Late Wednesday sources revealed that Fredrick W. Humphries was the FBI agent at the heart of the Petraeus scandal. And like the former CIA director, he had an Army background.
Humphries, 47, is married to a teacher. And the controversial shirtless email he is alleged to have sent Jill Kelley, the socialite who received harassing emails from Petraeus’ mistress was also sent to his boss and other friends accustomed to his dumb-joke emails over the years.
In fact, his wife has a copy of the photo too, and she keeps it in a picture frame, proving that it isn’t some deep dark secret.
His former boss, retired Seattle FBI Special Agent in Charge Charlie Mandigo once even put it up on the bulletin board in the office as a joke according to the Seattle Times.
The photo in question shows the man who is also credited with foiling a knife attack on the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa as a bald, muscular man minus his shirt, as he stands between two bullet-ridden and headless dummies on a shooting range.
The email opening line is simply: Which one is Fred?
The joke, centering around ‘Who is the dummy in this picture?’ runs counter to the credentials and reputation of the seasoned FBI agent who is also credited with serving in the Army as an intelligence officer before joining the FBI in 1996.
In 1999 he was assigned the case involving the foiled plan to set off a bomb at the Los Angeles International Airport. And likely now, on the heels of the very national scandal involving not one but two national military leaders, the FBI agent is really asking which “dummy” is Fred?
Yet it is par for the course of many law enforcement agents to let off steam in such a manner with family and friends, especially if they have found themselves at odds with a police agency over their passion to serve with honor.
The Seattle Times says that’s what happened with Fredrick, because some within the agency began to see him as disloyal long before he phoned Washington House Rep. Dave Reichert about his concerns that national security may have been breached due to content in emails to Kelley.
During his LA airport investigation in 1999 involving Ahmed Ressam, aka the “Millenium Bomber,” who was an Al Qaeda operative involved with the attempted New Years Eve plot, Fredrick made some enemies within the agency.
As the case lead, and the only French-speaking agent in Seattle at that time, where Ressam was attempting to enter from Canada, Humphries is credited with first bringing it to the FBI’s attention that Ressam, who was claiming to be a French-speaker from Quebec, did not really speak the language as such.
That led to his arrest and more thorough interrogation by Humphries, which, in turn, led to the successful halt of a major terrorist attack on American soil. No small feat.
Yet the agent would go on to take issue with the agency’s decision to transfer Ressam to New York, where Humphries believed he would not be treated properly, as he had promised for Ressam’s cooperation.
In fact, Humphries would go on to do the unthinkable in law enforcement circles as a result of his agency’s transfer of Ressam: He would testify for the defense about his concerns over Ressam’s treatment in court.
Now the same man who protected LA from a terrorist attack and the MacDill Air Force Base from a knife-wielding Army veteran also finds himself the center of an internal FBI investigation according to Fox News.
And his attorney, Lawrence Berger, who is the general counsel for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, insists “He’s committed no misconduct.”
Berger says Humphries and his wife were socializing friends with Jill Kelley and her husband and nothing more. He disclosed that the FBI agent first met the Tampa socialite after he was transferred from Seattle, WA to Tampa, FL.
According to Berger, the two met at an FBI function in which esteemed citizens are invited to participate in the FBI Citizens’ Academy from Sept. 13 to Nov. 30, 2011.
The FBI, along with many local law enforcement agencies around the nation encourage public participation in citizen academies to educate the public on some of what the police agencies do in the course of operation. It fosters goodwill and helps keep down crime in neighborhoods where the public is informed and responds as needed.
And Berger says that other than socializing with the Kelleys in the presence of his wife, and the FBI Citizen’s Academy event, as well as the joke emails the families sent back and forth, he just tried to pass on a request for help to the FBI Cyber Unit when Jill asked him to assist.
The FBI says Fredrick is not involved in their Cyber Unit investigation into the emails sent from Petraeus’ mistress Broadwell to Kelley. Berger says the FBI agent was told by FBI executives to steer clear of the case once they felt he was becoming too personally involved.
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