I have not been looking to start a personal fight with the president. When somebody insults your wife, your instinctive reaction is to want to lash out in response. When you are the acting director, or deputy director, of the FBI, and the person doing the insulting is the chief executive of the United States, your options have guardrails. I read the president’s tweets, but I had an organization to run. A country to help protect. I had to remain independent, neutral, professional, positive, on target. I had to compartmentalize my emotions.
Crises taught me how to compartmentalize. Example: the Boston Marathon bombing—watching the video evidence, reviewing videos again and again of people dying, people being mutilated and maimed. I had the primal human response that anyone would have. But I know how to build walls around that response and had to build them then in order to stay focused on finding the bombers. Compared to experiences like that one, getting tweeted about by Donald Trump does not count as a crisis. I do not even know how to think about the fact that the person with time on his hands to tweet about me and my wife is the president of the United States.
At home, it was more difficult to move on. The situation was especially hard on Jill. At times, she has felt responsible for everything that has happened to me and even to the FBI—as if it all somehow grew from the kernel of her choice to run for the Virginia state senate. Of course, that’s not true. Had Jill not run for office, Donald Trump would have found something else bad to say. He did not go after me because Jill ran for office. He went after me because the FBI opened the Russia case, which led to the appointment of a special counsel. He went after the FBI, and continues to do so, because its work has led to more than thirty indictments—with more likely to come—of individuals associated with Russian interference in the 2016 election. Those investigations raise questions about the legitimacy of his presence in the White House—questions that prompt fear.
Fear is why the president still has a map of his electoral college victory hanging outside the door to the Oval Office. Fear is why the president makes every person who goes into his office pass by a display meant to assert his right to sit behind the Resolute desk. Fear is why he asks people to pledge personal loyalty.
After December 19, 2017, it was impossible for the president or any of his supporters to believe that I might pledge personal loyalty to him—if there had been any doubt before. That was the day when my testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence made it clear that I would corroborate Jim Comey’s version of the events surrounding his firing and the president’s attempts to stop the investigation of Michael Flynn. Before I gave this testimony, the inspector general’s report on Midyear had been expected to be made public the following spring, and the investigation of my statements was expected to come out later. After I gave this testimony, the inspector general informed one of my staff members that the report on me would be coming out first—and earlier than expected.
The president’s tweets resumed within a few days of my testimony. It was like being the target of a schoolyard bully who slaps you around, lets up for a while until you think maybe it’s over, then shows up again, saying, No, no—it’s not over. You didn’t think I’d forget Christmas, did you? The whole family was at home getting ready for the holidays when I was sent a screenshot of his latest tweet: “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!”
It was a very effective way to terrorize my family. All through Christmas and New Year’s, the thought would buzz inside my head: He’s focused on this. Can I just get to my birthday—the date of my retirement, long planned—before I get fired?
In January 2018, after conferring with the IG, Chris Wray called me in to a one-on-one meeting on a Sunday night and demanded that I leave the position of deputy director—but also asked that I announce I was stepping aside voluntarily. I refused to make what I considered to be a false statement and instead went out on leave, intending for this to last until my retirement.
“A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe,” which was concluded in February 2018 though not released by the inspector general until April, determined that I “lacked candor on four separate occasions.” This report was used as a pretext for dismissal. The attorney general ordered my firing on March 16—twenty-six hours before my planned retirement. I received word, as Comey had, by watching the TV news. The president marked the moment with a tweet: “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”
I do not want to get down in the mud with the president. I do feel that I have an obligation to stand up and say, You can’t do this. You can’t just continue to attack people with an endless string of baseless lies. No one should be able to do that. The president of the United States especially should not. Analyzing or breaking down the specifics of what he’s said on Twitter is a fool’s errand. And I understand that it is meaningless to be called a liar by the most prolific liar I have ever encountered.
But I will say this. Donald Trump would not know the men and women of the FBI if he ran over them with the presidential limo, and he has shown the citizens of this country that he does not know what democracy means. He demonstrates no understanding or appreciation of our form of government. He takes no action to protect it. Has any president done more to undermine democracy than this one? His “I hereby demand” tweet in May 2018, ordering Department of Justice investigations of the investigators who are investigating him—I can barely believe that I just wrote that phrase—is a clear example. His demand for documents identifying confidential informants does harm to the men and women of the FBI on a fundamental level. It undermines their ability to build the trust that allows law-enforcement investigations to take place, in ways that, I want to believe, he does not comprehend. To think that he could recognize what constitutes a good thing for the men and women of the FBI does not deserve comment.
