The Amazing Grace of Mike Kahoe

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here.”~Lewis Carroll, “Alice in Wonderland”

Editor’s Note: In mid-July 1995, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, a former FBI Special Agent himself, informed select members of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill that Mike Kahoe, currently the Special Agent-In-Charge of the FBIs Field Office in Jacksonville, Florida had just been suspended by the FBI for allegedly destroying an “important DOJ/FBI document” some three years earlier, preventing its inclusion as part of the federal government’s case against Randy Weaver and his associate Kevin Harris, both of whom faced multiple federal charges including first-degree murder following the infamous August 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

However, just 11 months later, on July 8th, 1993 Weaver and Harris were acquitted of all major charges following their trial at the federal courthouse in Boise, Idaho. At the time of Kahoe’s suspension he had been an FBI Special Agent for nearly 25 years, serving in a number of capacities and field offices, to include a stint at FBI Headquarters in Washington D.C. where he was the former head of the FBIs “Violent Crime and Major Offender’s Section”. Kahoe would eventually plead guilty to a single count of “obstruction” related to his actions described above and serve 1 year + 20 days of an 18 month sentence in federal prison.

To this day he remains the only FBI official involved in any aspect of the Ruby Ridge case and the subsequent investigations, inquiries, hearings, etc., who was criminally charged, convicted, and incarcerated by the Department of Justice, all but closing the book on Ruby Ridge and ignominiously ending an FBI career that had spanned nearly three decades.

Author’s Note: The following is my assessment of Kahoe’s plight in the aftermath of Ruby Ridge, and why he was accompanied by Andrew G. McCabe, the future acting Director of the FBI, following Kahoe’s guilty plea to Obstruction of Justice, October 30th, 1996 at a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C.

By the mid 1990s, Andrew G. “Andy” McCabe, was a law school graduate as well as an FBI Special Agent with DOJ ties going back to the summer of 1992 when he did an Internship in the DOJs Criminal Division prior to finishing law school at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He then became an FBI Agent sometime in 1996 after working as an associate attorney for a small law office in New Jersey.

Author’s Note: According to McCabe’s FD-302 FBI Employment Interview conducted September 14, 1995 and provided in the Prologue of his recent book “The Threat”, McCabe passed the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Bar Exams in the Fall of 1993 then toiled as an associate attorney for a couple of law firms before he was hired by the FBI. McCabe infers his Entered On Duty (EOD) date with the FBI was 1996 by referring to his New Agent Training Class at Quantico as “NA9618” but never once provides his EOD or even uses the term, an unusual omission to say the least.

McCabe wrote in his book that “he knew he wanted to be an FBI Special Agent” during the aforementioned summer 1992 DOJ internship but claimed the FBI “wasn’t hiring” upon his graduation from law school sometime in 1993 (as cited in the FD-302), although McCabe himself didn’t provide any date whatsoever of his law school graduation, not even the year, instead writing “when I came out of law school, the Bureau wasn’t hiring.”

Author’s Note: It’s highly likely McCabe first became acquainted with future FBI Director James Comey during this nebulous, murky 4 year period between 1992 and 1996 because Comey was already an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) in the DOJs….wait for it….Criminal Division.

However, having graduated from college myself in the summer of 1992, August 8th to be exact, as a Criminal Justice Administration major, then filling out several FBI employment applications shortly afterwards, the FBI was very much hiring new agents back then, just not run of the mill college grads like myself. Why?

Because back then the FBI preferred its new agents were already certified accountants and law school graduates/lawyers as to get a leg up on its white collar crime, fraud, and civil rights investigations which in those days were the flavor of the month, so McCabe’s assertion of the FBI “not hiring” after he just finished law school AND did the internship with the DOJ doesn’t quite pass the smell test.

