WILLIAM TAYLOR: FBI Whistleblower and Retired FBI Agent (Part 1) | SUNDAY Sit-Down | Ep 643

William "Bill" Taylor is a retired Supervisory Special Agent with experience in both criminal and national security investigations. In Part 1 of this marathon interview, we discuss the first half of his career and his first experience as an FBI whistleblower.

The subscribers on Locals have already started clamoring for Part 2, so make sure you are subscribed wherever you get our podcast.

Follow Bill:

https://x.com/retfbi

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
In every field office, agents that work domestic terrorism are
on the JTTF. But the domestic terrorism
program is not, I repeat, not part of the national Security
program. It is not funded by the NIT.
The National Intelligence Program funding is not NIT.
Well, here you go. Here's the solution.

(00:22):
As the CT threat wanes down, they're facing the prospect of
losing their funding for the CT IT mission.
Well, you hire up all of these CT ages, that threat starts
going away. But those people don't start
going away. They're continuing to work on
JTTFS, but they become graduallymore and more say, unemployed

(00:43):
because the threat has been waning.
Now all interviewers have their own style, and my style is to
try to get to the point and to be intensely curious.
And the key to interviewing is listening.
Take a look behind the curtain with a real whistleblower and
American patriot. Prepare to embrace the
uncomfortable truth because thisprogram has no time for

(01:05):
comforting lies. Here is civil liberties
enthusiast, Second Amendment defender and recovering FBI
agent Kyle Seraphim. Today's Sunday Sit down, take
number. I think we're up to five.
This is Bill Taylor. He is a retired FBI supervisory
special agent. He was an FBI whistleblower and
I wanted to have him come tell his story here with an FBI guy

(01:28):
'cause I think we share some commonality and understanding.
Bill, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me in the
invite. I appreciate this.
This is great. This is really great.
Thanks for the patience too. We, we've been doing this for
about 35 minutes. Folks try to get this thing to
run, but I think we've got all the the demons exercised out.
Will you tell people where you grew up, maybe some of your back
story, your professional historyand what made you, you know,

(01:49):
want to become and how did you become an FBI agent?
Yeah, it's great. I, I grew up a little bit here,
a little bit everywhere. I kind of started out in the
Northeast. I moved down to Florida when I
was a teenager, spent a lot of time down there and then ended
up going to college at University of Texas in Austin,
where where I think you are, andloved it there back in the 90s.
Stayed there for the next like 13 years until I became an agent

(02:11):
in 2003. Before being an Asian, I was a
teacher, I taught public school.I just had a real sort of
passion for public service and trying to get back and help.
And you know, after doing that for about 7 years, I, I had the
calling to try to take it to another level.
And I'd always had some law enforcement in my family and an

(02:32):
interest in it. So I put my name in the hat for
the FBI. Actually, it was before 9/11.
It was in January of 2001. When I put my name in the hat.
I didn't hear anything back whatsoever.
I mean, I was a teacher. I didn't really expect to. 911
happens and then suddenly they're rooting around through
the bottom of the desk drawers to find any application.
And I think mine, mine showed upthen because I still remember

(02:56):
it. December 18th of 2001, I, I got
a package in the mail from DOJ and I'm like, what the heck is
this? Am I in trouble or something
here? And I open it and I'm like
astounded. It's like, hey, would you come
and interview, you know, do the Phase 1 testing and all that
kind of stuff. So I did and I passed and I, I
just feel like I was the perpetual alternate candidate.

(03:18):
Like it took me 3 years to on board into the FBI.
So my my on boarding was in October of 2003 and I retired in
October of 2023 after 20 years. And again, just something that
I'd always wanted to do, and I'mthankful I had the opportunity
to do. I started out at the Newark

(03:41):
Field office of the FBI. That's, it was #7 I think on my
list, you know, you put, you putnumbers on them, right?
It's #7 I, I, I think they, theysaw anybody who put it above #50
and they're like, oh, that guy'sgoing there.
And so that was me. I was going there.
And I spent about 7 years working at the Newark Field

(04:01):
office, about seven years as initially assigned to the OSA
def stuff. So the Organized Crime Drug
Enforcement Task Force, which was great work.
I mean, I, I loved it. We worked like International
cartel. Columbia was mostly our thing.
We did drug buys in Columbia. We laundered money with

(04:23):
undercover operations. It was some really cool and fun
work. I, I really enjoyed it, but I'd
always had sort of a desire. Maybe I'd watched too many spy
movies or something, or grew up too much during the, the Cold
War. But I always liked national
security. And so I asked, you know, for
permission, like, hey, can I go over and work some national
security, some CI stuff? And of course everybody on drug

(04:45):
squads. Like, what the hell is the
matter with you? Are you stupid?
I mean, I took, you know, a beating, which I understand, but
I always wanted to work it. And, you know, they come to you
and they're like, OK, well, you,you got this big case.
Just give me another year, give me another two years and we'll
help you get there and do a goodjob and we'll get you there.
Well, you know, like another year comes not another two years
comes not and all you still, youknow, but eventually they they

(05:08):
made good on their promise. And I got to go over to work
some CI stuff on on the squad there and that was good
experience too. But I had no family in, in
Newark, NJ, nothing. And, you know, trying to raise
a, you know, a new family. And so the only ticket out was
to go to headquarters. And you know, at that time you

(05:29):
had two, two paths, right? You could either do a TDYA
temporary duty assignment and come back 18 months later or go
permanent. Well, I had no family.
I, I mean, as much as I liked the work in Newark, I, I didn't
want to go back to New Jersey. And so I opted for the permanent
transfer. We got to, we got to let people
know kind of inside Bureau language.

(05:50):
When someone says, you know, thework is good, it means the
office is terrible and the only thing that's keeping you
interested is that you have a lot of scumbags to go after.
Is that fair? Bingo, man, that so that's one
of the right, obviously one of the the Bureau euphemisms.
The office has great work. That means it's a it's a
disaster of a place to be. Yeah.

(06:11):
I mean, you know, you come in asAGS 10, which is, you know, I
mean, I was one of the few people, let's put it this way,
of 50 people in my class, I think I was literally the only
person that got a raise. And that's only because I was a
public school teacher in Texas. You were one of those guys, too.
I was a public school teacher. After teaching seven years, my
salary was $32,000. So, you know, Texas didn't pay

(06:33):
anything back then to teachers. And so like, I was one of the
only people who got a raise, butyou can't raise a family and
live in Newark, NJ, just outsideof New York on AGS 10 step one
salary. It's just not possible.
It's very difficult, let's put it that way.
And so after putting in my time there, I had to, I had to get

(06:54):
out, I had to do something different.
The commute is an hour plus eachway.
And we spent like extra money tonot live in Pennsylvania, which
a lot of the people did. So it was time to time to get
out and headquarters was our wasmy ticket out.
That's. A terrible, that's a terrible
ticket that you have to buy. But let me let me also hone in a
couple of things. You mentioned this in one of our

(07:15):
earlier takes as we were trying to get this through.
What age were you going through the Academy and what kind of
backgrounds did you see? If you took a pay cut or you
took a raise and everyone else took a pay cut, what were the
backgrounds of the folks that you you entered?
I was 34, so I was a little bit older than the average which you
know was is said to be about 30 just on on average.
So I was a little bit a bit older.
I think the maximum age at that time you could come in is 37.

(07:38):
Otherwise you'd age out. The guy literally sitting next
to me was a rocket scientist, literally like he worked for
NASA. I was a mathematician.
We had attorneys. We had all kinds of crazy
professional people, of course, military people, kind of weird
like, so this is 2003. Our class at that time, I

(08:00):
believe was known as the class with the most females ever.
At that point. We had about 30% females in our
class. It's just not historically a
female dominated profession, butthat was sort of maybe the
beginning of trying to change that.
Yeah, I don't envy that class. Yeah, it was interesting.

