The Threat Quotes

“When a population loses any sense of a shared story—when each segment of a population believes that only its own perceptions are valid—then that population can become ungovernable.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“The president has stepped over bright ethical and moral lines wherever he has encountered them. His unpredictable, often draconian behavior is dangerous—a threat to both the Bureau and the nation.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“I do not even know how to think about the fact that the person with time on his hands to tweet about me and my wife is the president of the United States.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“Through the fall, the president’s anger seemed difficult to contain. He threatened North Korea with “fire and fury,” then followed up with a threat to “totally destroy” the country. When neo-Nazis and white supremacists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one of them killed a protester and injured a score of others, he made a brutally offensive statement condemning violence “on many sides … on many sides”—as if there was moral equivalence between those who were fomenting racial hatred and violence and those who were opposing it. He retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda that had been posted by a convicted criminal leader of a British far-right organization. Then as now, the president’s heedless bullying and intolerance of variance—intolerance of any perception not his own—has been nurturing a strain of insanity in public dialogue that has been long in development, a pathology that became only more virulent when it migrated to the internet. A person such as the president can on impulse and with minimal effort inject any sort of falsehood into public conversation through digital media and call his own lie a correction of “fake news.” There are so many news outlets now, and the competition for clicks is so intense, that any sufficiently outrageous statement made online by anyone with even the faintest patina of authority, and sometimes even without it, will be talked about, shared, and reported on, regardless of whether it has a basis in fact. How do you progress as a culture if you set out to destroy any common agreement as to what constitutes a fact? You can’t have conversations. You can’t have debates. You can’t come to conclusions. At the same time, calling out the transgressor has a way of giving more oxygen to the lie. Now it’s a news story, and the lie is being mentioned not just in some website that publishes unattributable gossip but in every reputable newspaper in the country. I have not been looking to start a personal fight with the president. When somebody insults your wife, your instinctive reaction is to want to lash out in response. When you are the acting director, or deputy director, of the FBI, and the person doing the insulting is the chief executive of the United States, your options have guardrails. I read the president’s tweets, but I had an organization to run. A country to help protect. I had to remain independent, neutral, professional, positive, on target. I had to compartmentalize my emotions. Crises taught me how to compartmentalize. Example: the Boston Marathon bombing—watching the video evidence, reviewing videos again and again of people dying, people being mutilated and maimed. I had the primal human response that anyone would have. But I know how to build walls around that response and had to build them then in order to stay focused on finding the bombers. Compared to experiences like that one, getting tweeted about by Donald Trump does not count as a crisis. I do not even know how to think about the fact that the person with time on his hands to tweet about me and my wife is the president of the United States.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“But I will say this. Donald Trump would not know the men and women of the FBI if he ran over them with the presidential limo, and he has shown the citizens of this country that he does not know what democracy means. He demonstrates no understanding or appreciation of our form of government. He takes no action to protect it. Has any president done more to undermine democracy than this one? His “I hereby demand” tweet in May 2018, ordering Department of Justice investigations of the investigators who are investigating him—I can barely believe that I just wrote that phrase—is a clear example. His demand for documents identifying confidential informants does harm to the men and women of the FBI on a fundamental level. It undermines their ability to build the trust that allows law-enforcement investigations to take place, in ways that, I want to believe, he does not comprehend. To think that he could recognize what constitutes a good thing for the men and women of the FBI does not deserve comment. As for my own firing and the ostensible reasons behind it, the demands and risks of an ongoing legal process put tight constraints on what I can say, although I would like to say much more. I am filing a suit that challenges my firing and the IG’s process and findings, and the unprecedented way DOJ handled my termination. I will let that action speak for itself.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“Let me state the proposition openly: The work of the FBI is being undermined by the current president. He and his partisan supporters have become corrosive to the organization.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“Her dismissal stood out for another reason. She had spoken her mind, done her job, and stood by her principles—a fatal trifecta in the eyes of this White House.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“The president tells one group of citizens: You are the good ones. No one else is equal to you. All the others are not as significant, not as important. They should not have the same rights. They should be treated as less-than. They are alien. They should be stricken. That is the language used by totalitarian regimes and fundamentalist religions to generate shock troops of core believers and sow the seeds of extremism.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“The purpose of the FBI is not to support one side. The purpose of the FBI is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“Russian organized crime today has deep ties to the Russian government. It saturates the internet. As most people are aware, the combination of crime, computers, and the Kremlin has in recent years taken aim at electoral politics—at American democracy itself.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“he values the word of the Russian president more highly than the collective opinion of his own intelligence services.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“My daughter, who was thirteen years old at the time, would joke about this with me. That whole first week in the acting director’s chair, when I came home at night, she would say, Did you get fired today, Dad? Not today, honey, I would answer—but tomorrow’s a new day!”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“. . . When is the right time to give up on people's general ability to understand any slightly complicated statement that they don't agree with? When do you declare that the political process, or the press, no longer has the power to facilitate comprehension? When is the right time to act from skepticism and cynicism, rather than from faith in a society you have always believed in.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“Theirs was one of the first cases with a real operational connection to the internet. The internet pervades human existence so thoroughly now that it can be hard to remember how recently life was mainly analog. When was the point of no return? Maybe around 2006. In July of that year, a microblogging platform called Twitter debuted for the public. In September, Facebook launched a new feature called “News Feed” and opened membership to all comers, where before you had to be part of a college or school network to join. In 2006, YouTube was barely a year old. The first iPhones didn’t go on sale until 2007.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“But our general attitude was: The FBI’s not afraid of haystacks. We’re that good, we’re that strong, that is who we are—we do hard stuff better than anybody. If FBI agents have to take each stalk of hay off that stack, inspect it individually, and replace it precisely where it was before, we will goddamn do that, and for your convenience also provide you with a spreadsheet by four o’clock this afternoon that tallies all stalks of hay that were inspected in the last twelve hours.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“president has stepped over bright ethical and moral lines wherever he has encountered them. His unpredictable, often draconian behavior is dangerous—a threat to both the Bureau and the nation.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“What I know, from years of experience interviewing people, is that in situations of massive reorientation, you never show concern or make hasty judgments. You accept the facts that have been disclosed. You keep your feelings about those facts to yourself. In the moment, you act like a professional.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“There is no effective distinction, in Russia, between organized crime and government, so kryshas have proliferated to where they block out the sky. Everyone lives under protection. The transformation has been systemic. It cannot be attributed exclusively to the actions of any one individual. But under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, the cohabitation of crime and government became the norm. Crime is the central and most stable force in Russian society.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“The president’s thoughts were frenetic. It’s a disconcerting experience to attempt a conversation with him because he talks the whole time. He asks questions but then immediately starts to say something else. Almost everything he says he subsequently rephrases two or three times, as if he’s stuck in some holding pattern waiting for an impulse to arrive that kicks off the next thing he wants to say. It all adds up to a bizarre encounter.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“The role of agents is to say, Here are the facts, here is what we found. Not, This guy’s good and that guy’s bad, but rather: This guy’s dead, that guy had a gun, here’s a list of phone calls that guy made, and here’s a money transfer from this one to that one the day before the death. That’s the agent’s role. That’s the job that I have loved.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“The building itself—classical exterior, art deco interior—stands in contrast to the brutalist architecture of the FBI building, and the contrast captures something of the reality. The J. Edgar Hoover Building represents the instrumental aspects of justice, the Robert F. Kennedy building represents the ideal.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“[FBI agents] said [Gen. Michael Flynn] related his comments in what appeared to be a very credible fashion. However, what he said was in absolute direct conflict with the information we had.

