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G-Man, Good Man · Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

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SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone and welcome to Q&A.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm Jay Nordlinger and our guest today is Michael Feinberg,
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a former FBI agent who is now a writer and editor with the
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publication Lawfare.
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With the FBI he won a slew of awards and commendations but was
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forced out last year
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SPEAKER_01: when the regime of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino came in.
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SPEAKER_01: He wrote about all this in a moving article called Goodbye to All That
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SPEAKER_01: Mr. Feinberg, of course, borrowed his title from Robert Graves.
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SPEAKER_01: We have a lot to discuss and we will tuck right in.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: And thank you so much, Mike, for joining us today.
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SPEAKER_01: When I say us, I'm not trying to be royal.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean the audience and me.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm very glad to be here.
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SPEAKER_01: So you and I are fellow Midwesterners, I think.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, I grew up in the Chicago suburbs.
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SPEAKER_00: I did a brief stint in Boston for college in a suburb called Waltham.
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SPEAKER_00: I was at Brandeis University.
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SPEAKER_00: And then I moved back to Chicago to the city proper after graduation.
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SPEAKER_00: Ended up staying there for law for law school.
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And during the brief period in which I was a practicing
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attorney,
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did so in that city.
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SPEAKER_00: I only really left the Midwest when I joined the FBI.
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SPEAKER_01: Well, what suburb did you grow up in?
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SPEAKER_00: It's called Wilmette.
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SPEAKER_00: For people who are familiar with the area,
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SPEAKER_00: it is essentially two suburbs north of the city limits on the lakefront,
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SPEAKER_00: and it sort of sandwiches with Chicago,
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SPEAKER_00: Evanston,
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SPEAKER_00: which is where Northwestern University,
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SPEAKER_00: most people's frame of reference,
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SPEAKER_00: is located.
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SPEAKER_01: So is this what I call John Hughes territory?
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SPEAKER_01: You know, all those movies today that- Yes.
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SPEAKER_00: In fact,
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an inordinate amount of my friends and actually my sister as
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well ended up as
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SPEAKER_00: extras in his film.
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SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
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Because they would always do a casting call for them whenever
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they needed a school scene.
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SPEAKER_00: And the high school I went to is called Nutrier.
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SPEAKER_00: And when I went there, it has gone through having enough...
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SPEAKER_00: students to need at various times one or two campuses.
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SPEAKER_00: And when I was there,
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SPEAKER_00: they only had enough students to justify one campus,
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and John Hughes had actually rented out the gymnasiums in the
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unused campus to
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SPEAKER_00: outfit his movie studios for all of his indoor scenes.
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SPEAKER_00: So, like, it's literally John Hughes territories.
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SPEAKER_00: All the movies were filmed in my neighborhood.
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I remember walking past one house in a neighboring village in
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June or July and
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SPEAKER_00: trying to figure out why it was covered in fake snow.
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SPEAKER_00: And it was, of course, the house in which Home Alone took place.
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SPEAKER_00: So...
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: That's wonderful.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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Seeing those productions being filmed was not a common feature
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of childhood in my
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SPEAKER_00: teenage years,
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SPEAKER_00: but certainly something that was not out of the ordinary.
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My guess is you were a bookish kid and a patriotic kid and a
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conservative leaning kid.
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SPEAKER_01: Am I off or on?
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SPEAKER_00: A little of each.
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SPEAKER_00: I was certainly a bookish kid.
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SPEAKER_00: In a way that was not particularly productive for my grades,
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SPEAKER_00: I would devour books by the shelf full,
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but they were very rarely the books which I had been assigned
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by my teachers or
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SPEAKER_00: books.
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SPEAKER_00: which could, you know, help my academic pursuits.
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SPEAKER_00: And my grade point average certainly reflected that.
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I had a lot of teachers who liked me because I could talk about
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authors that were
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SPEAKER_00: not part of the curriculum,
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but who were constantly exasperated by the fact that my
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ambition to devour this
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SPEAKER_00: stuff was not reflected in the work I turned in.
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SPEAKER_00: So I have very...
