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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. For those of you who are expecting our weekly Ask the Mayor segment, which usually happens at this time, Mayor de Blasio is down in Lower Manhattan observing the 9/11 anniversary ceremony, so he can't make it today. He'll be back next week. On this September 11, we'll talk down to a former FBI agent who investigated how some of the September 11 attackers got their heinous job done. That's not what this former FBI agent is best known for.

Peter Strzok was the FBI agent who opened the counterintelligence probe known as Crossfire Hurricane in July of 2016 after evidence emerged that Russia was planning to release damaging information about Hillary Clinton and that an advisor to the Trump campaign told somebody about it. Strzok went on to be named a lead investigator in the Mueller investigation but was then fired when text messages of his emerged from during the 2016 campaign that seemed to show political bias against Trump.

Now, that's the only thing that most Americans know about Peter Strzok, a few texts between him and his girlfriend, an FBI attorney named Lisa Page, like these, "Page, he's not ever going to become president, right? Right?" Strzok, "No, no, he's not. We'll stop it," or the one he wrote saying, "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office that there's no way he gets elected, but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40."

Strzok was fired from the Mueller investigation when those texts came to light, but here's the part you don't hear. The Justice Department inspector general investigated Strzok and Page and determined that whatever their feelings about candidate Trump might have been, they never used their investigation against him. In fact, they did just the opposite. They kept it secret from the public until after the election while, at the same time, Strzok took actions that hurt Hillary Clinton.

Strzok, as some of you know, drafted the letter that FBI Director Jim Comey sent to Congress on October 28, just days before the election, announcing they were reopening their investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. In such a close election, many people think that the Comey release of a Peter Strzok-drafted letter was the final straw that doomed her campaign.

That's the background, but it also takes our eye off the ball, which is Russian interference in the US election in 2016 and, again, today and whatever Donald Trump's relationship to it might be. That's why Peter Strzok's new book is called Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump. Peter Strzok joins us now. Mr. Strzok, thanks for making this one of your appearances. Welcome to WNYC.

Peter Strzok: Brian, thank you so much. It's good to be here.

Brian: Can I actually start with 9/11? Since this is 9/11 and you write about it in your book, what was your role in that investigation?

Peter: Absolutely. First, let me just extend my thoughts to everyone we lost to the responders who are still fighting, to their friends and family. I was up in Boston on 9/11. Like everybody in that office, both American Airlines Flight 11 and the United 175 from Logan and we spent months out at the airport tracing everything the hijackers had done in the days and the hours leading up to those flights. It's with me today like it is with many.

Working that case was, again, like everybody who did is something that sticks with me and will for the rest of my life. I was there at the time as a counterintelligence agent just before the attacks for some time. I've been working on a case involving a pair of Russian illegals, which are spies that Russia, then the Soviet Union before that, had placed into American society under deep, deep cover. They weren't even Russians. They had taken on the assumed identities of dead Canadians and were living in plain sight and gathering information and sending it back to Russia as we watched them do it.

Brian: When you opened Crossfire Hurricane, the original Russia investigation in July 2016, did you have in mind at all how the government had failed to connect the dots before 9/11 to prevent that attack?

Peter: No, I don't think so. I think part of that realization came a little bit later as we were looking and there was a similar sort of realization that we had missed a pretty significant vulnerability. That specifically as we started diving into what the Russians were doing, getting an appreciation of just how actively they had been using social media and how effective that had been. We always knew the Russians and the Soviets and the Czechs before them. They had always used disinformation and sort of trying to sway opinion with false or doctored documents.

It was always esoteric that's neat, but it doesn't really do much. What I certainly didn't, what I don't think anybody in the government appreciated, was the advent of the internet and information age, but specifically social media, the avenue that gave the Russians to, so effectively, use the tools and techniques of disinformation and perception management. By the time we kind of started realizing, we were way behind the power curve in the late summer and early fall of '16. We've learned some of those lessons, but I'm worried that we just haven't fully responded as we should as a government to shore up that gap.

Brian: Which could bring us to the present moment and the attempts that are taking place right now by different countries to have the 2020 election. We'll get to that in a little while. Sticking to the history a little bit first, why did you and Comey keep the Trump in Russia investigation so quiet while announcing to Congress the reopening of the Clinton investigation, which you must have known that members of Congress would make public?

Peter: Yes, absolutely. I get people to look at that and I look at that. I can see very much the disparate impact it had on each of them. While I understand that difference in impact, there was no other option to do that. The Clinton investigation was criminal in nature. It was closed at the time. At the time back in July, Director Comey had made a decision to announce the results of that. I agree with it at the time. In retrospect, I would have counseled him to do differently, but that's with the benefit of hindsight.

