That said, I do believe he had the best intentions. He had a rough job, and he got drug through the mud unfairly because he wouldn't be "loyal" to Donald J Trump. And they fired him the day before he was to retire. Dirty.
A couple of things I do want to mention from the book that I haven't seen in print anywhere else:
1) At McCabe's first meeting with Trump, Trump's bodyguard, Keith Schiller, handed McCabe Schiller's business card and said, "If you ever need anything..." I find that very interesting, and I wonder if McCabe ever did need anything from him. Schiller's departure from the Trump administration still strikes me as odd, to say the least.
2) McCabe has several passages about what it was like to work with the stoic, close-mouthed Mueller when Mueller was head of the FBI. But one passage I think carries a lot of meaning in a few words. Mueller was asked by President Obama to set up a new section, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) in concert with the CIA and the DoD to try to correct some of the problems and deficiencies that seemed to be responsible for the intelligence community missing the 9/11 threat and the abuses of human rights in Bush's terms. Mueller called upon McCabe, who was working counter-terrorism at the time, to be the FBI's liaison.
From chapter 4:
Then he turned to the matter at hand. He asked, "What's your plan next?"
I said I was looking forward to continuing what I was doing. He said, "Uh-huh. Okay." And then he said, "Well, there's this other thing that's come up. President Obama has asked the FBI to take responsibility for building and running a new group to be called the HIG. He explained the basics.
[...]
He explained it as an effort to get away from the abuses at Abu Ghraib and at other controversial CIA programs. [...] "There's been a study about this and a recommendation that came about as a result, and we've been asked to take charge, and we're going to do it. And you're going to do it. You're going to build it."
I had not been aware of this study, and I didn't know what the recommendations were. This was not something I had much experience with.
Mueller said, "Don't worry about that. You can read all that. CIA and the Department of Defense will be your partners, but they're not gonna like it. There are things they don't want to do that they're going to have to do. You will be the director. Your job is to make this work. That is the whole of your job description. If you start knocking heads with the agency and with DoD and you can't get them to agree, then get them to agree. And when you absolutely can't get them to agree, I don't want you to fight with them. Come to me, and I will fight those fights for you, because your job is to build it and make it work."
After all this, Mueller asked, "Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?"
I thought I saw an opening, and I tried to take it. I said, "Sir, I'll do whatever you want me to do, but if you're asking my preference, what I would like to do is work counter-terrorism."
Mueller looked at me, cocked his head slightly to one side, and said, "You know what I like to do?"
"No, Sir," I said.
"I like to try homicide cases, and look what I'm doing."
Dismissed.
I hope Mueller's happy doing what he's doing now. And I hope it doesn't turn into a homicide case.
I thought I'd listen to a serious interview with McCabe to see if it was any better than listening to him read. (I had to take many breaks.) So I chose this one from 3 days ago:
He's better when he's comfortable. I suppose we all are.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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