As we are learning that the FBI files reveal “missing bankers’ boxes filled with the former secretary of state’s emails.,” veteran FBI agents are expressing their concern that Comey’s approach to the Hillary case has “damaged the reputation” of the FBI due to his insistence that the agency politicize the investigation and its results.
Buried in the 189 pages of heavily redacted FBI witness interviews from the Hillary Clinton email investigation are details of yet another mystery — about two missing “bankers boxes” filled with the former secretary of state’s emails.The interviews released earlier this month, known as 302s, also reveal the serious allegation that senior State Department official Patrick Kennedy applied pressure to subordinates to change the classified email codes so they would be shielded from Congress and the public.The details about the boxes are contained in five pages of the FBI file – with a staggering 111 redactions – that summarize the statements of a State Department witness who worked in the “Office of Information Programs and Services (IPS).” The employee told the FBI that, “Initially, IPS officials were told there were 14 bankers boxes of former Secretary of State Hillary CLINTON’s emails at CLINTON’s Friendship Heights office.” Friendship Heights is a neighborhood that straddles the Northwest neighborhood of the District of Columbia and Maryland.The State Department witness further explained to the FBI that “on or about December 5, 2014, IPS personnel picked up only 12 bankers boxes of CLINTON’s emails from Williams & Connolly.”The officials were not sure if the boxes “were consolidated or what could have happened to the two other boxes. “
This is the kind of thing that left veteran FBI agents fuming since the reputation the FBI has spent decades rebuilding has been tarnished, perhaps permanently.
Veteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his “cowardly” whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private email server.Feeling the heat from congressional critics, Comey last week argued that the case was investigated by career FBI agents, “So if I blew it, they blew it, too.”But agents say Comey tied investigators’ hands by agreeing to unheard-of ground rules and other demands by the lawyers for Clinton and her aides that limited their investigation.“In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews,” said retired agent Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit.
Among their many concerns is the way that Hillary herself was given undoubtedly preferred and special treatment.
The New York Post continues:
What’s more, Comey cut a deal to give Clinton a “voluntary” witness interview on a major holiday, and even let her ex-chief of staff sit in on the interview as a lawyer, even though she, too, was under investigation.Clinton’s interview, the culmination of a yearlong investigation, lasted just 3½ hours. Despite some 40 bouts of amnesia, she wasn’t called back for questioning; and three days later, Comey cleared her of criminal wrongdoing.“The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time,” Hughes said. “I hold Director Comey responsible.”Agreed retired FBI agent Michael M. Biasello: “Comey has singlehandedly ruined the reputation of the organization.”The accommodations afforded Clinton and her aides are “unprecedented,” Biasello added, “which is another way of saying this outcome was by design.” He called Comey’s decision not to seek charges “cowardly.”“Each month for 27 years, I received oral and computer admonishments concerning the proper protocol for handling top secret and other classified material, and was informed of the harsh penalties, to include prosecution and incarceration,” for mishandling such material, he pointed out. “Had myself or my colleagues engaged in behavior of the magnitude of Hillary Clinton, as described by Comey, we would be serving time in Leavenworth.”Former FBI official I.C. Smith knows a thing or two about Clinton corruption. After working at FBI headquarters as a section chief in the National Security Division, he retired as special agent in charge of the Little Rock, Ark., field office, where he investigated top Clinton fundraisers for public corruption and even Chinese espionage.“FBI agents upset with Comey’s decision have every reason to feel that way,” Smith said. “Clearly there was a different standard applied to Clinton.”
Considering that agents involved in the investigation were required to sign rarely-used nondisclosure agreements, what can be done?
“I have no doubt resourceful prosecutors and FBI agents could have come up with some charge that she would have been subject to prosecution,” the 25-year veteran added. “What she did is absolutely abhorrent for anyone who has access to classified information.”Smith said Congress should subpoena the case’s agents to testify about the direction they received from Comey and their supervisors: “It would be interesting to see what the results would be if those involved with the investigation were questioned under oath.”Comey made the 25 agents who worked on the case sign nondisclosure agreements. But others say morale has sunk inside the bureau.“The director is giving the bureau a bad rap with all the gaps in the investigation,” one agent in the Washington field office said. “There’s a perception that the FBI has been politicized and let down the country.”
Senator Grassley explained in July that he obtained a “Case Briefing Acknowledgement Addendum” that suggests the NDAs would not apply to testimony to Congress.
Fox News reported at the time:
Responding one day after the FBI director said he would not recommend criminal charges, Grassley pointed to Comey’s conclusions that a limited number of emails had classified markings, thousands of work related emails were not turned over by Clinton to the State Department despite a sworn declaration to a federal court and her public assurances, as well as “potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.””In light of all these inconsistencies, it is even more troubling that the FBI tried to gag its agents with a non-disclosure agreement on this matter, in violation of whistleblower protection statutes,” Grassley said in the strongly worded letter. “…you indicated that agents working on this case were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement that failed to exempt protected whistleblowing. Only after I wrote to you did you advise your FBI agents that they are still free to speak with Congress regarding waste, fraud, and abuse.”The “Case Briefing Acknowledgement Addendum” provided to Senator Grassley after the initial FBI response July 1 makes clear the agreement does not supersede or conflict with “communications to Congress” and “the reporting to an Inspector General of a violation, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety, or….any other whistleblower protection.”Grassley also noted the timing of the FBI’s response five months after his original request for information on the NDAs, with a partial response July 1, and full response on July 5 2016, the same day the FBI made a public recommendation at bureau headquarters against criminal charges.
Hopefully, Congress will follow through and subpoena the case agents; their testimony would indeed prove interesting.
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