(08:22):
I could tell you that. Some some a lot of stories, but.
Let me let me hone in on that for one second.
Yeah, go ahead. Were there instances, no names
needed? Were there instances of marital
infidelity with females in your class that you're aware of?
Infidelity. Not that I'm aware of.
Like there were some relationships that were formed,

(08:44):
sure. I don't think that they were
married though. And and did any marriages fall
apart while? Not that I'm.
Aware male, male or female colleagues?
No, not that I'm aware of. Not from my class, but there was
a rather notorious class counselor there.
At the same time, it wasn't our class counselor who had

(09:05):
apparently lots of problems withwith having affairs with the
with his students going through there just.
I, I, I just point that out because everybody thinks you're
going to get these paradigms of,of virtue and you're going to
get rocket scientists and CIA case officers and all that.
And the reality of it is, is, you know, we had Jim Comedy run

(09:27):
through when my class was there and he came up and talked about
the the show. Quantico was just coming out.
And he was like, that's just what it's like you.
Know we all hang out in our towels and talk.
And I was like, yeah, that's funny 'cause it's not real.
And then I went like every single female minus maybe one of
them was having a relationship with a student or a counselor
there. And three marriages fell apart
from my class. And one of the gals that was in

(09:47):
my class ended up mothering a baby from one of my classmates
when she was married to another agent.
And and like just all of the worst things, I think it
probably got worse over time, but it's interesting. 30%, yeah,
there there's certainly you. You had the seeds of it back
then. For sure, for sure.
And there were definitely some qualified women in the class,
there's no doubt about it. Most of our class, you know, if

(10:10):
you make it to the Academy, I don't know, but the exact number
is, but it's up over 95% graduate at one point, like we
had, we had recycles for injuries, but we only had one
person out of roughly 50 that failed out of of the Academy,
just one person. And they gave her a position in

(10:31):
surveillance to help her out. But yeah, so all but one of us
ultimately became ages. Did did you know that when you
went to the while you were at the Academy, do you know the
fail rate was less than 5%? No, I didn't.
I, I was, you know, I don't know.
I kind of straight laced and I just feared that, you know, I
was going to be that, that one guy who, you know, so I was

(10:51):
always very motivated to, you know, keep a low profile, keep
my head down and and just do whatever I could to get through
it. You know, I just I my my way of
it's always been during life is just don't throw attention to
yourself. Try not to, which is completely
not what I did when I became a whistle blower, right.
Yeah, I end up a lot of attention to myself against my

(11:12):
better senses and and judgement,but yeah.
But it was good to get out of the Academy.
It was, I mean, it wasn't the the best training.
I mean, it was just a lot of administrative stuff.
Yeah. And.
And I think that's also worth people hearing because every,
you know, you see these shows that glamorize it and they act
like it's boot camp and it's grad school and it's the
toughest thing ever. You were years after The Silence

(11:34):
of the Lambs, but did people still have that sort of attitude
that that's what they were getting into?
And yeah, the Hollywood version.For sure, there was definitely
people that were there for the wrong reasons that you could
tell or you could sense and you know, nothing individually was
hard. It was if anything was
difficult, it was the collected.You know, you've got the

(11:56):
studying, you've got the, the physical, you've got the, the
tactics and of course the firearms.
And any one of those things could, could wash you out and
send you home. And you know, it's, it's, I
guess part of it is just as the high stakes.
I mean, you quit your job, you, you, you jettisoned your job and
you may or may not be able to goback to it if you fail out.

(12:18):
So it's, it's just high stakes, I guess if you, if you do not
succeed, but they found ways to get most people through.
That's the to get people not through if they didn't like them
too. We saw that in a couple other
classes that were going through at the same time and they would
have these meetings like all theinstructors, they called it the

(12:38):
pig or whatever, where they would have like these informal
boards to people who didn't exhibit the right
characteristics. They would find ways to to get
them out. They would call them, deem them
unsuitable. Yes, the suitability crisis.
Were there any other school teachers, former school teachers
that were in your class that yourecall?

(12:59):
No, I don't think so. And I only met a couple in the
Bureau. I think it's, it's kind of
funny, like I, I processed through San Antonio, the same
office. I think you'd process through.
And I I think that maybe the only reason I even got that
first phone call, that first letter in the mail was because
the applicant coordinator was a former teacher.
Yeah. And see, I I just speculate.

(13:20):
And she saw that I was a teacherand, you know, had, you know,
succeeded at what I had done through life And then maybe, I
don't know, took pity on a fellow teacher.
I don't know. But.
That's a we can't rule it out. And you know, it's one of those
little coincidence. We'll play with one last little
thought on that. You said you were 34.
The average age we know is probably late 20s or like right
at 30. Were you the oldest member of

(13:40):
your class or were you close to it?
No, I was the probably the upperquartile of the class in age.
But I think there was one guy that was like a couple of weeks
away from his 37th birthday whenhe graduated type of thing.
So like, yeah. But by and large, the average
age I think in our class was right around 30 to 31.
And I was, you know, probably inthe upper 10 people in terms of

(14:04):
age. Yeah.
All right, so Newark, it's got good work, but nobody wants to
be there. You're working drugs for, what,
almost eight years it sounded like?
5-6 years roughly, yeah. And.
Then and then CI after. That and then CI.
Yep, in Newark. In Newark, that's right for
about two years. OK.
And you're and you punched the ticket and what kind of work did
you go to in headquarters and what was the headquarters

(14:28):
experience? That's a That's a different
animal once you. Stepped up, it's a way different
animal and it's not for everybody.
It's probably not for most people.
I, I took AI, took a, a job, an SSA job at headquarters in the
Iran unit. I worked a subset of
counterintelligence called counter proliferation, like
preventing people from getting, you know, parts and components

(14:51):
for their WMD programs and whatnot.
And Iran was a big thing back then and I was fortunate enough,
I say fortunate enough, I I wanted it fortunate enough to
get that position in the Iran unit.
And you know, at the time it covered all Iran CI.
So your Intel officer type stuffand as well as like this counter

(15:12):
proliferation thing. And in fact, like nobody really
knew or liked counter proliferation.
They didn't know what it was. It's kind of like the most
criminal aspect of CI work of ofany.
And so like I took to it becauseI was a drug guy.
And so like when people on my squad in Newark were, you know,
having to go over to like the USattorney's office, they were
sometimes like, I don't, I've never talked to AUS attorney's

(15:35):
office before. I don't know what I'm like.
I'll do it. I've done it before.
It's cool, you know, so when I got to headquarters in the Iran
unit, I, they said, oh, you, youwork counter proliferation.
They're like, oh, you can have all those cases.
You know, they didn't want to have anything to do with it.
I was like, fine. So it was me and one other SSA
at headquarters in the Iran unitthat, that program manage.

(15:57):
That's what they do program. They don't actually work cases,
but program manage the entire country's Iran counter
proliferation program. And it was, I loved it.
I, I thought it was great and I got a chance to work a lot with
some of the other agencies like CIA.
We partner and work very closelywith them.
And from doing that, we have details over there.

(16:21):
And so I raised my hand and said, hey, I'd like to go be a
detailee over at CIA working thesame kind of stuff.
And I was fortunate enough to get selected to go over to the
agency for a couple of years to be a detailee working basically
the exact same stuff, except notjust Iran, Syria, North Korea,

(16:42):
primarily Iran, but still there's others.
And this was at the time that the JCPOA was being undertaken.
And it was just a very tumultuous time in the Iran
program, which actually was the source of my very first
protected disclosure in 2015. So after spending a couple of
years at CIA doing some really, really good stuff, some really

(17:03):
cool stuff, I often consider that sort of the high watermark
of my career. I mean, you felt like you were
actually. Yeah, being detailed over to the
to the agency. At least it particularly in the
capacity I was in. Sometimes detailees turn out to
be pencil, pencil pushers depending on what position.
The position I was in as a detailee was probably the most

(17:24):
operationally oriented position that our detailees had.
And so I just got to do some fantastic operational type
things that I wish I could talk about.
Yeah. I'm watching you talk.
I'm watching you dance around what you can see my.
Filter is going off on my head like I I can't say or whatever,
but it was just a great sense ofprofessional satisfaction like

(17:50):
anything you would see related to Iran that in the news during
those years. But I mean, we were working it
like every day. It was it was stuff that you
would see on the news almost on a daily basis whenever Iran came
up. And, you know, we focused on
interdicting things. And so, well, we worked a lot
with other intelligence servicesall around the world, people.

