[applause] mr. Mccabe thank you. Thank you so much for that warm welcome. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and distinguished guests, students, and all members of the new school community. Thank you for inviting me to speak to you here tonight. It is truly an honor. And quite frankly has large and as terrifying as hello you are now, but to do it on the hundredth anniversary of the new school. Congratulations on your anniversary and for making that a part of it. Tonight, i would like to talk to you about loyalty, and about how my experiences in the fbi showed me the majesty and power of loyalty at its best. And the danger and manipulation of loyalty in pursuit of selfinterest. The motto of the fbi is fidelity, bravery, integrity, so it begins with fidelity. Fidelity, what is that . The quality or state of being faithful. And what is faithful . According to miriam webster, faithful is steadfast affection in affection or allegiance and loyal. So i think it is appropriate that at the fbi you begin swearing an oath of loyalty to the concepts and principles that we dedicate ourselves to during the course of our career. My beginning took place on a hot sunday night in july of 1996. I had been suffering as a miserable attorney. Are there miserable attorneys in the audience . This is new york city, so i know there are some miserable attorneys in this audience. [laughter] mr. Mccabe i feel you. I was working. I locked on to the idea of becoming an agent while i was in law school. The fbi was under a hiring freeze. I graduated from law school and went to work at a small firm in camden, new jersey. Wonderful town. [laughter] mr. Mccabe i immediately put my application in and waited and waited. I remember most visceraly the day that Timothy Mcveigh drove a truck to the front of the alfred p. Murrah Federal Building in oklahoma city, detonating the truck, killing 168 americans, injuring others. I spent the entire day sitting in my office staring at the wall listening to the radio, no work. I could not break away from the coverage of that event. There was something about what was happening on the ground. I could not explain it to myself at that time, but i knew i wanted to be there. I just felt the need to be a part of that, to be in the rubble, the side of the smoking hole, helping those touched so dreadfully by terrorism, and most importantly, being a part of that team that was going to have the responsibility to find those people responsible and bring them to justice. So i remember that time as being particularly tough, waiting for the fbi to give me the call, but i did get it eventually in july 1996. On that sunday night, i packed up my stuff and drove to quantico, virginia. Quantico is a very regimented place. You are told exactly where to be at every minute of the day and must be early and dont be late, the whole nine yards. As soon we got there, we were told you have half an hour to eat, put on a suit and tie, and report to the classroom, where we were sworn in as special agents in training at the fbi. Your very first night in the fbi, you dont sleep until you gather together with your class of 40 or so and you hold up your right hand and take the oath. The following oath. You begin by saying, i, Andrew Mccabe you wouldnt say Andrew Mccabe, you would say you own names. [laughter] mr. Mccabe just dont get hung up on that. Do solemnly swear that i will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That is the phrase that gets me the most. Everybody thinks about the first clause, i will defend the constitution against all enemies , foreign and domestic, which is striking, important, and powerful, but it is the second clause that really defines what you do as an fbi agent, i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, to that same constitution that binds us all to the principles of freedom, fairness, and justice. That is the source. That is what you become loyal to when you make that oath. Notably, there is no president in that oath, there is no Political Party in that oath, there is no race, there is no gender, there is no sexual orientation. It is simply the pledge of loyalty to the document that binds us together as americans,. It is the same oath that every Public Servant in the United States government takes, and with each of us, it carries the same meaning. Basically, that we will do our job, whatever it is, in accordance with the principles of that constitution for the betterment of all americans. I started to learn how this happens when i had the opportunity, my first office of assignment, right here in the big apple, new york city field office, not too far down broadway from where we are sitting tonight, and i was first assigned there as an agent on the Russian Organized Crime Task force. I know, ironic, right . [laughter] mr. Mccabe coincidence or not . Im not sure. Not sure, but there, i had the opportunity to work alongside the same people who share the took the same oath as me and shared the same values and dedicated themselves to those values on a visceral and daytoday level. I also had the opportunity to work for leaders who showed me , by example, what it meant to be loyal to those concepts, to those ideals, and those values, and i had the ability to interact with and help victims of crime, who intrinsically new loyalty to those help them nod , matter what. Probably the best example i can give you of this is my first big case on my squad, still very new in the new york office, new enough that i was showing up early, which no one in the new york office does. I was not seasoned enough to realize that our days drag on into the evenings and it was better to come in later. Nevertheless, i was the only was there when the phone rang one morning. [siren] mr. Mccabe on the phone, i hear this gravelly voice of a man with a heavy russian accent. I had to introduce myself, hello, mccabe, fbi, then i giggled because i couldnt believe i was actually saying it. [laughter] mr. Mccabe the man on the other end said, i think im being racketeered. I think that is extraordinary. Verber thought of it as a in that way. I talked to him and he laid out a story for me. Felix was a Furniture Store owner. He owned a store in brooklyn. He was russian, here on a green card, here for many years, and was part of a community of other Furniture Store owners, all russian, hardworking people, not making a lot of money, but making their way in this country, paying their taxes in , and living their lives the same way all of us do. Earlier in his career, he had a partner, dimitri. He left the store, went back to russia, spent a year in moscow, then returned to brooklyn with a new approach on life. Dimitri decided he would become a gangster so he built a small crew of thugs and he set about doing what