact
with the public. You know, can out there with the public, conducting
investigations, doing interviews, doing searches. By the nature of their work,
they impact or could impact on people's liberties. And that's why, and I
really stressed this in the book. In the past, we were really inculcated
more than even trained or instructed in the US Constitution. Most of our classroom
work for those three or four months when you first became a new agent was
spent on the Constitution. Outside the classroom, yes, there was a firearms
training quite extensively, and arrest tactics and things of that nature. But in
the classroom it was the Constitution, most specifically the Bill of Rights, the
first ten amendments to the Constitution, and we were taught to cherish them and
embrace them, and most of us did. We were taught part of our
role was to guarantee the civil rights. That's the term that was used in
those days of Americans, and that the fourth, fifth, and sixth Amendment
particularly, and those are the amendments having to do with search and seizure and
the right of people's counsel and the right against self incrimination. That we should
not see those amendments as an obstacle to be overcome, but we should embrace
them. And in fact, when we finished our new Agents training, one
of our legal instructors gave us a pocket sized copy of the Constitution, told
us to keep it in our breast pocket, and that when we were interviewing
an American citizen or searching someone's home, if we had the Constitution with us,
it was very unlikely that we'd go astray and do anything wrong. And
that may sound corny to some today, but we did embrace that, and
we did accept that as our role, and that sacredness of the Constitution and
that concern for people's civil rights. Civil liberties as the term we used today,
kept coming back to me and echoing back to me when we learned of
the abuses in the Russian collusion investigation and more recent undertakings. It is shocking,
and my initial training just kept coming back to me. We'd never I
mean, we'd be admonished if someone came up with an idea to do some
seeing that infringed on citizens civil rights or on their particularly their religious rights.
That was just beyond the pale. That made me really sad when you mentioned
the point about the Constitution, and I want to get into some specifics,
but what jumped to my mind was the messages between Peter Struck and Lisa page
as you were explaining that, and it brought me to the conclusion of the
Durham Report, and maybe we can say at the thirty thousand foot level here
for a moment, because I want to ask about John Durham's final thoughts and
the report, which were essentially the way to change the FBI is by reinforcing,
reinvigorating. The only thing you can do is is to reinforce among the
personnel the importance of the Constitution, of their fidelity to the Constitution, the
rule of law, respect for what they do. What did you make of
that, mister Baker, how does that strike you? Well, Emily,
you you expressed it exactly as John Durham did. And the three hundred and
some page report you've obviously read some of it, or maybe all of it.
I read all of it. What I found in it was that it
actually vindicated and validated much of what I said or suggested in my book.
And it's nice to be vindicated. It's nice to be validated. But it
also was very sad and shocking because, as you know, the conclusion of
Durham's report, one of the principal conclusions was that there was absolutely no none
probable cause, reason, no predicate information to embark on that the Russian collusion
investigation, which the FBI code named cross via Hurricane, that the whole thing
was premised on nothing. And he emphasizes that, and he said, what
the FBI has to do, they have to be constantly reminded of this and
return to fidelity to the Constitution. And maybe that's what clicked with you.
That's one of his plauding phrases in his summary at the end, and it
rang true to me, fidelity to the Constitution. And if we talk about
maybe some more specific things, and know you address in your book FISA and
PISA's at the center of the crossfire Hurricane controversy, and Durham walks through some
of it, Muller walks through some of it. We've seen people talk about
this for years now, and I've always wondered, you know, I imagine
when you joined the FBI. It's sort of in the aftermath of the Church
era, the Church Committee which basically gave us FISA. FISA was already in
its inception, was supposed to be a guard rail and if anything, we
saw it acting as you know, the gate the gateway to corruption and crossfire,
hurricane, And again, I know you addressed this in your book.
What can be done to FISA, what can be done specifically, because reform
should be on the table. Republicans are in the House, certain things are
up for reauthorization, like I'll ask you about Section seven or two in just
a bit. But on phis IT in particular, is there a way to
transform fies it into the guardrail that it's supposed to be for the FBI that
lawmakers should look at. Absolutely, Emily, and you said a lot of
that very correctly. The reform of FISER is one thing that the Congress can
undertake. In fact, the Congress has to undertake so many of the other
things I suggest have to be done internally by the FBI and by the DOJ.
But just to step back for a second. You're obviously familiar with this,
but a lot of people aren't. It's a major thing in American history.
