The more things change, the more they stay the same.
McCabe, the New ‘Deep Throat’
Another top bureau official who leaked, lied and blamed other FBI agents.
William McGurnApril 16, 2018 5:54 p.m. ET
Both Mr. McCabe and Felt were FBI deputy directors. Both leaked information about an FBI investigation that was under way. Both did so for the sake of their own careers, lied about it to their bosses, and even let other FBI agents take the blame.
Start with Felt, who died in 2008. Though sometimes cast as the noble truth-teller of Watergate—in “All the President’s Men” he was memorably played by a chain-smoking Hal Holbrook—reality is less flattering. Felt saw himself as the rightful heir to J. Edgar Hoover. When he was passed over for L. Patrick Gray III, Felt flattered Gray to his face while sabotaging the new FBI director behind his back.
He also let others take the fall. On a Saturday morning in June 1972, a furious Director Gray summoned 27 agents from the Washington field office to the conference room at FBI headquarters. He then cussed them out over a leak to Time magazine. Paul Magallanes, an FBI agent working the Watergate burglary, said Gray called them all “yellow-bellied sniveling agents” and demanded the guilty party step forward. No one did, of course, and Gray vowed to find out who the leaker was and fire him.
Felt never corrected the record on behalf of his falsely accused brother agents. To the contrary, Deep Throat would himself assume control over the investigation into who was leaking—and use that position to admonish other agents about leaks for which he himself was the culprit.
Mr. McCabe is Felt’s heir. Like Felt, he had a highly personal reason for authorizing a leak to The Wall Street Journal and then denying it. In October 2016, the Journal had raised questions about Mr. McCabe’s impartiality on the Hillary Clinton email investigation by reporting that his wife, Jill, had accepted donations from political action committees associated with Terry McAuliffe —a Clinton friend and former member of the Clinton Foundation board. Now the Journal was following up, and asking about an alleged order from Mr. McCabe telling FBI agents investigating the Clinton Foundation to “stand down.”
To counter the narrative that he might be compromised, Mr. McCabe authorized FBI counsel Lisa Page and a public-affairs officer to tell the Journal about a phone call with a high-ranking Justice official. In this account, Mr. McCabe is the fearless G-man pushing back against Justice complaints that the bureau was still investigating Mrs. Clinton’s family foundation during the election.
In the process the leak made public something Mr. Comey had studiously kept quiet: an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation. In a report released Friday, the Justice Department’s inspector general notes that while this disclosure “may have served McCabe’s personal interests,” it did so “at the expense of undermining public confidence in the Department as a whole.”
Mr. McCabe’s disservice to the bureau didn’t stop there. Just as Felt had covered his tracks by shifting blame, Mr. McCabe implicated innocent agents. After the second Journal story appeared, he called the heads of the New York and Washington field offices to berate them for what appears to be his own leak. The head of the Washington office says he was told “to get his house in order.”
Then, in a final Feltian flourish, Mr. McCabe lied to his director.
The IG report says that Messrs. Comey and McCabe give “starkly different accounts” of their conversation about the article containing the leak. Mr. McCabe insists he told Mr. Comey he’d authorized it—and that Mr. Comey had answered it was a “good” idea. Mr. Comey is categorical that Mr. McCabe “definitely did not tell me that he authorized” the leak.
Just two men with different memories? The inspector general thinks not. The circumstantial evidence, the report notes, all runs against Mr. McCabe. Not a single senior FBI official backs Mr. McCabe’s claim that within the bureau people generally knew he’d authorized the leak. It isn’t the only McCabe statement to conflict with accounts given by other agents: At one point, he claimed FBI agents who had interviewed him under oath had wrongly reported he’d denied authorizing the leak.
Back in the early 1970s, Mark Felt leaked information about an investigation in hopes it would eventually lead to his becoming director. In a 1999 interview with Slate’s Timothy Noah, six years before his Watergate role was revealed, Felt rightly declared that if he had been Deep Throat, it would have been “terrible” and “contrary to my responsibility as a loyal employee of the FBI to leak information.”
Today Mr. McCabe stands accused of an unauthorized leak that poisoned the FBI’s relationship with Justice and of a “lack of candor” under oath. President Trump is having a Twitter field day calling Mr. McCabe a liar. But the irony of the McCabe defense is that it hinges on having us believe it was not him but Mr. Comey and other FBI agents who gave the false accounts of his actions.
