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The Fall of The FBI - How A Once Great Agency Became a Threat To Democracy · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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Hey, good morning, and welcome to the second hour of the Morning Show
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with Preston Scott, June sixth on the radio program. Remember to take a
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moment and remember those who lost their lives on this day during the Allied invasion
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at Normandy from America and our allies. They are remembering that sacrifice today as
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we speak. And so it is June sixth, and it's great to be
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with you this morning. Grant Allen over there in Studio one A. I'm
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here in Studio one B, A show four forty three of this radio program,
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and I am thrilled to have with us. Thomas Baker. Thomas spent
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thirty three years as an FBI special agent. He has since left the agency.
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He is author of a boy, The Fall of the FBI, How
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a once great agency became a threat to democracy and Thomas, welcome to the
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program. How are you, sir, Glad to be with you this morning,
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Preston. I appreciate your service to our country, Thomas, And so
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let me say that first upfront. I've got to believe that the decision to
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write this book had to be somewhat painful. What pushed you to do it?
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Well? Painful? That's a very good word actually, as I reflect
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on these things and I talk to people about what's happened and what's become our
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FBI in the last few years, of heartbreaking is the word I use.
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And for me and for many others, it is heartbreaking. How many people
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inside the agency, you know, I have as we've talked, you know,
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doing what I do. You talk about the stories and what's going on
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with the FBI. Sadly we have to talk about it all the time,
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it seems like. But I constantly mentioned that the people the rank and file
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special agents are good men and women that really want to do a good job
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and do it well, and do it properly and do the right things.
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But that the upper management, if the leadership of the bureau is what I'll
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use the word corrupted now. Is that your appraisal and assessment as well.
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To some extent, I've talked to a lot of very recently retired or resigned
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agents, and I'm into contact with several people in the bureau still and there
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is a lot There are a lot of people that feel the way I do.
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They're heart group at the change in culture. They see a tremendous problem
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towards our nation, There's no doubt about that. I think the problem is
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not individual so much as the change in culture that was brought about by Muller
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and Coullie, and that leads to a whole bunch of different outcomes. When
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I've interviewed authors over the years that write this type of book, there always
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seems to be that straw that breaks the camel's back. What was it for
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you? What was it that that okay, you kind of maybe you were
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thinking about writing it, but was there one particular thing that pushed you to
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say we have to write this. Well, yes, there were so many
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things, but what it really was is is is the failure by the current
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top leader of COMYN and then Ray, and Ray has persisted in this and
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because I started writing the book when Comy was still a director, is to
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failure to recognize the problem. And more and more that comes to the four
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each time an incident comes out, whether it's the original Russian collusion investigation,
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Uh, the FBI actually fired Komy, Struck, McCabe, the key,
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the key villains there, each incidence that happened since then, we always get
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the explanation from Ray, well, those people are no longer with us.
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In effect, we fired the bad apples. That it's a matter of bad
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apples, and my contention is beyond a matter of bad apples. It was
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a change in culture, a change of approach to the business, a change
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in mission, and that has to be corrected and it won't be corrected until
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it's recognized. The Morning Show with Preston Scott Boy that escalated quickly. I
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mean, that really got out of hand fast. On WFLA Thomas Baker our
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guest, former FBI special agent, author of a book to followed the FBI.
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Thomas, you mentioned a couple of times the cultural changes, our cultural
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changes, the type of thing that you can track down. Is it written
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in policy or is it intentionally not written in policy? Well, ultimately it's
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manifest in your mission statement and your approach to your business. What happened And
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in my book sort of a subtitle of it, I refer to as the
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good, the band, and the ugly. I do try to show how
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great the FBI once was. The good and then the bad, of course,
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is some injustice, and the ugly is the stuff that's come to light
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here in the last three, four or five years. The change, the
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change you can put your finger on it. Almost in the FBI. Happened
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when Bob Muller became the director. Bob Muller famous as the Special counsel of
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the Russian collusion investigation. He was made the director of the FBI just a
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few days before the September eleventh attack, and the September eleventh attack been on
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a Tuesday. On Saturday, September fifteenth, he was summons to President Bush's
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retreat in Camp David, Maryland in the woods, where the President was kind
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of hunkered down, surrounded by his national security team, and he presented to
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the FBI reported the investigation to that point, not only about three and a
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half days actually elapsed between the attack on Tuesday and that Saturday morning, And
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in that time, the FBI had done what it does best investigate, and
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they had identified all nineteen hijackers, they're financing their travel, their associates,
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their background, their connections to al Qada. And when he was done presenting
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that a rather thorough report, George W. Bush just looked at him and
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said, I don't care about that. I just want to know how you're
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going to prevent the next one. Well, Mala left that meeting and Mala
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has told us this numerous times. Bounded determined to change the culture of the
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FBI. He used the word from a law enforcement mentality to that of an
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intelligence agency. Well, it may have been good reasons for that at that
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moment, but it had unintended consequences, many even bad consequences. Is that
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where the abuses of FISER really stemmed from. Absolutely FISER was created. And
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this is something that the Congress can correct. You don't even need a coastal
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change in the FBI to fix this. FISER was created in nineteen seventy eight
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to have illegal means legal framework for gathering intelligence on foreign agents resident in the
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United States. And so it was only to be used to gather intelligence,
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not for prosecutions, and only on foreigners. And that was the case,
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and it stayed that way until after September eleventh, and the Act was amended
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and amended and amended again, and now it permits the legal part of it
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permits the monitoring the electronic intrusion under the Fiser Act Foreign Selligence Aveillance Act of
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US persons and that's of course US citizens of legal aliens, and US corporations.