We had the Pike and Church Committees back in the mid and late seventies
exposed abuses not just by the FBI but by other intelligence agencies and by the
federal government in general, and a number of reforms were undertaken internally. The
behind the DOJ set up guidelines which which Durham references in his report the original
guidelines, the Leavy guidelines, and that they have they still stand and should
be followed. But specifically, the Congress passed the Fiser Act. Now,
what the Fiser Act did, It's set up a legal mechanism for the surveillance,
the electronic surveillance mainly of foreign entities and other words, foreign spies resident
in the United States. Now in the past in American history, going back
to President Fdr. Truman Eisenhower, Lyndon Baines Johnson, they had all looked
for turned to the FBI cast upon them without much guidelines that they wanted intelligence
on what our enemies were doing in this country. What Fieser did it set
up a legal framework for that to be done under the authorization of a court
new court that was established, the Secret Court, the FISA Court, the
FISK as we call it. That came into action in nineteen seventy eight.
Happened to be the same year that Judge Webster became the director of the FBI
and Judge William Webbs to set the get Gold standards for the use of FISER.
It was very restricted. It was followed very closely. But as its
name implies, it was only meant to gather intelligence, not to gather evidence,
and to gather intelligence on foreigners. And that's the way it operated for
several decades until the unfortunate, the tragic crises of the attacks of September eleventh.
After the September eleventh attacks, FISER was amended and amended again and again
several times, and it allowed for the surveillance under of US citizens, which
was never the intent. And this old to light, of course, in
the car to Page surveillance or a four FISER warrants issued against car to Page,
a US citizen who it turns out, did absolutely nothing wrong, and
the pier surveillance of him, which went on for a year, it turned
up nothing that he was doing wrong. The most fundamental reform that could be
undertaken is to restore PISA to its original purpose, that is, using it
to gather intelligence, but to gather intelligence on foreign entities in this country,
not on US citizens. If a US citizen is suspected of being engaged in
espionage or terrorism, there are ways under the Criminal Statute to surveil that US
citizen. There is no need to use PHIZER and this is also a huge
problem with seven O two, which I believe is actually under the purview of
the NSA, but we know has been in part really sort of tapped by
people at the FBI the CIA for a long time. It's up for reauthorization
again this year and does have some bipartisan opposition, although maybe not too much
bipartisan opposition, although you would think in the aftermath of crossfire Hurricane it would
get some more bipartisan opposition. Is that similar in the sense that it's another
tool that may have proper predication, you know, like FISA, this is
something that can be helpful to national security, if not essential to national security.
But in order to have something like that, you have to trust the
personnel to use it appropriately because they're able to operate without transparent you see it
and again for some necessity, but that involves a huge measure of trust.
Is that similar to FAISA in a sense? Well, Emily, it's such
a pleasure to talk to you because you're very well informed on these topics,
which most people, even journalists and all of this who have interviewed me in
the past, they're really not familiar familiar with the substance of this, and
you're also right, and it is disappointing that there's so little bipartisan support for
some of these reforms, and there should be. There really should be.
Some of the Democrats, quite frankly, are so obsessed with their their hatred
of Donald Trump that they see any attempt to reform the FBI or reform DJ
is somehow going to help him, and that's not the case at all,
because these abuses of authority threatened people on the left as well as on the
right. There are a few in Congress, and I saw it in the
House Judicial Committee who who get a little Democrats who get a little concerned about
this issue. And also the issue of the monitoring under the direction of the
FBI and other federal agencies, but specifically the FBI, the monitoring of the
censoring, if you will, of free speech through Twitter and others, and
that's been well documented by the Twitter files, and that's something else that needs
to be addressed and should be addressed in a bipartisan way. Hey, y'all,
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.