As for my own firing and the ostensible reasons behind it, the demands and risks of an ongoing legal process put tight constraints on what I can say, although I would like to say much more. I am filing a suit that challenges my firing and the IG’s process and findings, and the unprecedented way DOJ handled my termination. I will let that action speak for itself.
Righting the Ship
On May 20, 2018, on Twitter, the president called for “real Americans” to “start getting tough” on what he calls “this Scam”—the reference was to the special counsel and the Russia probe, and the basis of the accusation was nothing more substantial than fiction and malice. This was a frightening statement, which has larger implications. I want to spell out those implications here.
Since the 2016 election, it has become commonplace to note how polarized the country has become. Disagreements that fracture public life have grown to the point where people on either side of the political divide can no longer even agree on what the facts are. People accept as fact only the information they get from their own selected news outlets. When you reach the point where your own group sees itself as representing the true believers, the only good people or the only “real Americans,” then everyone else by definition must be seen as wrong, bad, fake. The president of the United States is actively pushing the citizens of this country in that direction. He exhorts his supporters to think of themselves as true Americans, and to consider anyone who disagrees with them as being treasonous, like criminals—people who should be in jail, as he has explicitly urged. The president tells one group of citizens: You are the good ones. No one else is equal to you. All the others are not as significant, not as important. They should not have the same rights. They should be treated as less-than. They are alien. They should be stricken. That is the language used by totalitarian regimes and fundamentalist religions to generate shock troops of cor
e believers and sow the seeds of extremism. It would be impossible to overstate my concern at the president’s rhetoric and behavior. I hope that others, including people close to him, are as alarmed by it as I am. But even if they are, I have seen in him no evidence of any capacity for introspection, self-criticism, or good-faith resolve. He will never back off that sort of rhetoric.
I would like to imagine a future in which we have righted the ship. The more horrendous things become, the more—I hope—it will increase the odds that America can swing back in the other direction. I hope that Americans will return to faith in one of our country’s best traditions: answering the call of duty. Answering the call of duty is a tradition of both personal and professional excellence. And entire institutions, also, can embody and answer the call of duty. The FBI was built to do just that. It’s the quality that made me want to be an FBI agent instead of a lawyer.
It’s the same thing that compelled the FBI to change after 9/11. It wasn’t just that we were being told we had to change. We knew we had to prevent the next attack. We had to answer that call. It’s the same reason that Director Mueller took on the responsibility of the HIG from President Obama, despite his reluctance to get involved in an interagency feud. It’s the reason Jim Comey took a bullet for the Justice Department in the Clinton email investigation—especially after the attorney general’s conversation on that tarmac with former president Clinton. He knew it was a no-win situation, but he did it because he thought it was the best thing for the country. Finally, answering the call of duty was why I took the actions I did in the days after Jim Comey’s firing—why I protected the Russia case by pressing for a special counsel to be appointed. I suspected that someday it would cost me my job. But I also knew that it was the right thing to do.
The purpose of the FBI is not to support one side. The purpose of the FBI is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. I know that the motto sounds corny, but I will say it a thousand times. That is really what we are trying to do. I’m not naïve—I know that nobody works in a vacuum. The FBI depends on Congress for funding and for oversight. Oversight is a good thing: We ought to be overseen by someone who is not us. The FBI also depends on the White House for support and direction and policy guidance. But at the end of the day, we have got to do our work independently and apolitically. That has become very hard, and it is time for more Americans to know that this difficulty of the Bureau’s—this effort by Congress and, now, the White House to politicize everything—could cost our country dearly.
In order for the FBI to continue to fulfill its mission, it needs to attract the best and brightest. We don’t need just former police officers, military officers, and attorneys. We also need computer scientists, we need biologists, we need statisticians. We need engineers. We need people who represent America’s full spectrum of backgrounds and intellectual gifts. As the political atmosphere of our time continues to poison the intelligence community with politically motivated attacks, my fear is that people who are trying to decide whether to take a high-paying career in the private sector or to embrace a tough, maybe dangerous, and demanding career in the public sector are going to turn their backs on public service. We have got to start cherishing public service in a way that’s going to continue to attract the people we need.