(18:13):
I was surprised how much and howfree we worked with other
intelligence agencies around theworld.
You know, we work with other intelligence, other nations
closer than we worked with some other U.S. government partners.
So that was just fascinating. And when I finished with my
detail there, I came back as andwas promoted and basically came

(18:34):
back as a unit chief in our counter proliferation section.
And so I was the chief then of FB is Iran counter proliferation
program for the next 4 1/2 five years until I left headquarters.
I want to dig into the the granularity of it because I
think a lot of people don't havean idea of what why CI is not
considered to be very fun counterintelligence.

(18:54):
Oh yeah, generally no arrests. Would you agree?
Generally that's correct. A lot of sort of information
based gathering of of Intel and mapping out networks or mapping
out who's talking to who, but a lot of is not criminal activity.
100% right. But the overlap that you had
doing drugs and OSA def type cases and counter proliferation,
it makes sense to me. I'd never thought about it

(19:15):
before, but we're talking about you're setting up probably
controlled buys of of controlledproducts like ITAR products,
restricted items. You don't kind of talk about
sort of why that that backgroundsets you up perfectly to do
something that most people, mostpeople, if you said you want to
go do counter proliferation and you worked in the FBI, they'd
rather like put a pencil into their nose.
They no doubt about it, absolutely.

(19:36):
And it was this weird hybrid that I'd sort of found as a
niche because, you know, there'sthat, that that group of people
that want to put on their, theirtheir cloak and daggers fiber
spy thing and go chase like an IO from, you know, whatever
Russia for three years and do nothing.
And then, you know, maybe go interview him on his way out.

(19:58):
There's a unique personality that can do that.
That wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do.
And because I was set up with this background in criminal
stuff, which I got to tell you like at the time.
Our office mandated everybody work criminal for two years
before you even consider going to work anything national
security. And I didn't like that policy at

(20:19):
the time because I wanted to work national SEC.
I'm like, oh, come on, man, I can do this.
But I'm telling you, that was the smartest thing and the right
thing to do because it set me upfor being able to do like CI and
counter proliferation work so much better because I had that
background in the criminal realmand I was able to understand
prosecutions. I was able to talk to US

(20:39):
attorney's offices, and it made all the difference in the world
for going over to work CI. And then I just gravitated
towards the CP stuff because I had that unique experience and
could turn CI cases into criminal cases.
And we're able to sort of impactnational security using sort of

(21:00):
these traditional criminal toolsbecause there are a lot of legal
tools that prohibit this export of goods to other countries.
It's very convoluted web of laws, but it was very effective
to do and I enjoyed doing it. And I found my home there, I
guess. The the way it was explained to
me in The Academy Is that there's this thing that we go

(21:22):
after and it's called contrabandand that's the government's
property. And so that's what drugs are and
illegal guns or whatever else. But you know, being able to work
counter proliferation, it's the same sort of mechanism you're
just going up against. Instead of, you know, St. level
gangs or cartels, you're doing nation state actors and
whoever's working on their behalf is that.
Oh, it's so true. And so especially coming from a

(21:44):
background of working like cartel drugs, like one of our,
our main techniques that we, we implemented, we, we ran
undercover operations to laundercartel money and that's how we
made our drug cases. So we had a Group 1 undercover
operation where, you know, so the cartels would send cocaine
that was took for a big thing back at that time.

(22:04):
We'd send cocaine into the US, But their big problem was, OK,
well, that's great. We have a 10 keys or 100 keys
in, you know, New York. How do we get the money back to
Colombia? That's where we came in with our
undercover operation. We had an undercover operation.
We would physically go out into the street, meet money brokers,
pick up the drug money that you know, so you know, they would

(22:26):
sell all the drugs they would collect.
We would pick up to three $400,000 at a time in a parking
lot in a mall and with the understanding that we have a
business. And then we would take, we would
as part of the undercover, we would physically take the cash
back. We'd count it deposited to our
COBRA bank account and then we'dwait for instructions from

(22:47):
Columbia, the, the cartels on where to wire it to.
So. And so that was sort of their,
their trade mechanism. And by doing that, we were able
to identify the assets and players in the Columbia side of
it, as well as the money brokersand the people distributing the
drugs here. So I laundered like several
$1,000,000 of, of cash back to Colombia doing this drug

(23:10):
operation. And then ultimately, because
some of the US attorneys are skeptical of prosecuting,
sometimes they're like, well, how do we know that this is
actually drug money? And so we were doing like these
goofy things like testing the, you know, 50 and $100 bills for
like the amount of residue cocaine on them and things like

(23:31):
that. And we're like, come on, like
usually, of course it's drug money.
What do you think this is? You don't just pick up $400,000
in the parking lot of a Macy's or something.
And so we're like, fine, we'll, we'll just go and buy the, the
cocaine ourselves in Colombia. And so that's exactly what we
did. In fact, I, I believe it was the

(23:55):
first time the US government ever bought undercover cocaine
in Colombia. The Colombian constitution
prohibited that type of undercover activity from Yeah.
And so we went down there right after they changed.
I mean, we had an ongoing relationship, but once they
changed their constitution, we went down there and talked to
their, they call them the Fistilia, their prosecutors,

(24:16):
their head prosecutors and pitched a plan of our
undercovers buying cocaine from in Bogota and they approved it.
And so, yeah, I went down there and, you know, we used a
confidential informant to actually do the transaction that
I, I handled. And yeah, we, we went down
there, we bought 6 kilos at a time of, of cocaine several

(24:38):
times. And it was, it's pretty, pretty
interesting, pretty pretty scarytoo.
And you're buying, you know, high purity cocaine directly
from the cartels. I believe so.
There's a lot of money in it too.
Like we were buying cocaine in whatever 2006, $1000 a kilo and
in Colombia, yeah. And the cocaine in New York at

(25:01):
that time at my memories, right,is probably about 25 or so a
kilo, maybe more. So there's a tremendous profit
motive. And and then like when you
compound on top of that, the, the cocaine we bought there, the
lowest purity cocaine we bought was like 80% pure and we bought
stuff over 9095% pure. When you see it in the street,

(25:21):
it's way deluded to like I don'teven though like 5 or 10% purity
or something. So there's this huge markup.
Just getting stepped on from dealer to dealer to dealer and
you guys are? Playing, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we of course as an undercover picking up the money,
we would take a cut like so our fee was anywhere from 5 to 10%.

(25:43):
So if you brought us say $400,000 to to launder, you know
our fee would be upwards of 10% of that to to do it.
But with a 25% or A25X markup 25what, 1000% or something or
easily? Easily right 20. 500% markup I
guess you're getting horrible they they can eat 10% no problem
yeah now when you're doing the national security stuff you're

(26:05):
dealing with nation state obviously Iran being the focus
were you doing by walks were youdoing control buys and and and
setting up you know brokers trying to be that same man in
the middle and using. The same thing.
No, it was a little bit more complex in some.
In some ways it was exactly the same.
Like these networks, the money laundering, the movement of
goods, it's the same thing. It's a widget instead of a kilo.

(26:26):
I mean, it really is the same thing.
The difference though, in terms of the undercover was as a
matter of U.S. policy, they werenot wanting or willing to let
equipment walk because these things were going into missiles
and nuclear programs and things like that.

(26:47):
So it was very difficult at bestto get the approval to let
something walk. But we were still able to do the
network analysis and one of the two and interdictions was one of
the big things. And that was, that was a lot of
fun in a sense, because we had, so we could use FISA obviously

(27:13):
for targeting those networks overseas.
The problem had been we really weren't allowed to use FISA to
conduct interdictions of stuff. But we were able to figure out a
way to to do that. And it was great when you would
interdict a a shipment, whether it was in the United States or
overseas. It was great to see them then

(27:36):
argue about what happened that. Was.
Good, I blanked out for a second.
Am I still with you? You are.
Yeah, I saw that too. It's.
It looked like the feed was getting interfered with and then
it just disappeared for a secondbut OK.
Cool. So yeah, we were able to
interdict things. And then they had no idea where
it came from. Like, how did you know?

(27:58):
How did they find out or where did this go?
And they would blame each other and sort of destroy their
trusted networks because then they think each one's, you know,
a source or a rat. And then we took that same
thing. Instead of interdicting physical
goods, we started interdicting money and using treasury
authorities, which was great too.
And we were able to because theyhave to pay for these things.

(28:21):
And so it's usually done by wires, for example.
All of this stuff kind of indicates that the people that
were involved in it, they absolutely knew what they were
getting involved in. They knew that they were trying
to skirt US laws and they knew that they were trying to provide
contraband. Let's call it broadly speaking,
dual use technologies or or you know, military specific to a a.