gangsters do, which is taking advantage of people in their own communities and extorting them for things like protection money, collection, kidnappings, things like that. So dimitri had come to felix and said, im going to get all the Furniture Store owners together and they are all going to start paying me for protection. I need you to help me with this. I need you to pull them together. Felix was outraged, outraged. He was nervous because he had a family it was outraged by what demeter is demanding from him and his in he said i dont need him because i have you and i knew in that moment, the fact that he came from a place where he could never have that level with alland trust forceful officers that he interacted with, but here it was different. Member of thes a to that i would remain loyal those principles that my and thation stands for was why he was inclined that when we asked him to go to a meeting wearing a concealed recording device, he didnt want to do it, but he trusted us and get it anyway. We were able to make what turned. Ut to be an unbelievable case i also had that time to work for whot leaders, leaders taught me about creating environments of trust. [no audio] the last few hours, he would cases,alking to us about our performance, with mean to us complain about our prosecutors, but also talking about our wives and kids in the renovations we our firstg to do on houses. Whoas just there in the guy connected with us on a very personal level, and exemplified a level of excellent and honesty and integrity that we all aspired to mimic in our own lives and the way we worked our own cases. Later when i moved to headquarters, i had the opportunity to work closely for many years with director mueller. So the best way i can describe director mueller to you is he is exactly that got you heard about them fits the description to a t. People have got this guy figured out. He is the consummate investigator, prosecutor, cross examiner. Director mueller never met a case he didnt love, and he wanted to get right into the weeds of every one of them, and would use that knowledge to grill us at the table in the morning. He would ask us questions, constantly challenging our knowledge of the facts and whether we had followed up on the things he asked us to do the day before, and although that was mildly terrifying and stressful at the time, i realize later as a leader in the fbi that what he was doing was teaching us and communicating the level of excellent, the level of understanding that he demanded of each of us. We are in a business [indiscernible] terrorism. It is not like you get most of them, you have to get them all, and understanding those demands director mueller communicated us can exactly how much emphasis he placed on our expertise but he is also incredibly fairminded, and although he can push you to the limits, he was the same guy who called me the day after i got hit by a car riding my bicycle, to find out how i was doing. I was heavily on painkillers, so it was a strange conversation i cannot exactly recount at this moment, but another caring, moral leader with integrity who served as a great example to the people he led. So you can imagine my shock when on the evening of may 9, 2017, after having been informed half an hour earlier by the attorney general that he had to fire the fbi director, i received a call, my staff received a call, the president would like to see you in the oval office. So i had never been to the oval office. I had been to a thousand meetings in the white house, the situation room, members of the National Security council, some of which were attended by president obama, but i had never met with president in the oval office. Simply as a career government servant going to the oval office is an aweinspiring event, no matter who is sitting in the office at the time. When i walked in, President Trump was seated behind the resolute desk, the incredible, solid desk. He popped up quickly, came around the desk, put his hand outstretched, his fingers outstretched, he immediately shook my hand and begin talking. I know, you are surprised. [laughter] mr. Mccabe President Trump is an overwhelming communicator. He is a big man. He speaks loudly and constantly. He launched into a tirade of really statements, not so much questions, just statements, which i later learned was his way of informing me of the facts he wished me to adopt. He said, so glad you are here. This is going to be great. [indiscernible] everybody is happy. Did you hear them everybody is happy about this . [indiscernible] are they happy about this at the fbi building . Isnt this great. Isnt this terrific . Yeah, fortunate he ended with the question. He said, i heard you were part of the resistance, and [indiscernible] i am not sure i understand what you mean. He said, i heard you were part of the group that didnt like jim comey. You didnt approve what he did in these cases. You didnt agree with him. He said, you objected to the way he worked to these cases, is that right . I said, no, sir, that is not right. I worked very closely with jim comey and we worked on this cases together. I was a part of most of those decisions, most of them. I know that some people have disagreements with the way that we handled some of our decisions, but i was part of that team, so i dont think you are correct about that. So in the moment, my impulse was to answer the question honestly, because that is what we do. It was only later that i realize that this was my loyalty test. Jim comey had notoriously had his in his private dinner with the president shortly after his inauguration, when the president came out and said, i need you to be loyal. There was no interpretation needed there. It was pretty direct. I realized this was my version of that same loyalty test. The president clearly laid out i dont want to call them facts alternative facts . That he wished i would adopt, then gave me that opportunity come put that lifeline in the water, saying you are either with us or against us. It did not even occur to me at the time to respond to that in any other way other than to correct [indiscernible] several other interactions with him, the next morning on the telephone, and then later that day in the afternoon, then a followup meeting i had with him a few weeks later. I saw things about President Trumps leadership style that i had never seen in the fbi. I saw the way his staff and advisors would sit at attention in a small row of chairs gathered in front of the resolute desk. I saw the way he tried he and his advisors tried to manipulate me into inviting him to speak at the hoover building that week. I saw the way he reflexively again and again came back [indiscernible] Political Campaign in a state of virginia the state of virginia in 2015, consistently