An FBI agent who worked on the corruption case of former Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson resigned after superiors found a list he wrote of his sexual conquests with agents and a confidential source, according to court documents.
The same agent, John Guandolo, who is married and who unsuccessfully solicited a $75,000 donation for an anti-terrorism group from a wealthy witness in the Jefferson case with whom he was having an affair, resigned from the FBI and appears to have landed on his feet on the speaking circuit playing up the threat of Islamic terrorism.
The affair list was first reported by Allan Lengel at ticklethewire.com
The relationship between Guandolo and key government informant Lori Mody, a former tech executive for whom Guandolo worked undercover as a driver, failed to derail the Jefferson conviction after a judge ruled it irrelevant this week.
But the documents, filed back in June before the trial got underway, and only unsealed this week, offer a salacious picture of what was going on behind the scenes during a major corruption investigation.
Read the full document here.
Just days before the Jefferson trial got underway in June, Mody came to the FBI to reveal the affair:
Ms. Mody explained to Special Agent Thibault that she and Mr. Guandolo were mildly intimate (but did not have sex) in New Orleans when Ms. Mody traveled there in April 2005 to attend an event hosted by Defendant Jefferson and to record communications she had with him. Ms Mody further reported that after the New Orleans trip she rebuffed 2-3 advances by Mr. Guandolo, including one in which she characterized Mr. Guandolo as inappropriately aggressive, but that she later had consensual sexual intercourse with Mr. Guandolo on two occasions in approximately May 2005.
According to an FBI doc, Guandolo’s advances “took place in a car, [Mody’s] townhouse, or [Mody’s] parent’s house.”
Despite having secretly recorded conversations for the FBI, Mody was never called to testify.
At some point, Guandolo’s superiors saw the “document” that “detailed his affairs” with female agents and an internal probe was launched by the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, according to the court filing. In the document, which has not been released, Guandolo also says “he had had an intimate relationship with a confidential source that he thought could damage an investigation” — probably referring to Mody.
But Guandolo resigned in December 2008, before he was interviewed by OPR. The office investigates only current employees, and the DOJ declined to comment on the Guandolo case. He later “expressed deep remorse for his actions” to the FBI.
Mody also told the FBI that Guandolo approached her with information about five “anti-terrorism organizations,” including one affiliated with “a person named Emerson,” and wanted her to make a $75,000 donation to one of them. She declined.
Emerson is probably Steven Emerson, author of Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the US, writer for David Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com, and head of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Emerson tells TPMmuckraker he was acquainted with Guandolo when he was an FBI agent, but the revelations about Mody are news to him.
Perhaps it’s not a surprising that Guandolo has emerged issuing what can charitably be described as overheated warnings about Islamic extremism. From the Shelbyville Tennessee Times-Gazette in February:
Every major Muslim organization is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, the former FBI agent said, which he said was formed to overthrow America and establish Islamic law.
“They’re having great success of implementing Shariah law, I could give you a thousand examples,” Guandolo said.
Guandolo, the Times-Gazette reported, worked on counterterrorism issues while at the FBI and now works with “Stephen Coughlin, former Islamic Expert for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” He was not in when we called his home in Virginia.
