Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Despite the advance publicity, this is not a book about President Trump. It is a book about national security and how the 37000 members of the FBI (and the rest of the intelligence community) painstakingly work to keep Americans safe from threats, both foreign and domestic. That the president of the United States now poses a threat to national security, per the FBI leadership's assessment in May 2017, introduces a crisis that our country has never experienced before. This is nothing like Watergate. McCabe's first chapter is an FBI agent's "take" on biographical information, introducing us to the routine reports they file--the 302's--and for this, he writes a 302 about himself as an FBI interviewer might have recorded it 27 years ago when he first joined the FBI. As with other examples of the FBI agents at work, it is surprisingly interesting. After that, he gets to the subject matter that most people will be reading "The Threat" for--Donald Trump. In this case, it is his first meeting with Trump, at 6:30 p.m. in the Oval Office, on May 9th, the day that James Comey was fired. (Of course, I read all the parts about the Trump-Russia investigation first. But then I went back to all the rest, McCabe's training at Quantico, his first assignment at SDNY (not what I was picturing for that work environment), and his many years going after the new mobsters in America--not Italian-run crime, but Russian. They are, per McCabe, very different, and his description of his work was quite fascinating. Then there was 9/11--he had just been chewed out on a case in Florida and was expecting more of the same when he got the call--and his experiences with FBI directors Louis Freeh and Bob Mueller. This is good reading, and underscored two things for me: (1) intelligence agents are disciplined professionals with a strong work ethic and an impressive attention to detail (i.e. the opposite of President Trump) and (2) when McCabe--and Comey--say Trump reminds them of a mob boss, it's not like the rest of us saying it. They're not talking about mobsters they've seen on television or in movies. They know--from extensive contact as investigators or prosecutors--exactly what that means. They are choosing their words carefully and They. Know. I hope people will read -all- this book. Like Comey, McCabe does a great deal to remind us of what the FBI does for us--not fault-free, but it is a disgrace to call them crooks and liars.) Like Comey's memoir, McCabe--the trained FBI professional--has an eye for detail that reveals character. He notes, for example, that while other presidents had officials sit in the comfortable chairs or couches in the Oval Office, Trump's stagecraft is designed to emphasize his superiority and importance, and make others feel diminished and uncomfortable. Trump--a tall large presence--sits hulkingly behind the imposing Resolute desk while the officials there at his request are told to sit on small wooden chairs lined up in front of him. It is a power play, and Trump continues it in every encounter, one way or the other (usually, it's by his non-stop talking on topics that are often unrelated to the subject at hand, and often repeating himself.) McCabe, like Comey, observes how Trump gives his version of the truth--with the goal of having his listener agree with him and take Trump's view of reality as his own. At this first meeting, that means badgering McCabe over and over with the message that Comey was a terrible director, people hated him, everyone's thanking Trump for getting rid of him, and so on. This will be a pattern often repeated--the leader force feeding a false narrative as part of a loyalty ritual. McCabe, trying to be nonconfrontational throughout the meeting, does contradict this and points out that Comey was, by and large, widely admired and respected and many people are shocked and depressed by his abrupt dismissal. (There seems little doubt that the reason for it was not "Clinton's email" as Rosenstein wrote, but the Russia investigation.) Trump even --shockingly--invites Russians to the Oval for the first time since 2014, secretly has the ambassador there, and bans U.S. media and advisors as he tells them Comey was a "nutjob" and gives them top secret intelligence that divulges sources and methods. (Americans only learn about this meeting from photos from the RUSSIAN Foreign Ministry.) McCabe describes the chaos that this firing causes at DOJ as they scramble to protect the country from a president who seems to -possibly- be a Russian asset or agent. What to do about such a shocking possibility? McCabe--showing great courage--takes the risk of opening a counterintelligence (espionage) investigation against the president, as well as an obstruction of justice one. This could easily blow up in his face. He wants a special counsel but Rosenstein, the Acting AG in terms of Russia (Sessions is recused), isn't sure. Whether McCabe's urging, Comey's release of a memo to the NYT about Trump telling him to "let the investigation of Flynn go", sitting in on Trump's interview of Mueller for a possible FBI director (one can easily imagine how this was NOT a meeting of styles or minds), or something completely different--Rosenstein also shows great courage and names Mueller as special counsel the following day, not asking the White House, and only telling them and the AG (who comes across as a racist, incompetent dolt) a half hour notice before going public. This, too, took guts. McCabe further earns Trump's ire the following day by telling the House committee that, contrary to Trump, the FBI director was much admired and is greatly missed. But, as we learned from Comey's memoir (and McCabe already knew), Trump has had it in for him for years, back to the campaign. McCabe's "sin"? While he's a Republican (like Comey and Rosenstein), his wife is a Democrat, an ER pediatrician and, at Governor McAuliffe's urging, she ran for state senate in Virginia. Believing she would be a great state senator, McAuliffe had his PAC donate to her campaign.. This is the original sin for Trump. McAuliffe is a friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton!!! How dare McCabe's wife know a friend of the Clintons' and have help from him for her campaign? (She had no contact with the Clintons in any way and they never donated to her--probably had no idea who she was.) This is the kind of loyalty Trump demands from people who work in government--very personal loyalty to him (not to any ideas or values, just to the man himself). That is, as McCabe points out, very disturbing, given the historic importance of the independence of the DOJ (J. Edgar Hoover showed what could go wrong--disastrously.) Trump, a man with no interest in history and little intellectual curiosity about anything not on television--including his Presidential Daily Brief--cares about two things: (1) getting his way and (2) being surrounded by sycophants. It's no wonder, reading "The Threat", that last week there were leaks from intelligence briefers chafing at being told they could not tell Trump anything that differed from what he said to the public. That level of willful incompetence in a U.S. president is shocking and should be brought out in public hearings--as should many other things in this book (the idea that he didn't believe what intelligence said about Kim having nukes--instead choosing to "believe what Putin tells me.") Robert Mueller will have a report some day and hopefully the new Attorney General (someone Trump clearly has brought in with the hopes Barr will protect him and be the loyalist he felt Sessions wasn't) will let Americans see it. The truth needs to come out, whatever it is and wherever it leads.