A big part of the FBI's counterintelligence work in the United States is trying to understand whether foreign adversaries have gained any leverage over anyone in a position to influence a policy of the United States Government or to reveal its secrets. And so it's at the heart of our counterintelligence work, because that's how the bad guys overseas hurt us. One of the ways is they co-opt people, recruit them, or coerce them into giving up information that's inconsistent with American interest. And so it's a critical issue without regard to the person.
Mr. Cummings. Okay. When Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates learned of the significant national security risk, she went over and warned the White House counsel, who was Don McGahn.
Proper protocol when the White House learned about that potential national security risk would have been for the White House to suspend General Flynn's access to classified information while they looked into the matter, but they didn't do that. So we've been told that General Flynn held his active clearance until he was fired by the White House about 18 days later.
In your experience at the FBI, when the FBI learned that an individual who had an active security clearance might be a risk to our national security, did the FBI follow the standard procedure I described and suspend that individual's security clearance pending an investigation?