referring it to it as that mistake that i made. Leaders dont this was not a leader creating an environment of trust. These were obvious efforts to coerce me in a position to take that loyalty i had over the course of my career and shift it, the loyalty, to a person, rather than an ideal or the constitution. We all know how this story plays out, unfortunately. Over the days that followed those meetings, i had the opportunity or the obligation to make a series of decisions that ultimately, i believe, led to my own firing from the fbi, in some way. Those decisions have been characterized as acts of treason, and we have been referred, a group of us that worked on those issues, referred to as plotting a coup to overturn the presidency. I think those words are lies. I think they are intentionally weaponized to gather peoples attention to a certain set of talking points. But im going to leave it up to you. We can tell you exactly what we saw, exactly what we knew at that time, and what we thought of the decisions we were making, and you can be the judge as to whether those decisions were an act of professional integrity and loyalty to the responsibilities we had at the time, or some sort of treasonous coup. So im going to ask you to put on your investigators hat and think about the facts that we had in our hands over the period leading up to the firing of jim comey and immediately after. The standard for opening an fbi case, as given to us by the attorney general and the attorney generals guidelines, is when we have information to indicate that a threat to National Security might exist or that a federal crime might have taken place. That is the standard to open a full field investigation. So, go back in time, through your investigators lens. 2014 and through 2015, we knew that the russian government was behind an aggressive series of Cyber Attacks that were focused on institutions, government institutions in d. C. At the highest level. We werent sure why they were doing it, but we knew they were behind the activity. 2016, we see the aggression and the targeting of that activity becomes even more specific. We then uncover signs that the Democratic National committee may be a target of cyber activity. So we go through a period of fits and starts where we dont communicate very well with the dnc, telling them they should check their systems and see if they see evidence of this probing and intelligence collection. As we get deeper into 2016, we see that activity is focused specifically on emails at the dnc and other places associated with Hillary Clinton her campaign. Unbeknownst to us, in may of 2016, an individual with the Trump Campaign, george papadopoulos, has a meeting with a friendly foreign diplomat in which he tells that diplomat that the russians have informed them that they have a lot of negative information about candidate clinton and they offered to help the campaign using that information. But we dont know this in may. Now we see the information we know the russians have taken is actually weaponized. It is released on the eve of the convention in an effort to harm candidate clinton. Seeing that activity, the friendly foreign diplomat realizes the significance of the information he has received from mr. Papadopoulos, and he passes that to us. At the end of july in 2016, we had known for a while that russians were targeting our political systems through cyber means, we know theyve taken this information from the democratic infrastructure, and now we know from someone in the campaign that they were at least aware of the fact that the russians had this information and were willing to make it available. The obvious question then is, is it possible, do we now have information that our most significant adversary on the world stage might be working in concert with a domestic Political Campaign to undermine the stability and sanctity of our democratic elections . We make that decision to open the russia case on that reason. And then we think, who are we actually going to investigate . Who do we know who is associated with the campaign who has known significant ties to russian intelligence . We come up with names that will not surprise you. Mr. Papadopoulos, because he made the statement. Paul manafort, who was well known before that time to have had highlevel political contacts in ukraine with candidates supported by russia. Michael flynn, who engaged in highlevel and public interactions with Vladimir Putin and other russians. And an individual named carter page. Carter page was a guy who was known to us for many years, who had come up in an earlier counterintelligence case, who had been interviewed and alerted by our agents to the concerns we had about people he was interacting with, and then shared that information with them after the briefing. Carter was a person who had significant former contacts with russian intelligence agents. We go into the fall. The Intelligence Community comes together and produces the Intelligence Community assessment, which concludes unanimously across our three agencies that the russians intentionally meddled in the campaign. Trump is inaugurated in january and begins a series of odd and concerning actions with director comey, in which he requests loyalty, in which he requests that we make a public statement, that we lift the cloud over his investigation. These are all concerning us. Then he asks us to close the investigation into michael flynn. Until that point, we were never quite sure, are these odd interactions and requests just someone who doesnt understand the intricacies and sensitivity of the white house fbi relationship, but with the request to close the flynn investigation, it became clear to us, he did not like the fact that we were investigating russian involvement in that campaign. And then of course in may, he fires director comey. The day before that is made final, he asks the Deputy Attorney general to write a memo justifying the firing, and he asks the Deputy Attorney general, please put russia in your memo. The Deputy Attorney general says, i dont think that is a good idea. After he fires the director, he tells lester holt on the news that when he fired the director, he was thinking about russia. The next day, he tells the russians that he fired the director and has relieved a lot of pressure from the russia investigation. With that knowledge, and your investigator hats are tightly pulled down over your heads, ask yourself, have we met the standard for an investigation . Do we have information that might indicate that a threat to National Security could exist, or that a federal crime could have been committed . That was the question that confronted me on may 9 and in the days following when we determined to open a case on the president of the United States. Act