Ex-CIA watchdog who retaliated against whistleblower part of Jan. 6 panel

A former CIA inspector general found to have retaliated against a whistleblower will be part of the House select committee looking into the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, according to a new report.

David Buckley, the select committee’s staff director, served as CIA Inspector General, the intelligence agency’s watchdog, between October 2010 and January 2015. Buckley’s tenure was best known for his office’s 2014 report revealing that CIA employees improperly spied on Senate staffers prior to the release of a report into alleged torture of detained terrorism suspects. In 2019, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) inspector general revealed that Buckley and other officials in the CIA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) opened a so-called “retaliatory investigation” into Andrew Bakaj, an OIG special agent. That probe uncovered “derogatory information” that led the OIG to place Bakaj on leave and suspend his security clearance.