It was a very odd conversation. The agents kept saying it seemed like he was telling the truth. The rest of us kept saying, "Yes, and it completely contradicts the information that we have." And their response was, "Yeah, we know. It's weird."

They weren't saying they believed him, and they weren't saying they didn't believe him. They struck me as being mainly surprised by the encounter, surprised at the difficulty of resolving their observations—as if they had just met a man who seemed completely normal, even when he glanced out the window and remarked at noon (and then again an hour later, and a third time shortly after that), "What a beautiful black sky.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“I should've understood that whatever we concluded about Midyear [Exam] was not going to be thoughtfully considered, but rather ground to powder for political warfare.

Or should I have known that? When is the right time to give up on people's general ability to understand any slightly complicated statement that they don't agree with? When do you declare that the political process or the press no longer has the power to facilitate comprehension? When is the right time to act from skepticism and cynicism, rather than from faith in a society that you have always believed in?”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“[Jeff Sessions’] major interest in any given topic tended to be the immigration angle, even when there was no immigration angle. Before disruptions of US-based counterterrorism cases, we would brief him. Almost invariably, he asked the same question about the suspect: “Where’s he from?”

The vast majority of suspects are US citizens or legal permanent residents. If we would answer his question, “Sir, he’s a US citizen. He was born here,” Sessions would respond, “Where are his parents from?”

The subject’s parents had nothing to do with the points under discussion. We were trying to get him to understand the terrorist threat overall, trying to explore the question: Why are Americans becoming so inspired by radical Islam and terrorist groups such as ISIS that they’re going out and planning acts of terrorism against other Americans right here in this country? That question cannot be exhaustively explored by reference solely to immigration policy.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“Donald Trump would not know the men and women of the FBI if he ran over them with the presidential limo, and he has shown the citizens of this country that he does not know what democracy means. He demonstrates no understanding or appreciation of our form of government. He takes no action to protect it. Has any president done more to undermine democracy than this one? His "I hereby demand" tweet in May 2018, ordering Department of Justice investigations of the investigators who are investigating him--I can barely believe that I just wrote that phrase--is a clear example.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“Fear is why the president still has a map of his electoral college victory hanging outside the door to the Oval Office. Fear is why the president makes every person who goes into his office pass by a display meant to assert his right to sit behind the Resolute desk. Fear is why he asks people to pledge personal loyalty”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“A person such as the president canon impulse and with minimal effort inject any sort of falsehood into public conversation through digital media and call his own lie a correction of "fake news.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“The FBI press office would receive inquiries about fictional scenarios from right-wing news outlets; we would shoot them down; the news outlets were unable to move forward. Then the story would appear on some fringe, alt-right website, without a byline. Once it was picked up by the blogosphere and on social media, an outlet such as Sinclair would have cover to repeat it, which would enable Fox News to get on board, and then Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham would talk about it for weeks. This is a practiced, intentional strategy of news circulation. The stories may be fictional and the information false, but the consequences of the strategy are real.”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“Americans have freer access to more information than at any other time in the history of our country. What happened when we let loose on that landscape of possibility? People raised their voices, louder all the time, and the boundaries of the landscape we had known wore down as volumes rose. The country started seeming like a village in a folktale under a spell, where the more the people see the less they know”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

“You never knew when you’d bump into some distorted perception. On one occasion Sessions launched into a diatribe about whom we were hiring at the FBI. Back in the old days, he said, you all only hired Irishmen. They were drunks, but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos—who knows what they’re doing?”
― Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump