Lawfare Daily: National Security, Counterintelligence, and Counterespionage: A Guide for the Perplexed

[Intro]

Derek Pieper: Counterintelligence has been around forever. I mean, espionage is, what, the second oldest profession? So, I mean, and the way that they conduct it, espionage is essentially, you know, the technology's different, but I mean, the goals and the aims are really the, the same to get up and get an advantage over your global adversary.

Michael Feinberg: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Lawfare Senior Editor Michael Feinberg with former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Derek Pieper, who oversaw a counterintelligence branch at the Washington Field Office.

Derek Pieper: You know the idea that any agent is sitting there, culling through data, trying to find the next case. They're too busy for that. You know, and you deal with the ones that actually rise to a level that they could be predicated. Nobody's got time to, you know, say, Hey, I'm gonna target this person.

Michael Feinberg: Today, we'll be discussing the difference between counterintelligence and counterespionage, the skill sets needed for each, and what happens when these cases become overly politicized.

[Main Podcast]

The reason we're doing this now is that as most people know, roughly two weeks ago on a Friday evening, the news media began reporting that at the FBI's Washington Field Office, a squad, which focused among other things on Iranian counterespionage matters, was summarily fired for their role in a politically sensitive matter.

The very next day, the United States functionally went to war with Iran. And in the human cry that followed in most media from the center-right, moving left, following that chain of events, there was a lot of discussion that conflated counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and counterespionage as if they were one thing, which they emphatically are not.

So today I thought it would be helpful to have Derek, who also left the FBI, similar to the way I did as in ASAC within a counterintelligence division, for us to have a conversation about what exactly counterintelligence looks like, how it differs from counterespionage, and why the nation should care, particularly in a time of conflict.

Derek, with that said, would you be willing to sort of tout your own credentials and explain to us why we should care what you in particular have to say about counterintelligence?

Derek Pieper: Sure, Mike. And thanks for having me. You know, this is my first opportunity to talk about myself in a while, so I appreciate it.

So, yeah, like you said, I mean, my entire career at the Bureau, almost 21 years was spent working counterintelligence. I was assigned to a CI squad in New York. So the first half of my career was as a New York field agent working counterintelligence, worked on Russia counterintelligence stuff.

And one of, one of the cases that people have heard about is like the Ghost Stories, Russian “illegals” case. So that was part of what my squad did when I first joined the Bureau. The other part of what my squad did at that time was work espionage cases. So we had a lot of, actually internal, FBI cases where, you know, an agent would be suspected or there would be an allegation that, that, you know, there was an espionage allegation or at least some sort of misconduct that there was close enough to espionage that we took a look at it.

So, from the very beginning of my career I was doing this hybrid thing where I was looking at Russian “illegals,” and I was looking at espionage cases. After the illegals case ended in 2010, I moved over to the New York offices espionage squad. They had decided that they wanted to have their own standalone squad right around 2009. And I, I was sent, transferred over because I had some experience working those cases.

So I did that for a couple years. Worked a variety of, of almost all, well it was all espionage or media leak or mishandling cases on the espionage squad in New York. I became a supervisor after that and that's when the first time I went over to the global-side bureau.

Counterintelligence tends to be broken up into kind of like, Russia matters, China matters, and global matters—and global being the catchall for everything else. And so I moved over to become a field supervisor in New York on a global squad. So we did a variety of, of cases against a variety of countries.

After doing my supervisor time there, I went to headquarters and that's where I met you. I was unit chief over the Internal Espionage Unit in at FBI headquarters. So the Bureau, you know, has its field offices where they're looking at, you know, the regional problems. Then you have the headquarters, which is supposed to be looking at the program as a whole.

So any internal espionage case against a Bureau employee across the country would've fallen into that unit. So I was working there, managing, helping field offices with, with resources or, you know, some guidance and, and basically overseeing those cases, pushing them along to make sure that they were addressed properly.

After that, what they do—In fact, in New York for a hot minute. And then I came back to headquarters. I worked over at CIA as a detail for the Bureau in the, in the Russia operations section. So being the, the senior FBI person over at CIA headquarters, working on Russia matters. This was during Skripal and all those kind of big kind of dust up between the U.S. and, and well whole world and Russia at that time. So it was a busy moment.

