An FBI employee blew the whistle on the unit that investigates counterespionage inside the bureau, accusing it of “gross misconduct, fraud and potentially criminal activities within the FBI.”
Members of the FBI Senior Executives Service (SES) have, at various times, conspired to ensure they are shielded from internal espionage or counterintelligence investigations, according to the whistleblower disclosure provided to the House Judiciary Committee.
The FBI employee said the “executive exemption” from internal investigations was an unwritten policy and practice by the Internal Counterespionage Cell (ICEC) of the Global Operations Section, which is based at FBI headquarters in Washington.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican on the committee, reviewed the disclosure.
“It appears the Bureau has intentionally and unwisely created its own blind spot, which has compromised our national security. I’m hopeful this administration will take steps to remedy the situation,” he told The Washington Times.
The whistleblower also reported the failure of ICEC investigators to the FBI’s Internal Affairs Section of the Inspection Division, but then experienced retaliation, said the whistleblower’s lawyer, Kurt Siuzdak, who prepared the disclosure.
“After this FBI employee reported the misconduct of ICEC to the Inspection Division, the Inspection Division allowed the Counterintelligence executives to retaliate against the reporting employee by transferring him/her to another office. Retaliatory transfers are prohibited by law and regulation,” he said. “Another employee in ICEC was also threatened after he complained about the issues in ICEC. The Inspection Division took no action to stop the reprisal against this FBI employee.”
The Times reached out to the FBI for this report.
Mr. Siuzdak, who has represented other FBI whistleblowers, said that a recently retired FBI supervisor who conducted security revocation reviews also provided a protected disclosure to Congress about misconduct within the Security Division.
Under the FBI protocol for internal investigation, one of the first things that should happen when an FBI executive is the subject of a counterintelligence investigation is a review of the executive’s security clearance.
“The retired supervisor advised that he does not remember ever receiving any SES security review request from ICEC. He also did not remember any SES having their security clearance revoked by the Security Division,” Mr. Siuzdak said.
The retired supervisor stated that he would also be willing to be reinterviewed by Congress related to the lack of requests from ICEC.
The ’executive exception’ is not a recent practice for FBI brass, the disclosure said. It has been in effect for a long time and through several FBI directors, and “protects the families and friends of SES executives.”
According to the disclosure, the FBI has the authority to investigate the family and cohabitants of FBI employees, but “does not open these investigations against the families or cohabitants of FBI SES executives.”
“In effect, FBI SES executives are exempt from the type of counterintelligence investigations that have been conducted against other public officials, including President Donald Trump,” it said. “For instance, the FBI received information that a retired FBI assistant director had classified information at his home.”
However, the disclosure said that a senior counterintelligence official decided not to open a counterintelligence operation against the retired FBI executive, and no action was taken.
Several employees working in ICEC attempted to persuade a second senior counterintelligence official of the Global Operation Section “to open the investigation against the retired SES executive who illegally stole and possessed the classified information,” the disclosure said, but the second senior counterintelligence official refused to move forward on the investigation.
The second senior counterintelligence official was one of the FBI executives responsible for the Mar-a-Lago raid investigation, when President Trump’s Florida estate was searched by the FBI in August 2022 to investigate the alleged improper removal and storage of classified government documents, according to the whistleblower.
Additionally, the disclosure said the second senior counterintelligence official worked on an off-the-books operation against the first Trump campaign that was launched by former FBI Director James Comey in 2015.
“To make matters worse, SES executives are not required to recuse themselves from investigations when they are identified as being part of the subject pool when it involves an unknown subject,” the disclosure said.
In another example cited by the whistleblower, a counterintelligence senior official did not recuse himself after it was determined that he was one of the potential anonymous subjects in a case about to be opened.
The official’s “refusal to open the investigation prevented the case from being opened and the evidence was subsequently destroyed,” according to the whistleblower.
The same counterintelligence senior official “refused to open an internal espionage investigation against another FBI SES executive after a separate intelligence agency provided credible articulable facts that the executive was likely involved in espionage activities.”
“In another instance, ICEC had not opened a counterintelligence investigation against an FBI employee, which caused espionage activity by the FBI employee to go on for years, and caused the loss of multiple millions of dollars because certain technology became useless,” the disclosure to Congress said.
Mr. Siuzdak said that the employee who made the disclosure did not know of any SES employee who had ever been investigated after ICEC received information of potential counterintelligence activities of the executive.
Although Charles McGonigal, the former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York, was investigated and eventually pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and money laundering tied to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch, he had already been retired from the bureau for five years.
The disclosure also states that two major field offices were attempting to force the counterintelligence assistant director to open an espionage investigation against him, and that a significant amount of McGonigal’s activities was not investigated or disclosed.
The disclosure notes that the ICEC has not stopped or apprehended any FBI employee involved in espionage since the 2001 Robert Hanssen case. Hanssen pleaded guilty to 14 counts of espionage and one count of conspiracy to commit espionage.
Hanssen was arrested near his home in Vienna, Virginia, after leaving a package of classified documents at a dead drop site.
He was charged with selling U.S. intelligence documents to the Soviet Union and later Russia for over $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and Rolex watches during a period of over two decades.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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