Plus he’s very coy about exactly what he was doing and “up to” during the exact same time period of “The Post Seige Ruby Ridge Mushroom Cloud” that had enveloped all of D.C., especially the DOJ and FBI. And if that wasn’t enough trouble or work for them, the Branch Davidian Compound disaster at Waco, Texas in 1993, and terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 kept everyone busier than a one-armed paper hanger, but according to McCabe the FBI didn’t need the extra help.

On what planet? Certainly not this one.

I strongly suspect McCabe was serving in an official capacity with the DOJ as a DOJ employee well before he alluded to becoming an FBI agent “sometime in 1996” but whatever he was doing then became an issue for the FBI/DOJ circa 2016 when he was appointed by FBI Director James Comey as Deputy Director of the FBI, the Number 2 position in the entire Bureau.

Did that long ago summer internship pay dividends or what?

Which is why The AP Photo of the “Man in the Glasses” featuring Mike Kahoe, and my shopping it for an explanation in the summer of 2021 made a lot of people uncomfortable to the extent The AP Photo is no longer retrievable via a simple Google search and why “Racheal Major: Private Investigator” without any invitation or introduction suddenly popped into my email inbox October 7th, 2021 claiming to be “fascinated with cases just like Ruby Ridge.”

Coincidence? With this bunch? Not a chance.

Meaning McCabe’s presence with Kahoe in October 1996 leaving federal court just moments after Kahoe pled guilty to obstruction is no coincidence either. McCabe was with Kahoe that day for a reason and it’s more likely than not McCabe as a lawyer and FBI Special Agent was knee-deep in whatever leverage-scheme-bribe-extortion maneuvers being used against Kahoe “forcing” him as Danny Coulson told me in September 2021, to admit in federal court of committing a crime he didn’t commit in order to save his FBI pension.

Mike Kahoe was a senior grade agent with 26 years in the FBI by October 1996, closing fast on retirement without any disciplinary issues or actions I know of, but suddenly just like that he’s going to “voluntarily” jump on the Ruby Ridge grenade by admitting to “something” he did three years ago on his way out the door?

No one is that stupid. Not even our man Ray Epps who is so dumb it takes him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes.

My guess is Kahoe as a human being was probably not the brightest bulb in the knife drawer, but was a solid agent who did decent enough work throughout his FBI career, and more importantly, was very loyal to the FBI as most FBI peeps are. Unfortunately for Kahoe, he likely accumulated a skeleton or two in his closet during his 26 years as a G-Man that under ordinary circumstances were overlooked by any and all who discovered them, but these were no longer ordinary circumstances, especially for those in the FBI who were sitting on a hot seat getting hotter by the minute. Why?

Because in May 1995, FBI Special Agent Eugene Glenn, the on-site federal agent in charge during the Ruby Ridge fiasco, filed an official complaint with the DOJs Inspector General after witnessing the FBIs less than ethical conduct nearly two years and counting trying like hell to contain the damage of its Ruby Ridge operations, which resulted in the launching of a DOJ “Office of Professional Responsibility” (OPR) investigation, and when combined with the upcoming Congressional hearings on all things Ruby Ridge, the FBI apparatchiks who ran its Damage Control Division (DCD), determined they had only one choice as in “either we allow several FBI officials to swing” or “we hand them a head on plate right up front” taking the wind out of their investigative sails, employing a smokescreen at the same time, and all but ensuring the “sacrifice of one will save the asses of the others”.

There is no longer any doubt Mike Kahoe was the perfect sacrifice because he checked all the right boxes. He was senior enough, not that bright (at least when compared to his scheming, cutthroat colleagues), loyal, close to retirement, and most importantly had “something” in his background that was leveraged against him. If Kahoe wanted to keep his pension he’d “play ball and take one for the team” even if it resulted in his public “execution” and imprisonment. I’m sure Kahoe was promised a bunch of other “goodies” as well i.e., a light sentence, no hard time, early release, restoration of certain rights, etc., all of which he received interestingly enough.