In contrast that though with the Trump and it wasn't Trump, it was not an investigation of Trump and people throw that out there and it's nonsense. The investigation was not on him. It was not on his campaign. There's an allegation, a credible allegation that came in that a member of his campaign had received a Russian offer of assistance to help the campaign by releasing information that the Russians had stolen. That would be harmful to Clinton and Obama.

That was a classified counterintelligence case. There are, of course, criminal aspects to it. It was a counterintelligence investigation. It was classified. It was ongoing. We don't ever talk about cases like that in the FBI. While I understand that the way it played out in the public eye is obviously very, very different and universally almost to every event serve to damage Secretary Clinton's candidacy and to help then-candidate Trump's candidacy, I don't see any other way to have done other than what the FBI did.

Brian: You just made a very important distinction, I think, that I want to drill down on a little further because I think it applies to the Mueller investigation and why so many people were disappointed with the results of the Mueller investigation. Of course, you were a lead investigator on that in the first phase of it. I've been hearing people say the reason he didn't come up with more detail about Trump personally and Russia was that Mueller was running a criminal investigation, not a counterintelligence investigation. We didn't even look into it. Is that distinction accurate and is it important?

Peter: Well, I think it's close, but it's not entirely accurate and it's absolutely important to understand. We are no longer in the days of having a split criminal and different counterintelligence or intelligence investigation. They have to be made together. Having said that, it was very clear when you look down the line at what guided special counsel Mueller. The special counsel regulations are tailored and centered around looking at violations of law.

They don't talk about intelligence or counterintelligence activities at all. Mueller's appointment order from the Department of Justice mirrors that. It is very focused on examining links and connections, but with an eye to building or disproving criminal charges. The last thing is just the structure of the team. Director Mueller, he deeply understands counterintelligence, but he's a prosecutor.

The way we structured the team was around attorney, agent, analysts, and forensic tech folks focusing on individuals and violations of the law. He was never going to do that counterintelligence look, but we agreed. We talked about this at length. It was agreed that the FBI team that I was leading that was seconded or attached to the Mueller team would be doing that work. At the same time, they're doing all the traditional work of building a criminal case.

That's really complex and it really, really is large. When you look at the Senate intel report, that's a thousand pages. It's a bipartisan report, but it gives you an idea how broad that was. I was really working hard to try and figure out how to do that when I was removed and returned to the FBI. It's certainly possible that took place. I know Director Mueller talked about people on his team from the FBI pulling information back, counterintelligence information back to the FBI, but that's not a perfect answer.

Ideally, that then comes back to the Mueller team and it's this very robust cycle that is deeply integrated with his work. Again, it may be going on in the FBI. It may have occurred with everybody in the US intelligence community supporting it, but I do have some concern that it actually was not done or was not done in a very deep, thorough, comprehensive way.

Brian: If your book is called Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald Trump, which sounds like you're drawing a conclusion, what did the Mueller report leave on the table that you can tell us?

Peter: Well, I think the Mueller report points out a number of things. The first thing is, obviously, there's a lot that's redacted. There are things that I can't talk about that are certainly known to the government, but what the Mueller report did do and certainly that the Senate intel report expands on is demonstrates a bunch of behavior that clearly points to this idea that Trump is compromised, that he's beholden to the government of Russia in a way that makes it difficult, if not impossible to place the national interests ahead of his own.

Let me give you an example. In the campaign trail in 2016, the campaign stopped. Trump makes the statement reassuring all the audience, all the voters that, "I have no business dealings with Russia. I have no relationship financially, no deals, no nothing." At the same time, the exact same time he's doing that, his personal attorney Michael Cohen and others are pursuing a bunch of deals to get a Trump Tower Moscow.

That's a lie. Trump knows when he says that, it's inaccurate. Certainly, people in Moscow up to including Vladimir Putin know that it's a lie. Having just double down to the American populace and making that assertion to maintain that fiction, he has to rely on Vladimir Putin keeping that falsehood a secret. That instantaneously gives Putin leverage over him and that's one example.

If you look and there's been a lot written publicly that's well-known about all kinds of entanglements and grossly over a price sales to Trump properties to Russian people. Michael Cohen, I guess, is recently alleged. He assumed that was a direct payment from Vladimir Putin. All of these things, if you're trained in cell service like the Russians have and their intelligence services are excellent at this, that each and every one of those things gives you leverage that they are not hesitant to use to achieve their national goals.

Brian: Listeners, we're going to take a break. Attention, controller, we're going to take a break, and then we're going to continue with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, whose new book is called Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump. We can take a few questions for him on the phone, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. We will bring it up to the present because there's all of this news breaking just in recent days.