After that came back was the chief of staff in the counterintelligence division for a little while, working for the assistant director, helping them with whatever they needed. And then I became a WFO ASAC. So Washington Field Office has three assistant special agents in charge within the division within the field office. It was broken up into criminal, CT, CI, and then there's mission services, and so I was one of three. I had the global group, so if it wasn't Russia, it wasn't China, I had it.

So I mean, that's kind of where my and my career ended. I, I ended up staying there five years until, until last January when I decided I could retire. So I would. Insist I'm not—I'm enjoying retirement.

So over the course of my career, I've, I've touched on both the CI side of counterintelligence side of counterintelligence, but also the counterespionage side, which I always thought the two sides of the same coin really. And, and one of the things that I used to do with, with new agents would be assigned to my division—Quantico, you remember this, doesn't do a real good job of preparing agents for counterintelligence work.

Michael Feinberg: I think I got a grand total of three hours training in counterintelligence when I was at the Academy.

Derek Pieper: Yeah, I don't even remember what mine was, but I remember it not being very impressive. And I mean, in 2004 when I went through, I mean, it wasn't that long after Hanssen, you know, there was some significant, you know, counterintelligence work going on or had just finished.

I think I read the Wise book on Hanssen at the academy and thought, well, that sounds interesting, but I don't remember very much about, about learning about counterintelligence and counterterrorism training was even worse. So yeah, you get a new agent that gets assigned and a lot of new agents end up at Washington Field Office, and they get assigned to a CI squad and they're have no idea, like, all right, I don't know what this is.

So what I used to try and explain to them is. We got the CI side, which is, you know, looking at the counterintelligence activities of your adversary. What, what is, what is a, an intelligence officer from another country doing in the U.S. to try and either hurt, steal, recruit, you know, Americans here or our interests. So there's that angle on, on CI.

I should caveat this as I only have big office experience. New York and Washington Field are the two biggest counterintelligence programs, I worked in both of them. So this is going to differ if you're working in a small office, in the middle of the country somewhere. The programs are smaller, the threats are, are, are not quite as apparent as they are in Washington and New York.

That's the CI focus. So you're, you're looking at the actual foreign actors who are within the U.S. who are, who are trying to hurt the U.S.

Counterespionage side is looking at the people that have either been recruited or volunteer to work for a foreign adversary, whether they're providing the access or materials or secret information or, you know, a whole wide variety of different things that they could be doing.

So on the one side, you're looking at the foreign actor and on the espionage side, you're really looking at the American.

Michael Feinberg: Okay, so this, this might be a good place to pause, because you and I have sort of lived in this universe for close to two decades each—for a little more than two decades for yourself. A little under for me.

And I just wanna make sure, 'cause I worry that, some of our listeners may be in the same position of somebody who just graduated from Quantico and is assigned to a counterintelligence squad. So I just wanna sort of like do a one-minute encapsulation of what you're saying and make sure that you and I are tracking on the same definitions.

Derek Pieper: I was always told you're gonna hear acronyms and if you don't know ask. So now's the time to recap if you caught what I said.

Michael Feinberg: Yes. So essentially counterintelligence is, as a general matter, identifying foreign spies in the United States and at the risk of broadly oversimplifying things, figuring out what they're up to.

And then counterespionage is looking at the individuals who are usually United States citizens that have access to classified material or national defense information, who have been recruited by those foreign spies to help them in their efforts to steal secrets.

Derek Pieper: That's a good recap.

Michael Feinberg: Okay, so I do wanna talk about something because we're gonna dive more into the nuances, but I think when you and I first joined, that definition of counterintelligence was actually pretty narrow.

You were looking at spies, in their attempts to recruit U.S. persons to get classified information. By the time both of us left, the universe of what counterintelligence entails had probably expanded quite a bit. I think when you and I joined the Bureau, for example, was not really looking a lot at foreign influence efforts or economic espionage or theft of technology.

Could you maybe talk a little bit about how and why that expansion might have occurred? And, since neither of us work for the organization anymore, feel free to give your opinion on whether that expansion was generally a good thing or if it's distracting from what used to be the primary mission.

Derek Pieper: Yeah, I mean, if you have the core mission of what are the spies doing, I think it's logical and made sense for us to begin to go down the path of what are the spies doing and what are the spies—or why are the spies doing it, and who are they targeting? And so, you know, the whole Foreign Influence Task Force, I wanna say that was 2015, 2016—

Michael Feinberg: It was 2017. They started it because it was in response—

Derek Pieper: The formalization of that, you know, so we had, we had started looking at, at, you know, how are foreign countries, you know, influencing our opinions, our policies, our politics. And I think the big difference between when I started and that point was the ability for foreign actors to do this stuff without being there.