Author’s Note: At this point I’m actually beginning to wonder if Kahoe even went to prison, but instead hung out at an FBI “safehouse” under an alias the entire time which seems more and more plausible by the day.

McCabe, in on the ground floor of this entire operation, was there to shadow Kahoe all throughout his court appearances primarily to ensure Kahoe never wavered from his agreement or gave the judge any indication he was a patsy or was asked any questions by the judge that might reveal “something else was going on” and that’s why McCabe was present because as an attorney representing the FBI, not Kahoe, McCabe could shut down any inquiries coming from the bench or elsewhere by claiming “that’s classified” or “could impede another ongoing investigation” or whatever BS snow-job was needed.

This is standard operating procedure for the DOJ/FBI when it comes to a DOJ/FBI employee (which Kahoe still was…he didn’t officially retire from the FBI until January 1997) called as a witness in a congressional investigation or in any venue where there’s a chance of accidentally letting the cat out of the bag. For example, I think there were at least two or three DOJ/FBI attorneys sitting directly behind disgraced FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok during his congressional “RussiaGate” hot seat testimony July 2018 who were there to insure Strzok didn’t spill the beans on anyone or anything, either wittingly or unwittingly.

And there you have it. Unfortunately I can’t prove a thing about any of it, no one can, but I guarantee it’s as close to what really happened versus the official line we’ve been fed for nearly 30 years. Does it mean E. Michael Kahoe is an innocent man? Probably so, considering how others in his orbit carrying far more culpability than FBI Special Agent Mike Kahoe regarding all things Ruby Ridge “somehow” slipped the noose.

Did he deserve the punishment he received? Absolutely not.

Epilogue: E. Michael “Mike” Kahoe died March 8, 2021. He was 74 years old. Before his passing Mike Kahoe was a motivational speaker in the Cleveland, Ohio area, and I thought it appropriate you heard directly from Mike Kahoe, in his own words, from his own hand I pulled from The Bash*, a website he used for marketing purposes and booking his speaking events, even offering to travel up to 500 miles for those interested in what he had to say, which it turns out, was quite extraordinary:

I became an FBI agent in 1970 when I was 23 years old. I had was born (sic) and raised in my grandmothers row house in Baltimore Md. All my early education was in Baltimore and I graduated from Law school at the University of Baltimore in June of 1970. I entered on duty with the FBI as a special agent in October of 1970. After new agents training I was assigned to Atlanta Ga, and then to Cleveland,Ohio for the next twelve years. I was promoted fairly rapidly and after Cleveland I was promoted to FBI headquarters and then after a couple of years I was promoter (sic) to the job as head of the FBIs office in Gary, Indiana. After about 5 years in Gary I was made the number 2 agent in New Orleans covering the entire state of Louisiana. After about three years I was promoted to the position of Agent in charge of the FBIs violent crime program out of FBIHQ Washington D.C. I was then transferred to become the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI office in Jacksonville Florida. While serving in the capacity of chief of the FBIs violent crime an incident occurred in Ruby Ridge Idaho in which a Deputy U. S. Marshal, a 14 year old boy and his mother were also killed. The mother was killed by the errant shot from a highly trained sniper. At the conclusion of this incident an after action conference was held. The over riding question concerned the change in the rules of engagement. The only two individuals who could have changed those rules did not show up for the after action conference. I later destroyed the memorandum made to document that conference. I admitted to destroying that memo and was sentenced to a term of 18 months in a federal penitentiary. I served a year and 20 days. I will tell the entire story of Ruby Ridge. Why it should never have started and why an entire innocent family was slaughtered by the government. I will tell the entire story about the government gharges (sic) against me and why no one else was ever charged most importantly those who could have changed the rules of engagement and why they couldn't show up for the after action conference. I will answer any and all questions truthfully and completely.

*https://www.thebash.com/motivational-speaker/michael-kahoe-former-fbi-professional-speaker