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
McCabe, the New ‘Deep Throat’
Another top bureau official who leaked, lied and blamed other FBI agents.
William McGurnApril 16, 2018 5:54 p.m. ET
Both Mr. McCabe and Felt were FBI deputy directors. Both leaked information about an FBI investigation that was under way. Both did so for the sake of their own careers, lied about it to their bosses, and even let other FBI agents take the blame.
Start with Felt, who died in 2008. Though sometimes cast as the noble truth-teller of Watergate—in “All the President’s Men” he was memorably played by a chain-smoking Hal Holbrook—reality is less flattering. Felt saw himself as the rightful heir to J. Edgar Hoover. When he was passed over for L. Patrick Gray III, Felt flattered Gray to his face while sabotaging the new FBI director behind his back.
He also let others take the fall. On a Saturday morning in June 1972, a furious Director Gray summoned 27 agents from the Washington field office to the conference room at FBI headquarters. He then cussed them out over a leak to Time magazine. Paul Magallanes, an FBI agent working the Watergate burglary, said Gray called them all “yellow-bellied sniveling agents” and demanded the guilty party step forward. No one did, of course, and Gray vowed to find out who the leaker was and fire him.
Felt never corrected the record on behalf of his falsely accused brother agents. To the contrary, Deep Throat would himself assume control over the investigation into who was leaking—and use that position to admonish other agents about leaks for which he himself was the culprit.
Mr. McCabe is Felt’s heir. Like Felt, he had a highly personal reason for authorizing a leak to The Wall Street Journal and then denying it. In October 2016, the Journal had raised questions about Mr. McCabe’s impartiality on the Hillary Clinton email investigation by reporting that his wife, Jill, had accepted donations from political action committees associated with Terry McAuliffe —a Clinton friend and former member of the Clinton Foundation board. Now the Journal was following up, and asking about an alleged order from Mr. McCabe telling FBI agents investigating the Clinton Foundation to “stand down.”
To counter the narrative that he might be compromised, Mr. McCabe authorized FBI counsel Lisa Page and a public-affairs officer to tell the Journal about a phone call with a high-ranking Justice official. In this account, Mr. McCabe is the fearless G-man pushing back against Justice complaints that the bureau was still investigating Mrs. Clinton’s family foundation during the election.
In the process the leak made public something Mr. Comey had studiously kept quiet: an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation. In a report released Friday, the Justice Department’s inspector general notes that while this disclosure “may have served McCabe’s personal interests,” it did so “at the expense of undermining public confidence in the Department as a whole.”
Mr. McCabe’s disservice to the bureau didn’t stop there. Just as Felt had covered his tracks by shifting blame, Mr. McCabe implicated innocent agents. After the second Journal story appeared, he called the heads of the New York and Washington field offices to berate them for what appears to be his own leak. The head of the Washington office says he was told “to get his house in order.”
Then, in a final Feltian flourish, Mr. McCabe lied to his director.
The IG report says that Messrs. Comey and McCabe give “starkly different accounts” of their conversation about the article containing the leak. Mr. McCabe insists he told Mr. Comey he’d authorized it—and that Mr. Comey had answered it was a “good” idea. Mr. Comey is categorical that Mr. McCabe “definitely did not tell me that he authorized” the leak.
Just two men with different memories? The inspector general thinks not. The circumstantial evidence, the report notes, all runs against Mr. McCabe. Not a single senior FBI official backs Mr. McCabe’s claim that within the bureau people generally knew he’d authorized the leak. It isn’t the only McCabe statement to conflict with accounts given by other agents: At one point, he claimed FBI agents who had interviewed him under oath had wrongly reported he’d denied authorizing the leak.
Back in the early 1970s, Mark Felt leaked information about an investigation in hopes it would eventually lead to his becoming director. In a 1999 interview with Slate’s Timothy Noah, six years before his Watergate role was revealed, Felt rightly declared that if he had been Deep Throat, it would have been “terrible” and “contrary to my responsibility as a loyal employee of the FBI to leak information.”
Today Mr. McCabe stands accused of an unauthorized leak that poisoned the FBI’s relationship with Justice and of a “lack of candor” under oath. President Trump is having a Twitter field day calling Mr. McCabe a liar. But the irony of the McCabe defense is that it hinges on having us believe it was not him but Mr. Comey and other FBI agents who gave the false accounts of his actions.
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