(28:41):
100% accurate, yeah. Most of the time now the US
companies like, so just to to beclear, like the US companies
that were selling these things 99% of the time didn't know that
it was going to Iran. The for using Iran as the
example, Iran would use cutouts in third countries.
So the US company from their perspective was selling, you

(29:03):
know, a widget to, you know, UAEor Malaysia where they have
other customers. So the US company very rarely
willingly or knowingly sent stuff to like, say, Iran.
We had special access to specialintelligence.
We knew it was going to Iran. And that's where we were able to
sort of slip ourselves in the middle in one fashion or another

(29:26):
to disrupt or scuttle the transaction, whether it be with
the goods or and or the money, and then watch them fight about
what happened. Broadly speaking, is that where
the the CIA, the agency in inject is, is the overseas
connections and for sure some oftheir that's their capability.
Absolutely. And it could be at very, it
could be at a lot of points. It could be at a physical port.
It could be in the financial system.

(29:48):
It could be in a lot of different ways.
Yeah, yeah. So you got pretty steeped in
that. How many years were you doing it
as a as a program manager? So I was a program manager like
an SSA for about two years and then I went to the agency for a
couple of years officially like a two year detail, a little bit
of extra overlap on either side and then back to headquarters as

(30:11):
the chief of the Iran program for like the next four or five
years. It's like left headquarters.
Well, I kind of enjoyed my headquarters time.
I was doing what I felt was somemeaningful and some fun stuff,
kind of creating some new programs as well that, you know,
I believe still live to this daythat, you know, we're using to
interdict and and thwart things.So I sort of enjoyed it.

(30:33):
That was to me, that was a good time.
Obviously the bureaucracy of it was a disaster and the way the
headquarters was run is an absolute disaster and train
wreck. What?
What state or district did you live in during your headquarters
time? I lived in Virginia, Yeah.

(30:56):
Fairfax County. Yep.
And so I was like, I was on the train every day I came in now.
Yeah. So you lived in the Americas and
I think that delineates the the different types of people that
go to headquarters because I canonly be friends with people that
lived in Virginia. Not the Maryland.
Folks, I just don't get it. Virginia is right there.
You could live. There.
You can own a gun and it's okay,yeah.

(31:18):
It's okay. Nope, Although not New Jersey,
you couldn't own a gun. Right, Yeah, so you lived, you
moved from America to a slightlymore America, even though it's
not very American. That's right.
In some ways that's right. Okay, let's set up your Well, I
last little question on that too.
What was your interaction with the field agents 'cause I know
it's a mixed bag when it comes to program managers and their

(31:38):
interaction. My buddy Steve friend regularly
talks about someone taps in for 18 months, you know, puts their
name on a memo, doesn't help anything, doesn't understand the
program. What was your dynamic and and
did that change at all during your time there as you got more
senior in it and how how did youinteract with the field?
Depends on who you ask I. Think yeah of.
Course, as a, As a field agent working CI or anything, like I

(32:02):
hated headquarters. They were a bunch of idiots who
did nothing to help your case and were just obstacles,
administrative burdens. I hated this program managers,
as they're called there and thenI went and became one.
But in some ways that that was maybe helpful because like I, I

(32:23):
tried to swear to myself, I willnever be like like those people.
Like my personal position was. I'm here to assist you, the case
agent, not run your case or tellyou what or how to do it
necessarily. I'm going to try to help you and
add value to it in any way that I possibly could.

(32:43):
I'm going to try to make your life easier.
You know, you had to get headquarters approvals to do all
kinds of things. I mean, as a field case agent,
especially on national security stuff, you need headquarters
approval. If you want to travel somewhere,
you gotta get headquarters approval.
If you want to do this or that, you gotta get headquarters
approval. So my job I felt was to make it
as easy as possible. Now having said that, like when

(33:05):
you work those national securitythings, you, you really are
working in the interagency. This is no longer like
partnering on a like a Vic MO bank robbery with like the local
sheriff. If you have a big case on like a
counter proliferation, like I was working, not only are you
working with almost certainly the CIA and other three letter

(33:26):
agencies, but you might be working with Mossad, you might
be working with Germans, you might be working with the
British. And those are all people with
real stakes and equities that, you know, Jim, the case agent in
Omaha just can't like dictate terms to the entire
international community on how his case is going to run.

(33:47):
And that's where like I felt like it was the most challenging
to to get everybody synchronized.
I mean, you really have to be a diplomat to get everybody
singing on the same page. And so like I'm, I am certain
that there were a lot of folks that probably didn't like me in
the field because of having to coordinate these things.

(34:09):
There are others that like me a lot that were like, hey, thanks
for helping me coordinate with, you know, Mossad or whoever.
Sure. Well, the reason I bring that up
is because I've had people who retired and it is a unique
experience to spend enough time at headquarters to understand
it. And almost to a man, the folks
that I respect that worked in the Bureau and retired said if
you really want to understand what the FBI is, you have to go

(34:30):
to headquarters. You have to spend time there
because you've got to see it from the side that you just
explained, and I've never heard it explained quite that way and
that that's where the other equities come.
In it might be true, like like I, I obviously have heard that
and people, you know, criticize that philosophy coming from a
headquarters guy and, and it, it's probably not necessary on

(34:53):
the strictly criminal stuff. I don't know.
I, I guess I can't say that. But on the national security
stuff, when there are so many stakeholders, it really is like
imperative to to know and be able to coordinate this.
And you don't operate in a, in avacuum.
And then, you know, there's certain field offices, right,
that are particularly like, thisis my investigation, screw you

(35:19):
and screw everybody else. I'm going to do it my way like
you know. We're totally not talking about
New York field office, right? There, right?
Exactly. It's so true.
I was trying to. Because I had respect the work
that they did, the folks in New York on like this program, best,

(35:39):
best cases they had. Oh my gosh.
So I Can't Sing their praises enough.
And I know some of them were very upset with me at various
points, but to their credit, they had the most impactful best
work and they were phenomenal, not notwithstanding the the gear
grinding of trying to coordinatethings and and get things to

(36:01):
work out the way that they they ought to be, but.
But that perspective and the headquarter side of it and the
working on the agency side, I think that does give the bona
fides to talk about the the first whistleblower activity.
I got a little CHEAT SHEET because I got to listen to you
talk to Chris Farrell about it. So I have kind of a sense of
what that was. But it even makes more sense
because I didn't hear you talk about that background and the

(36:22):
international interplay of all the other, you know, IC partners
in the world you want to set up.And then walk us through your
first whistleblower activity andwe'll get into consequences of
what that looks like. Yeah, sure.
So I come back from CIA and of course, like even at that time,
there was the negotiations for the nuclear deal.

(36:42):
But around 2013 is when those negotiations really started
getting serious and heating up. And so you had John Kerry was
the Secretary of State at the time and our investigations are
in that space. Iran counter proliferation, in

(37:03):
particular our multi year, multiagency, multi nation, in many
cases investigations. And yeah, So what happens in
20/13/2014 when they're desperate for any agreement with
Iran, they start interfering with law enforcement, not just

(37:27):
FBI, Department of Commerce, DHS, other investigations.
But obviously I'll just speak tothe FBI side of things.
You know, we had a lot of arrestwarrants and indictments pending
and some of these people, many of them are international
figures and they don't travel often.
We use it extradition as a tool quite a bit and try to get them

(37:49):
maybe lured to a country that's favorable for extradition.
You want to talk about what the what the process is for pause
and and the State Department involvement there since she's
brought up Kerry? Yeah, yeah.
So when you get so, you know, wewould get an indictment on your
Iranian bad guy who travels a lot.
Maybe he's in Iran but travels internationally, probably never

(38:11):
to the United States. And you know, then there's this
thing where with Interpol you can put a red notice in which
like alerts the system. Well, we generally would not put
red notices in because there's agood chance that that would leak
that we were interested and thenthey would never travel.
So you're basically what we did on the intelligence side is we
would wait and have good visibility on their travel

(38:34):
plans. And if we saw them traveling, we
would start spinning up our our coordination and we would then
while they're like in flight, get a provisional arrest
warrant, a pause, you described it.
And then send that provisional arrest warrant to the country
that they're about to land in orjust landed in or traveling in
and saying, Hey, we want to arrest them and we pledge to

(38:56):
extradite them. And here's the charges that
they're on. And we had to, you know, pick
that very careful because only certain countries, every country
had different rules. And even the countries that had
favorable rules didn't always have the political will.
And so we had to work very carefully with countries that
both had the rules and the political will to extradite

(39:17):
somebody back to us. And so they would land or
whatever to do their meetings, and then they would be greeted
by the local police who would take them into custody.
And ultimately, you know, it would usually take months and
months, but ultimately extraditethem to the United States.
But they're very complex and difficult to pull off things.

