Being an FBI agent was Stephen Friend’s dream job. For eight and a half years working there, the Notre Dame graduate and Iraq War veteran investigated around 200 violent crimes, including human and sex-trafficking cases, and served five years as part of an FBI SWAT team.

Friend did his job so well that he won an FBI performance award.

Then one day this past fall, his top-secret security clearance was revoked by his superiors at the Jacksonville, Florida, field office, and he lost his job.

The reason was that he had expressed concern about a) the inflation of statistics regarding Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) cases; b) assignments to surveil parents at school board meetings and log their license plate numbers in violation of the parents’ constitutional rights; and c) the FBI’s decision to use a SWAT team in the arrest of an alleged January 6 rioter who had expressed willingness to cooperate with the FBI.^[1]

Friend also testified about how the FBI’s focus on January 6 cases led to wasted resources and a de-emphasis on child exploitation crimes.

He related one example in which the FBI ordered him to make a three-hour round trip to conduct an in-person interview of a January 6 subject, who Friend learned was actually not in Washington, D.C., during the January 6 riots but was attending his son’s funeral in Florida.^[2]

Friend’s experience was similar to Garret O’Boyle, an infantryman in the 101^st Airborne Division from Wisconsin, with a degree in criminology from Marquette University, who served tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

O’Boyle was also subjected to retaliation by the FBI after expressing his concerns about DVE reporting up his chain of command along with unconstitutional surveillance methods and a bonus structure that rewarded overzealous policing methods.^[3] O’Boyle further said that he was pressured to open cases based on anonymous tips which, in law enforcement, do not usually hold much weight.^[4]

The FBI was particularly cruel to O’Boyle—who had been given high performance reviews prior to his termination—because he and his wife had just had a baby two weeks before (three of his other kids were under ten) and, like the others, he was prevented from getting a new job.

O’Boyle was suspended without pay just after being transferred from Wichita, Kansas, to Quantico, Virginia, and had to pay $10,000 out of his own pocket to retrieve his family’s belongings from storage.

Appearing before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on May 18, O’Boyle said that his case proves that, “if you challenge the FBI, they will crush you. They want to get rid of critical thinkers; people who raise valid questions up the chain of command…We are all expendable to them.”

O’Boyle added that “they’ve decided they’re going to do what they want, on their agenda, on their terms…they’re the law, and they’re not going to have someone internally shining a light in the darkness; on the bad things they’re doing.”^[5]

The third whistleblower to testify at the hearing, Marcus Allen, was another decorated military veteran who served two tours in Iraq and in 2019 was named the FBI’s employee of the year in its Charlotte field office.

He had his security clearance revoked and was suspended on January 10, 2022, for allegedly promoting “conspiratorial views in regards to the events of January 6,” after sending his colleagues links to open-source news articles that questioned the FBI’s handling of the January 6 riot.^[6]

Allen had been part of the FBI Charlotte office’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). His duties included performing “all-source analysis” in which he would “research publicly available information [and] anything on the open web…to help out with our assessments and cases that the FBI has.”

Allen testified that passing along the articles for which he was fired was “part of his job,” and that he was never afterwards even given the opportunity to rebut the allegations against him, or to meet with agency leadership in his office.^[7]

Allen told a member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that: “I sent [the emails] just for awareness because they…indicated potential problems with the investigation as far as informants were concerned, and our organization’s potential forthrightness about the utilization of informants there on that day. That might have some impact on our cases and the subjects that we’re looking up, and just general awareness overall for the investigation, as a whole, that there might have been some kind of potential Federal involvement with the activities on January 6^th, and I thought it was important enough that it like warranted our attention, you know.”^[8]

These comments suggest that Allen was targeted because he had come to understand the importance played by federal informants and potentially provocateurs in the January 6 riots—something on which CAM has previously reported—which contradicts the official narrative that the government wants people to believe.

Friend’s and O’Boyle’s insinuation that the FBI was manipulating crime statistics to inflate the threat of DVE, real as they may be, reflects a characteristic modus operandi of the FBI.

Since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI has tried to get more funding by instilling fear in the public over exaggerated national security threats.

As a bonus, the inflation of the threat of DVE suits the agenda of the Biden administration by discrediting its main political adversaries whom it wants to brand as political extremists and potential terrorists, while evading any discussion of how the failure of neoliberal economic policies championed by both Democrats and Republicans have radicalized segments of the population and empowered the far right.

Part of the FBI’s trick that Friend pointed to was the FBI’s manipulation of statistics to make it appear that it was investigating DVE cases around the country when a majority of those cases related to a single event on January 6.

Friend also said he was asked to space out arrests from the same group on different days to make it look like they were more cases.^[9]

O’Boyle stated that hundreds of January 6 cases were being treated as DVE when they were “resolved as petty crimes such as trespassing and disorderly conduct.”^[10]

Democrats Play the Role of Joseph McCarthy

Sadly, the Democrats on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government looked like the party of Joseph McCarthy at the May 18^th hearing, which CAM‘s managing editor along with one of its founders attended.

