The U.S. Department of Justice has reopened a case against a former top FBI counterspy. Charles McGonigal was Special Agent in Charge of Counterintelligence at the New York field office. He left the FBI in 2018, joined the massive Brookfield asset management fund as a vice president for global security, and was arrested and convicted in 2023.
But not for espionage. McGonigal quickly pled guilty to corruption-related crimes. He is serving six-and-a-half years in federal prison.
His prosecution and admission seem suspiciously tidy.
McGonigal was part of the FBI’s discredited CROSSFIRE HURRICANE “counterintelligence” operation led by his boss, Peter Strzok, against Donald Trump and his supporters in 2016.
As the former senior spy-hunter at the Bureau’s largest field office, McGonigal barely defended himself from charges relating to illegally accepting money from Albanian businessmen tied to that tiny country’s intelligence service, and for ties to a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
He received a light sentence and $40,000 fine.
Something feels off. To the Russian or Chinese intelligence services, someone in McGonigal’s position would be a prime intelligence mark — the man in charge of tracking them.
Someone with his double life and excessive lifestyle makes a ripe target. It stretches credulity to think that Albanian intelligence got to McGonigal instead of Putin’s chekists.
On April 30, then-U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin renewed focus on McGonigal. In a letter to McGonigal’s attorney, Martin noted the former FBI man’s convictions of “falsifying records, making false statements, conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.”
Martin was vague about the new interest. “Information has come to the attention of my office which requires us to interview Mr. McGonigal,” he wrote, offering no specifics.
Apparently, DOJ is pursuing more than just minor details about Albanians or Russian oligarchs.
The job of countering foreign intelligence services — counterintelligence — is poorly understood, even in government. Investigating foreign spies might sound glamorous, but it’s hard work filled with drudgery.
The toughest part can be investigating fellow American citizens legitimately suspected of espionage, then building criminal cases against them with evidence that the Justice Department can place before a judge and jury without compromising counterintelligence sources and methods.
Justice is elusive. Many spies get off the hook because legitimate evidence is inadmissible. Others are never tried. Some get booked on something else, like corruption.
Was McGonigal a foreign spy inside the FBI? We don’t know. But the Trump administration seems to suspect he was.
Former senior FBI agents can command high salaries in the private sector. Brookfield, a trillion-dollar asset management company, hired McGonigal as Senior Vice President for Global Security.
McGonigal was working there when Mark Carney arrived as an executive in 2020 and became chairman in 2022. Sources claim that McGonigal was held for questioning while returning from South America on Brookfield business. Brookfield, typically vocal in press releases, made no public comment when McGonigal left the company or was arrested by the FBI.
Did McGonigal use his senior security post at Brookfield to commit espionage? Did Brookfield Chairman Carney, now Prime Minister of Canada, order a company-wide assessment of foreign intelligence infiltration? These questions remain answered.
Here’s a clue: Within days of U.S. Attorney Martin’s letter to McGonigal’s lawyer, McGonigal sought a gag order against his former girlfriend, Allison Guerreiro, who has publicly claimed to have evidence that he was a spy.
The Counterintelligence Division, over the past decade at least, has been one of the FBI’s most politicized components. Did the FBI under Christopher Wray not want to investigate its own man, McGonigal, as a possible Russian spy because it would reflect badly on the bureau? It appears so.
Might others in the bureau be covering up to protect McGonigal, or to avoid the most heinous crime of all — which is to make the bureau look bad? The FBI has a track record for such a thing.
Martin’s letter to McGonigal’s lawyer, combined with the new FBI leadership of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino who promise to clean house, might reveal more about Russian penetration of the FBI.