(39:39):
And so the interference comes from State Department.
Any time that there was any sortof law enforcement type thing
against the Iranians, like clockwork, the Iranians meaning
like the foreign minister Javad Zarif or his deputy would be on
the phone with John Kerry complaining and like, hey, what

(40:02):
are you trying to do? And.
You know, you're trying to to derail these these negotiations.
You've got to let this guy go. You can't do that.
And in there, Ernst, to get thisagreement, the State Department
was like, oh, yeah, sure. We'll do whatever you want us to
do. And so State Department and DOJ
formed this, I call it a workinggroup.

(40:24):
Actually I call it the Star Chamber.
Like there were a small group ofpeople that would get together
and give like this thumbs up or thumbs down whether we could
arrest somebody. Now, this is something where
we've investigated for 5-10 years maybe.
And we went to AUS attorney. If US attorney agreed to

(40:46):
prosecute, the US attorney took it to a grand jury. the US
attorney got an arrest warrant and an indictment signed by a
judge. And now we're trying to execute
that arrest warrant and somebodyat State Department, like in
some cases, specifically John Kerry was stepping in and
saying, no, you can't do that. Like this is not prosecutorial

(41:08):
discretion here. Prosecutorial discretion is when
you know, you're like with the AUSAI don't really think we have
enough here, doesn't need a threshold, blah, blah, blah.
We better not take it to the grand jury.
That's prosecutorial discretion.And I might not always agree
with it, but that's just the wayit goes.
This is you've got a warrant. And the guy in some cases, like
we had one guy that landed in the United States, he was on a

(41:31):
terrorist watch list. He was part of their nuclear
program. We got in here and we're about
to arrest him. And as he was landing, they said
they're not allowed to arrest him, send him back.
We're like, what are you talkingabout?
This is like a major figure in Iran's program.
The amount of intelligence that we would have gotten from

(41:51):
debriefing, looking at his electronics and things like
that, that he had with them would have informed on the very
deal that they're negotiating. But they don't want it.
Not to mention taking a very important person out of the the
equation. They insisted and they made us
break all kinds of rules. You need to remove them from
NCIC right now and everything. And DHS and CVP are looking at

(42:14):
us like, what kind of idiots areyou?
I have an active warrant in NCIChere.
We have to arrest them. And I mean, it was just a
complete, complete show. And they let him go.
Did they let him go? Absolutely.
They let him go and actually it's part of my that was part of
my that specific instance was anexample I used in my protected

(42:34):
disclosure 2015. I did made protected disclosure
in July of 2015 to directly to director comedy and so in 2015
as they formed an agreement withIran, the US Congress passed the
law called the Iran Nuclear agreement Review Act of 2015 and

(42:56):
in it it's specifically prohibited during the review
period of the negotiated deal. It specifically prohibited any
type of sanctions relief or any help or assistance.
Section B3 for for your people out there that want to check
and. They'll be.
There will be. Some I know, that's why I throw

(43:17):
it out there. And by virtue of interfering
with these lawful arrest warrants, they were providing
sanctions relief to Iran, allowing them to not be arrested
and giving them this reprieve. And so I was like, look, I might
not have liked the previous policy of the US, but I didn't

(43:39):
necessarily know or think it wasa violation of law, you know,
the standard basically for whistleblower disclosure.
But when I saw that they were violating this new statute at
the time, I was like, I can't, Ican't sit idly anymore.
And I took it to two of our attorneys at FBI in NSLB and
said, hey, can you guys give me your opinion to the interference

(44:03):
effort, the interference that we've seen from State
Department, FBI itself and DOJ, Does that constitute a violation
of this federal act? Do you can you look at it?
They're like, sure, we'll be happy to look at.
They emailed me back and I posted this on my, on my
account. So they emailed me back, said,
yeah, we think it did. Would you like us to, you know,
I was like, can you put it in writing?

(44:24):
They're like, yeah, would it like a blurb on e-mail be
sufficient? I'm like, yeah, that's fine.
They're like, do you want me to?Do you want us to add that?
It's based on political factors and political interference?
I'm like, no, you don't need to do that.
I'll let the chips fall where they may just, you know, then
violates the statue and they're like, sure, next day I get a
phone call. The attorneys got a phone call

(44:45):
saying you're not putting anything in writing and they
were shut down. And I have that on e-mail which
I posted on my account too. So complete corruption.
NSLB, National Security legal branch or law branch.
And so these are attorneys inside the FBI that their entire
job is interpreting national security matters of federal law.

(45:05):
Yes. Correct.
That's right. They're legit, like that's their
expertise. And that's exactly what they
did. And I asked them to do just
that. And, and they knew, you know, we
worked with them before they knew what had been going on with
these cases. And I simply asked them, hey,
the things that I documented here, can you look against this
law here that was passed and tell me if you think that this

(45:25):
law was violated. And they said yes.
And they were willing to put it in writing until management shut
them down. And, and that's actually why
that branch exists. You go out there and query them
with specific things. You go, here's the circumstance.
Here's a tactic I want to use. Here's a, you know, here's an
operation I'd like to run. Can we validate that this thing
is something I can legally do and then I can ethically do?

(45:47):
And then we can, you know, an age we had a, a deal where we
had a guy who, who escaped on a,on a UFAP from New Mexico and he
had been accused and then he wasindicted for sexually
assaulting. It's more graphic than that, but
let's just leave it nicely. A handful of young girls.
And he was old. He was in his 70s, late 70s.
And his family members helped him escape to the other side of

(46:09):
the country, you know, to the other side of the border.
So he went to Mexico and he was hanging out there.
And the international unit endedup locating him, finding him,
knew what was going on. And so I ran this idea.
I said, look, he's got Social Security coming in.
United States is paying this manand he's he's a fugitive from
justice. We can shut that down.
So we did and then we found thatthe the footage showed that his,

(46:30):
his daughter had involved herself in getting him across
the border and she was living inthe United States.
And I said, why don't we make a phone call to the number that we
have on record and state to him in no uncertain terms that you
can surrender yourself or we're going to go after your your
daughter for accessory. And here's the statute that I
want to do. Can you interpret whether this
plays? And are we violating anything by

(46:51):
asking a man in Mexico whose phone number we have to turn
himself in at the bridge the Americas at a certain time and,
you know, in a week or we're going to go and make sure that
we get this the the daughter. And we should probably get the
daughter anyway because that's the right thing to do.
So we kind of laid out the plan and, you know, the same kind of
deal. They look at it and they go, OK,
well, this is where you would run afoul.
Or here's how you'd have to wordyour language and this what your
OP plan has to look like. But that's what these guys
exist. For yeah, giving the parameters

(47:12):
to make sure you're doing it right.
I mean, you know, a lot of us are type A personalities, right?
And we, we come up with sometimes maybe even some crazy
ideas. They're supposed to be.
That might be a crazy idea I just thought by the way, but I
don't think it's a bad. No, no.
And they're supposed to be the backstop to make sure that, you
know, we're not doing anything crazy.
And sometimes it works and sometimes in this case.
That's right. That guy's still.

(47:33):
That guy's still in Mexico. As far as.
Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably watching you,
laughing at you. That hopefully so that and
that's just the reward. But end of the day, all you're
trying to do and they asked you for politics.
Did they know what your politicswere?
These people, you do they Do they know you personally?
Yeah, I mean, you, you know, them headquarters is a big
social club and and whatnot. So you go out drinking with them

(47:53):
and stuff. I mean, you certainly get a
sense maybe. But you know, that's sort of a
weird thing. Like when you look at like the
politicization of the FBI, I didn't really feel or notice any
politicization until like this 2015.
Like that was the first time that I really started to see and
feel politically motivated things happening.