So they could do it from overseas and, you know, the whole cyber angle and the fact that you could have people sitting in a basement, in Russia, let's call it, influencing the American elections or influencing American opinion on something. Back in the day, you would've had to relied upon those spies who were already here, the, the intelligence officers or the diplomats, and how they were, who were they meeting and how are they doing it—

Where now they're doing it over the internet really. And so, you know, the world changes. I mean, and even when I left—I mean, the other comment I used to make a lot was, you know, well counterintelligence has been around forever. I mean, espionage is, what, the second oldest profession.

So I mean, in the way that they conduct it, espionage is, essentially, you know, the technology is different, but I mean, the goals and the aims are really the same. To get up and get an advantage over your global adversary. So, you know, whether you're the tradecraft is a thumb pack in a, in a park bench, or whether or not you're using a thumb drive or you're using encrypted, you know, apps. It's all really distilled, you know, be able to effectively and clandestinely trade information that another country wants.

Yeah. So I mean, I, I saw a change and I think, you know, as technological advances were made and coverage got better, it just sort of, you're peeling back the onion into, into stuff that you can see or you find out, and then it's like, how do we not look at this?

And, yeah, you start walking down that path, it is dangerous because you're gonna anger somebody, but how do you—

Michael Feinberg: We'll get to that. Yeah.

Derek Pieper: Yeah. And how do you realistically say, well, we didn't look at it. You know, I mean, if, if the comment is nobody's above the law. Well, if nobody's, you know, if somebody's breaking the law, how's the Bureau not supposed to look at this?

And the Bureau has a ton of tools and tons of ways to do this, and, you know, and to, to wield those tools, you know, in a legal way using all the avenues that you are provided. I don't know how you don't, you know, and, and I don't think it sidelined the Bureau from its CI mission.

I think it was just in the natural extension of the CI mission to see like, who are these people who are being influenced and what, what's the point of it and, and how effective is it, how do we counteract that, and how do we get the word out that what you need, maybe looking at online is not what you think it is or is paid for by somebody else.

I mean, I think, you know, it's such a, it's such a sticky, sticky problem, but I, I don't know how you don't look at it. And if you, if the Bureau's not looking at it, then who is?

And if nobody is, how is that not a problem?

Michael Feinberg: Well, we may find out, I mean, as you know, the Foreign Influence Task Force at the FBI has been disbanded, as has the Foreign Maligned Influence Center at ODNI. So I'm not in the government anymore. I don't know what efforts are being made on the foreign influence front, but if they are being made, they're a lot less demonstrative in public.

And if they're not being made, we're gonna have a natural experiment in what happens.

Derek Pieper: Yeah. No, I, I think, I think we may be at that point where we're gonna fool around and find out, you know, like for all the criticism that the Bureau got over the years about, well, they shouldn't be looking at this or, or this was a witch hunt or whatever.

Now we're gonna get to the point where, okay, well the Bureau's not looking at it, so what happens best? You know? And I think, I think that's a serious, I think it's a serious problem.

Michael Feinberg: Yeah. And it's funny, I was actually, I did an interview. A couple weeks ago, I think, where I was trying to explain to somebody the difference between dropping the ball in counterterrorism and dropping the ball in counterintelligence.

And the way I explained it was, if you drop the ball in counterterrorism, people are going to die then and there. If you don't stop a plot, there's gonna be a bomb somewhere. There's gonna be a shooting, there's gonna be a truck veering off the road. And at a discrete moment in time, people tragically are going to lose their lives.

Counterintelligence, on the other hand, if you drop the ball, it might not be clear right away that there was a failure. It might not be clear for a decade.

And I think back to my time in Los Angeles. Because like you, I served mostly in large offices, and the LA office overlooked a veteran cemetery. And one of my early supervisors pointed out to me all the graves from World War II, and he said every single one of those deaths is a counterintelligence failure. Because we didn't get ahead of figuring out what the Japanese or the Germans were trying to do to us, and as a result, that had real ramifications in battle and in war.