There have always been people, and I think this might even be part
of Ronda Santas's reform plan for the FBI, who have said you shouldn't have
the same agency that's doing the intel collection also be doing the enforcement. I
don't have a particular opinion on that, because I didn't spend decades in the
trenches as you did, but I want to ask about that. It's it's
a fundamental question that so many people have had for years and now as you
were writing about you know the forms that can fix the FBI, is that
among them? What should I mean in your broad plan, we've talked about
FISA, what should happen to the FBI in the future. Well, thank
you for that question. And Ron de Santis has some standing for what he
speaks about. A lot of people don't realize in his background, he was
a prosecutor in the Navy, and then he was a special assistant US Attorney
in Florida, and so he's somewhat familiar with the proceeds the process. For
years, I and many others and in speaking to public groups when I was
in the FBI, as part of my role in public affairs and the FBI,
we always used to point out that the United States is blessed, blessed
to have as its domestic security agency an organization that's a law enforcement agency,
because then it operates within the guidelines of the Constitution. And this is very
unique even in Western democracies. Other countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom,
they have a civilian intelligence agency operating as a domestic intelligence agency, removed
from law enforcement, removed from those legal guidelines and restrictions. And I've always
suggested that we are blessed in the United States to have the FBI doing the
domestic security work. Unfortunately, when we've had people leaders go off the track,
beginning in the direction that Mulla put us in and then under James Coby's
disastrous leadership, we may now have a situation where we are cursed, not
blessed, cursed to have a domestic intelligence agency with police power. So that
does have to be looked at. The whole thing goes back to the FBI's
culture and and that requires a lot of work internally by the FBI, and
d J. Durham certainly pointed the way for that, and it's hard for
I think a lot of members of the public to trust that Christopher Ray is
the right person to write the ship, so to speak. What do you
make of raised tenure and raise capacity to help the FBI actually become the institution
to have the culture that it desperately needs. Well, an old fan,
as Chris Ray, didn't get us in this mess. This mess started with
Bob Muller changing the culture and then Comy's disastrous leadership. But what, unfortunately
a lot of us are disappointed in is over the past five years, at
least every time some malfeasance is discovered, Chris Ray points out, either in
a public statement or before a Congressional committee that, well, the bad actors,
the rotten apples, if you will, have been shown the door.
They've gone on. Theyre no longer with us looking again and again as if
it's the work of a few bad apples, when there's an underlying cultural change
that's happened. I've spoken to many FBI executives in recent years. Some of
them are aware of it, but they really can't haven't seemed to come to
grips with it. And I think, Emily it all traces back, and
I explained this in great detail in the book to decisions made by Bob mullet
in the wake of the September eleventh attacks, which we're now commemorating, ironically,
twenty two years ago today. You mentioned that point earlier, and I
was really eager to ask you to flush it out, because, as you
mentioned, we're recording this on September eleventh, twenty twenty three, as the
country is grieving the events and the events of nine to eleven, And it
does seem to me that communism was the stress test. The Cold War was
the stress test that culminated in the Church Committee and the reforms that came out
of it. Nine to eleven was another stress test, and after that we
saw DHS and say we saw the vast expansion because of technology of surveillance.
We don't look back necessarily fondly at what Jedger Hoover was doing to, for
instance, every Black Panther group. You know, there was some reason to
be paranoid of how communists lurking in some of these very important corners of American
society and culture. But we don't look back fondly at the accesses of those
powers, those muscles being flexed in the way that they were. I feel
like we should be in a similar moment right now, we don't seem to
be. Can you tell us a little bit about how specifically Bob Mueller and
the aftermath of nine to eleven really changed the culture of the FBI in ways
that we seem to not have awoken to until just the last couple of years.
Emily, that's a very good summary. You used the term stress test.
I used the term crises. Looking back at American history, this has
happened before. Every time there's a crisis, there winds up being even coming
from some very well intentioned people, in fact, some great people, abuses
of civil liberties, and in the past they were later corrected. We haven't
corrected the recent abuses yet. Specifically, look back to the American Civil War,
there was a major crisis if their revel was one and Lincoln, who
I think almost everybody agrees was a great president and as a beloved president,
but Lincoln engaged in abuses of civil rights. He is suspended the rid of
habeas corpus. He was proved wrong. Historians think he was wrong, and
ultimately the Supreme Court pointed out that Lincoln was wrong. When we had the
attack on Pearl Harbor, another crisis comparable with the September eleventh attacks, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt A. Montachu later issued an executive order in turning locking up Japanese
Americans. The problem with that was many of those Japanese Americans were US citizens.
Their civil rights were totally suspended, and many of them wound up sitting
in prison camps in the interior for three or four years. Everybody now agrees
that was a gross violation of civil rights, but was done by this very
great president in response to a crisis. So we have now not unfamiliar to
us, the crisis of September eleventh. Bob Muller, Bob Mueller of Special
Council fame, had been the FBI director only for a few days when the
attacks occurred September eleventh, then being a Tuesday, he was summoned to the
President's President's retreat in Camp David, Maryland, where George W. Bush was
hunkered down with his national security advices. The country was in a crisis comparable
to Pearl Harbor certainly and Mula, and it was only three and a half
days essentially went by between the attacks on Tuesday and that early Saturday morning in
Camp David. Mullah had with him the FBI's report of their investigation. The
FBI code name pent Bomb for Pentagon Pennsylvania to bombing, and the FBI had
done what it does best, investigate and in only three and a half days,
the FBI had identified all nineteen hijackers that travel they're financing their kind connections
back to al Kada, and Mulla presented this report and he's told us this
many times, presenting expecting praise or thanks from George W. Bush, and
instead, as he got to the end, Bush simply looked at him and
said, I don't care about that. I just want to know how you're
going to prevent the next one. Muller, a proud man, was humiliated.
