Meanwhile, most Americans have never known anything more in-depth about Strzok than those texts. After spending two years as a punchline and exclamation point, Strzok appears in Compromised for the first time as a fully formed human being.
I’ve spent a dozen years covering the FBI, written multiple books about the bureau and dozens of magazine articles, interviewed hundreds of its employees—from evidence technicians and analysts to six of its eight directors—and probably spoken to FBI personnel more days than not since 2008. And part of what’s so surprising about Strzok’s unique and engaging book—part-memoir, part-lesson in intelligence tradecraft, and part-cri de couer—is just how utterly typical an FBI agent he appears to be.
Far from a conniving villain or Deep State plant, Strzok—who by the summer of 2018 was the deputy assistant director of the bureau’s counterintelligence division, the number-two job in one of the FBI’s most important missions—was widely regarded in the bureau as one of the most promising counterintelligence agents of his generation. He comes across in the book as driven, aggressive, respectful, patriotic, and deeply bound to the principles and procedures of the FBI. He certainly is no Hillary Clinton superfan, as he finds himself repeatedly stymied by her team’s stonewalling of the email investigation. (By way of disclosure, Strzok and I have previously only met once in passing, though we do share the same literary agent.)
Strzok joined the bureau as a counterterrorism analyst, part of its post-Oklahoma City bombing expansion, and spent most of the 2000s as an agent working some of the nation’s most important national security cases. He uses that background in the boo ..
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