Coming across as mean-spirited, the Democrats did not want to hear what the three FBI agents had to say, but instead tried to attack their credibility, claiming that they were not real whistleblowers, and that they were right-wing extremists who espoused conspiracy theories about January 6.

They said further that serving in the military did not necessarily make them patriots and that their allegiance to the U.S. was in question. Former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) even insinuated that Stephen Friend was a Russian agent because he gave an interview to Sputnik Radio—the “network of Putin and his cronies.”^[11]

Wasserman Schultz and Dan Goldman (D-NY) attacked Friend because he was writing a book about his story, and insinuated that he and O’Boyle were in the pay of a Trump political operative (who they worked for after they had been fired and needed a job).

Wasserman Schultz also questioned why the hearing was even convened at all, declaring “most of what I have heard from these three men has been ‘hot air.’”

In March, while professing her admiration for the FBI and affront that Republicans would criticize it, Wasserman Schultz engaged in character assassination of another witness to the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, journalist Matt Taibbi, who was subjected to FBI surveillance and an IRS audit after he helped uncover a pattern of FBI censorship over Twitter.

Taibbi told journalist Chris Hedges that Wasserman Schultz didn’t want to engage with his reporting, she and others on the committee just tried to smear him. Taibbi said that he had grown up “in an atmosphere where the Democrats were always the champions of free speech, more so than the Republicans. Through the ’70s, ’80s,’90s and even the early 2000s. Suddenly…it was wall-to-wall hostility. There wasn’t a Dennis Kucinich or Bernie Sanders type who stands out from the crowd…The old school ACLU-like liberals, they’re just gone now.”^[12]

The tactic of character assassination is a familiar one used often to try and deflect attention away from whistleblower revelations and to cast aspersions on whistleblower motives, or in Taibbi’s case, that of an independent journalist.

The idea that the witnesses at the May 18th hearing were not real whistleblowers is ludicrous; the three men all suffered hardships for speaking out against practices that appear to be unethical.

Progressive media outlets may not be championing the three because their revelations can be used to reinforce a narrative advanced by conservatives about the January 6th investigation that raises suspicion about the FBI (historically this would have been the position of leftists), and because they have not advanced any kind of leftist critique of capitalism or the FBI.

Related to the latter, many whistleblowers are not political radicals; they are often apolitical professionals or people with conventional or conservative political views who feel that they have a duty to speak out against something that they feel is wrong.

While they did not leak any documents and have to flee to Russia to avoid going to jail, the three seem to have a lot in common with Edward Snowden in their concern about illegal surveillance and the violation of Americans constitutional liberties, along with the FBI’s attempt to manipulate public opinion and cover up past misdeeds.

As a way of invalidating the whistleblowers testimony on May 18, Stacey Plaskett, the Ranking Member on the subcommittee from the Virgin Islands— who previously accused Matt Taibbi of lying—said that “this select committee is a clearinghouse for testing conspiracy theories for Donald Trump to use in his 2024 presidential campaign.”

Plaskett is not totally off-base in her latter comments. CAM has previously criticized the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government for its partisan agenda and betrayal of the legacy of the 1975 Church Committee, in whose footsteps it claims to follow, by confining its investigation of FBI abuses largely to conservative groups.

Reflective of this fact, the subcommittee has not sought to investigate the FBI’s August 2022 overly zealous, military-style, dawn raid on the home of Omali Yeshitela, the 80-year-old leader of the African People’s Socialist Party in St. Louis, which has built basketball courts, set up Black-run businesses, and initiated programs to help integrate newly released prisoners into society. Nor has it sought to investigate FBI surveillance of the Black Lives Matter movement and protesters who came out in solidarity with George Floyd in the summer of 2020.^[13]

That all being said, there is no excuse for the behavior of the Democrats toward Taibbi or the FBI whistleblowers, who did what the law prescribed in reporting their concerns up the chain of command and were retaliated against and persecuted for pointing out real abuses by the FBI.

These abuses include the FBI’s development of an incentive system that helps skew law enforcement priorities along with expanded intrusive surveillance methods.^[14]

It was revealed in the hearing also that the Bank of America had provided the FBI with confidential consumer data voluntarily and without any legal process in the January 6 riot investigation, setting a dangerous precedent for future investigations.