(48:15):
And like I can remember. So New Jersey, where I came from
as a as an agent, like that's the liberal place.
And frankly, a lot of the agentsthere, you know, were more
liberal and Democrats. But yet on the squad, Myosa def
squad, you could sit there and talk about, you know, your
liberal or, or democratic views and I could talk about a
conservative view and it doesn'tmatter.
Like you're still going through the door.

(48:36):
At the same time, you still trust each other with your
lives. Things changed in 2015 and
moving forward things and I frankly attribute that to
comedy. I mean, it really became
politicized and it didn't change.
It got worse under Ray in my in my opinion.
And it do you. Have a sense of what that do.
You have a sense of the mechanism that comedy would have

(48:58):
used that that caused that. I I would say hiring is probably
a factor that that inculcated itin the lower ranks, right?
When you purposefully and we're talking about like the quote UN
quote DEI hiring for example, when you.
I'm hearing personnel is policy.I'm just saying.
Personnel is in fact policy and it's long lived policy as well

(49:23):
because as you know, you if everyone Floyd is very difficult
to well, I I was gonna. Have have you heard the term 20
year mistake? Have you heard that term?
Yeah, yeah. And it's true.
Like I, I unfortunately had to work to get a couple of people
removed at one point and it is next to impossible.
And so like, I personally, like,understand why managers in the

(49:45):
FBI just throw their hands up. Like I can't do anything
legitimately. People the need to go, you can't
get rid of them and then. Send them to SOG.
They can only they can screw up a whole team instead of screwing
up one person's desk. But if you're a whistleblower,
man, they will find a way to getrid of you in a heartbeat.
Suddenly, suddenly they can finda way.

(50:06):
Yeah, it's. Well, let's do, let's do
consequences. What method did you get your
whistleblower disclosure your your protected disclosure to
comedy? You said you took it to him
directly. So what was that route?
I literally emailed it to him. So I got this, this thing back
from the attorneys. I'm saying yeah, we'll put it in
writing, yadda yadda. And then I get I, I talked to
them and they're like, no, we can't put it right.

(50:26):
I'm like, that's it, I'm done. I immediately sat down and
started writing my protected disclosure.
And I think it was like a Thursday night at like 7:00 or
something. I sent it the e-mail.
It was an e-mail directly to to James Comedy and.
And how did you, how did you formulate this disclosure?
Because as you mentioned, there are parameters that have to be
fit for it to be quote UN quote.Protected.

(50:48):
Yeah. So I, I, you know, being a, an
agent, a case agent, you know, Itry to think in terms of like
proving a case, like an agent, like collecting evidence,
demonstrating evidence. And so like it all of my whistle
blowing. I have always tried to tie
whatever my complaint is to a specific and I articulated what

(51:09):
the fact or I'm sorry, what the statute is, it's been violated
or what the policy. It's not that I'm just like
making up some allegation that Ididn't like or didn't agree with
and then also providing the evidence to sport and show that
this was broken. So that's sort of what I did.
I, I laid out in my protect disclosure the, the headline of

(51:29):
it, the title of the e-mail was whistleblower protected
disclosure to make it, you know,blank and, you know, be crystal
clear what this was and not be ambiguous about it.
And then, you know, I tried to acknowledge in the beginning, I
understand the greater policy posture of the United States,
etcetera, etcetera. However, you know, these are the

(51:50):
laws that were broken, specifically this law, these
were the policies that were broken.
And here's examples illustratingthat.
And I tried to keep it short. I think it was, I don't know,
maybe two or three pages, 3 pages or something, but I laid
out specific examples showing some very damning and

(52:11):
significant things where people like John Kerry himself were
interfering with lawful FBI and other agency arrest warrants and
wielding power arbitrarily that they didn't have.
And it sounds like you were not rewarded with an on the spot
award for doing a great job. So what happens next?

(52:33):
Surprisingly comedy, I say. Surprisingly comedy responded to
me. He sent an e-mail back on, I
believe Sunday night or Sunday. It was night or night.
Unfortunately, his response was really completely dismissive.
And you know, I talked about that prosecutorial discretion.
He chalked everything up to prosecutorial discretion.
He kind of missed the point thatthese people had already been

(52:56):
indicted in some cases years andyears ago.
And the the whole influence and people can read my protective
disclosure online now because I posted it to X.
There's some pretty serious things like the the personal
financial enrichment of Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in one
case. So those things were done with

(53:19):
Kerry's knowledge and approval. That's corruption.
There's no two ways about it. It's corruption.
And if I could tell the classified story, man, it would
make it all that much clearer, too.
I wish I could. So he, yeah, he dismissed it,
said, hey, we'll send it over toinspection division.
You know, they sent it over to inspection division.

(53:41):
Frankly, I thought it would be investigated.
I was very surprised when I got a letter like, I don't know, six
weeks later, which I also postedsaying, you know, we're not
going to investigate it. I was like, what?
I documented a violation of a specific law that Congress just
passed. Was that the first time that you
kind of did a double take at or had a kind of a like a real

(54:03):
serious gut check on the on the Bureau?
That was the eye opener for me. I mean, because I went into it
like this was a, a serious matter.
I didn't undertake this lightly.And in fact, I told all of the
my employees in in my unit like,hey, I'm doing this and I showed
them my protective disclosure before I submitted.
I think it was before, maybe it was just after and said, hey,

(54:23):
look, I'm not asking anybody to sign on to this.
I know you all are disappointed and upset with the same
shenanigans that I am, but I'm just showing this to you.
I might not be here, you know, next week or something.
How was that received by folks around?
Actually, it's my understanding that at least two other
employees wrote their own protected disclosures, echoing

(54:45):
the same things that I did in myprotected disclosure and got the
same similar, you know, thanks, but no thanks.
We're not, we're not investigating it.
We're not going to look into it,But I, I don't know, I felt like
I needed to be, you know, transparent with them and let
them know what I was doing and, you know, it was up to them if
they wanted to jump in on it or not.

(55:05):
It was interesting because some were like no, I they were
clearly afraid of the consequences of of saying
something even though they shared the same belief.
Yeah, even though they get that annual whistleblower training.
That's weird. Why do they?
Yeah, what's that far? What's that training do?
There's a there's a culture moment I want to dig into and
it's it's unique, I think at least our maybe common

(55:26):
experience. But if you haven't had that
moment, the gut check, the eye open, the unexpected consequence
of something that you thought you were doing the right, you
thought you were probably being trained for that moment, were
you not? Because I don't want to put
words in your mouth. But I didn't.
I feel like I've heard you say that.
I did not think or feel that retaliation was headed my way.

(55:51):
I had a little quirk on the video.
I didn't know if it. Yeah, Yeah, you're good.
You didn't think. OK, You were saying that you
didn't think or. Feel.
Yeah. I didn't think or feel that I
would have any retaliation per SE.
I mean, like you said, we get annual training about it.
I took it very seriously. I consulted attorneys ahead of
time, like FBI attorneys to makesure I wasn't like some lunatic
in left field with this. And I again, I was just shocked.

(56:13):
Like I, I didn't put everything in my protected disclosure
because AI was trying to keep itshort.
And then BI was like, well, they're going to open an
investigation and you know, I'lltell them the other stuff then
you know, that I have and you know, I get this e-mail back
saying we're not going to investigate.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
Like, and by the way, like Ding,Ding, Ding, these other two or
three things to inspection division, you the chief and

(56:37):
asking him if OIG had seen it. And he said, yeah, OIG saw it
and they declined it on such andsuch date.
And so, you know, good luck. And that was it.
I mean, I got, you know, yelled at by, you know, the assistant
director pretty good. And I think, you know, I didn't
really have career and ambitionsbeyond my current position at

(56:57):
that point. So like, I know my career would,
it was, was over at that point. But I didn't, you know, I, I
wasn't aspiring to anything further.
It was, I guess, kind of funny too, because not long after
this, like my boss pulls me intohis to his office.
My boss was section chief. He's like, and I didn't have
field desk. I wasn't a field supervisor

(57:19):
previously at this point. So I was AGS 15 unit chief, but
I had not been a field supervisor, just a headquarter
supervisor. And if you're progressing
through your career, you have tobe do 2 years as a field
supervisor to check that box to go up in your career.
So my boss pulls me in and it's like, hey, Bill, there's going
to be a desk coming open at WFO.And I know you don't have your

(57:41):
field experience yet. I think you might want to think
about taking that. And like, I was the problem that
they need to get rid of. So they were willing to like
direct place me in a field supervisory position to Get Me
Out of the, the unit chief position at headquarters, who
just, you know, became a whistleblower.