I look back on more than two decades of service to the Bureau with a sense of how much has changed and also of how durable the fundamentals have proved to be. My first major case as a newly sworn-in special agent concerned organized crime from Russia. And the ultimate Russian criminal organization—the Russian government itself—created the last significant issue I faced as acting director: interference in U.S. elections, the mechanism of our democracy, which resulted in the appointment of a special counsel to investigate this assault on this country’s core values. People often think of values as fragile—and they certainly can be—but values grow in might when embodied in relationships, the basis of all social institutions: families, schools, churches, civic organizations. The U.S. government embodies values, too. The glaring exception to that rule, for now, is the presidency of Donald Trump, whose only value is self-seeking. But our government is vast, and it operates on many levels. The military, for instance, is a reservoir of civic values. So is local government. My vocation has been to work proudly in another bastion of legitimate values, the FBI. The FBI’s core values—rigorous obedience to the Constitution, fairness, respect for those we protect, compassion, uncompromising personal integrity and institutional integrity, exemplary leadership, accountability, and embracing diversity—take their form and power not only from guidelines and procedures but through an animating culture, something that exists in the soul.
Hundreds of thousands of people in government devote their lives to the work of the United States of America. Millions upon millions of ordinary citizens serve their communities and make up the backbone of institutions of every kind. All of these people, in ways large and small, stand up for what they believe in—it’s an abiding characteristic of our nation. If ever we lost that capacity, we’d be lost. But that capacity is something that real Americans will never lose.
Acknowledgments
This book describes the experience of having worked with the talented, dedicated, patriotic men and women of the FBI. For every person named on these pages there are scores more who led me, taught me, inspired me, protected me, and helped me become one of you. You are always in my thoughts. Your bravery and perseverance in the face of adversity is the true meaning of public service. God bless you and be safe.
I would not have been able to make this journey without the love and support of my family. Jill, George, and Maggie—you helped me ignore the lies and stay focused on doing the right thing, regardless of the cost. You reminded me what is truly important in life. Ellen, George, and Patrick McCabe—your guidance and protection turned me into a lawman. Susan, David, Jeff, and Kim McFarland and Charles Willis—you have always been in my corner. Gail Boren—you keep the family glued together. And Jeremiah—you show us all that sometimes, it’s just better to take a rest.
Every ship needs a calm port in a storm. Karen and Fred—your hospitality and generosity gave us the safe place we needed to ignore the headlines and get this work done. You are truly supportive friends, and I am forever grateful.
All agents love to tell stories. But twenty-one years of memories don’t turn themselves into a book without the help of a great writing and editing team, Michael Joseph Gross and Cullen Murphy. Thank you to Carole Ludwig for expert transcriptions and to Ben Kalin for thorough fact-checking. To Todd Shuster, David Granger, Sarah Levitt, and the team at Aevitas—thanks for putting me on this path. To George Witte, Sara Thwaite, Tracey Guest, and the whole team at St. Martin’s Press—thanks for embracing this project with enthusiasm and bringing it to life.
Tough times make you appreciate the people who stand with you. Michael Bromwich, Melissa Schwartz, David Snyder, and David Schertler: thanks for believing in me and fighting for me. To Ed Puccio and the team at CEP, thanks for your consistent support of Jill and me. And to all the wonderful people, some I know and many I don’t, who sent their thoughts, words, and support when I needed them most—I can never explain how much that meant to my family and me. Thank you.
Finally, thank you to each and every person who musters the dignity, the strength, and the courage to stand up for what he or she believes in. Acts of bravery and conscience are the lifeblood of a society committed to democracy and justice, decency and fairness. Standing up is more important now than ever.
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Abdulmutallab, Umar Farouk (“Underwear Bomber”)
Abedin, Huma
acting director of FBI, McCabe, A., as
contempora
neous memos of
FBI director interview for
on FBI response to termination of Comey
Rosenstein meetings with
Sessions meeting for
Trump call and meetings with
Affordable Care Act
Afzali, Ahmad Wais
Ahmed, Syed Haris
Ahmedzay, Zarein
Amato, Baldassare (“Baldo”)
Apalachin Meeting, of organized crime groups
AQAP. See al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Arbabsiar, Mansour J.
Ashcroft, John
Asian organized crime
al-Asiri, Ibrahim Hassan
assessment
association evidence
Attorney General. See also Holder, Eric; Lynch, Loretta; Sessions, Jeff
al-Awlaki, Anwar
Baker, Jim
Barbara, Joseph
Benghazi attack (2012)
Congress and
crowdsourcing for
House Intelligence Committee and
Midyear Exam and
bin Laden, Osama
Black, Dick
Bonanno family
Boston Marathon attack
Congress and
crowdsourcing for
footage of
Mueller and
Richard killed in
SIOC and
The Threat Page 27