The committee report noted that “the FBI dispenses cash bonuses to local field office leadership for meeting certain arbitrary metrics and performance goals. This bonus structure creates perverse incentives for the FBI to utilize law-enforcement tools and resources where they may not be needed or appropriate in order for FBI leadership to benefit financially.”^[15]

Additional evidence was also brought to light at the hearing about the prevalence of informants and potential provocateurs at the January 6 riots.^[16]

As to the charge of being right-wing extremists, none of the three whistleblowers condoned the behavior of the January 6 rioters. Friend said he had been a liberal Democrat, and called the January 6 rioters “bad dudes” who “should go to jail.”^[17]

O’Boyle said he had worked on cases involving anti-abortion extremists with whom he did not sympathize, and that he believed the government should be prosecuting some of the people involved in January 6.^[18]

During the hearing, Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) showed the Twitter account of a Marcus Allen who tweeted that “Nancy Pelosi was to blame for January 6^th.”

However, the former FBI Agent Marcus Allen testified that he did not use social media, that this account was not his and that he did not agree with the statement. (Marcus Allen is a common name, including that of a famous football player.)

The hearing generally exemplifies how the Democrats have betrayed their responsibility as members of the legislative branch to investigate abuses of the executive branch—of which the FBI is a part.

They have evolved as the party that defends federal police and intelligence agencies and shamefully mocks and maligns anyone who raises questions about their conduct.

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1. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, U.S. House of Representatives, May 18, 2023,transcript, 7, 16, 18, 20, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 70. ↑

2. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 70, 71. Friend raised concerns to his FBI supervisor about violating citizens’ Sixth Amendment rights due [to] overzealous charging by the DOJ [related to January 6 cases] and biased jury pools in Washington D.C. Friend said that he was worried the FBI’s actions would lead to something like the infamous 1992 Ruby Ridge case when a team of U.S. Marshals killed the wife and son of Randy Weaver, a survivalist and alleged white supremacist living in rural Idaho who was later acquitted of the major federal charges initiated against him. ↑

3. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 6, 7. ↑

4. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 19. ↑

5. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, transcript, 58. ↑

6. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 59. Congressman Lynch stated at the hearing that Allen’s supervisors “didn’t like the questioning of the FBI’s view of events”; they were “purposefully hostile [to him] to keep agents from speaking up and sharing information that doesn’t fall in line with the FBI’s political narrative [of the events of January 6].” ↑

7. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 59, 60. ↑

8. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 59. ↑

9. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 7, 13, 16, 18. ↑

10. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 18. The Committee expressed concern in its report about the manipulation of statistics and that the FBI was “diverting resources from investigating violent criminal enterprises, major drug traffickers, and international sexual predators and human traffickers to prioritize ‘domestic extremists’—roughly translated according to the President’s own words, as half of the country that does not support his political views and policies [in a] misallocation of law enforcement priorities [that] should concern all Americans.” ↑

11. Wasserman Schultz is best known for her role as a member of the Democratic National Committee in undermining Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic Party primaries. ↑

12. Chris Hedges, “The Democratic Party’s Revenge on Matt Taibbi,” Consortium News, May 29, 2023, https://consortiumnews.com/2023/05/29/chris-hedges-the-democratic-partys-revenge-on-matt-taibbi/. See also Chris Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class (New York: Bold Type Books, 2011), which foreshadowed a lot of what is occurring today. Wasserman Schultz attacked Taibbi’s journalistic credibility, calling him Elon Musk’s lapdog. Dan Goldman attacked Taibbi for questioning the Democratic Party’s dubious narrative about Russia Gate and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

13. On the latter, see Spencer Ackerman, “The FBI is Back to its Old Habits: Illegally Spying on Protesters,” The Nation Magazine, July 9, 2023, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-fbi-is-back-to-its-old-habits-illegally-spying-on-protesters/ar-AA1cl0it. Committee chair James Jordan (R-OH) did reference the FBI’s infiltration of a felon into the Black Lives Matter movement, possibly as some kind of provocateur, in a hearing on March 9. ↑

14. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript. 1, 2. ↑

15. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 1, 2. Congresswoman Harriet Hageman (R-WY) emphasized that power in the FBI has become more centralized in its Washington headquarters since 9/11 after the FBI was embarrassed by the intelligence failure on 9/11. The FBI engages in more intrusive surveillance increasingly targeting law-abiding American citizens, including those on the conservative end of the political spectrum. The Russia Gate hoax was a manifestation of an increasingly politicized, corrupt and tyrannical leadership. “They know it [that the leaders are corrupt], we know it and the American people know it,” she said. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said that the bonus incentive system at the FBI rewarded dirty behavior and reminded him of the scandal a few years ago involving the New Orleans Saints football team whose coach was paying players bonuses if they injured opposing teams’ quarterbacks. ↑

16. Footage was played of a past hearing when FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill testified that a video that materialized from January 6 was censored by the FBI’s Washington Field Office out of fear that it would disclose the identities of those agents who had infiltrated the right-wing groups that orchestrated the riots. ↑

17. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 71. ↑

18. FBI Whistleblower Testimony Highlights Government Abuse, Misallocation of Resources, and Retaliation, Interim Staff Report of Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, transcript, 71. ↑

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