of treason, the plotting of a coup against the United States of america, i think not. What it was, was us doing our job. We are the investigators. We are not the prosecutors. We are not the judge. We open the case using facts to predicate it. We didnt do it because we thought it would be cool or fun or interesting. We didnt do it to help one side or hurt the other side. We did it simply because it was our responsibility to do so and we take that responsibility incredibly seriously. To not do so under those circumstances would have been a dereliction of duty, would have been a failure in the loyalty we had all pledged to that constitution. To fail to act at that time because the person involved was the president of the United States would have been even worse. We would have been undermining the bedrock assumption that all people in this country, none of them are above the law, including the president. We remain loyal to that oath, to that responsibility, and to our commitment to treat everyone the same under the law. So here we are, two years later, still struggling with the same concepts. We still hear words like deep state, treason, plotting coups. The frustrating thing for me in the way that our work has been, i think, unfairly criticized, is that it also vilifies the good work of men and women who are devoted to the service. And by doing though, it dishonors their commitment and the value they bring to our lives. I worry about our ability to continue to attract the best and brightest to lives in public service. I worry about those former colleagues of mine who continue to serve in government and who have to confront the same sort of questions that we did. Do you stand up [inaudible] and if by doing so you run the risk of being publicly [inaudible] or maybe being fired 26 hours before you achieve your pension. So, to you, concerned citizens, politically aware people who care about your community, who care about these issues, my only request is that in any way that you can you stand up. Stand up for the things you believe in. Speak out about the things you see that are wrong. Do it even when it is hard. Do it even when it could hurt you personally. After everything ive been through, i stand here before you battered but not broken and i can honestly tell you, if taken back to those times, i would do the same thing tomorrow. It is worth it for the men and women who are serving today. It is worth it for the whistleblower who stepped up and kind of thrust us into the current controversy that we are thinking about. That is the way out of a time when concepts like loyalty have been destroyed and disfigured into pledges of personal loyalty. We get back from this time by focusing on those things that unite us, that commitment to the constitution, and the beautiful concepts that it embodies for everyone. Thank you very much for listening and i will now ask mr. Bernstein to come join me on stage. [applause] carl everybody can hear me . That was extraordinary to hear. Thank you so much. This is a terrific book that youve written. It is an extraordinary tale about a persons journey through National Service and where that National Service is broken down, and also, about where we are in the country today. There is a lot to learn in here. What youve just touched on, it has raised a number of questions that i would like to ask you. Lets start with the first, given what weve seen of the temperament of the president of the United States. What is not in your book, i believe, is the discussion that you were present at about the invocation of the 25th amendment. What provoked that discussion, who had it, and tell us about it. Mr. Mccabe so, in the days following jims firing, i had a series of meetings with Deputy Attorney general rod rosenstein, first in a one on one exchange on the friday of that week, and then over the days that followed. It was in one of those first meetings that rod raised the idea of the 25th amendment. In the course of a wild and chaotic conversation about what the president had done and what he may have been thinking when he did it. Carl what the president had done specifically when and where . Mr. Mccabe rod and i were discussing the firing of jim comey and why jim had been fired and whether or not the president was there was more to it, essentially, then the reasons in his memo. In the course of that conversation that rod first offered to wear a wire to the white house. Carl do you remember his words . Mr. Mccabe i remember him saying, pointing out the fact that he didnt get searched when he went into the west wing, so he felt he could wear a recording device. Carl so there could be nothing to the story given your description that this was some kind of joke. Mr. Mccabe it absolutely was not a joke. He raised it in front of others in later meetings, pointed out to people that he made this offer to me. I thought it was an unbelievably bad idea. I kind of put the whole thing aside by saying, well ill talk to the investigative team, and if that is something they want to do, i will ask you for that authority, and of course we never did. I remember going back and telling my team at fbi headquarters, that included jim baker and other Senior Leaders the Deputy Attorney general offered to wire up into the white house. The fbis lawyer jim baker, a wonderful guy and a very good lawyer, but also has a tendency to be stressed out he was like, oh my god, you are not doing that. I was like, im not asking you, jim. Im just telling the story for comic effect. That is not something we considered doing. The comments about the 25th amendment and whether the president was capable and who would be inclined to support such an effort, i never considered it seriously in any way. It is not a process that the acting director of the fbi would have a role in. Carl who was in that discussion . Mr. Mccabe rod brought it up, probably not in our first meeting, but a second or third meeting. Myself, his chief of staff, another woman from his staff, and a third meeting would have been one or two other people. Carl the reason for it invocation being the firing itself or some temperamental mr. Mccabe it is hard for me to say. I cant really fully describe how stressful the time was. That stress was having a deep impact on mr. Rosenstein. The conversations we had were kind of freewheeling, off the top of his head comments. He would go from one person to another person. It wasnt entirely clear whether he was referring to someone as a possible candidate for the special counsel role or the directors job. It was a very chaotic and emotional exchange. Carl but it did not go to a question about the president s stability . Mr. Mccabe it was more like rod was kind of musing off the top of his head, who would support such an effort, who else