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I’m going to give you my impression of this as an Agent. You’ll undoubtedly get some brilliant legal analysis by @shipwreckedcrew later but he’s an attorney not an Agent. Another guy to watch is @Jim_Casey_ .
Here goes. https://twitter.com/chuckrossdc/status/1309363125544783875
Here goes. https://twitter.com/chuckrossdc/status/1309363125544783875
This is an FBI 302 of an interview of FBI Special Agent William Barnett who appears to be an experienced Agent. “302” is just an FBI form number for a memorandum of interview. All agencies prepare a memorandum like this and have their own form or acronym.
This 302 of Barnett is, IMO, extremely well written. I read it and I’m not left wondering what is meant by certain terms used by the interviewee (Barnett). It’s detailed and the interview appeared to be thorough.
SA Barnett was clearly frustrated by the investigation which he saw as a complete waste of time. He even asked to be removed from the case. At no agency including the FBI can an Agent simply decide not to work a case or close a case that was assigned to him.
That’s not to say they can’t open cases and in that way choose their caseload but if an investigation comes down from “on high” as I call it, an Agent can’t just close it. Barnett describes a second way to get off a case a “sit strike” I think is what he said.
This means an Agent does so little on the case that management understands that they need to close it or reassign it. Management has quotas too for timeliness, etc. Such a strike can be a little risky for the SA not for fear of getting fired but for fear of a poor performance
Review. So Agents tend to do the minimum to go along without getting themselves in trouble. That’s why Barnett didn’t try harder to get off the case, IMO.
There’s been a lot of talk about the pretty damning text messages about professional liability insurance. They are damning. Barnett doesn’t illuminate this at all and says he actually regularly recommends liability insurance. Let me explain briefly.
There are 2 or 3 companies that provide federal law enforcement with professional liability insurance. It provides $1 mil or $2 mil policies for $290 and $390 respectively. The govt then reimburses half. So an Agent’s cost us $150 or $200. That’s less than what I pay
For an umbrella policy. So it’s not expensive. But it only lays if you’re scoped. That means a determination has been made that you were acting within the scope of your employment. So the only way it really pays out is an unheard of situation where you were found to be acting
inside the bounds of your employment but DOJ doesn’t represent you. A DOJ attorney once gave a lecture on how that policy is basically worthless. So I find it a little odd that Barnett regularly recommends it. Personally I would have pressured him a bit more on that.
However, these insurance policies are heavily marketed and advertise in various agency professional associations.
Barnett basically puts all the blame upstairs and all but says it was a witch-hunt. This is more pronounced when it comes to the SCO. This is where I need to explain more.
In a normal criminal investigation the Agent goes to the USAO and asks for a case to be opened based on some information. The purpose of this is because an Agent really needs subpoenas to move an investigation along. Many agencies have administrative subpoenas or summons
powers but usually those are restricted to very limited statutes under investigation. So if you want subpoenas you need a GJ case.
Now how this happens depends on the particular USAO. In some cases an Agent like me has built up a stable of AUSAs that he’s worked with and trust him. A case is opened based on a single phone call and an opening EC (a memo).
Others require you to go to a particular section chief at the USAO and they’ll take the info and assign an AUSA (good agents hate that). Either way the person driving the investigation is usually the Agents.
However in significant investigations it is not unusual for the AUSA to be extremely involved and to request particular Agents or even Agencies. If you want tax or money laundering for example, you’ll call IRS. If you want a really good forensic lab you call USSS.
If you have anything touching the mail you call Postal. You may even have particular FBI agents you want working (FBI Agents are assigned to squads which focus on particular crimes).
I have had situations where I walked into an office at 9AM and was presented with an affidavit for a search warrant by an AUSA and told I had an appointment at 11AM. This is extremely unusual. Normally the Agent writes the first draft and the AUSA fixes it.
How much fixing depends on the Agent. I’ve had AUSAs rewrite my affidavits and others who made zero changes. Just to give you an idea I’ve had legal documents written by DOJ attorneys that I’ve sent back later to the same DOJ attorneys who corrected their own writing.
So I never take it personally if they make changes. However, most of my documents need little changes. Just a point of bragging here.
Anyways, Barnett describes a situation where the SCO is driving the investigation. That’s not totally out of bounds in my view. You’ve got a staff of attorneys who are working one case. What else are they going to do? However, it’s clear Barnett is upset about it.
I think that is where things get good. Because in my view he’s not uncomfortable with their involvement or leading the investigation but he’s uncomfortable that they’re pushing all kinds of paper based on nothing. And he feels like a worker bee.
Let me tell you this. Most Agents are dominate type A personalities. We don’t like being bossed around. Not by our SSA not by upper management and really not by an attorney. We don’t work for them.
Now many AUSA will refer to Agents as “my agents.” That is acceptable because it’s really a term of endearment. AUSAs use that of Agents they like and respect. Agents and AUSAs often form friendships and work together for years and many cases.
So some of us don’t find anything objectionable to that phrase. It also is good to keep an AUSA as your defender as it’s useful to keep management from giving you assignments that interfere with their interests.
All that being said...no Agent wants to be a cog or worker bee. None. As I said, Agents work for the Agency who writes their checks not the attorney.
Barnett even goes so far as to make his contempt for Rhee plain to Rhee and others. This is pretty damning, IMO. Most Agents have attorneys they’d never work with. And other Agents too. We don’t normally tell them to their face. It’s not politically smart.
By that I mean office politics. Your ability to get stuff done depends on your reputation and ability to get others to help you. It’s a small community and the path of least resistance is to simply say a courteous “sure, I look forward to it).
But Barnett was so contemptuous of Rhee and the investigation that he straight up tells Rhee “yeah, that’s not happening.” It’s at this point I really like Barnett, LOL.
So Barnett lays out an environment where FBI superiors and the SCO were pushing all of this despite any evidence. It’s casts everything in a very bad light but stops short of any directly damning info.
Also “check the box” is common vernacular across federal agencies. Sometimes it literally means checking the box on some stupid form. Doesn’t matter if that thing isn’t relevant or needed, it’s on the form. Government is replete with them.
In other situations it’s basically going through steps to fulfill an informal checklist management has created so they can say they did everything they could before doing something (like closing a sensitive case.)
So this explains why Barnett didn’t think anything was too amiss. He just assumed it was part of typical management bureaucracy. At least till the SCO investigation.
This does cast the Flynn investigation in another light and I don’t know how Sullivan doesn’t dismiss now. Honestly this stuff paints the entire investigation as a politically motivated hit job over the protestations of a line Agent.
That’s it. I’ll answer legit questions but I’m not going to dox myself. Anybody trying to get me to do so will be blocked without warning.
