Excellent first-person account. Chilling to think of the consequences of the current White House to our civil services. ( )

Written while Donald Trump was still in the White House, this an excellent memoir of a difficult time to be FBI Acting Director. Unsurprisingly, Trump is revealed as pathologically narcissistic and tyrannical. More useful, McCabe reveals how the FBI responded and reshaped itself to the challenges of terrorism and the information explosion. ( )

It should be apparent to anyone considering this book that there will be political opinions expressed in it. The author, Andrew McCabe, was fired from his job as Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by President Trump twenty-six hours before he was eligible to collect his FBI pension. So Mr. McCabe could be expected to have an ax to grind, feeling that his firing was petty and vindictive. But regardless of your political persuasion, I'd still recommend the book since so much of it centers on the author's FBI career and how the FBI operates. McCabe spent time investigating the Russian mafia, and then after 9/11 spent time doing counter-terrorism. He recounts a number of significant cases he was involved with, including the Boston Marathon terror attack, the underwear bomber investigation, Faisal Shahzad's failed car bombing in mid-town Manhattan, the Benghazi investigation, and most significant to this book, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's e-mail investigation. Each story is interesting in its own right, and it's important to understand how dedicated, thorough, and professional the FBI is during its investigations.

It's only toward the end of the book, when McCabe discusses the FBI investigation of the Hillary Clinton e-mails that politics becomes more a topic of conversation. The investigation, taking place just before the 2016 Presidential election, became politicized, and it'd be impossible to write about the investigation without including the politics that went along with it. The investigation itself became a rallying cry among Republicans and Donald Trump during his campaign for President, yet defenders of Hillary Clinton felt vindicated when the FBI determined that there was no criminal wrongdoing by her. McCabe talked about the difficulties faced during the investigation, the results of the investigation, why no charges were brought, and the political fall-out from the last minute announcement by Director Comey of a new cache of e-mails discovered on ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner's computer.

The President was clearly irked by the fact that the FBI filed no criminal charges against Ms. Clinton, and that the FBI continued to probe Russia's interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. Director Comey paid the price for this, and was soon fired by the President. Mr. Comey wrote his own book (A Higher Loyalty) about his firing, which readers may also find interesting. Following the Comey firing, Andrew McCabe became Acting Director. It wasn't long before the president began to rage against Mr. McCabe as well, calling him as being biased because his wife had run for a senate seat in the State of Virginia as a Democrat. During her run for this office, Mrs. McCabe had accepted campaign contributions from Democratic sources close to the Clintons, and Mr. McCabe was seen wearing a t-shirt supporting his wife's candidacy. Even though Mr. McCabe had been a registered Republican and voted for Republican candidates throughout his career, the fact that his wife had run for State office as a Democrat was enough to make the president question McCabe's loyalty and ability to remain unbiased. McCabe was never able to overcome the President's opinion of his independence, and Trump had him fired a mere 26 hours before McCabe would have been eligible to collect his pension. That appears pretty vindictive, but not unheard of treatment of senior FBI officials. The President had also fired the previous FBI Director, James Comey, due in part to the FBI's on-going investigation into Russia's involvement and interference in the 2016 Presidential election. Immediately after the Comey firing, the President questioned McCabe as to why he had allowed the just-fired Director Comey, who was on Bureau business in Los Angeles at the time, to return to Washington, D.C. on an FBI airplane. McCabe explains that the plane had to be flown back anyway, that Comey was in Los Angeles on Bureau business, that Comey's detail had to be flown back, so it only seemed reasonable that Comey return to Washington with his team. Trump disagreed, and wanted to further punish Comey after firing him, by not allowing him on an FBI aircraft or being allowed to enter any FBI offices. Most bosses wouldn't be that vindictive after firing a subordinate, I would think.

Up to that point in the book, any criticisms of President Trump ​by Mr. McCabe ​are mostly just observations - observations ​however ​which are repeated over and over again by numerous other authors of other "Trump books". After the firing, Mr. McCabe's understandable anger becomes more obvious, and criticisms of President Trump become more pointed. Among McCabe's criticism are that Trump demands personal loyalty over Bureau policies and requirements, and that the President doesn't listen well to people who have opinions not consistent with his own. These same points are made by many others, both supporters and critics of the President. Perhaps among the most disheartening observation Mr. McCabe offered was when the Intelligence Agencies briefed the President on a missile test just conducted by North Korea, and Trump told the briefer that the test report couldn't be true, because Putin told him that North Korea didn't have that capability. This was one of several examples of the President discounting his own Intelligence Agencies if the intelligence briefs wasn't consistent with the President's existing biases and beliefs, and sided with the likes of Putin instead. Again, like many others, including supporters of the President, McCabe made note of Trump's tendency to dominate most conversations, talking all the time, not letting briefers complete their statements, etc. Also, he notes, that if the President asks a question, he often doesn't wait for an answer, and simply answers his own question with his own opinion on the subject. That makes offering a contrary position to the President even more difficult for most staffers. And McCabe's complaints about the President become more vociferous as ​Trump ​continued his Twitter attacks against himself, and his imminent firing became probable. In spite of McCabe's understandable dislike of the President who fired him, the book comes across as a credible look at FBI practices and interaction with the President.
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Excellent Book

I seldom add comments when leaving the star rating of books I’ve finished but wanted to share a a few on this one.

Thankfully I purchased it on Saturday because I ended up reading it late into the night.

The book was very well written. Anyone with a curiosity about how the FBI works will enjoy it and find it hard to put down. ( )

I suppose I am behind the times reading Andrew G. McCabe’s book about the start of the Russia investigation and his retaliatory firing while America has moved on to the Ukraine scandal and impeachment, but the roots of the the current scandal are found in the earlier one. The Threat puts that threat squarely in the character of Donald Trump.

Everyone knows the outline of the story. Andrew McCabe refused to turn the FBI into Trump’s personal law enforcement force to be used to protect his friends and punish his enemies and was fired, not long after James Comey, the acting director was fired. The firing was an act of authoritarian overreach by a president who thinks “L’etat est-il.”‘

McCabe tells his story chronologically from training to his early cases bringing RICO charges against the Russian mafia to counter-terrorism investigations and the Boston Marathon and Underwear Bomber cases. Throughout he displays a punctilious dedication to the Constitution and Bill of Rights—advocating for conducting interviews with terror suspects that focus on rappor-building and making connections and opposing torture.

It is also intriguing to read how they develop cases, explaining some of the terms of art for the kinds of cases and how they go about them. When it gets to 2016 and 2017, he covers familiar territory though it is simultaneously alarming and reassuring that he found Trump irrational, disinterested, and corrupt. Reassuring because I feel the same and alarming for the same reason—recognizing the danger such an unqualified, incompetent, ignorant, and immoral head of state represents.

FBI agents know how to organize their thoughts and produce a clear narrative. They do it daily writing up notes of meetings and interviews. This makes McCabe an excellent explainer, clear and linear. He is a good writer, though he does not adorn the text with embellishment.

I can’t say I really ‘enjoyed’ The Threat atbecause after all, who enjoys reading about a feckless president who is a clear and constant danger to our democracy and constitutional form of government. I also think McCabe particularizes the threat too much in Trump. He does mention the spread of propaganda masquerading as news and the hyper-partisanship that seeks nothing but partisan wins. However, he’s a Republican, or he was, and is prone to both-sides delusions that this is a bipartisan disease. It isn’t.

The Threat at St. Martin’s Press | Macmillan

Andrew G. McCabe – 60 Minutes interview

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