would think carl you have to do it through the cabinet. Mr. Mccabe correct. Carl you talk about those chairs lined up in front of the resolute desk and im just thinking about wilbur ross saying, that is an idea, lets do the 25 amendment on this guy. Mr. Mccabe not something that turned into an actual effort as far as im aware. It was an offhand mention. Carl theres been a lot of talk by the president of the United States, by those around him, by the attorney general of the United States, about a deep state, some kind of deep state plot, that really it is not the russians who were behind everything, but rather theres something deeper here that goes to others, goes to the democrats, goes who knows where, and yet, isnt there a real history in the institution that you work for, in the cia, not that long ago, evidence of a real and dangerous deep state, in terms that existed under fbi director hoover, in the committees of congress, the house on american activities committee, the cia and its spying on, breaking into peoples premises who were under suspicion, so when did this deep state ceased to exist, if you accept, and do you accept that, that the fbi was part of something . Mr. Mccabe i wouldnt propose to define the concept, but i will absolutely say that in the course of the fbis history, when you look back on the fbis intelligence program, there were decades of illegal activity, activity that quite frankly was an embarrassment to the institution and to the nation and should never have taken place. Our history, particularly on the intel side, is checkered at best, but the defining moment was truly the Church Commission hearings, the efforts of people like Bobby Kennedy and others who confronted this thing head on and ultimately brought the fbi to the place it is today. I would suggest that the fbi that most people know and expect is the post hoover fbi. Carl you came in 1996. These types of activities, you saw nothing of, they were done . Mr. Mccabe absolutely. There are certainly activities that the fbi engages in that some people dont approve of, but they are nevertheless lawful and closely scrutinized by the courts and congress. Hoover basically cut political deals with enemies and foes alike and use the agency essentially to the aggregation of his own power. That is not the fbi that i know. Carl the mueller investigation. Did the final report itself fall short of the maximum use of what information was developed by the fbi and other investigators, and was there something in the way though report was written or assembled that accounts for what i and other reporters were told a few weeks before the report, the quote that i was given was that fbi senior officials and prosecutors under mr. Mueller were demoralized by the final stages of the process, and by what was going into the report were you aware of that . Mr. Mccabe i cant speak to the morale of the team, because i have not been connected with those folks since i left. I cant say how accurate that is. As far as the report goes, from my personal perspective, i was both kind of amazed and impressed by some aspects of it, and a little disappointed by other aspects as well. Much in the same way many folks who really read it. Carl what disappointed you, and did mr. Muellers performance before congress disappoint you . I can take them one at a time. Mr. Mccabe when i read the report, particularly volume two about obstruction, that to me is very much the product of bob mueller, not that he wrote of the whole thing by himself, but what comes out of that volume is bob muellers sense of fairness and propriety. Bob mueller, i think, went as far as he possibly could to essentially call every ball in the air in the president s favor. And despite that, in a report that details 10 separate categories of obstructive behavior, i think in eight of those 10 categories, he finds that the president s behavior has satisfied all the elements of the offense of obstruction of justice. We knew that he limited himself he followed the doj policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted, and in his own sense of fairness, decided it would be improper to say that anyone else who has committed these acts would likely be charged with obstruction of justice. Carl jaworski did the same thing in the nixon investigation. Did not specifically accuse nixon. He gave a roadmap. Mr. Mccabe unfortunately the roadmap is incredibly dense, tough to follow, so you lose the opportunity to kind of deliver that final conclusion. You lose a lot of the audience. Essentially, what happens with that report is based in some extent on how strongly people feel about it. You miss out on the opportunity to show folks how substantive it is. You have to really wade through that with a lawyers eye for detail or an investigators eye for detail and most people dont have the time or interest to do that. Carl theres nothing in the report that talks about any significant communications between Paul Manafort and donald trump the candidate. Did you or were you aware of any such communications that bore on the investigation that you undertook, that might not have been put in the report . Mr. Mccabe i do know, but i cant tell you. Im kidding. [laughter] carl trying to make a little news. Mr. Mccabe youve got to remember, we handed off those cases at a very kind of early stage. I was not aware of any information like that. I dont know what they found or what they chose to put in or leave out. Carl but you never saw any information whatsoever that would have any bearing on conversations or communications between manafort and the candidate . Mr. Mccabe i am not aware of any information that i think should have been given greater consideration and wasnt. Carl you were among those [inaudible] did she undermine the National Security of the United States in her installation and use of that server . Mr. Mccabe ive been asked a lot of questions about that case, but not that one. So good on you. I think that the entire staff infrastructure, not just secretary clinton, but her Close Associates and advisors, and those communicants who were interacting with her over the email every day, they were, just the simple fact that they were doing so over architecture that didnt carry the United States governments typical level of cybersecurity protections, that is dangerous activity. Carl was it negligent . Mr. Mccabe im not going to relitigate the legal call. Carl i dont mean in the legal sense. Mr. Mccabe but it was irresponsible, i think. There are many reasons why they did that. They were hampered by particularly poor systems at the department. There were folks in that circle [inaudible] they were operating kind of under intense demands. I am confident in our conclusion that none of them, the secretary or any of her