There's a whistleblower from Homeland Security who says the Trump administration is suppressing information about Russian attempts to hack this year's election. There's Microsoft coming out just yesterday and saying China and Iran, as well as Russia, are trying to hack both the Trump and the Biden campaign. We'll get Peter Strzok's take on that. A few of your calls, if you do call in for him, 646-435-7280 right after this.

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Brian: Brian Lehrer at WNYC with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, now author of Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump. Let's take a phone call. Eli in Park Slope, you're on WNYC with Peter Strzok. Hello, Eli. Oh, you're breaking up real bad. Try to stand in one place and give it your best, Eli. I guess not. Let's try Bernadette in Neptune, New Jersey. You're on WNYC, Bernadette.

Bernadette: Yes, hi. My question is a follow-up on what you said in relation to an also another interview that Mr. Strzok gave. Are there still barriers, which prevent the FBI's counterintelligence people from giving information to criminal prosecutors? It seems like Mr. Strzok said something to the effect that, "I know things, but I can't talk about them." If some of that is top security that reveals secrets or whatever, but if some of it is actually evidenced that leans towards criminal liability, I'm wondering if there's still these barriers. You see what I'm saying?

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Peter: Yes, absolutely. That's an excellent question, so no. I want to reassure you that that was one of the very hard lessons we learned. The extraordinary price of 9/11 was that we had to eliminate these historical barriers that have existed between the intelligence, counterintelligence, and criminal sides within the FBI and DOJ. I'm very confident. The bureau under the leadership of Director Mueller worked really, really hard to tear those down in conjunction with DOJ.

The comments I made certainly were much more in the context of pushing back against some of these arguments that people and partisans make that there's some sort of deep state out to get President Trump or that was out to get his campaign. The fact of the matter is what we were talking about earlier in the conversation, if you look at the fall of 2016, obviously, the FBI had investigations of Paul Manafort and General Flynn and a guy named George Papadopoulos and others.

None of that came out. The point is that if there were this plot against Trump, there's no better way to have hurt him than to have disclosed that information. It didn't happen. That's all the evidence you need really to show that there was not this crazy deep-state conspiracy going on, but I'm very comfortable. I would tell you to be reassured that there is robust information sharing between the intelligence side of the House and the criminal prosecution-type work that the FBI does.

Brian: If we accept the inspector general's conclusion that you are just repeating that your feelings about Trump expressed in your famous text messages in 2016 did not affect your professional approach to investigating his campaign and that's the part of the story that doesn't get told so much when people say, "Oh, Peter Strzok and his text messages," what were your personal feelings about the implications of a Trump election?

If you were having that kind of back-and-forth, you obviously thought he was a danger to the country. Did you grapple with the weight of knowing you were doing this investigation and could have used your power as an FBI agent to leak stuff to the public or otherwise try to protect the country if you saw him as such a threat?

Peter: Also, look, I would never and I don't know any agent who would violate either certainly disclosing classified information or giving an insight investigative information properly to the press or anybody else to influence something. That's just not only anything I would never do but, frankly, nothing I have ever seen in my career anybody else do. I've got a personal opinion as does every agent that I know. I think what's important to note in that regard is that while I know that, it's just not anything that's ever talked about at work.

To the extent, the public knows about mine. It's because these very, very personal, not work-related, not occurring in some unit meeting at work were illegally leaked by the Department of Justice. That does truly get checked at the door by me and each and every agent who goes to work. The inspector general confirmed that through two investigations. Having said that, setting aside the personal aspect of things, I think all of us were deeply concerned from a professional standpoint about all these counterintelligence concerns that we saw all around the Trump campaign.

It wasn't just a person. It was a foreign policy advisor. It was the incoming national security advisor. It was the incoming attorney general. It was the incoming campaign finance manager or the current campaign finance manager, I should say, and his deputy, and on and on and on. When you look at all these people and you see concerning connections to Russia with all of them, it was unprecedented.

I think from a professional standpoint, anybody who worked counterintelligence at the time we were concerned and anybody who's ever been in this environment would have similar concerns. That's what you see Dan Coats, the former director of National Intelligence and 16-year Indiana Republican Senator, having those same concerns. That's because they're real and they're merited.

Brian: Let me try again the caller who I called Eli. Maybe we didn't have that connection because his real name is Ellie, which I think I'm now saying right. Ellie in Park Slope, you're on WNYC with Peter Strzok. Let's try again.

Ellie: Good morning. Can you hear me?

Brian: I can hear you.

