Nearly 25 years ago, FBI agent William McGrath resigned after refusing to follow an order that allegedly would have blown a federal informant’s cover.
According to McGrath, FBI officials retaliated against him by spreading false information designed to damage his career. Those officials were never held accountable for their actions, he said.
The former FBI agent has never told his story publicly until now.
Investigating a New York Politician
In 1997, McGrath was a special agent who led high-profile investigations into Russian organized crime. That year, a confidential informant notified him about a prominent politician soliciting allegedly illegal financial contributions.“While I was briefing the informant, the informant advised me that a New York politician had contacted the informant and requested money,” McGrath told The Epoch Times, declining to name the politician. “No case was ever made against the public official, who is in a more prominent position now. To my knowledge, there is nothing in the public domain to suggest that the public official has integrity issues.”
Because it was campaign season at the time, McGrath said he didn’t find the politician’s request unusual. Nevertheless, records show that the informant’s tip made it all the way to the attention of then-FBI Director Louis Freeh.
McGrath said the FBI higher-ups told him to have the informant record a phone call with the New York politician.
“They were hoping to reel in a big fish,” he said.
But doing so would have compromised the informant’s identity and life, he said.
“If the target were indicted, the government would have to turn over recorded conversations to the defendant, and the identity of the informant would be obvious.”
Internal OIG notes reviewed by The Epoch Times support McGrath’s claim. The notes say the informant worked on investigations involving Russian organized crime, and “was of such importance to the FBI that in the early 1980s, FBI Headquarters ordered that this informant was not to be put in position to testify, which would then reveal his identity.”
While the informant had the freedom to refuse—McGrath referred to the person as a “good citizen informant” rather than someone working with the federal government to avoid prosecution—he also may not have known the risks involved in the recorded call, McGrath said.
McGrath said the FBI officials in New York were trying to use him to circumvent the informant’s relationship with the direct handler in Washington. That would violate the FBI guidelines, and can erode trust between informants and their handlers, he said.
“The procedures for handling informants provide for a handling agent for a reason. The procedures for handling informants are in place to protect the informants, agents, and the public,” he said.
When the New York officials insisted on using the informant against McGrath’s wishes, he resigned from the FBI on Dec. 5, 1997.
McGrath told The Epoch Times that he resigned after careful deliberation.
“This thing had been going on for a couple days at least, and I had made my decision for a couple days that I wasn’t going to do anything that [the informant’s handler] wasn’t on board with,“ he said. ”And I had a feeling there was a turf war between these two field offices [New York and Washington], and I wasn’t willing to do this inappropriate thing—and I wasn’t going to take the hit for not doing it.”
Under the impression that he was avoiding a hornet’s nest by resigning, McGrath was shocked and angered when the FBI said he went absent without leave (AWOL) on the day of his departure.
He filed an internal whistleblower complaint in 1998, alleging that the FBI’s AWOL label was retaliation for his resignation.
The FBI disputed his complaint for the next nine years. Along with other arguments, bureau officials said McGrath’s abrupt departure was unjustified because the informant’s direct handler had, in fact, authorized the phone call to the New York politician.
FBI agent Raymond Kerr, one of the New York officials who pushed to use the informant, wrote in a 2002 signed statement: “My instruction to McGrath, regarding the direction to the [confidential informant], was lawful and correct. In fact, subsequent to McGrath’s departure, I received a phone call from special agent Bill Mackey [the informant’s handler] who concurred with the decision to pursue the operation.”
However, McGrath obtained notes from a 2002 interview OIG officials conducted with Mackey that contradict Kerr’s statement. According to notes from that interview, Mackey did tell McGrath to refrain from using his informant until he could find out more details of the operation.
“[Mackey] said he was not aware of the order or that a phone call was even planned. [Mackey] told McGrath not to make the phone call until he had time to check it out,” the OIG notes state. “[Mackey] next heard from New York that McGrath had refused the order for the informant to make the call and that McGrath had quit the FBI.”
The notes say the informant was used but didn’t record his conversation with the U.S. official. Without a recording of the phone call, the informant wouldn’t have to testify and would maintain anonymity.
During the discovery for McGrath’s whistleblower dispute, he said the FBI destroyed evidence related to his case.
Records show the FBI told him they destroyed his attendance records in 2003, in accordance with their policy to only retain such files for six years. However, McGrath said those records should have been preserved when he filed his complaint less than a year after leaving the bureau.
McGrath’s whistleblower complaint was finally successful in 2007, when the DOJ’s Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management (OARM) found that the FBI incorrectly labeled him AWOL—ordering the bureau to pay him $13,422 in legal costs and four hours of docked pay.
Turning to the Courts and Congress
McGrath sued the FBI in federal court in 2007 over his complaints, but the case was tossed for procedural reasons. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said in her April 2008 decision that the law doesn’t afford the same whistleblower protections to FBI agents as it does to other government employees.“Congress chose not to include FBI employees in the [Civil Service Reform Act] because of the sensitive national security and law enforcement issues that might be implicated by personnel disputes within the agency,” the judge said. “Congress intended to bar FBI employees from obtaining any form of external review with respect to whistleblower complaints, for fear of intruding on sensitive national security and law enforcement operations.”
With his legal avenues apparently largely closed, McGrath has continued to file complaints with the FBI and OIG.
The FBI has called McGrath a “prolific correspondent” in written correspondence—a term he resents because he says his complaints haven’t been thoroughly investigated.
The whistleblower has also lobbied his elected representatives for redress over the past 10-plus years—to little avail.
However, in February, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security interviewed McGrath, and on April 6, he signed a consent form for the committee to obtain information about his case from the OIG, according to records he provided The Epoch Times.
“The most response I’ve gotten has been this recent one from Senate Homeland Security,” he said. “I guess they’re feeling strong enough to request documents from OIG. They could have just done nothing.”
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security didn’t respond to an Epoch Times email seeking comment.
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