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The change Congress can make us to restore fise it to its original purpose
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of only being used against foreigners. It sounds as though for a layperson like
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myself and for most of us that are listening today Thomas, that the key
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here is the FBI has lost its way from being an investigative agency to now
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are surveilling one. Is that accurate. That's accurate, And that's key Preston,
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because here's the distinction. I'll make two distinctions criminal investigation and the mindset
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of people who handle criminal investigations, even if they're working on counterintelligence or counter
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terrorism, is you start at a certain point to the fact a complaint,
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crime, whatever, and you move forward in a straight line to find the
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culprit and eventually bring them to court and to justice. Intelligence work goes in
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circles. It never ends. You pick up a piece of intelligence, you
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go around and pick up another piece, and pick up another piece. And
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the people now who have come to prominent in the bureau of these intelligence analysts,
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not the special agents, and the intelligence analysts are always looking for ways
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to probe, probe and more. And that's why they come up with these
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literally crackpot ideas to certain groups that like to use a certain flag that rose
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or the one of the most atrocious proposals of all they came up was to
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focus on Catholics who prefer to worship using Latin and somehow that makes them potential
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enemies. WFLA on your phone with the iHeart radio AM and on hundreds of
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devices like Alexa, Google Home, Xbox and Sonos and Ihearts radio station.
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Final segment this morning with Thomas Baker. The book is The Fall of the
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FBI, How a once great agency became a threat to democracy. He spent
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thirty three years of his professional career as an FBI special agent. He served
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in the old FBI Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, and is with us
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this morning. How important is it for the FBI to acknowledge its role good
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batter indifferent in the Russian collusion case, as well as its role or lack
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thereof, and whatever's going on or has gone on with the current president Joe
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Biden and his son Hunter. Well, it's extraordinarily important, and it was
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all laid out for us just a couple of weeks ago in Durham's report.
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John Durham, the Special Council who looked into the origins of the Russian collusion
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case. Did you find that report credible? Incredibly so heartbreaking, So it
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validates an awful lot of the stuff I said in my book. Okay,
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and number one, but number two, what he did. He comes to
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the conclusion there was absolutely no justification for opening that investigation whatsoever. And he
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goes through the items with specificity, including the issues around the Foreign Intelligence of
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Aillance Act. But in his conclusion he used the term the phraseology that the
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FBI has to be continuously reminded of this and it's need to adhere to be
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the guidelines that have existed, you know, as I said, since since
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nineteen seventy eight, really under Attorney General Ed would leave you when they were
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first set out that these guidelines have to be followed. There's no need for
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new rules, new regulations. They just have to follow the guidelines. And
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they didn't. Well, what was most disappointing about that when the report came
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out the current director Ray said that the people who were involved in that fiasco
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are no longer with He didn't see say fiasco, that's my word, but
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he's the people who were involved in that are no longer with us. Durham
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pointed, out the need to continuously learn from this, and now we see
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similar when we don't see we don't know what the hell is going on with
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the excuse my expression, with the Hunter Biden as, but we know there's
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something there the laptop that's validated. Most of the information on the laptop is
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available to the public through Miranda Divine's book and other avenues. The One Congressional
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Committee has found millions, literally millions and millions of dollars being washed around through
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the banking system, ending up in the accounts of half a dozen members of
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the Biden family. To anyone with the least amount of intelligence, that looks
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suspicious. And now we have this human information that's being swabbled over that there
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was a specific five million dollar payment which may or may not turn out to
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be true, but there is something there and it needs to be looked at,
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not buried. Is it possible that Joe Biden, when he went on
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television and talked about being the vice president and going to Ukraine and telling them
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to fire their attorney general that was investigating Barisma, where his son or sat,
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his son Hunter sat on the board, was that a criminal act by
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the Vice president at the time I don't know, but it probably wasn't.
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Certainly it was an abusive authority, an abuse of his position, using his
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authority to help and protect his son. And that's a lot of these things,
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even and Durham said this, going back to the Russian colusion thing.
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A lot of these things we are not actually crimes, unfortunately, but they
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are abuses of authority. And that happened again and again and again and again,
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the unmasking of General Flynn and others. Most people have the authority to
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do that, but doing it so promiscuously was an abusive authority. We see
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this again and again that there's a lack of restraint which you would find.
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Getting back to my point in a law enforcement agency that's bound by constitutional guidelines,
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an intelligence agency, they just keep going out and bigger and bigger circles,
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gathering more and more information. Thomas Baker, final moment with US former
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FBI special agent, author of a book Fallow the FBI. Thomas, how
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will we know that the FBI has corrected its course when they say in their
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mission statement, the mission statement begins, now it's an intelligence an agency.
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When they put the phraseology about being a law enforcement agency backup on top when
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they get a control over this woke culture of these intelligence analysts. These people
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are being recorded and are driving the agenda. When we put special agents who
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are in charge, trained in the Constitution back in charge. Right now,
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the people in the bureau tell me the intelligence analysts are driving the agenda.
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And that's how you come up with these crackpot ideas like investigating people who prefer
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to pray in Latin, clearly a violation on several levels of potential violation of
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the First Amendments. Thomas, I wish you well and great success in your
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book. I hope you're keeping your firearm proficiency up. And thanks for making
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time for us this morning. Thank you, Preston for your time. I
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appreciate it. Sir Thomas Baker, former FBI agent, twenty seven minutes after
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the hour the book The Fall of the FBI. How a once great agency
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became a threat to democracy? I don't know. I think thirty three years
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inside the Bureau and working with Congress might give you some insight. Great,
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great, great to have him on the show this morning on the Morning Show
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with Preston Scott