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SPEAKER_00: vivid memories of my sophomore year of high school,
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SPEAKER_00: supposedly studying for my final exams in my bedroom,
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and actually just reading William Shire's Chronicle of the
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Third Reich and the
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SPEAKER_00: first two volumes of William Manchester's Churchill biography.
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Both served me as good stead,
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but emphatically did not help me with my exams.
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SPEAKER_00: As for politics, I...
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It wasn't something I thought about very much until my senior
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year of high school,
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SPEAKER_00: I became good friends with somebody.
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SPEAKER_00: He ended up being a lifelong friend.
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He was one of my groomsmen a few years ago,
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whose father was very much a libertarian.
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SPEAKER_00: And so I started becoming familiar with, you know, a couple...
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SPEAKER_00: They're not fringe.
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SPEAKER_00: They were intellectually serious,
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but they were the sort of journals and magazines that never
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really had a large
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SPEAKER_00: audience that would get into Ayn Rand,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: objectivist theory,
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SPEAKER_00: various libertarian economic theories.
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SPEAKER_00: I was...
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very familiar with the output from Hillsdale College long
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before it became what it is now.
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SPEAKER_00: I was tracking the Cato Institute as a high school and college student.
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SPEAKER_00: And,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: I would eventually read a lot of the classics of the field,
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SPEAKER_00: whether von Mises or Hayek.
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SPEAKER_00: And I grew up in a pretty liberal area,
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SPEAKER_00: so I was always socially liberal,
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which meant that I could never consider myself just a standard
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conservative.
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SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
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SPEAKER_01: I bet you came across Reason Magazine at some point.
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SPEAKER_00: Exactly, yes.
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My friend's father was a subscriber,
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and when he was done with an issue,
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I would steal it.
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SPEAKER_00: Not steal it, he gave it to me, but I would take it and read it.
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SPEAKER_00: And...
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it opened my eyes to a lot of arguments to which I had not
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previously been exposed.
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SPEAKER_00: And I became certainly fiscally conservative,
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SPEAKER_00: um,
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SPEAKER_00: and a huge skeptic of the administrative states and regulatory agencies.
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When I got to college is probably when I started to turn a bit
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more conservative.
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SPEAKER_00: Um, um,
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SPEAKER_00: but not necessarily in a manner that a lot of people would recognize.
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SPEAKER_00: I still, even now,
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SPEAKER_00: as pretentious and pompous as this is going to sound,
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almost consider myself like a Cold War conservative in that I
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was certainly heavily
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SPEAKER_00: influenced by contemporary conservative magazines,
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SPEAKER_00: National Review,
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SPEAKER_00: The Weekly Standard began publication when I was a freshman in college.
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But I was also really influenced,
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and I have no idea how I originally discovered this stuff.
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SPEAKER_00: But magazines like Partisan Review and The Public Interest,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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the sort of little magazines of New York's very febrile 50s and
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60s and 70s.
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SPEAKER_00: And that really formed my worldview.
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SPEAKER_00: At the same time,
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I was at a very liberal university to which I had a very common
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conservative
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SPEAKER_00: counter reaction.
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And there were some things about the left in the 90s that
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really just did not sit well with me.
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I was very patriotic,
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largely almost as an intellectual endeavor more than an
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emotional one.
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I revered the founding documents and the writers of Antebellum
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America in terms of
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SPEAKER_00: the form of government they had endeavored to set up.
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SPEAKER_00: I didn't think it was perfect, but I think...
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SPEAKER_00: You know,
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even when people criticize American policies domestically or
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internationally,
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a lot of times what they're comparing those policies against
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are actually the
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ideals that were first set out in a government charter by our
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founding generation.
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SPEAKER_00: So,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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patriotism was considered sort of passe and unsophisticated by
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a lot of the more
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SPEAKER_00: educated classes in the years immediately after the Cold War.
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SPEAKER_00: And so,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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I had this sort of instinctive aversion to a lot of leftist
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intellectualism
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SPEAKER_00: combined with libertarian instincts.
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SPEAKER_00: Um...
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which combined yet even more with a real reverence for the
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Western canon and the
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SPEAKER_00: Western tradition in arts.
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I was probably one of the only people who in his 20s sat
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through the entirety of
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SPEAKER_00: Kenneth Clark's civilization in a public library.