He left that meeting and he said this many times. Bound into to
change the culture. And that's the word he used of the FBI, from
that of a law enforcement agency to an intelligence organization. It may have been
understandable at the time, in the midst of that crisis, but that had
a lot of unintended consequences, and we know now bad consequences. Did you
sense that at the time that this was a foot, that the culture really
was about to change significantly pretty quickly? A number of people spotted the change
in culture and had had everything used to be predicated on probable cause or if
it was an intelligence matter, at least articulable facts. But more and more
things were changing outside the FBI. At the same time, we had this
change that you briefly talked about earlier in Fizer. Fizer was amended so that
it could be used against Americans. Then we had brought into the FBI.
As part of this change, they adopted a model which a lot of FBI
managers at the time didn't what didn't fit. They tried to take the model
that principally the CIA used, where they had a cadre of you could say
workers in the field, their officers, but they had this cadre at home,
so very significant in the CIA of intelligence analysts who do just what the
name implies, analyze information and in the broadest sense, actually speculate on things
and possibilities. And they tried to take that model and transferred into the FBI.
Well, the problem when you allow these intelligence analysts to do this wide
speculating, which it can be all right for the CIA, when you're trying
to figure out what might be happening in Africa. But when you transfer it
to an organization that has police power, just doesn't fit. And the examples
come up again and again when you have these crackpot ideas, and that's what
I call them, that's come forward from several field officers now to investigate in
the most prominent or recent example is traditional Catholics who prefer to worship using Latin.
Well, you may may not agree with that, but that's not a
threat to our democracy. And there was no ar ticketable facts and those memos
that came out of those field officers Richmond, Portland, Los Angeles that indicated
these groups of traditional Catholics were in any way advocating or engaged in violence.
And that's the standard, and Durham said it in his report, You've got
to go back to the Leavy standards if speech, if you can say anything
you want, so long as you don't engage in violence or advocate violence.
And yet you have these crackpot ideas coming up from these intelligence analysts. That's
a basic change in the FBI. Even as it happened. People have told
me recently who were right there when it was happening in the counter Terrorism Division,
that it just didn't fit our model of law enforcement. That's what has
to be restored. The culture has to be changed. We've got to get
back to the guide rails of the constitution, God rails of the Constitution.
I was going to ask about this issue of informants, because it comes up
more and more when we're looking at, for instance, January sixth, if
you look at the plot to kidnap Gretchen Wittmer, even though that turned out
people were convicted in court for their roles in the plot, what we learned
through that case is that there was an FBI informant who seemed to be heavily
prodding the conspirators along. We don't know how much that happened on January six
yet we do know thanks to the reporting in the New York Times and some
other places, that there were a handful of informants. Some people put them
in the double digits based on the tallies from the various news reports. And
again it's understandable because we saw that devolve into violence. The Whitmer plot devolved
into violence. Whether or not that would have happened without the FBI, I
don't know, hard to say, but you understand why there would be some
informants and genuine domestic extremist organizations. But a lot of people look at the
FBI right now and say, it seems as though under Christopher Ray, they
have decided to focus on domestic extremism in this overly broadway that lumps in you
know, traditional Orthodox Catholics superfer Latin Mass and say this is a domestic this
is potential for domestic extremism to the point where we need to monitor and surveil.
Do you think that characterization is accurate, that the FBI has sort of
turned its mission in large part to this issue of quote, domestic extremism in
ways that are implicating maybe Conservatives, Christians, average Americans. Is that a
serious threat as you see it? It absolutely is. And that's the subtext
of my book. Our once great agency became a threat to democracy because we
used to hold that First Amendment for free speech and freedom of religions sacred.
You didn't mess with it. Look, you mentioned the Witmer case. That's
a good example in point how the mistakes of the past have been forgotten and
now we had to relive them. If I may just step back and say
this for a second, some people remember and some remember it from the movies
and that have been done about it, the Abscam investigations, which was actually
a series of investigations rather than one case. And in Abscam, which happened
back in the early eighties, we wound up having six congressmen in one US
senator, among many other people convicted and sentenced to prison. Well, a
defense was raised at that time that entrapment was involved because there was a lot
of recordings, a lot of undercover agents up against these corrupt politicians and others.