(58:01):
You know, they would have done and tried to do anything to get
rid of me if they could. But I was like, I'm happy where
I'm at. This is good, you know, for now
until, you know, I decide it's time to leave, you know, but in
their mentality, though, they don't get it because they're
there for 18 to 24 months Max. And that was one of my biggest
complaints about headquarters. You know, I, I mentioned what a,
you know, joke. A lot of it is these managers,

(58:24):
particularly at the lower SES levels, like section chiefs
would rotate through. And so like, they would get
there. It would take them six months to
learn what they're doing. They might contribute for six
months and then their last six months is figuring out where
they're going next. And, you know, they don't know

(58:44):
or care about the program. Like I had countless section
chiefs, bosses that had no clue about counter proliferation.
Some of them didn't even know anything about
counterintelligence hardly. But yet they're, and it's so
embarrassing because you go to other agencies and you introduce
your boss like this SES section chief and they expect them to

(59:05):
know something like I bring themover to CIA and things like that
to meet with people. And they're just like empty
suits. And it's, it's honestly
embarrassing that they have no knowledge or background.
They're just there punching a ticket to get to their next
position and they're never therelong enough to contribute.
And I promise myself I'm, I'm not going to be one of those
people. Like I'm not going to punch a

(59:25):
ticket for two, two years just so I can get another position.
I want to contribute something. And so that's why, you know, I
know people laugh like what kindof idiot to be at headquarters
for seven or eight years and, you know, a unit chief for like
4 or five years. You know, that's why like I
didn't want to, you know, be that guy who just turns it over,
turns it over. I wanted to try to contribute

(59:46):
meaningfully and and know what Iwas working too I mean.
Yeah, Well, that sounds like you're not, you're not one of
us. If I had to guess, just based on
the the way these people work. One of the things that a friend
of mine, George Hill, has talkedabout, he's, you know, we we
deal with him on Twitter too. But George and I talk all the
time. And he mentioned the difference
between what the FBI considers to be a Smee, a subject matter

(01:00:07):
expert, and what the intelligence community considers
to be a Smee. And so when you go and you bring
your FBISES boss who's got six months on the job and knows
nothing about your threat, and then you go meet with a real
subject matter expert who spent 20 years studying the insurance
and outs and intricacies. We just had that on the, on the
bombing of the, of the nuclear facility in Iran very recently

(01:00:29):
where you heard about guys that spent 15 years and every single
day they, they woke up and they thought about and they worked
and they went to sleep thinking about the same individual
singular threat. And they knew the atmospherics
and they knew the altitudes and they knew the GPS coordinates of
every possible entry. And they knew the progression of
technologies and the movements in and they could tell you the
number of trucks on a Wednesday on average, kind of like that

(01:00:50):
was all they did. And and that's real deal too.
Like I met in my time at CIA, a lot of those types of people,
those highly specialized, spend years on a specific thing, a
specific widget even. I mean, it would come as no
surprise, right? Then the CIA uses covert
authorities, corporate action authorities that it has from the

(01:01:13):
president to to do sort of like the really cool secret shady
stuff. And to do that, you need that
level of understanding of things.
And I saw some, I mean, that's why I say like that was very
impressive. Like these people are dedicated
patriots that like literally devote years to the most minute
things to make sure that large effects that benefit our country

(01:01:36):
happen later. And right.
Like that's why it's just so embarrassing to bring our quote
UN quote subject matter experts over to talk to to their subject
matter experts sometimes, I mean.
Right, theirs is like a weaponized autistic person in
their 40s who's been studying ittheir whole adult life and we
bring over like a 26 year old female analyst who got assigned

(01:01:56):
to it randomly after having a background that was unrelated.
Kind of thing. And you're just, yeah, she was
an intern, you know, six months ago and maybe have, you know,
some experience in a service industry, I don't know.
That sounds, that sounds super familiar.
And all right, here's what I also want to key in on because
this is a Bureau culture thing that people won't get anywhere

(01:02:17):
else. Did you ever see somebody go up
against the Bureau in the let's what?
How many years was it before 2003 to what, 2015, 12 years?
Yeah, probably right. Yeah.
Did you see anybody go up against the Bureau in that time
and if So, what did you think about the results?
I'm just trying to think it's anexcellent question.

(01:02:39):
Like I'm trying to remember any specific instance like go up
against, not as a whistleblower,like I never heard, Yeah.
But like, you know, someone who was said, hey, we got a problem
here, whether it be a specific whistleblower where they
actually took it to a comedy, but theoretically saying we're
violating rule, policy or law. Somebody was a stickler for sort
of like doing things the right way or maybe said, hey, this is
an improper way of doing it. Anybody who was kind of the the

(01:03:01):
squeaky wheel for policy or for what would later be looked at as
being like, hey, you probably have a different perspective on
them today, but did you see anybody go up against the Bureau
and and kind of push back and say, hey, we got a problem here
I'm. Trying to think of an example,
and I'm sure if I thought long enough I could probably think of
one. But the only thing that really
comes to mind is just in generalterms, like we sort of policed

(01:03:24):
our own in a sense. Like I'm I'm thinking back to
the drum squad and like when guys screwed up or did
something, you know, not right. Like we had a senior guy on the
squad that would talk to you andsay, hey, man, like you can't do
that. You know, you can't press the
barrel of your gun against that guy's head when he's on the
ground. I mean, I literally saw that

(01:03:44):
happen. Yeah.
I, you know, we're arresting a drug guy and I have him on the
ground and another AG comes up and presses the barrel of his
Glock into the side of the guy'shead and says don't move or I'll
shoot you MF for. And after that, you know, we,
you know, we always would do like a hot wash after to, to see
how things went. And that was definitely a an

(01:04:05):
issue that came up. That's like, yeah, we, that's
not, that's no, no bueno. Don't do that.
That's tactically. Bad.
Exactly. There's so many things wrong
with that. And it was just like, what are
you doing? But like a lot of the things
that your question kind of it just seemed like we remedied
ourselves whether it was on thatsquad or even maybe to a lesser
degree on the CI squad when I was on it, you know, but I

(01:04:26):
never, I don't remember like like a policy thing that was
escalated up the chain so much. Did you ever see the OPR
Quarterly? Oh yeah, those are fun.
Can you describe what those are for folks who are not FBI people
or nurses? Yeah, we would wait for these
things to come out like. It's a whole morning.
Yeah, exactly, 'cause you're like, I never want to be that

(01:04:48):
guy or whatever. That's that's Can you believe
that? So what they are is every.
So an OPR is an internal investigation on an employee and
to make, you know, to try to maybe inform the employee base,
they published this OPR quarterly, which highlights some
of the cases that internal investigations adjudicated.

(01:05:10):
And they have a very scripted kind of format with these
things. They lay out some brief facts of
the case and then they'll tell you what the discipline may have
been with it, whether, you know,there's these things called
aggravators and mitigators, likethere's a standard penalty for
something. And then like in mitigation, you
know, you were highly decorated in the past or something in

(01:05:34):
aggravation, you were like a a real big idiot.
And so we're going to hit you harder.
And so, you know, we would always wait for those things
because usually it always featured a lot of very poor
judgement, like, you know, agents abusing the view car in
various ways. Like going to strip clubs in the
work day or? Exactly or.
Taking, taking, taking their stripper source home.

(01:05:56):
Yeah, yeah. To avoid the wife for something
you know, I don't know how many.These funny things.
But listen in. In mitigation, mitigate.
Was a really good. And he was a Cub Scout leader
and father of four children. But in aggravation, he was also
known for drinking on the job and had previously wrapped his
Buchar around a telephone pole. And right there you.
Go, you know, something about that that's frustrating.

(01:06:18):
You know, I think they just do it for a self-serving purpose to
to show the the employees that they actually take action
against misconduct. But here's a story.
So I'm in Newark as a fairly newagent, but there's a new agent
that comes in even newer than me.