associates, engaged in that behavior intentionally, to violate the statute or to conceal or mishandle classified information. I dont believe they made carl or to keep it from any possible eyes that might use it nefariously, the vast rightwing conspiracy . Mr. Mccabe that was our conclusion in the case. Did we find a lot of misuse of the email, yes, but we didnt find any evidence that it was done intentionally, and without that element of intent, you cannot prove the offense, and we recommended that just does not go further. Carl during the campaign, before trump was nominated, did you think that by and large the press coverage of Hillary Clintons server was unfair to her . Mr. Mccabe i dont know that i thought about it in terms of whether the press coverage was fair or unfair, but it was certainly a constant pressure on the work we were doing. I often get asked, why did you handle the cases differently . Why, when you opened the case against the Trump Campaign to investigate the russians, you did that quietly, and so forth, but the clinton case was wide open you have to understand that the clinton case was public before we got it. The very referrals that we received from the state and i cig that initiated the investigation were public. The director and the attorney general publicly acknowledged it. That public nature of the case drove a ton of that reporting. So not only was what we were doing already public, the relentless reporting around every little issue really elevated the pressure to get that job done in a way that, if we could, before it would have an impact on the campaign. That is not how things ended up. Carl mr. Barr, the attorney general, has been on a worldwide search for what he apparently believes is this deep state conspiracy within the Intelligence Community and the obama administration, as the impetus for your investigation of russian interference in the campaign. You said on cnn this week that the circumstances are not a mystery and that youve touched on the issues in the book and youve told us a little bit about it here, but what else about the instigation of the investigation havent you told us . [laughter] carl and i think there is something. Mr. Mccabe that is why you are a great reporter. Never satisfied with what is already known. Well, i cant, carl. As we walked through, during my comments tonight, that is basically what we knew. We knew more detail about russian cyber activity and more technical detail, but those are details that i cannot share. Carl havent left anything big out . Mr. Mccabe no. I do this specifically because people should understand, the fbi doesnt just open cases because we think, that is neat. We open cases when [inaudible] we think it is required to do so. That threshold level of information. We so clearly had the predication to initiate these investigations. Not doing so would have been turning a blind eye to our responsibilities. There isnt a mystery behind it. More facts or secret information or something we got from malta carl after it was reported by the press, it was justified. Mr. Mccabe that is a good point. A2year special counsel investigation resulted in, what, three dozen indictments, numerous russians, the report that lays out in detail what the russians did, so the results of the special counsels effort, no matter how anticlimactic one might think they are, validated our concerns. Carl there is a good deal there. Forget about the obstruction part of it, but the actual contacts between russians and aspects of the Trump Campaign. Mr. Mccabe the level of detail that they put in that report was extraordinary to me. They exposed a level of detail about different russian intelligence agencies that was remarkable. If you are into that sort of thing carl question about the instigation of the investigation, the steele dossier. What role did it or did it not play, and what is your evaluation of what it is, and represents, and its accuracy, or is it really intended to be a raw intelligence document . Some misinformation, some disinformation, some from good sources, some from bad sources. What was its role in the investigation . Mr. Mccabe it had no role in the initiation of the russia investigation. The russia investigation was opened on july 30 and we didnt get the dossier until mid to late september. So it played no role in the initial opening of the case. Carl that is contrary, i believe, to what [inaudible] mr. Mccabe im quite sure it is. It did play a role in our pursuit of a warrant from the fisa court to initiate electronic surveillance on carter page. It was not the sum total of that request. It was part of some of the information that was in that package [inaudible] misquoted from closed testimony that i gave, from testimony that has not been released, that is frustrating. [inaudible] that is not and has never been my position. What i have said is, it is impossible now, having sent the request in with the steele dossier and the other information about carter page, it is impossible for anyone to say, could you have gotten it without what was in there . Carl in the dossier itself, in those 40 or whatever the number of paragraphs, were there some good leads . Mr. Mccabe yes. There was a lot of information that we could not disprove. There was a fair amount of information carl a lot of information you could not disprove. Mr. Mccabe there was a fair amount of information that we knew was accurate, but there are questions with respect to timing. When you get a source, even if what the source is telling you is correct, you have to figure out if theres some way carl my reading of it, and tell me if this seems right to you, and i spent a good deal of time with it, was that steele didnt pretend that the information was definitive, that rather they were from sources, and he was outside russia himself, but he had sources, that he could communicate with them from outside, and some with intermediaries, and there are varying levels of which there is both plausibility, perhaps accuracy, but that it was not intended to be a definitive document. Mr. Mccabe absolutely right. It is raw source reporting. Steele presented it as such. We knew that steele was working a number of different sources, some of which had sub sources, and he represented that in the reporting, so it didnt come with, this is all gospel. It is, this is what im hearing. Some of the information was consistent with reporting we were getting from other sources. Steele had a history of good reporting. He had provided information on other cases about russian organized crime and other issues, information that was judged to be so accurate that it was used in arrest warrants and indictments. So he had a solid track record and provided this information, describing some that he thought was pretty solid, others