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SPEAKER_00: So yeah,
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so eventually that formed me as a conservative and I still very
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much consider
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SPEAKER_00: myself that sort of conservative.
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SPEAKER_00: I just feel like
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conservatism as a political movement has taken a shift i'm not
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entirely comfortable
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with well that was a very long-winded answer i apologize no i
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was just chucking
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over the understatement uh yeah um what'd you major in in
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college history um i
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SPEAKER_00: figured i focused um
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SPEAKER_00: as much as I possibly could on German intellectual history,
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SPEAKER_00: particularly 1865,
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SPEAKER_00: the time of unification through 1945.
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SPEAKER_00: And,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: I had originally planned to go on and get a PhD in the topic,
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SPEAKER_00: but as that time approached,
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the three scholars with whom I would have liked to work the
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most all died or
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SPEAKER_00: retired.
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SPEAKER_00: So when I graduated, I worked for a couple of years in various odd jobs.
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SPEAKER_00: And then like all unimaginative liberal arts students everywhere,
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SPEAKER_00: I ended up going to law school.
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SPEAKER_01: You would have been a good student of Fritz Stern at Columbia.
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Fritz Stern's The Politics of Cultural Despair was one of the
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most influential
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SPEAKER_00: books I read in college.
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SPEAKER_00: And he was one of the three people that I would have loved to work with.
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SPEAKER_00: The others being Gordon Craig at Stanford and George Mosse at Madison.
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SPEAKER_01: Formidable scholars.
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SPEAKER_01: And where'd you go to law school?
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SPEAKER_00: Northwestern.
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SPEAKER_01: Right.
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SPEAKER_01: You're a wildcat in a sense.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, I am.
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SPEAKER_00: I am.
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SPEAKER_01: What was the attraction to the FBI?
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I have a fairly idiosyncratic background and set of
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intellectual interests.
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SPEAKER_00: I've always been interested in spying.
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I read John,
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I read John le Carré's novels when I was in high school and
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college.
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SPEAKER_00: And I remember the first time I read Tinker,
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SPEAKER_00: Taylor,
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SPEAKER_00: Soldier,
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SPEAKER_00: Spy,
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SPEAKER_00: when I was a youngster,
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SPEAKER_00: thinking that catching spies would be the most exciting,
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SPEAKER_00: romantic,
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SPEAKER_00: fulfilling job in the world.
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SPEAKER_01: Oh, you were interested in counterintelligence.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was particularly interested in spy hunting.
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SPEAKER_00: But I didn't know anybody who ever lived in that world.
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SPEAKER_00: This isn't like I grew up in Northern Virginia.
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SPEAKER_01: Of course, you're not supposed to.
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SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
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SPEAKER_00: But,
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SPEAKER_00: but,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: so it was about as realistic as saying,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: I want to be a dinosaur when I grow up.
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SPEAKER_00: I sort of put it aside.
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SPEAKER_00: I went to law school and practice law.
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And then we threw a surprise birthday party for my grandfather,
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who was 90 years old.
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SPEAKER_00: And his,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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relatively spry 87 year old brother came in from California and
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at the party,
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they were reminiscing about joining the army in the days
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immediately following
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SPEAKER_00: Pearl Harbor.
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SPEAKER_00: And it made me sort of reflect that,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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on 9-11 I had been a 1L at Northwestern and I hadn't changed my
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life at all.
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SPEAKER_00: And honestly,
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listening to my grandfather and his brother caused me to feel a
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little bit ashamed.
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And I sort of resolved that I needed to restructure my life to
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do something that
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SPEAKER_00: was more public service oriented.
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And I knew from my earlier interests that if I was actually
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going to do that,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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it should be something within the national security
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intelligence world in terms of
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SPEAKER_00: just pure interest.
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SPEAKER_00: And I looked at the CIA, I looked at the FBI.
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SPEAKER_00: The FBI was more attractive to me for a variety of reasons.
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SPEAKER_00: And the Venn diagram of things I had done before,
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SPEAKER_00: There is a common area that made me a perfect FBI applicant.
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I was a lawyer,
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which they still very much like,
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even though it's not a requirement.
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SPEAKER_00: I spoke a few languages.