(01:06:38):
He's on probation and I come into work one day and find out
that he was arrested for drunk driving.
He was driving the wrong way on the Pennsylvania Turnpike at
night and I think it was his Bukar.
I'm not 100% sure of his Bukar, but he got arrested for or DUI.

(01:07:00):
In my mind, he's a probationary agent.
That's it. He's fired like you're done, but
there is no, you know, mitigating factors there.
They didn't fire him. I I was shocked.
So what happens is he goes for his trial for on his DUI and the
cop doesn't show up to be a witness.

(01:07:20):
So what happens? Dismissed.
Of course you get you know, theydid him a favor right now.
I don't know if anybody arrangedthat favor or not, but charge
was dropped. And so here's a guy that had a
DUI, he spends another maybe year or two in in Newark and
then he gets transferred to DC or takes a transfer, puts in for

(01:07:41):
it to the AG protective detail. Smart.
Within I don't even think he reported for duty within maybe a
week or two of him arriving, he once again is drunk driving on
the the roads in Maryland and this time his drunk driving
results in the vehicular homicide of a teenager and the

(01:08:03):
serious injury of the passenger.If he was properly prosecuted
and or terminated like everybodybelieves he should have been and
and could have been and maybe that kid would still be alive.
An 18 year old kid lost his lifebecause the FBI failed to do
what it should have done and hold people accountable.

(01:08:25):
It resulted in a kid losing his life to a drunk driver, a person
that they know the FBI knew had a problem with drunk driving.
It's it's indefensible, it's an excuse.
Yeah. No, that's exactly it.
And then you also probably have a slightly different perspective
after you're your life now looking back at some of these
Oprs in the way that they're drafted and the charges on them.

(01:08:46):
And when you've seen what they're willing to put in an OPR
file, it probably changes the game a little bit about how you
look at those things and whetheror not they were being
particularly. Truthful.
It makes it even worse because Inow know not only from personal
experience, but from other people sharing their personal
experiences, the FBI is more than willing to fabricate and
exaggerate allegations against somebody in an OPR investigation

(01:09:10):
against them if they just don't like you.
But yet at the same time, they won't legitimately hold people
accountable that clearly, you know, should be held
accountable. They wield it simply as a tool.
The two tiers of justice that wesee in society is alive and well
inside the FBI, unfortunately. I just got a text message before

(01:09:33):
we decided to start recording. Friend of mine who's been
watching the case that's out of Montana and it was the SSRA.
So the what do they call that? Is that supervisory senior or is
it? Supervisory resident agent,
senior supervisory special resident agent.
I think I want to get it mixed up SSR, Yeah, in the in the RA

(01:09:55):
above another Ssas even, but still in the same pay grade.
But but he's technically the head of that office.
So as I recall, he was out of Helena, Mt.
I'll post the story over on X sopeople can find it because it's
worth reading. NBC covered it, but he was
arrested by the state police forstalking an X and I don't know
if it was a girlfriend or a wife.
The details escaped me right now.
I I saw the headline and I knew the story already a little bit.

(01:10:18):
He'd been arrested for stalking and there was a protective order
that was put in place by this this female that this guy was
doing dangerous and predatory stuff.
And you know, you're arrested byone of your quote UN quote state
local partners, right? People you got to have a good
relationship with. And he was out on bail and

(01:10:39):
waiting for trial. So the FBI let him stay in his
job as AGS 14 supervisor of the FBI on a domestic violence
stalking charge, a woman who feared for her life.
And he was able to continue it all the way until I the outcome
of the trial is irrelevant because he was able to retire
from the Bureau while under investigation for a violent and

(01:10:59):
dangerous thing. And I think there was some
physical violence that was involved previously.
So I'll get the whole story out for people to hear it.
But you know that kind of stuff.Kill a teenager, run down your
ex-wife and scare the hell out of her in her house and make her
live in fear of her life becauseyou're an FBI agent who still
carries a badge and a. Gun Yeah, yeah, they're they
just, I mean, people refer to this mafia thing and it really

(01:11:20):
is an apartment descriptor form.They act like a mafia.
Would they to have this unrighteous system of carrying
out the, you know, retaliation and retribution against people
and ignoring things that clearlyshould be punished?
I mean, I posted recently about perjury in the J6 case.

(01:11:42):
I mean, I have the receipts likeI have the testimony transcript.
I have an audio recording of hiscomments.
I mean, it's dead to rights, butyet nothing 0 no accountability
whatsoever. It's bad news.
I want to tease people and do a Part 2 of this.
We'll continue recording right now.

(01:12:02):
And but what I want to Can you give me a summary of kind of
some high points to some of the salacious details we're going to
have to get into to tear out therest of your story now that you
had your eyes opened and and JimComedy decided that it didn't
matter whether or not somebody was violating federal law.
Yeah, So I go, I do my protective disclosure in 2015,
you know, whatever sort of insignificant retaliation, I

(01:12:25):
never complained about it type of a thing.
And I'm going on with my career.And then in 2018, I'm, I'm
taking my, my off ramp, if you will, getting out to the field
just to where I want to retire. And I end up in Knoxville, TN
and I come here in 2018 and you know, I've got like 6-7 years to
go going to finish out my careerhere as a supervisory special

(01:12:48):
agent. And I had no expectation of
being a whistleblower or, or anything.
And then suddenly a lot of bad things happened in the last
couple years that again, like I just couldn't turn a blind eye
to Like I wasn't going to allow violations of the Constitution.

(01:13:08):
I wasn't going to allow people to fabricate predication of
investigations and just kind of go along with it.
But and I and surprised that everybody else was willing to go
along with it. It still doesn't make a whole
lot of sense to me. People just think differently.
I guess there's two ways of people thinking.
There's people who I like to sayI took an oath to the

(01:13:32):
Constitution, not the institution of the FBII think a
lot of people take an oath to the institution of the FBI,
which is a source of a lot of our problems.
It's going to conclude our Part 1 right there.
It's Bill Taylor. You can find him on X.
It's at RETFBI like retired FBI,Rhett, FBI.

(01:13:53):
Check out Bill's commentary on there.
If you're looking for documents,they are all there.
He is a gifted writer and he, I think he says a lot of things
that you should hear from another voice than my own and
you should hear from another voice than some of the other
whistleblowers you've heard. It's got a small enough platform
that you're going to see it's not biased.
It's just what the man sees. And I think it will resonate.
We don't have to agree on everything, but I think we're
going to agree on a lot of the main stuff and then check in for

(01:14:16):
for Round 2 of this because we're going to do it a little
bit further where we get into what actually ends up being, I
think probably the nastiest thing, including all the was
there a was some death threats involved in the, the next round
of this round, I mean. We can get into death threats,
assassination lists, We can get into J6 related.
We do. And the retaliation from the FBI

(01:14:38):
we're. Going to do all.
That we shouldn't do that. It's worth, it's worth.
Bring it out. And that is the Sunday sit down
with Bill Taylor. Round one, Part 1, You guys are
going to have to like, share andsubscribe it if you want to get
to Part 2. I'm just saying put it out
there. This one is sponsored by our
folks over on locals. If you guys want to hear a
little teaser. Part 2, we have FBI agents

(01:14:59):
committing perjury on the stand.We've got street fights that
turned into domestic terrorism charges and we have a hit list
of 35 FBI employees and some real wild stuff going on with J
Sixers. So guys, make sure you guys
listen to this mostly so you have an understanding that it's
just not me out there telling this stuff.

(01:15:19):
And you can support us and sponsor this program yourselves
by joining us over on LOCALS. It's Kyle serafin.com.
If you want to be part of our local channel, you can follow us
on [e-mail] slash [e-mail]/kyle
Seraphin. All these things real easy to
do. Check us out over there and make
sure you like this video. If you sat through it to this

(01:15:41):
point, you're not liking it. What the heck are you doing over
there? Bump us up in the ratings, let
people know about it, share witha friend, Kyle seraphinshow.com
if you want to get it on Spotifyand you can watch or listen as
you like. Really appreciate all of you
guys joining me and I look forward for you seeing us on
Tuesday and then also match in Part 2 next Sunday.
So make sure you guys put the stuff on your calendar or at

(01:16:02):
least work it into your schedule.
See you very soon. Thank you for listening to the
Kyle Serafin Show streamed live weekdays on rumble.com/kyle
Serafin. Follow Kyle on Twitter, True
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