Not Reality TV
Last June I wrote an essay titled “Twenty Four.” It was a fantasy based on the old Fox television series by the same name. I took the lead character, Jack Bauer, an agent willing to go to almost anything length to protect the United States, and placed him in a situation where a Presidential candidate was compromised by the Russians.
We now know that in reality, the Jack Bauer character of my story was in place of real-life Peter Strozk, the FBI’s now dismissed Deputy Assistant Director for Counter-Intelligence. Strozk had been one of the lead agents in the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation; in the late summer and fall of 2016, he turned to evidence of Russian involvement in the Trump campaign.
The FBI had multiple reasons to be concerned. They were aware that the Democratic National Committee computers had been hacked and emails stolen. The Australian Ambassador to the United Kingdom reported that a Trump associate, George Papadopoulos, told him that the Russians had the emails. Federal agents were also aware of multiple connections between Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and the Russian government, and had long had campaign advisor Carter Page on their radar. Page had been involved with a Russian spy ring two years earlier, and continued to have close contact with the Russian government. Finally Trump chief foreign policy advisor General Michael Flynn had multiple Russian connections.
The FBI knew that a social media campaign was being driven by Russian intelligence, originally against Hillary Clinton, and then positively for Trump. The put all of these together, along with many statements by the Trump campaign (and Trump himself) that were far from “mainstream” Republican (or Democrat) thought on US policy towards Russia.
The original investigation was trying to determine what Russia’s actions and intents were involving the Trump campaign. With the information already in front of them by the fall of 2016, it would have been FBI “malpractice” if they weren’t investigating. In those early days it wasn’t a question of the actions of the candidate, President Trump; but of what the Russians were doing and were these four Trump campaign employees knowingly involved.
And the FBI became aware of a report by a former British Intelligence agent, Michael Steele, regarding potential compromising materials and actions the Russians had on Trump. While this report was not fully “vetted” and was written for political opposition research, Steele had proven to be a good source of information in the FIFA (world soccer association) scandal, and was trusted by American intelligence agencies. His information was taken seriously. Strozk was doing his job, and doing what we expect of the FBI. He wasn’t “Jack Bauer” breaking the rules, but was doing what he was supposed to do: find out when and how a foreign nation was trying to secretly influence America’s elections.
After the election, the FBI was aware that the Trump transition had ongoing contact with the Russian government. They knew that Jared Kushner tried to set up a “private” communication with Russia over secure Russian connections. They knew that Flynn had multiple conversations with the Russian Ambassador, and was not telling the truth about those conversations. When they questioned Flynn, he lied about it, even though he was given multiple “cues” that the FBI knew the truth.
And then, the President himself took multiple steps to try to shut down the investigation. He repeatedly told the Director of the FBI, James Comey, to go easy on Flynn, and made it clear he wanted the Russia “matter” to be dropped. The new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, lied to the Senate in his confirmation hearing, denying that he had multiple meetings with the Russian Ambassador, meetings the FBI already knew about. Sessions was confirmed, but his contacts and lies forced him to recuse himself from the investigation.
If the adage “…where there’s smoke, there’s fire…” has any truth to it, then the agents involved had to be concerned. Chief advisors to the President were lying, more and more information about Russian contacts were coming out, and the President himself seemed to be trying to obstruct the investigation. Then the President fired Comey, told NBC’s Lester Holt in a national interview that he did so because of Russia, and bragged to the Russian Ambassador and Foreign Minister that he had “ended” the Russia thing. It looked like the President had committed the ultimate obstruction of justice.
This weekend the New York Times published a story, quoting James Baker, FBI special counsel, that after the Comey firing the Russia investigating team took an ultimate turn: they began to investigate the President of the United States himself. This had to be a chilling moment for the agents, men and women who had spent their entire adult careers protecting the United States against enemies, foreign and domestic, who were now confronted with their chief executive as a possible suspect. It would have been easier, and much, much safer, for them to turn their back on that possibility. But their creed is to follow the evidence, wherever it leads.
It led to the Oval Office, and to a President who seemed to be cooperating with Russian intelligence. If this had been an episode of Twenty Four, aired on the Fox Network, the President would have been a Democrat, but this was reality, not reality TV.