that are, im getting this from one person and i cant vouch for the sourcing chain. Carl lets give people in the audience a chance to ask questions. Weve got microphones on either side. Meanwhile, ill call on some of these folks. Go ahead. Hello, bob. This is bob, a great journalist and now publisher. Go to the mic. This is something ive never quite understood. It is an honor to be in the same room with you. If you are getting this info, this intel, in 2015 and early 2016, about russians engaging in cyber warfare, was this transmitted to the president of the United States . Obama is president. Youve got serious people running the cia and nsa. I would assume that if you were getting this kind of intelligence, it would have been appropriate or really bad stuff is going to happen. Did that happen . Is that not how the fbi works . Carl let me add to the question, did secretary clinton convey anything like that . Mr. Mccabe she would not have been there 2015, hes talking about in 2015. First of all, that was information that was known across the Intelligence Community. There is a question that people were aware of what is going on. But your question gets right to the heart of what she still struggles with, how does the Intelligence Community handle highly sensitive intelligence about cyber activity . If you go forward and make the sort of warnings or threats, they moved to a different set of infrastructure, and you lose the visibility on the threat. So it is not dissimilar [inaudible] when a human source gives you information, if i use it in a search warrant or indictment, i run the risk of burning that human source. That same sort of concern in the cyber realm is even more sensitive and harder to grapple with. [inaudible] mr. Mccabe i cant sit here and tell you what president obama was briefed on, personally. I have a twopart question. The first part related to the famous or infamous principle that a sitting president cannot be indicted. The work of Robert Mueller came to not because of that principle. Carl what is the question . The question is, is there anything we can do about it . This is a conflict of the highest principle, that nobody is above the law. We heard it repeated ad nauseam. Carl you want to try and answer it . Mr. Mccabe sure. It is a policy of the department of justice. It is not law. It is a policy based on the department of justice lawyers interpretation of the constitution. They feel it would be unconstitutional to indict a sitting president because of all the effort and time and attention it would take for the president to defend himself, that essentially you are taking that resource away from the country. That is not saying i agree with their interpretation, but that is the principal. Carl and it goes back to nixon. The same decision was made. Mr. Mccabe it could be rescinded by the department of justice if their interpretation changed. Carl we are just going to do one point. The second part is a very small question. It has to do with the mental state of the president. The man who changes his opinion faster than [inaudible] carl question . Can we forcibly subject him to a psychiatric evaluation . Carl ill take that one. No. Mr. Mccabe i dont think you can. [inaudible] i ask you this question. How concerned are you where are we headed [inaudible] mr. Mccabe so, i am absolutely optimistic about our future and the future of this nation. We are stronger than the times we are in right now. We have been through worse crises in this country before. By rallying around those things that bind us together, by understanding that we all want to live somewhere that is free and fair and just. We have drifted from that for the moment. We have some tough situations to get through before we get back to appreciating each other, but i have no idea that we will get back to that. What it is going to take is ethical, transparent leadership. Uniting this country and observing the rule of law. Thank you. [applause] thank you for the lecture. The theme of this lecture is loyalty and i have a question about attorney general barr. I will keep it short. Why do you think that a. G. Barr is acting in the interest of the president instead of taking the traditional more impartial position, and what do you think that barrs actions mean for the future of the department of justice . Mr. Mccabe great question. The first one, i really cant answer. It wouldnt be fair to speculate on why hes doing what hes doing. It is more important to focus on the things hes actually doing, and what a departure this is from attorneys general that attt we have seen over the last you know several series attorneys general. Theres is no question that his efforts certainly like the revelations of the last week, traveling around the world and pursuing this investigation of the investigators, is completely consistent with the president s preferred political narrative. Things like that are ultimately harmful for the department. And you know again, i think that , it wont be fatal to the department, but we have got to get back to a position where we all have faith that the leadership in the department of justice is acting on the law and on the facts and not on politics. Mr. Bernstein do you have suggestions or ideas . Or maybe do you want to apply for the next one . [laughter] mr. Mccabe if they were going to ask me. They know where i live. I would just point out, there is a bit of mythology about the independence of the attorneys general. You go back to watergate and remember that two of nixons attorneys general were implicated in watergate, one of whom went to jail for a considerable time. And yes. Hi. First of all, thank you for being an amazing role model of integrity. We need that. So it seems there has been irreparable damage to our ability to gather intelligence and ways of gathering intelligence with income lost. Do you feel theres been a preferable damage to any of our cap irreparable damage to any of our kind of methodology, and do you think that training people that loyalty is underrated . Mr. Mccabe i think the damage that is being done to the Intelligence Community right now is i dont think it is , irreparable. My guess is it is more on the then side that it is on technical side. People in the community dedicate their lives to doing hard and stressful and dangerous work for the sole purpose of providing information and insights to decisionmakers, and ultimately to the ultimate decisionmaker, the president of the United States. So when they get back these consistent messages that the president doesnt trust them, the president doesnt use the information they are sending, the president isnt interested in educating himself about the issues of greatest concern, that is incredibly dispiriting to those people. My hope is that they are