So if we fail in Chinese counterintelligence today, for example, we might not know until we're unable to defend Taiwan, if China chooses to invade in a year or a decade.

Derek Pieper: No, you know, you know from the Bureau you'll have a, you know, an arrest and it's, it's in the criminal side and it's very kind of cut and dry, person's in jail, you know, CT side, maybe you disrupt a plot, you can kind of articulate, but even then, if you disrupt the plot, you don't get the kind of credit that you probably deserve for keeping things from blowing up.

CI, you may just never even know whether that was gonna happen or not. But if it did, I mean, I always said the CI emergency is an actual war. You know, it's like, you know, so you, you know, if you missed something or if there was something that you should have been tracking that you had in your coverage, or you should have had in your coverage, or you should have been paying attention to, or it was dots that should have been connected and you didn't—

I mean, I think, you know, the other countries, and U.S. is too, we all don't expend the amount of money and human capital to go try and get up on our adversaries for no reason. You know, I mean, so, you know, and, and when you look at the amount of effort it goes into a China or Russia or you know, any other country to go put people here to find out information about what the U.S. is gonna do, we're doing the same thing.

And if the FBI, as the counterintelligence, people aren't figuring that out or aren't tracking that, I mean, we're gonna get hit with a surprise that we should have probably seen coming. And that's dangerous.

And I mean, like, you know, you asked about the economic espionage. I mean, that was, that was not so much of a thing when I first started, but it became a thing, you know, in the 2010s period, where all of a sudden people were noticing that, you know, a Chinese operative steals, you know, a seed, you know, now they can, they can take this overseas and regenerate it where they're, they're skipping all of the research and the developments that the U.S. did and the amount of time and the effort and the money that the U.S. spent and just now they've got, I mean, that it saves them so much time and effort and that, you know, and now there's, there's an advantage that has shifted that they didn't once have.

You know, the biggest problem I always had with the economic espionage thing was they would—And maybe you saw this presentation at 1.2, is they came in and they talked about the importance oof economic espionage, and they were beaming up the faces of all the people that they had done. And then it was like, sentence was like, time served

Michael Feinberg: Five years. If that.

Derek Pieper: Yeah, right. You're, you're kind of like, you know, you spent seven years making the case, but the guy got five, you know, and that's not the Bureau's fault. That's, that's Congress, you know, not taking, taking economics espionage serious enough to put some sentencing. It didn't actually mean something.

But what we really started seeing what other countries, particular China, you know, is, is stealing and walking off with, you know, without having to expend much effort other than, you know, recruiting somebody it's devastating, you know, and I mean, it's a loss of money. It's a loss of opportunity. The losses just rack up.

Michael Feinberg: So I wanna pivot off something you just said about recruiting people. I think you and I would both agree, I think most people who've worked national securities would agree that one of the most important things even we do as counterintelligence agents is recruit confidential human sources.

And one thing I always noticed was that some people are very good at recruitment and other people are very good at handling the sources once that recruitment has occurred. But it's very rare that somebody is good at both. They're just, they're different skillsets, and they take different personality types.

I'm curious to sort of get back to the counterintelligence versus counterespionage divide. Do you think it's similar that some people are better at general CI and some people are better at counterespionage, or are the bodies fungible?

Derek Pieper: I think that like in an office like WFO where you have enough people working CI, where you,

Michael Feinberg: And just again WFO is the Washington Field Office.

Derek Pieper: Washington Field Office. In a place like that, or a place like New York where you have enough agents assigned to counterintelligence where you can kind of mix and match skill sets, I think it's a little different, but I do think, I think you're absolutely correct that, that there are people in the Bureau who I knew who were fantastic recruiters—

They could get in front of somebody and they could convince them that it was in their life's best interest to help the United States government in some way and they could, they could recruit just about anybody 'cause they were just that good at it.

And handling is different. I mean handling is not the, the first date. It's the living with them. And there's a whole different set of skills there. And I know, you know me, I'd be, I was, would not be a good recruiter. I was, I would be a better handler. One of the important things I think about a CI still is to know which of those you are because you put the wrong person in the wrong role. It's, it's not helpful.

And so, I mean, a lot of times we would have people who we knew were good at recruiting, go out and talk to whoever it was because they were, they were good at that, and then they could hand them off to a handler. But I mean, all about the recruiting is, is building that initial trust and then the handling is the keeping that trust and continuing to get the information. And, you know, and making that source feel, feel valued and trusted and that they trusted you.

