Rachel Poser

So tell us that story.

Jill was one of those agents for whom the FBI was really her life.

She worked there.

Her husband worked there.

They were true believers.

Jill was an analyst who worked on violent crime in L.A., and that was really her area of expertise.

But then, as the Trump administration's deportation agenda ramps up early last year, she and a whole host of other agents and analysts suddenly get tasked to help with the immigration push, something they had really no experience in.

I was stressed out because I was having to pull analysts off of different teams to... Agents were being assigned to immigration enforcement and pulled away from things like public corruption, cybercrime, white-collar crime, drug trafficking, terrorism, things that under the Biden administration and for decades before had been core priorities of the FBI.

So Jill is already frustrated.

And then she gets asked to do something that she feels crosses a red line for her.

She's asked to have members of her team run a pre-assessment on protesters, which is essentially the first step toward a criminal investigation.

And members of her team had been asked to take a look at a cell phone video that their supervisors claimed showed anti-ICE protesters impeding an arrest.

Their determination is that the protesters have done nothing wrong.

And so they say, we're not going to go forward with this investigation.

And they're told, you have to open one anyway.

She was getting the request from her supervisor, but it was clear to her that there was pressure coming from the top.

That's a great question.

Several people described the FBI to me to be in a kind of post-Hoover mindset, meaning that they were very aware of the ways that particularly in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the Bureau had violated American civil rights by investigating huge numbers of people who had committed no crime.

And that's not to say that since then their track record has been perfect by any means.

The treatment of Muslim Americans after 9-11 is just one example.