hanging on through this hard time, and that when they once again work for a leader who appreciates and values their contribution, that they will be able to bounce back to the high level of performance they always delivered. I hope that people arent so discouraged that they are leaving the community, but im optimistic for our ability to turn that around. Thank you. Mr. Mccabe you are welcome. My name is olivia cadwell and im a firstyear year phd student here at the new school. My question is, your perspective, specifically on the divisiveness of this nation staying on the topic of loyalty, and betrayal. What would you say to the people, the American People specifically who are calling the whistleblower treasonous or actually someone who is betraying the country . Mr. Mccabe yeah it is so , incredibly damaging. Really impacts me personally because ive been the subject of the same sort of lies. As someone who spent my life, my career serving the country, to be called a liar and guilty of treason is about as bad as it possibly gets. I will say full disclosure, as , somebody who ran an executive branch agency, whistleblowers are like, not a happy day, when you find out theres another whistleblower report. Nobody likes that, but we all understand and respect the essential role that whistleblowers play in keeping us a highly functioning and accountable organization. Right . That report might expose all kinds of problems that you as a leader have to deal with, and that can be inconvenient or embarrassing or what have you, we address way that fraud, violations of the law, things that have escaped traditional oversight. It is absolutely essential that people feel comfortable, that they are courageous enough and willing to step up and speak up, that we have a legal regime that is set up that will protect them and provide for a fair and unbiased vetting of their complaints. So when the president of the United States attacks the whistleblower, incomplete contravention of the whistleblower statute, which is it ise laws he has damaging and i am sure it is terrifying to that person. Thank you. Mr. Bernstein raised the question about muellers testimony before congress, but then the discussion veered away from that. So i am raising the question again. Robertou think that mueller, who was characterized as a patriot, should he not have been more explicit, more outspoken in informing the American Public about what he had learned in the investigation . Mr. Mccabe ill say this. As a viewer, i would have preferred a more dynamic presentation. But as someone who worked very closely with director mueller, i understand that what we saw was an incredibly cautious bob mueller. Not bob, director, sorry. Director mueller clearly did not want to did not trust the questions and the way he would pushed he would be pushed by either side in the hearing didnt want to be perceived as , favoring one side or the other, and he would not stray one word from the text of the report. He kind of backed himself into a corner where he wouldnt provide any answers beyond the report, and he backed himself into a court where he would not in a corner where he would not reveal anything more and that undermined the appeal and the effectiveness of the testimony. He could have repeated many of the statements in the report to make it better known to the public that did not read it. Mr. Mccabe it did not come off as you do the testimony knowing that most people are not going to read the 400 page report. You put the testimony on to make sure people understand. Im not sure that they accomplished that. Lets be honest. These are not normal times. This is straight up fascism. We are seeing it. There is the evidence. It is there. The rule of law can only mean something if something is actually done about what is happening. I just want to say i have two questions. One question. Ok, whatever. If you will not take to the streets now to demand the trump regime must go, what will you do if trump is reelected, perhaps through the Electoral College even if he loses the popular , vote, and what will you do if trump loses the election, even with the Electoral College count, but refuses to recognize the results and insist he is still president . We are going to make that the last question. I am going to let you go to town on that. Mr. Mccabe you could not have cut it off one more mr. Bernstein serious question. Mr. Mccabe i totally understand your frustration. A couple things. One, i think the thing to do now, if you feel that way, is to get involved in the process, to get out there and support the candidates and the people who you think best represent you and your community and this country. And that is not just saying, i think ill go to the polls. That obviously you have to do, but get out there and work for the people you believe in. The best way to turn this thing over is through the process. I dont really know what kind of taking it to the streets means. I dont know how we accomplish productive change out of that. Ultimately you have to convince people to get off their butts, go to the ballot box, and vote for those leaders you have faith in. As far as this concern that you hear voiced pretty frequently now about whether or not the president will accept the result if he loses in 2020 or whenever, i dont really worry about that. I dont think he will be happy about it, and probably wont be a cordial departure. [laughter] mr. Mccabe but we have systems and processes and authority in this country that hes been shredding. Hes been shredding the rule of law ever since hes been office. What about that . Mr. Mccabe i get that. I understand what you are saying, but i guess im not willing to kind of throw in the towel on that yet. And we maybe see it differently. That is ok too. I do think when the time comes, it is going to be chaotic and uncomfortable, but ultimately at the end of the day, the peaceful transition of power is something that has been happening in this country 240 whatever years. I have faith in our ability to make that happen again under any circumstances. Mr. Bernstein i would like to thank first of all the audience and also for your extraordinary presentation. Mr. Mccabe thank you. [applause] mr. Bernstein and for letting us in on things we did not know about. Thank you for agreeing to do this. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer 1 cspan hosts a conversation next week with some of the candidates mounting primary challenges to President Trump along with your questions. That is friday night 8 00 eastern on cspan. Former Trump Campaign advisor George George papadopoulos. He served 12 days in prison for lying to the fbi during the investigation and wrote a book. He spoke to an audience in west lm
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