And so I think that's a huge skillset. And that doesn't come out overnight. I mean, you don't just learn how to do it. And, and one of the, you know, the amusing anecdotes I think that I, that I used to have is people would bring me like a recruitment plan and they would think that—and they were, they'd be newer and they would think that this was the greatest idea. And they came up with this and it's like, yeah, but we've done this before and it didn't work.

And they just didn't know, 'cause they hadn't been in long enough to generate the history. They weren't, certainly weren't trained on it. So a lot of it is, you know, follow on training or getting briefings or just working the carbon with other people who know what they're talking about. And you know, you'd have to shoot down an idea that, you know, just wasn't gonna work. Or they'd be want to be the recruiter and they want to be the handler. And then if they went overseas, they wanted to do that too. You know, like, this isn't how these work.

You can't, you know, if you've already outed yourself because you've done surveillance on them and now they know you're trying to recruit them, you, how are they gonna trust you? You just pretended you were something else for the first six months that they knew you and now you're gonna transition?

You know, it just didn't know any better. And that's where the, on the job training. You know, and the CI stuff is so important, which means timing your CI means time on the target knowing that, you know, I was valued to work on a Russian because a Russian would expect to see the gray hair. You know, you're fresh outta Quantico and you can do a thousand pushups saying, you know, and you look like you've been in five minutes. That's not what a Russian is going to expect, because that's not what their mindset is.

And so if you, if you're that person, you try to recruit them, a Russian guy, or you come back to me with somebody more senior, I may not know anything, but I look more senior. So, you know, and, and so it's knowing the, kind of, knowing how, how it works and, and gathering that information over time, it just, it's, it's not a skill that you can just replace on the fly, you know, like, oh, well, we'll just find somebody else to do it.

The massive loss of, in particular, I think with all the people that that, that have left in the last year, you just don't replace that overnight.

Michael Feinberg: So, I, I still wanna get more, a little more at the dichotomy between the two disciplines though. I mean, I think you and I are in agreement based on what we just talked about, that becoming a skilled CI agent, so much of your work is on recruiting sources and then doubling them back against the agency they're purportedly working for takes time.

You, you just like, you could do all the simulations in the world and all the role playing in the world while you're at Quantico, but there's nothing that is a substitute for real life experience. And at least, in the way I learned, there was nothing that was as good a substitute for screwing it up.

Like I learned more from the recruitments that failed than I ever did from the ones that worked

Derek Pieper: Well, the other, the other danger just is if you are going to sit in a room with an intelligence officer and try to recruit them, they're also trying to recruit you.

Michael Feinberg: Right. Exactly. Yeah. So, alright, so that's sort of like the bread and butter of counterintelligence.

But once you get into the counterespionage realm, I argue it's a very different skillset for the sole reason that, and I'm gonna generalize here, and I know, and we could both think of people who would disagree with this characterization, but a really successful counterintelligence case, pure counterintelligence, probably ends in a recruitment. A real successful counterespionage case probably ends in an arrest.

So if I've been working counterintelligence for three to five years, what have you, and I get pulled to a counterespionage squad. What are the new skills that I need to learn and what are the potentially bad habits I might need to break?

Derek Pieper: Yeah. So if you're coming from the CI world over to the espionage, counterespionage side, it's a hybrid of the criminal world because you are now dealing with prosecutors. You're dealing with trying to take a case to court, whereas you're still working on the CI side because where did that predicate information come from? It could have come from a highly sensitive human source, a technical source.

So you may not be able to even use the predication for that case. Like how do you know to look at this person? Well, you better rebuild that in a different way that you can use in court.

Michael Feinberg: We would traditionally call that just for the audience building alternate predication. In other words, you got a tip about Mr. Smith that the government is never going to admit in open court how it got, so you've gotta come up with an equally legally valid reason to look at Mr. Smith, that does not involve classified information.

Derek Pieper: Yeah, and that's where I think having a bit of a CI background helps because you understand the nuances of why information might be more sensitive than not, you know?

 Or like, all right, this is why I can't give it up, because there's a human source on the line who might get killed if this comes out and we're not going to trade, you know, this, for that guy's death. You know? So having that CI background I think helps. I mean, I mean, my background before the Bureau was public corruption, so that was another good avenue to, to looking at the internal type cases because there was a corruption angle and not, you know, and criminal as well.