But that particular case withstood scrutiny and those convictions held. But as a
result in the FBI, and I was there then and I was very involved
in this, and I talked about it in the book. There was a
great undertaking to train agents, particularly and undercover operations, that we were not
to entrap people. Entrapment was to be avoided, so you were never to
go up against someone who was quote unquote not otherwise inclined to commit these crimes.
They had to demonstrate an inclination to commit these crimes before you could approach
them. That training was so strict and so specific, and the levels of
reviews because this was all done in the field office and then reviewed at headquarters.
The levels of a review was such that incrapment as a defense in an
FBI case was never seriously raised for three decades from Abscam to the present day.
And then lo and behold, we have the Wittmer case, and things
just got completely off the track. There were agents involved in that case,
two or three at least, who were egging these characters on. There were
a numerous informants. It turns out there were more informants in that case,
this has all come forward in court than there were subjects. So it entrapment
was raised as a serious defense at that point. In the end, two
or three people were convicted, but a lot were not convicted in that case.
And once again when Christopher Ray was asked about it, he pointed out
that at least two of the agents involved, the real miscredence well dismissed for
good reason. And and that's again his explanation of the Whitman case. Well,
those guys aren't with us anymore, but let's look at why this happened,
what the under aligned culture is. That's the point I get back to.
Yeah, and you know, as we're wrapping up, I think you
know, James Comey has taken very seriously and political circles here in Washington,
DC to this day, Peter Struck gets to go on MSNBC despite you know,
sort of big clowning himself in full view of the public for a long
time. Same thing with Lisa Page and others. It's just even the media
is not here to hold the FBI accountable. And Jaeger Hoover certainly had an
interesting relationship with the media too. It's hardly unprecedented. But I want to
ask you know, some some people I've talked to experts over the years have
said, you know, the people at the top and the FBI, you
might have some rotten apples there, but in the rest of the bunch,
there's some really good, hardworking folks that actually do want to have that you
know, quote fidelity to the Constitution and actually do want to keep the country
safe and have only the best motivations. I want to ask you is that
what is the truth to that you know, are there if we're talking about
this department wide culture that has so many negatives attached to it these days,
what is the divide? You know, are there more good folks in the
FBI than bad? Are there good folks who are in this bad system of
conditioning. What's the truth about sort of the average person at the FBI versus
you know, Christopher Ray himself, who's in this situation. Well, let
me say two things about what you just said. Number one is you mentioned
some of these characters that really got the FBI off track and the Russian collusion
thing. Call me Struck McKay. All of them had written books and at
no point in their books, and this annoys people in the FBI today,
at no point in their books that they make an apology for the damage they've
done to our country, and specifically the damage they've done to the FBI and
its reputations. My book, in a sense, is trying to refute their
fiction. That's one thing. The other thing I found there are still a
lot of people in the FBI. I've talked to executives who are grappling with
this problem. But I'll tell you a personal experience I've had Emily recently.
I've not surprisingly, I've done a number of book signings at Bonds and Noble
and similar locations. And every time I'm whatever city, i'm in, whatever
state i'm in, without exaggerating one two or three people at each book signing
walk up to me, men and women, young and old, and identify
themselves as current FBI employees or someone who has recently resigned or retired from the
FBI, and they all tell me, in so many words, Tom,
thank you for having written this book. And then it's most scary and sad
of all. They say, it's worse than you think. So there are
a lot of people who are concerned and who see this. I don't know
whether to be happy or sad to hear that, because it's it's so good
to know some people are still out there who see the problem, but they'm
bad to know they feel they're surrounded by people who aren't. That's exactly my
action, Emily. I feel it's it's a validation for what I've said in
my book, but at the same time, it's very sad to know that
that's the state of affairs. Well. That book once again is called The
Fall of the FBI, How a once great agency became a Threat to Democracy.
Thomas J. Baker is the author. Sir, thank you so much
for your time today. Thank you, Emily, and thank you for the
wonderful job you're doing. Oh well, Thank you. I appreciate that so
much. I'm Emily Jasinski, culture editor here at The Federalist. We'll be
back soon with more Federalist Radio Hour. Until then, the lovers of freedom
and anxious for the Fray. You got me right, What are you wrong?
Right? Right,