NEWS ITEM: EX-FBI COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL SENTENCED TO 50 MONTHS FOR AIDING RUSSIAN OLIGARCH
This column appeared in the Santa Barbara News-Press on 28 January 2023.
Earlier this week Charles F. McGonigal, 54, formerly Special Agent in Charge of the Counterintelligence Division at the FBI’s large New York City field office, was indicted by the Department of Justice for conspiracy to commit money laundering, making multiple false statements, concealing material facts, falsifying records and helping a Russian oligarch avoid sanctions.
This 22-year Bureau-veteran’s position was very senior and extremely sensitive because New York City, which plays host to the United Nations, is the main recruiting ground in the USA for the Russian intelligence services.
The sad part is I knew Charlie around 2003-5 when he was a counterintelligence supervisor at headquarters in Washington DC.
As intelligence chief to Prince Albert of Monaco—and acting as the prince’s emissary—I, in February 2003, presented to the most senior national security bigwigs at the FBI evidence that a former U.S. Air Force/Defense Intelligence Agency colonel was spying for the Russians in addition to having laundered Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout’s ill-gotten gains through a Monaco-based company called Pastor International.
The FBI did their usual checks, formally opened an investigation and assigned it to… Charlie McGonigal.
Two years later, after much incriminating activity by our target (which I witnessed firsthand, having inserted myself into his life), and just after it seemed FBI special agents were making substantial progress, McGonigal inexplicably closed the Bureau’s investigation, telling me that even though we seemingly had a clearcut case of espionage, he intended to hand our case over to the IRS so that they could pursue our target’s “financial irregularities.”
This made no sense to me back then and makes no sense now.
Because even if FBI special agents at the Los Angeles Field Office (from which the case was run) had educed the investigation into a money laundering case (easier to prosecute than espionage), it would still remain within the Bureau’s purview for investigation and deliverance to U.S. Attorneys for assessing the merits of prosecution.
So, to my thinking, one must consider the possibility that McGonigal may have been compromised by the Russians way back then and, at their behest, derailed an investigation of Russia’s high-level spy.
SOME CONTEXT IS NECESSARY
We had reason to believe our target was personally recruited by Vladimir Putin in Germany during the timeframe 1986-90 when Mad Vlad was a KGB officer based in Dresden, in what was then East Germany.
Our target was at that time posted to the USAF base at Ramstein, West Germany, 200 miles from where Lt. Colonel Putin operated and whose job it was to recruit U.S. military personnel who had access to top secret intelligence. At Ramstein, our target supervised super-secret U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union
Additional context: When we passed our dossier to the FBI, we had reason to believe that our target who, although retired from the military, had become extremely wealthy (millions of dollars in real estate and Ming Dynasty antiques paid for with funds that could not be explained), was spying on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Board (PFIAB). This board assembled annually in Washington, D.C. to provide advice to the U.S. President on intelligence collection, analysis and estimates.
We tracked our target to Washington every December three years running as he positioned himself in luxury hotels near to where PFIAB met, in the Old Executive Office Building. And McGonigal himself hypothesized that our target knew a PFIAB board or staff member from when he was a “chart-flapper” at PFIAB meetings; that he would wine and dine this individual and glean all he could about whatever was discussed at PFIAB and report back to the Russians, maybe to Putin personally. (Our target professed an ongoing personal relationship with the Russian president.)
NOW BACK TO CHARLES MCGONIGAL
So: Did McGonigal truly transfer the investigation of our target to the IRS?
Or did Charlie deep-six it?
Certainly, McGonigal made no offer to introduce me to whoever he was dealing with at the IRS to liaise with them as I had liaised with the Bureau.
From that point on, nothing happened.
It went cold.
As if killed.
Consider this: In addition to four counts of laundering money, McGonigal is charged with having received $225,000 from “an individual who was an employee of a foreign intelligence service before his retirement”—a relationship he unlawfully concealed from the Bureau during the period 2016-18 while still working for them, thereby demonstrating that he was quite content to operate secretly in his own best interests while still employed by USG.
Thus it becomes plausible that a very senior counterintelligence official of the FBI has been on Moscow’s payroll for almost 20 years, which, if true, would raise him to the level of CIA traitor Aldrich Ames and FBI traitor Robert Hanssen in terms of how much intelligence has been compromised.
Which would mean that the FBI (and by extension the CIA, with whose officers McGonigal regularly liaised) have a much more serious problem than they know—one that requires much damage assessment.
Or maybe the Bureau would prefer to cover it up with charges less serious than treason (a capital offense punishable by the death penalty) due to the embarrassment and political ramifications it would suffer following such a revelation on the heels of other recent embarrassments.
However, if the FBI believed Charlie had been recruited by a Russian intelligence service, prosecutors would have insisted he be held in custody and not bailed (as he was, on a $500,000 bond) out of concern that the Russians might try to exfiltrate him out of the country to safety in Moscow.
Which means maybe the FBI doesn’t know and maybe doesn’t want to know.
THE EVER REVOLVING DOOR & BROOKFIELD PROPERTIES
If accepted at face value, McGonigal’s alleged criminal actions have shed a spotlight on how the “revolving door” operates in Washington, D.C.: While working for the FBI, Charlie supervised an investigation of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who was sanctioned by the U.S. Government after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. And then, after leaving the Bureau, Charlie went to work for… Oleg Deripaska, for whom he investigated a rival oligarch in addition to trying to get his client removed from the sanctions list.
Our data check on Mr. McGonigal connects him through an email address to Brookfield Properties of Brookfield Place, New York City, a global property company that offers “an incredible collection of real estate,” states their website, “everywhere you want to be.”
We know from past intelligence investigations that high-end real estate is one of the ways in which Russian oligarchs launder dirty money.
Oddly, Brookfield also links to Jared Kushner, who worked in the White House for his father-in-law Donald Trump.
In October 2022, the (UK) Guardian reported, “A financial firm [Brookfield] that operates billions of dollars in real estate properties around the world is facing questions from the powerful chairman of the Senate finance committee about whether Qatar was secretly involved in the $1.2 billion rescue of a Fifth Avenue property owned by Jared Kushner’s family while Kushner was serving in the White House.”
At the risk of telling the Department of Treasury how to do their jobs, if I were investigating the transactions of sanctioned Russian oligarchs with a view to confiscating their holdings, I would put Brookfield—based on McGonigal’s connection to the sanctioned Oleg Deripaska—under a microscope.
Indicted for his alleged crimes in two jurisdictions, Charlie is looking at four counts of money laundering and violating sanctions, totaling 80-plus years in prison, probably at ADX Florence in Colorado alongside Robert Hanssen (since deceased), Unabomber Ted Kaszynski (since deceased) and Mexican drug lord El Chapo.
CROSSFIRE HURRICANE
While not trying to turn this into a political matter, we would be remiss if we did not point out McGonigal’s deep involvement in Crossfire Hurricane, which led to the now disgraced Mueller special counsel Investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and which attempted to frame President Donald Trump as a Russian stooge based on misleading information later discovered to have been fabricated by the Hillary Clinton Campaign.
It was Charlie’s willingness to launch Crossfire Hurricane that propelled him, with then-FBI Director James Comey’s blessing, from headquarters to a top job in New York City.
It is certainly ironic that that a senior FBI counterintelligence official charged with investigating Mr. Trump for collusion with Russia is now himself criminally charged for colluding with a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
No relation to William McGonagall, the famous Scottish poet.