Ellie: Okay, good morning. I have a question for Mr. Strzok, something that I've been confused about. They always say Russia influenced our election by misinformation campaign on Facebook, on Twitter, or anything else, any other kinds of social media. The Trump campaign always says back, "Well, it could have been anybody. It could have been the Chinese, the Israelis, the Iranians, is that true? There a lot of different people, a lot of different entities spreading this information. There could be dozens. Maybe hundreds of different entities doing it and what [inaudible 00:20:54] Trump, it always looks bad.

Brian: Now, you're breaking up. I think the question is clear about multiple actors. Certainly, to tie this to the present, there's news today that Microsoft has Russian and Chinese and Iranian hackers have launched cyberattacks on both the Trump and Biden campaigns. Have you seen those reports and how does it tie back to Ellie's question?

Peter: Yes, absolutely. That's a great question. Look, in 2016, it's clear that Russia was the entity, was the government responsible for hacking into and stealing the DNC and DCCC emails and weaponizing those and releasing them through any number of organizations. There should be no doubt and that's a conclusion backed by the entirety of the US intelligence community, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and everybody else. That is conclusively true and that is something that a government-wide assessment concluded in a very comprehensive way.

It absolutely is also true though that every nation on this earth is conducting intelligence activity. Certainly, our adversaries, be they Russia or China or Iran, are all very active. I can tell you, having said that and if you look at the recent reporting coming from Microsoft, as well as the recent briefings that are being given by the Trump administration's intelligence community, the nature of the Russian interference and attacks is of a fundamentally different character than that of what we're seeing from China, Iran, or anybody else.

Russia is much more willing and is currently active in diving into our internal debates, into seeking to pour gas on the fires on all our social tensions. Whether that's Black Lives Matter, whether it's Blue Lives Matter, whether it's any questions about the COVID response or mail-in voting, they are actively involving themselves in internal American debates.

Brian: Why should people think though that Russia is doing that in the way you describe and China, which presumably would rather see Trump defeated, isn't-- China certainly got the social media sophistication.

Peter: Well, because that's how-- if you read into the actual documents and briefings that are being given by the experts in the intelligence community, that's exactly what they're saying. There's political spin on top of that, but go and read the source documents that are coming out of the ODNI. Go read the results of some of the material that they're briefing the Congress. Go actually read the Microsoft reporting.

They show that, for instance, with China, China is much more in an information-gathering mode. They're sucking up as much information as they can because they just want to know as much as they can. To the extent China is getting involved, it's to influence things of interest to China. China cares about how their response to COVID-19 is being portrayed. China cares about how they're being portrayed vis-à-vis their relationship with the leaders.

They aren't though doing the same sort of things that Russia is and stuff that has nothing to do with internal Russian concerns and going in specifically targeting internal US political debate on US issues that have nothing to do with Russia. I'd encourage everybody. It takes a bit of work, but dive under the reporting. Dive under what partisans are saying about it. Go read all these source documents and you'll see that that's all laid out pretty clearly.

Brian: There was a whistleblower from Homeland Security, no less than Brian Murphy, former head of the intelligence division of the Department of Homeland Security. Here, we sit on September 11th, the attacks of which were the inspiration for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Their intelligence chief is trying to blow a whistle, which became known this week, alleging the Trump administration is trying to stop the public from learning the extent of Russian and white supremacist national security threats right now. I wonder if you have any insight into what's happening in terms of that alleged blocking and what may not be getting through that people need to know.

Peter: Well, it's really concerning. Intelligence has to be independent. Intelligence has to just state the facts as they exist in the minute we start. It's bad if it's ignored. It's bad if there's a PDB that the President chooses not to read, but it's entirely a different thing. A far, far worst thing. If rather than being ignored, intelligence is being skewed or buried or hidden or misdirected.

My concern is-- and I haven't seen the reporting. I don't know what stands behind his complaint, but my concern is, in the FBI, not only the FBI but all the traditional services, whether it's the CIA or the Secret Service or the old customs, these agencies all went through very, at times, hard histories, the abuses of the '60s and '70s that led to the Church and Pike committee reforms, that led to all this sort of statutory oversight that created cultures of accountability and respect for both privacy of American citizens and the rule of law.

My worry is that when you get a brand new agency like the Department of Homeland Security, you don't have that same historical background of expectations of the interaction between the government and the population and the American expectations of privacy. When you don't have that same background, you don't have the same safeguards, my concern is that that opens it up to the potential types of abuses that are being alleged in this complaint.

Brian: We are out of time, I'm sorry to say, with Peter Strzok, former FBI agent whose new book is called Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump. There's so much that we left on the table that I wanted to ask you about. Maybe we can do a part two one of these days, but thank you very much for coming on with us.

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