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SPEAKER_00: I had fought on the amateur boxing circuit in Chicago in my early 20s.
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SPEAKER_01: Which languages, by the way?
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SPEAKER_01: German.
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So in college,
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I studied German,
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Italian,
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and one of the ancient Greek dialects.
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SPEAKER_00: I,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: after I joined the Bureau,
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SPEAKER_00: they sent me to some very intensive Mandarin language training programs.
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And I found the better I got at Chinese,
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the more I forgot everything else I knew.
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SPEAKER_00: So I could remember a few like literary epigrams in German,
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SPEAKER_00: but beyond that,
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SPEAKER_00: it's very much fallen away.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
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so the FBI offered something that was going to be
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intellectually challenging,
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SPEAKER_00: allow me to continue learning new things,
14:57
SPEAKER_00: would make some use of my law degree,
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SPEAKER_00: had a physical element that a lot of other jobs didn't have.
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SPEAKER_00: So I put in my application shortly after that party,
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SPEAKER_00: and against all my expectations,
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SPEAKER_00: they took me.
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SPEAKER_00: And that was really the beginning of my professional adult story.
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And in your years with the Bureau,
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did you you attempted to counter Chinese influence?
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SPEAKER_00: That was one.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Part of your work?
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
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I focused up until my last two years entirely on countering the
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efforts of the PRC
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SPEAKER_00: to spy on the United States.
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SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that involved foreign influence.
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Sometimes it involved their tech companies threatening our
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critical infrastructure.
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SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it was just old-fashioned espionage involving human spies.
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SPEAKER_00: But yeah, the common nexus is everything I do was connected to
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to trying to stop China from displacing the United States as
16:04
the world's henchman.
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SPEAKER_01: Mike, this is too broad a question, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
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SPEAKER_01: What were your colleagues like?
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SPEAKER_01: Were you impressed with the other FBI agents?
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SPEAKER_01: Were they sort of patriotic Dudley Do-Right types?
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SPEAKER_01: Were some of them sort of...
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Scallywags who are virtuous at heart,
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sort of bad boys who are on the right side of the law.
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SPEAKER_01: What were your colleagues like?
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SPEAKER_00: All of the above.
16:29
One of the things I loved is that I was very concerned I was
16:35
going to be an outlier
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SPEAKER_00: among the FBI.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: I am very bookish,
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SPEAKER_00: and I did not think that the organization would attract many people,
16:45
SPEAKER_00: you know,
16:46
SPEAKER_00: who would travel to another city to go see a ring cycle,
16:50
SPEAKER_00: for example.
16:52
I was unbelievably and pleasantly surprised at the diversity of
16:57
interests and
16:58
SPEAKER_00: experience that I found among my peers.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: My first office was in Los Angeles,
17:07
SPEAKER_00: and my partner,
17:09
SPEAKER_00: by which I mean professional partner,
17:10
SPEAKER_00: not romantic,
17:11
SPEAKER_00: the person with whom I did all my investigations,
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SPEAKER_00: had spent years in the U.S.
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SPEAKER_00: military and with some other companies,
17:19
SPEAKER_00: let's say,
17:20
SPEAKER_00: doing various forms of special operations in the War on Terror.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, one of the individuals who...
17:29
SPEAKER_00: became one of my closest friends in the office,
17:32
maintained his entire career that the only thing you need to do
17:36
to understand how
17:37
SPEAKER_00: to be a government employee is to read Catch-22.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: And he would pepper his conversations with quotes from Pynchon.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: So there was this really wide spectrum of people.
17:48
And the thing I loved about the Bureau in that era is they were
17:52
all welcomed.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: There was a real recognition
17:56
that you needed different types of thinkers and people with
17:59
different professional
18:00
backgrounds because you were going to all attack a problem in a
18:03
different way.
18:04
And at the outset of a case,
18:07
you don't know which way is going to resolve it.
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SPEAKER_00: So you get all these smart people together.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: You have them come up with ideas and you try the ones that sound best.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: And if they don't work, you go to a different idea.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: And it actually...
