The Seeds of the Corruption of the FBI

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Much like a serial killer who does not start out as a serial killer, so, too, the current corruption within the FBI was not born overnight. The seeds were planted long ago, and have grown and metastasized into what we see today in the treatment of patriotic and brave FBI whistleblowers who have spotlighted the ethical and moral fraud within the Bureau, examples of which are set forth here. (Please note the FBI whistleblowers testimony begins at the 17:22 mark.) The FBI, then, in my opinion, primed itself to be used as an enforcement arm of a corrupt Department of Justice and a corrupt Democrat Party. Some of the FBI’s condoned practices over decades have come home to roost.

Shortly after reporting to my second office of assignment in the early 1970’s, my immediate supervisor told me that he had opened and assigned me one or more informant cases. He instructed me that we had to keep the investigative case load and informant case load up to make the office look good; make the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) look good; and make me look good. The other suggestion from my supervisor was to attribute public knowledge-type of information to the source, as it would make the source look good also. In other words, fabricate FBI paperwork.

I was new, young, and just learning. I would go out every so often to meet and to debrief these “informants.” I would not be the only agent in our office who would have experienced this. After several meetings with these “informants,” I began to realize that they were unaware that the FBI considered them to be informants. This was all a paper game. After realizing this, I would close out the “informant” administratively. Then it might happen all over again. As a caveat, I have inquired with a few other retired agents from other offices, who tell me that they did not experience this.

This same supervisor also advised me that it did not matter who was president of the United States. Whoever it was would be gone in four or eight years and we, the FBI, will still be rocking along. We, the bureaucracy, now known as the deep state, can withstand and weather any administration. Today’s bureaucrats display a similar arrogance and hubris.

In a discussion recently with another retired agent, I was reminded of yet another way for an agent, on his own, to pad their informant caseload. An agent would randomly select a name from the telephone book and open, on paper, a file on a person as an FBI informant. This “informant” would be unaware, as the agent would create and falsify paperwork reflecting a source contact. After a certain period of time, the agent would close out the source, and no one would be the wiser.

This mindset and these practices were already in place when I came on duty in the FBI in 1969. As careerist bureaucrats often do, a legitimate investigative tool is fraudulently bastardized into an administrative numbers game. I took issue with this and fought it from within for most of my 31 years as an FBI agent. I was also taken to task for it.

This is a good segue into a book written by former FBI Agent Greg Dillon, entitled The Thin Blue Lie: An Honest Cop vs the FBI. Dillon discusses his career as an FBI agent and as an investigator with the Chief  Attorney’s Office in Connecticut. His prologue is “Letter to a Whistleblower,” in which he sets forth the various different ways a whistleblower can or might be punished:

Bosses need to look good to their superiors, and if you make them look bad you will suffer. Punishment can take many forms, being reassigned, harassed, ignored, transferred, passed over for promotion, and so on.

The “and so on” above includes being labeled a “malcontent, troublemaker, rebel,” etc. I can attest to Dillon’s assertions firsthand, having been transferred and downgraded on performance reviews two or three times for having an insufficient number of informants, and for speaking truth to power, not “going along to get along.” I have often found it difficult to “keep my head down.” It is unfortunate that this is not the case with many FBI agents, as they choose to just follow orders, as we witness today with the corrupt use of FBI SWAT teams, and the minuscule support the whistleblowers have received from their fellow agents. As I have discussed here, some succumb to the coercion, and some do not.

Dillon documents one or more instances of fraudulent affidavits written by FBI agents to obtain Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution (UFAP) warrants when he was on a fugitive task force that would include state and FBI agents. This would be, of course, a fraud against the court, as well as a fraud against the government. With this in mind, having taken place 25 to 30 years ago, is it then such a leap to fabricating one or more affidavits to secure a wiretap on a presidential candidate or a sitting president? Or, as FBI whistleblower Garrett O’Boyle has testified, to try to obtain a wiretap so that a superior can get a promotion? Informants or wiretaps are not needed if they are not necessary to make a case.

As another caveat, what I describe herein should not in any way take away from the many legitimate and great human sources that have been developed and operated by competent and hardworking FBI agents over many years.

My opinion of many Bureau supervisors and executives is that they are essentially insecure personalities who rely on their job titles to exert control over subordinate agents and use coercion to advance their careers. They are threatened by independent thinkers. Many could not make it as competent investigators, so they chose to go up the administrative ladder. Many have had little, if any, actual investigative experience.

I feel quite sure that what I have set forth herein will not sit well with many of my retired colleagues, those who apparently choose to live in a world of self-delusion, devoid of reality. They will try to minimize or deny what I have written. That would include those who might still think that it is only the upper echelons of the Bureau that have been corrupted. Not so, as I have previously set forth here, and here. Some will avert their eyes and might not want to connect the dots discussed herein with today’s FBI? They often relive what they perceive as their “glory days’ in the Bureau.

One could justifiably ask, “why did you stay on, why did you not leave?” The answer is that in my career, overall, the good outweighed the bad. The good being the camaraderie with your “band of brothers,” working cases with other agents and working with excellent federal prosecutors during our investigations. We also had fun working cases and bringing them to fruition; as well as making fun of superiors who might not have the ability to track a bleeding elephant in the snow.

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David J. Baldovin is a retired FBI agent who during his career investigated numerous and various violations of federal statutes. He was also a member of FBI SWAT teams, and was Hostage Negotiation trained.