So having that, a little bit of a criminal background. I know people who have had a CT background, which was particularly relevant on the global side because a lot of the countries—you know, take Iran. You know, you've got, you've got state sponsored espionage being committed by China or Russia.

In Iran, it's kind of like state -ponsored espionage, but they also might throw a bomb. So, and, and that's why there, there's this big angle, a nexus between CT and CI on, on the Iran threat in particular. It's, it's a complicated threat because so much of it is not symmetric like you would normally think.

You know, it's, it's an asymmetric type threat where you'll have a, somebody will be doing a correct of life, somebody will be doing a cyber act. I mean, they, they use all these things that are all sponsored by, by the state, which creates some, a big problem, you know? But, but again, Iran doesn't have an embassy, so I mean, it, it takes a different type of, you have to take a look, a different look at that particular target versus like a China or Russia.

But like a counterespionage agent, I mean they, they can come from all different backgrounds. Whenever I would select them to put on that squad, it would be somebody who had done something else before, who was meaningful, who was sensitive, and that they understood the nuances. And I also didn't want to have anybody who would come in and tell me they wanted to capture the next Hanssen.

Because your goal is never on an espionage, cases is not to arrest the subject, or it may not be. It is to identify whether that person did it. And if they did, then you run them down and you figure out what damage they did and how do you stop that damage, and then how do you prosecute them.

But oftentimes, there's a lot of cases that get opened that the guy didn't do it, did something else that got a spotlight put on them. It wasn't espionage, you know, it may have been some other kind of infraction, or it may have been something, or it could have been totally innocuous—

And I, I always felt like the role of counterespionage agent should be to understand that there's huge risks to letting that case go on any longer than it needed to go, identify the threat, deal with the threat. What happened to the information that they may have went out or clear them as fast as you could so they could go back and not have a career that's, you know, goes down the toilet it because they were an espionage subject.

So you need very, I think, mature agents. You need very, you know, good dose of common sense, but you also don't need the glory hound who, you know, wants, wants the director's award 'cause they caught the next spy. And I mean, I, I.

I moved agents away from that squad when I got the sense that they were really thinking that every case they opened was the next Hanssen. 85% of 'em weren’t, so.

Michael Feinberg: Yeah, you know, I don't think most people realize most espionage leads turn out to be nothing. There's a lot of grunt work separating the wheat from the chaff. And one thing I found most frequently in the ones that I came across was not a case of somebody giving classified information away.

It was somebody having an affair or doing something not related to national security at all that caused them to act in a particularly furtive manner that raised their colleagues' suspicions.

Derek Pieper: Yeah, I mean, just, I had an instance where we were watching this particular person and the allegations seemed sound, there was stuff backing it up, but among the things that he was doing, was he was also buying real estate.

And so he would, he would meet some random guy in an alley, and he'd be looking at a building and, and you know what do spies do? They might be meeting with somebody you don't know in an alley, but they also might be meeting with a real estate agent. So, you know, it, it, you have these moments where you're like, oh my God, is this it? And then you find out it's, it's his broker, you know?

So what I found with almost all of those cases, especially the internals, is there was always, there was always a good reason why probably that person shouldn't have been trusted to be an FBI agent, but it often wasn't espionage. You know, they, they didn't join the Bureau to steal secrets and they didn't come disgruntled and work with the foreign intelligence agency.

They got frustrated with the rules and they drove their Bureau car somewhere, you know, and, you know, so there was always separating, you know, the, is this guy a spy? Should he, you know, or, and if he's not, and if he's not, should he still be trusted with or secret information? Should he be put in a position of trust?

Oftentimes those answers turned out to be no, but they weren't spies. And yet, you know, and, and that's why a lot of the cases I worked you never heard of because they ended up being dismissed from the Bureau for some other reason, but it wasn't, you know, they weren't arrested for spying.

Michael Feinberg: Yeah. An agent you and I both know who is still in so will remain nameless, told me that the most important quality for a counterespionage investigation, in his view was always emotional maturity.

Because you have to realize when you're investigating somebody who has access to classified information, you're investigating a public servant. Which means that you are, if you are totally wrong and totally off base, you're investigating a bonafide patriot who is doing their country good.

