3/17/2023 0 Comments Bill boss strzokPriestap also made clear how uncomfortable FBI executives felt about confronting colleagues about an affair, even if it raised security concerns, noting: “I want the best for them, but I didn’t give them any guidance on what they should do.”įBI experts say the reluctance to confront Strzok and Page in a meaningful way was a red flag suggesting that the lessons of the Hanssen scandal may have been forgotten. But I had no information whatsoever that either of these individuals had any contact, let alone engagement or regular engagement, with an adversary.” “If we had information that any FBI person was cavorting with an adversary in any regard, we’d want to know about that. ![]() Rather than proactively confront and confirm the allegations of an affair, Priestap testified that his preference would be to wait until the bureau developed evidence that an agent was compromised and meeting a foreign adversary before taking affirmative action. Priestap’s testimony suggests the fervor of those reforms had waned by 2016, when the Page-Strzok allegations surfaced. ![]() The countermeasures ranged from routine polygraphs to creation of a special internal unit looking for moles and risky behavior. The FBI, then under the leadership of Director Robert Mueller (who, of course, is now the Trump-Russia special counsel), vowed sweeping reforms to aggressively monitor agents, especially in counterintelligence. “Our review revealed unwillingness within the FBI to report security violations and take them seriously, even when highly sensitive information was involved,” a DOJ inspector general report concluded. The after-action investigations in the Hanssen scandal in 20 determined that the FBI suffered from a culture of “lax personnel and information security” which left agents reluctant to question their own colleagues about behavior that might be risky or detrimental. Priestap supervised two of the most controversial cases in the past decade - the Hillary Clinton email scandal and the Trump-Russia collusion allegations.Īs such, he was the direct boss of Peter Strzok, the Trump-hating agent who led both investigations. The account is included in closed-door testimony given to Congress by William Priestap, the assistant director for counterintelligence under Comey and McCabe. To understand just how dysfunctional the FBI was under fired Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, consider how it dealt with allegations that its lead agent in the Russia probe was having an extramarital affair that could compromise his work.
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