18:20
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't sound like it,
18:22
but it's a ridiculously efficient way to tackle what can be a
18:28
really tough
18:29
SPEAKER_00: investigation.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, because it's oftentimes, you know,
18:33
You'd get reporting from a sensitive source that there is a spy
18:37
in X agency,
18:39
SPEAKER_00: and all we know is that he has brown hair,
18:42
SPEAKER_00: once traveled to Prague,
18:46
SPEAKER_00: and is single.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm just making this up.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: And you would have to look at the entire agency,
18:52
SPEAKER_00: which could be tens of thousands of people,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: and figure out who that was.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: It's not particularly easy all the time.
18:58
So having people who thought about things in different ways
19:03
really gave us an edge
19:05
that I think some of our more straight-laced totalitarian
19:11
adversaries like China
19:12
SPEAKER_00: and Russia would never have.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: Before he began his second term as president,
19:21
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump made some,
19:23
SPEAKER_01: to some of us,
19:24
SPEAKER_01: shocking nominations.
19:26
Matt Gaetz for Attorney General,
19:28
then Pam Bondi,
19:29
Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary,
19:32
RFK Jr.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: for HHS Secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps the most shocking to me was Kash Patel for FBI director,
19:45
SPEAKER_01: and then Dan Bongino for deputy.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: And these were, as far as I knew, sort of MAGA internet trolls.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: And these are such important positions.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Did you figure your days were numbered?
19:59
SPEAKER_01: Or did you figure you could kind of just go about your business,
20:03
SPEAKER_01: do your work,
20:04
SPEAKER_01: and we have rotation in office,
20:06
SPEAKER_01: and there'll be another election in four years?
20:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:10
I was pretty worried for the simple reason that Kash Patel and
20:18
Dan Bongino are not
20:20
SPEAKER_00: serious people.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: By which I mean,
20:23
SPEAKER_00: I think they both seem incapable of doing anything that is not in their
20:31
self-interest and unable to process any information that does
20:36
not fit into their
20:37
SPEAKER_00: ideological worldview.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: that is an incredibly dangerous type of person to have at the helm of an
20:46
SPEAKER_00: organization that is supposed to make its decisions,
20:50
SPEAKER_00: which let's be very clear,
20:53
SPEAKER_00: have the possibility of taking away someone's life or liberty
20:56
But those decisions are supposed to be made solely on a factual
21:00
basis and an evidentiary basis.
21:04
And Patel and Bongino,
21:06
I don't think it's exaggerating to call them conspiracy
21:09
theorists.
21:10
They just don't have the sort of sober judgment and emotional
21:13
maturity needed to
21:16
SPEAKER_00: run an organization that,
21:19
SPEAKER_00: if it slips past the guardrails,
21:21
SPEAKER_00: can very literally ruin people's lives.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: And Patel had a long record of being anti-FBI as well.
21:34
He said repeatedly that he wanted to close down headquarters
21:39
and turn it into a
21:40
SPEAKER_00: museum of the deep state.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: Dan Bongino was the first media figure to really give a platform...
21:48
to a small handful of agents who resigned because they didn't
21:53
want to investigate January 6th.
21:57
These were not people who were going to have sort of a Burkean
22:03
respect for the
22:05
institution or recognize why it's a bad idea to do massive
22:11
layoffs that result in
22:14
SPEAKER_00: losses of institutional knowledge.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: And none of that even has to do with their politics.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: Like I was a public servant.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: I leaned right.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: But that never affected my day-to-day judgment.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I drew on my personal opinions even once in a case.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: But it was very clear that Patel and Bongino would.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: And in my head...
22:45
I sort of mentally prepared myself that there would probably be
22:48
a premature leave taking.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: What I told myself is I had some,
22:54
SPEAKER_00: I had some red lines that if I was told to do them,
23:00
SPEAKER_00: I would say no and I would inevitably get fired.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: And I was willing to live with that.
23:06
I did not want to quit because at the time I was in a position
23:10
of some seniority and I
23:13
I thought I had an obligation to stay there and protect the
23:18
people who might not
23:20
know as much as I did about how the organization works and sort
23:25
of be an umbrella
23:26
SPEAKER_00: to stop things from raining down on them.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: And then lastly,
23:30
I really take John Adams' dictum that if good people don't
23:34
serve in government,
23:34
SPEAKER_00: only bad people will quite seriously.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: So I resolved to stay as long as I could.