And one of the things that worries me when you jettison an entire squad, as we saw happen two weeks ago, have experienced counterespionage agents, is that they might get replaced by people right outta the academy who they haven't been tempered yet by experience and they might not make that connection.

Derek Pieper: Yeah, because you, you get an espionage case in the Bureau. It may not be the biggest case in the Bureau, but it's on everybody's radar as a—

Michael Feinberg: And, and to be clear, when we talk about an espionage case in the Bureau or an internal case, what we're referring to is an allegation that somebody actually employed by the FBI is the spy you're looking for.

Derek Pieper: Yeah, and if you get one of those, you've got the attention of everybody who knows about it, 'cause there's also broke—compartmented and it's, you know, so it's a small pool of people who would know about the case, but they're all looking at you if you're the case lead, you know how long, you know what's going on today, you don't take days off on a case like that.

And what I always told my people that work for me who got cases like that was, yeah, you worked that case hard, but you also realize that you should work that case like as if you were the subject, like how would you want to be treat treated professionally? You know, you're not gonna, you're not, you're gonna, you're gonna do it right.

You're gonna, you know, pursue it hard, but you're also gonna do it professionally and 'cause that person, you may clear that person and they gotta come back to work and that's your colleague. You know, your colleague until you, until you prove that they're not

Michael Feinberg: Right. There's a, there's act, there actually is a presumption of innocence.

Derek Pieper: Yeah. In one, and once you kind of turn that corner and yeah, this is legitimate, then you know what? They've earned the right to have the Bureau, you know, come with them full force. But while it's just an allegation or while it's, you know, work it hard, work it fast, figure out if it's real, but the assumption can't be, this is the next Hanssen, then, then you're thinking about the outcome as opposed to following the evidence and the facts.

Michael Feinberg: Alright, and that, so that sort of gets to something that is gonna be an elephant in the room for a lot of people, which is the Bureau, in certain quarters, has gotten a reputation for using the counterintelligence or counterespionage program to go after people for political reasons,

and I don't think that's true. I've made the argument that it's not, but can you talk briefly, hypothetically, why does the counterintelligence division so often have to bump up against high profile people from both sides of the political spectrum?

You and I could probably name half a dozen career politicians on both sides of the aisle whom the Bureau has publicly investigated, and we could probably name a lot more who are still not known to this day. Let's not.

Can you talk about why is it that so many of these cases become so high profile?

Derek Pieper: Well, I mean, they become high profile because of who they are, and then when once becomes known that, that the Bureau's looking at them. It seems like over the last, you know, dozen years, the kneejerk reaction is just to label it as this is political, you know, and it never was in my experience, you know, there was something in a coverage or something that came in from a lead, or some piece of information that the Bureau would collect, usually in its routine coverage or would be brought to them.

And the decision had to be made, do we look at this or not? The kinds of information that would come in, you know, if you're in Washington, D.C. you know the politicians in Washington or staffers or people working on the Hill, working in the White House, they all have contacts with foreign nationals. They all have contacts with different foreign countries. They all have overseas connections in, in one way or another.

Michael Feinberg: And let's be clear, most of those are legitimate.

Derek Pieper: Yeah. And most of them are legitimate, but the Bureau will know about them one through some means or another. And it's not because anybody's looking in at anybody in particular, but it just comes up in, in, in coverage in the sweeps, or it comes in directly from, from some lead.

But my feeling would like, look, if we're looking at this allegation and it can be predicated properly and, and it's supported by, you know, some other independent facts and it makes enough sense, you, how do you not look at it? Because if you don't look at it, you're being just as political as you'd be accused if you did.

And, and that's, that's the worrisome thing that, that I saw happen over the second half of my career is, you know, you were, you were damned if you did, and you were damned if you didn't. You were political no matter what, because, you know, half the people would say, well, it's political, and the other is, how could they?

You know, it, it was extremely frustrating, especially when you boil it down to, all right, well, did they have this contact and did they do this thing and, you know, did they report it or handle it properly?

You end up on, on the Bureau's radar if you do something that puts you on the Bureau's radar. And if you don't want to be on the Bureau's radar, then don't. I mean, you know, you know, the Bureau will look at a legitimate contact and say nothing to see here. You know the idea that any agent is sitting there culling through data trying to find the next case.

They're too busy for that, you know, and you deal with the ones that actually rise to a level that they could be predicated. Nobody's got time to, you know, say, Hey, I'm gonna target this person.

