Former FBI Agent: What Went Wrong on 9/11 I Chris Piehota

Oh, yeah.

And, you know, a Kleinsmith does more damage.

But for a Kleinsmith, and we're talking, of course, about the FBI agent who pled guilty in the Russia collusion hoax for faking evidence in front of the FISA court, for those who don't remember the name.

Yes.

But even to get to a point where there can be a client Smith who ends up paying virtually, you know, really no penalty for

that.

And so you know that there are abuses of power and you know that an organization that can produce a situation where an attorney can creates false evidence to put in front of a secret court so that they can spy on Americans and especially on a, on a candidate.

That's an organization that's obviously, yeah, it's got some problems.

The public sees those.

Can it ever get, I mean, I don't know what they're going to do to recover the trust because now when the FBI puts out a statement, as you know, huge numbers of Americans disregarded or immediately assume that statement must be wrong.

Of course.

And I think what you have is you have problems.

When you have a situation that arose with the Clinesmith issue, that shows to me that the FBI culture was sick.

We had a deficient culture that if you have a proper organizational culture, that type of stuff generally doesn't happen.

The culture will police itself.

And over time, after 9-11 and then after Director Mueller left and everything, the culture of the FBI declined significantly.

Everything became much more, and I'll use a term, liberal and negotiable.

And instead of the old-time FBI, that just wouldn't happen under the old Bureau because agents – and here's another thing that changed after 9-11. a lot of agents, agent managers were moved out of positions of authority and non-agent managers were moved into positions of authority.

So you started seeing again, that cultural shift in the Bureau where FBI agents weren't running things as much as they were.

And you had some differing practices and perspectives.

And that's when we started running into some serious problems.

And again, And I'll tell you, on the front end, what led us to 9-11 was our inability to see past being that cops and robbers organization.

We didn't see the threat environment.

We didn't see what the adversary was doing.

And then after we made the adjustments, again, the FBI didn't see what was happening to itself.

Oh, yeah.

And, you know, a Kleinsmith does more damage.

But for a Kleinsmith, and we're talking, of course, about the FBI agent who pled guilty in the Russia collusion hoax for faking evidence in front of the FISA court, for those who don't remember the name.

Yes.

But even to get to a point where there can be a client Smith who ends up paying virtually, you know, really no penalty for

that.

And so you know that there are abuses of power and you know that an organization that can produce a situation where an attorney can creates false evidence to put in front of a secret court so that they can spy on Americans and especially on a, on a candidate.

That's an organization that's obviously, yeah, it's got some problems.

The public sees those.

Can it ever get, I mean, I don't know what they're going to do to recover the trust because now when the FBI puts out a statement, as you know, huge numbers of Americans disregarded or immediately assume that statement must be wrong.

Of course.

And I think what you have is you have problems.

When you have a situation that arose with the Clinesmith issue, that shows to me that the FBI culture was sick.

We had a deficient culture that if you have a proper organizational culture, that type of stuff generally doesn't happen.

The culture will police itself.

And over time, after 9-11 and then after Director Mueller left and everything, the culture of the FBI declined significantly.

Everything became much more, and I'll use a term, liberal and negotiable.

And instead of the old-time FBI, that just wouldn't happen under the old Bureau because agents – and here's another thing that changed after 9-11. a lot of agents, agent managers were moved out of positions of authority and non-agent managers were moved into positions of authority.

So you started seeing again, that cultural shift in the Bureau where FBI agents weren't running things as much as they were.

And you had some differing practices and perspectives.

And that's when we started running into some serious problems.

And again, And I'll tell you, on the front end, what led us to 9-11 was our inability to see past being that cops and robbers organization.

We didn't see the threat environment.

We didn't see what the adversary was doing.

And then after we made the adjustments, again, the FBI didn't see what was happening to itself.