23:40
It turned out to be considerably less time than I could because
23:45
Dan Bongino found
23:47
SPEAKER_00: out I was friends with someone on Kash Patel's enemies list.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: And I was essentially told I was never going to get promoted.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: I was going to get demoted.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: And I was going to get investigated over the nature of that friendship.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: And the combination of those three things meant...
24:07
SPEAKER_00: that I could no longer do the things I wanted to do,
24:12
SPEAKER_00: the reason that I wanted to stay in the organization.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: And they were gonna upend my life.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: My wife was seven months into a high-risk pregnancy.
24:22
We were living in an area where we did not have a lot of
24:26
familial support.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't gonna put her and my soon-to-be-born son through that.
24:32
So I made what was simultaneously an easy but also
24:38
heart-wrenching decision to leave the FBI.
24:42
I just want to tell our readers that we could go into details
24:45
here for a half an
24:46
SPEAKER_01: hour,
24:46
SPEAKER_01: but I'm going to link to Mike Feinberg's article in which he
24:51
SPEAKER_01: explains all of this, gives all the details.
24:55
I do want to make one...
24:56
There is one thing I am unhappy with about that article.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: I referred to Robert Graves simply as a writer.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: My editor changed it to poet,
25:06
which I take issue with because he was so much more capacious a
25:10
writer than that.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: So...
25:14
SPEAKER_00: That's the one edit that has always bothered me.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: Understood.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: I often quote Robert Graves,
25:21
SPEAKER_01: who said,
25:22
SPEAKER_01: the thing about Shakespeare is he really is good,
25:26
SPEAKER_01: despite his widespread popularity and esteem.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: Mike, are there still real professionals in the FBI?
25:40
SPEAKER_00: Less and less every day.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: I wish I could give a more comforting answer to that.
25:45
But a week does not go by where a senior official is not fired
25:52
for refusing to do
25:54
SPEAKER_00: something that Patel or the administration wants to do.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: That is really beyond the bounds of propriety.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: I will let listeners draw their own conclusions from the fact that
26:06
The special agent in charge of the Atlanta field office was
26:09
fired the Friday before
26:11
SPEAKER_00: that office was ordered to raid the Fulton County election archives.
26:17
So executives are being peeled off the minute they object to
26:23
anything Patel wants to do.
26:26
And I work with a number of nonprofits now geared towards
26:30
supporting onboard DOJ
26:32
SPEAKER_00: and FBI employees.
26:34
And there is not a week that I do not hear from a low-level
26:38
employee scared to
26:40
death because they've been asked to do something entirely
26:42
unethical or illegal,
26:44
SPEAKER_00: and they need guidance on what to do.
26:47
So I think there are people there who want to do the right
26:50
thing,
26:51
but four years is a long time.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: And you could get rid of a lot of personnel in that time.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: And I very much fear what the FBI is going to look like,
27:04
SPEAKER_00: not even at the end of this administration,
27:07
SPEAKER_00: but at the end of this year.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: Mike,
27:11
SPEAKER_01: some of us refer to the before times with a capital B and a capital T,
27:16
SPEAKER_01: meaning America before 2016.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: If there were before times,
27:21
SPEAKER_01: there will be after times with a capital A and a capital T.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: One of the things I wonder is,
27:27
SPEAKER_01: can organizations, institutions such as the FBI be reconstituted?
27:35
SPEAKER_01: How lasting will the damage be?
27:38
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be very lasting for two reasons.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: First of all,
27:42
SPEAKER_00: like I mentioned,
27:43
they are purging the workforce of people with independent
27:48
thought and real subject
27:49
SPEAKER_00: matter expertise.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: And I wanna pause for a second
27:55
SPEAKER_00: to explain something.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: The FBI in which I worked up until January 20th,
28:05
SPEAKER_00: 2025,
28:06
SPEAKER_00: was certainly a hierarchical organization like most people think,
28:10
SPEAKER_00: but it was also one that very much encouraged dissent.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: you were always free,
28:18
SPEAKER_00: obviously in a respectful manner,
28:20
to criticize or challenge your superior or your superior
28:26
superior when you thought
28:28
SPEAKER_00: they were making a mistake.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: It was not uncommon
28:33
for special agents in charge to get into shouting matches with
28:36
the deputy director
28:37
SPEAKER_00: or the director.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day,
28:40
SPEAKER_00: the highest person in the chain of command makes the decision,
28:45
SPEAKER_00: but there is an input process.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: That's gone.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: So anybody who is challenging Patel now gets fired.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: So you have this massive loss of senior executives who deal with him on a
28:57
SPEAKER_00: day-to-day basis,
28:59
SPEAKER_00: and that's gonna make reconstituting things hard.
29:03
You're gonna have the ranks of the line level investigators and
29:07
analysts who join
29:09
now experiencing four years of what we currently have and
29:15
thinking that it's
29:16
SPEAKER_00: normal.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: Everybody I know is retiring the day they are eligible.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna have a workforce
29:32
SPEAKER_00: that just doesn't understand the importance of norms.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: And the first interview I gave after I left,
29:41
SPEAKER_00: I was asked how long would it take to rebuild the FBI?
29:45
And the number me and my colleagues and friends have been
29:48
throwing around was like,
29:50
SPEAKER_00: it's gonna take a decade if it stops now.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: I fear we're in for a longer haul than that.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And I don't even know how we get there because there are so many people,
30:06
many of whom at one time you and I would have considered
30:08
political allies,
30:10
SPEAKER_00: who are completely okay and on board with what's happening.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: Of course, yeah.
30:15
And,
30:16
you know,
30:18
how do you fix a problem if you can't agree on what the problem
30:22
is?
30:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: Mike, the Epstein matter is a whole other program from us.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: But man, does it stink.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: And I had a thought the other day when doing some reading about
30:37
SPEAKER_01: You know how Trump and his people always say Russia,
30:39
SPEAKER_01: Russia,
30:40
Russia as a way of mocking you for having concerns about
30:44
Kremlin influence in the
30:45
SPEAKER_01: United States.
30:46
So when they say Russia,
30:47
Russia,
30:48
Russia,
30:48
you're supposed to be ashamed and so on and so forth.
30:51
But the links between Epstein and that whole matter and Russia
30:56
are interesting.
30:58
Yeah.
31:00
Yeah,
31:00
I'll confess,
31:01
I haven't delved into the files since their release recently.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's important to note,
31:10
and this is why what happened in 2016 was so concerning and did
31:15
need to be
31:15
SPEAKER_00: investigated.
31:17
The Russian services,
31:20
whether it's the SVR or the FSB,
31:23
are very intent on compromising the
31:28
SPEAKER_00: as many people as they possibly can,
31:31
SPEAKER_00: not just who are in positions of power,
31:35
but who are adjacent to positions of power and who may someday
31:39
have positions of
31:40
SPEAKER_00: power.
31:41
So if Russia had some dirt on Epstein or was using Epstein as a
31:49
conduit to get to
31:52
SPEAKER_00: those types of people,
31:53
SPEAKER_00: I would not be surprised.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: And to be clear, that's what intelligence agencies do.
32:00
You look for connections to power in other countries that you
32:03
can exploit.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: So none of this should surprise us.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: But it's also why,
32:12
SPEAKER_00: up until 2016,
32:14
there had been a bipartisan norm that you keep your cards close
32:20
to the vest when
32:21
SPEAKER_00: dealing with foreign powers,
32:23
SPEAKER_00: particularly those whose interests are inimical to yours.
32:27
And what we see with the Trump administration is an
32:31
unwillingness to exercise even
32:34
SPEAKER_00: that baseline level of caution.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: Different subject, Mike.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: I have a couple more before we go.
32:41
I imagine that you as a professional,
32:44
my guess is you're repulsed by the behavior of ICE.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: Very much so.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: And I've written on this topic explicitly.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: I'll link.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I... Look, I'm...
32:58
SPEAKER_00: I am ridiculously pro-law enforcement.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: You certainly are.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: Me too.
33:02
I mean,
33:03
I carried a badge and a gun for 16,
33:05
17 years,
33:06
literally everywhere I went.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: I upset people who otherwise agree with me on a lot of things now by a
33:19
SPEAKER_00: full-throated defense of qualified immunity.
33:22
In other words,
33:23
I am not a blushing violet when it comes to the realities of
33:26
law enforcement.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes the infliction of violence is necessary.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: But what we are seeing with ICE is an unhinged and unchained cadre of
33:42
that have been told falsely they have absolute immunity and are
33:49
acting essentially
33:50
SPEAKER_00: as roving brigands on the streets of Minneapolis.
33:55
A president is 100% within his or her rights to prioritize
34:03
combating illegal
34:04
SPEAKER_00: immigration and securing the border.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: But there is a smart way to do it,
34:09
SPEAKER_00: there is a stupid way to do it,
34:11
SPEAKER_00: and there is a needlessly confrontational and authoritarian way to do it.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: And rather than trying the smart way and then escalating if needed,
34:22
SPEAKER_00: they immediately went to a place where they flood cities,
34:26
SPEAKER_00: liberally deploy tear gas and pepper balls,
34:31
SPEAKER_00: beat people up,
34:32
SPEAKER_00: trample on First Amendment rights.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: There are law enforcement agencies that act like this,
34:41
but they are generally in countries and regimes we have not
34:44
traditionally sought to
34:45
SPEAKER_00: emulate.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so well stated.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, Michael Feinberg, thank you for joining us today.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: And here at the end, I want to tell you this.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: I have a dear friend,
34:59
SPEAKER_01: conservative,
35:00
SPEAKER_01: always been sort of a model of patriotism,
35:03
SPEAKER_01: the right kind of patriotism,
35:05
who says that the worst thing about this era is he's fallen out
35:10
of love with
35:10
SPEAKER_01: America.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: He never met a more America-loving, America-appreciating person.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: I wonder whether your view of our country has been,
35:21
SPEAKER_01: let's say,
35:22
SPEAKER_01: whether your view of the nature of America has been altered.
35:26
SPEAKER_01: Mine has.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: So I'll say this.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: We did this, Mike.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: These are all democratic choices.
35:34
SPEAKER_01: Every one of them.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: We absolutely did this.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: My wife has her doctorate in theology,
35:42
SPEAKER_00: and we are of different faiths,
35:44
SPEAKER_00: as one would probably guess from my last name.
35:48
But being with her...
35:51
By the way,
35:51
I'm just going to...
35:52
Here's a bit of levity.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: Were you one of the few Jews at Brandeis?
35:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
35:55
SPEAKER_01: I haven't been there,
35:56
SPEAKER_01: but I understand it gets less Jewish by the year and by the decade,
35:59
but...
36:00
SPEAKER_00: It was still quite Jewish when I was there.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: I was one of the only conservatives.
36:05
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: Just a moment.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: Keep going.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: I should have kept my mouth shut.
36:09
So the lens through which I'm viewing what we are going through
36:14
now is very much
36:18
through what I imagine my experiences will be as my child grows
36:23
up and through sort
36:25
SPEAKER_00: of the parable of the prodigal son.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: America is lost right now.
36:32
Our institutions and our government have strayed greatly from
36:36
the ideals on which
36:37
SPEAKER_00: this country was founded,
36:39
but that does not mean those ideals are not valid or not
36:44
something we should still
36:46
SPEAKER_00: strive towards.
36:48
And I hope there is a day where the people who have given up
36:55
those ideals for a
36:57
SPEAKER_00: worshiping of blind power
37:00
SPEAKER_00: will realize the error of their ways.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: And I hope that we can have an honest conversation about it.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: And I hope that someday we can welcome them home.
37:12
Well,
37:13
Michael Feinberg,
37:13
you are the prodigal son's brother with this exception.
37:17
SPEAKER_01: You won't be a churlish jerk.
37:19
SPEAKER_01: When your brother comes home.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: What a pleasure to speak with you.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: What a pleasure.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: Likewise.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: Ladies and gentlemen, I am Jay Nordlinger doing Q&A.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: Our guest has been Michael Feinberg.
37:32
SPEAKER_01: What a gem.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: What an American.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for continuing to contribute.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: May I say that sappy thing, Mike?
37:38
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: So long, everyone.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: Till next time.