And, and like I said, when, when the last five years, I mean, we, we work on cases, on, on, unfortunately, on both sides of the aisle. I mean, you know, and egregious behavior. You know, nobody's above the law and they deserve to be investigated and it should have been run out. And if they were, if there's enough to go to a grand jury, it should go to a grand jury. If there's enough to go forward with a trial, it should go forward with a trial.

You know, I, the idea that the Bureau is making decisions for political reasons, that wasn't my experience whatsoever. And I mean, I went through my 21 years, and I don't think anybody could tell you how I voted, if I voted, you know, and I would say, well, I, I would vote A for adults.

Michael Feinberg: So, alright. I'm gonna ask you a question that to you and I is probably rhetorical, but I think it's important for it to be reiterated for the public as much as humanly possible.

What happens when the investigators get punished for working those sort of cases?

Derek Pieper: I mean, you lose the ability to get people to want to, willing to work that stuff. I mean, when we had the previous special counsels that happens prior to me getting there. So the earlier Crossfire Hurricane, all those kind of things, the agents who were brought in to those cases got so slammed that you couldn't get them to volunteer or even assist with other legitimate cases because they're like, no way. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not gonna do it.

And if the current climate is, if you worked those cases, you are gonna be fired for something as simple as you know, wasn't necessarily the case agents that got fired, it was the support staff who worked on the spreadsheet, who put together a list of phone numbers who got fired.

That just sours the morale of the entire office, 'cause nobody knows, you know, if that's the reason you can get fired, everybody can get fired.

And therefore you steer away from those kind of cases, you, it's better to make the decision to not, you know? All right. We just won't deal with that because, I mean, I, you know, my, my impression is if you found something like that these days, if you pushed it up the chain. Nobody would wanna support it. Nobody wants to get fired for bringing, for bringing a case.

And you shouldn't, you shouldn't fear retribution working a legitimately predicated case that had evidence to support it, it was collected lawfully and by the proper means, and was not targeted in any way. You shouldn't, you shouldn't be fearful for your job.

And those are the professionals that are here. You know, I worked for four different presidents, you know, and I worked under four different directors. I never, there was never a change in what my mission was or what I was asked to do or expected to do, or how I was told to do my job in any of those change orders.

Until, until last year. So,

Michael Feinberg: Yeah. And, and there's public data to support this. We don't have to sort of dance around it.

If you look at, for example, when the DOJ inspector general does a report of eviscerating, a number of agents who worked on certain FISAs, as Michael Horowitz did in the aftermath of Crossfire Hurricane, and then you look at the publicly released numbers for how many FISAs were sought the year after.

It's a cliff. I mean, it is a, like, I think we're talking like over a thousand less, if not more.

Derek Pieper: No, I mean I was in a meeting over CD during that time period where—

Michael Feinberg: CD is counterintelligence.

Derek Pieper: Yeah. At headquarters, you know, where somebody asked, well, why are the FISA numbers so far down? And I, I kind of sat there and I, junior, I wasn't gonna say the obvious, but I'm like, you just vilified everybody who's working on a FISA and you've, you know, and, and the press is running about how the Bureau has, has done this, done that.

Like, why would anybody sign up to do that? And then, and you know, and they're costly and do we wanna be looking at this up?

And we always did the, the calculus of do we need to be looking at this country or that, you know, would be working through who, who constituted more of a threat? Because you can't, you can't devote resources to everything. But you were always having that conversation, which I think is legitimate, but the, oh, well, we're just not gonna renew stuff, or we're not gonna pursue FISA on a legitimate case because we don't, we just don't wanna deal with it.

I mean, that, that's a huge, that's a tool that, that solves cases. It's, it identifies plots. It, it helps keep things from going boom. I mean, it, it, it's a, it's a it powerful tool that if used correctly, and in my experience always was, it keeps America safe.

And if you're too worried about the fallouts to put one up. You're not gonna find out the information you needed to stop a plot or to find a terrorist or find a spy. I mean, these are all terrible decisions made by vilifying, you know, the Bureau and the agents themselves who work the stock.

Michael Feinberg: On that wildly optimistic note, I think we will wrap things off. Derek Pieper, recently retired assistant special agent in charge, thank you for joining us and for sharing your knowledge on this topic. Look forward to talking again soon.

Derek Pieper: All right, thank you.

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