nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
When Charles McGonigal, a former counterintelligence chief with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was accused of using his position to benefit an associate’s business in Eastern Europe, it represented a startling turn for a high-ranking official who had been entrusted with access to some of the most sensitive secrets held by the American intelligence community.
But it also set off a scramble within the bureau to assess the potential damage and determine whether any counterintelligence or law enforcement operations were compromised, according to two people familiar with the review, with the F.B.I.’s director, Christopher A. Wray, treating the case as a top priority.
“It puts a question mark next to everything he was involved in,” said Holden Triplett, a former F.B.I. counterintelligence official who left in 2020 and co-founded Trenchcoat Advisors, a risk management consultancy.
“You’d be trying to figure out, ‘OK, when did this start and what did he touch after it started?’” said Mr. Triplett, who does not have direct knowledge about the review of Mr. McGonigal’s career. “Going back and thinking about what the damage could be is painful.”
Inside the F.B.I., where he spent 22 years, Mr. McGonigal was so trusted that he was tapped to run the investigation into a devastating breach that led to the imprisonment, execution or disappearance of more than a dozen Central Intelligence Agency informants in China, one of the F.B.I.’s most sensitive assignments.
The episodes described in a pair of indictments unsealed last week by federal prosecutors in Washington and New York paint Mr. McGonigal, 54, as aggressively entrepreneurial in seeking to generate business through the contacts and power his position afforded him, operating almost in plain sight without being detected despite the danger that someone with his knowledge could pose if corrupted.
While still at the F.B.I., he developed a relationship with Prime Minister Edi Rama of Albania and took steps to benefit the politician, according to the prosecutors in Washington. Mr. Rama has portrayed himself as a reformer and as opposed to Russia’s war in Ukraine. But after his 2018 retirement, Mr. McGonigal worked the other side, on the payroll of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, once seen as a member of President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle, according to the indictment of Mr. McGonigal and another man, Sergey Shestakov, in New York.
The earliest crimes of which Mr. McGonigal is accused date to August 2017, but the F.B.I.’s damage assessment likely is looking back much further, former officials said. That he may have lied while with the bureau about his acceptance of cash from a business associate and contacts with foreign individuals has also raised concerns about the breadth and duration of his possible deceptions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/...YM0dLSUrtX_mZalXim8amDR-tL7NO0&smid=share-url
But it also set off a scramble within the bureau to assess the potential damage and determine whether any counterintelligence or law enforcement operations were compromised, according to two people familiar with the review, with the F.B.I.’s director, Christopher A. Wray, treating the case as a top priority.
“It puts a question mark next to everything he was involved in,” said Holden Triplett, a former F.B.I. counterintelligence official who left in 2020 and co-founded Trenchcoat Advisors, a risk management consultancy.
“You’d be trying to figure out, ‘OK, when did this start and what did he touch after it started?’” said Mr. Triplett, who does not have direct knowledge about the review of Mr. McGonigal’s career. “Going back and thinking about what the damage could be is painful.”
Inside the F.B.I., where he spent 22 years, Mr. McGonigal was so trusted that he was tapped to run the investigation into a devastating breach that led to the imprisonment, execution or disappearance of more than a dozen Central Intelligence Agency informants in China, one of the F.B.I.’s most sensitive assignments.
The episodes described in a pair of indictments unsealed last week by federal prosecutors in Washington and New York paint Mr. McGonigal, 54, as aggressively entrepreneurial in seeking to generate business through the contacts and power his position afforded him, operating almost in plain sight without being detected despite the danger that someone with his knowledge could pose if corrupted.
While still at the F.B.I., he developed a relationship with Prime Minister Edi Rama of Albania and took steps to benefit the politician, according to the prosecutors in Washington. Mr. Rama has portrayed himself as a reformer and as opposed to Russia’s war in Ukraine. But after his 2018 retirement, Mr. McGonigal worked the other side, on the payroll of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, once seen as a member of President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle, according to the indictment of Mr. McGonigal and another man, Sergey Shestakov, in New York.
The earliest crimes of which Mr. McGonigal is accused date to August 2017, but the F.B.I.’s damage assessment likely is looking back much further, former officials said. That he may have lied while with the bureau about his acceptance of cash from a business associate and contacts with foreign individuals has also raised concerns about the breadth and duration of his possible deceptions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/...YM0dLSUrtX_mZalXim8amDR-tL7NO0&smid=share-url
