If New Yorker writer George Packer hadn’t already taken the title, former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe’s new book might be best titled The Unwinding. McCabe, who became Twitter-famous in Trump’s Washington as a key figure in the presidential “Witch Hunt” of the Russia probe, has written this memoir in part as a spirited defense of the rule of law, and it paints an intimate portrait of roughly 10 months that rocked the FBI and the Justice Department.

The events of The Threat span the summer of 2016 through May 2017, encompassing the bungling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, the election of Donald Trump, the bureau’s investigation of Michael Flynn, and, finally, the 10 chaotic days that began with the firing of FBI director James Comey and ended with the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, the man who had preceded Comey at the bureau.

While most of the headlines about McCabe’s book have dealt with his observations on Trump—including the president's still-stunning “I believe Putin” line—those allegations offer little that’s new, painting a familiar picture of a rambling, egotistical id incarnate who is unable to even feign interest in intellectual subjects, policy nuances, or, frankly, anything that’s not about Trump.

Instead, McCabe’s greatest contribution in furthering our understanding of the “Russia probe” is in deepening our knowledge of that period of unwinding, tracing the inner workings of the Justice Department and the FBI during both the pre-election controversy over Hillary Clinton’s email investigation and the Comey firing. Rather than ending the then-nascent Russia probe, as Trump evidently wanted, those events instead launched Mueller’s heavyweight investigation, which may now be in its final hours or days.

Over the past two years, Trump and his cable news and talk radio allies have painted the trio of Rod Rosenstein, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe as an inseparable "Deep State" cabal. Yet McCabe’s portrait of the inner workings of the FBI and the Justice Department at the time shows the three men as anything but united. In fact, quite the opposite.

What emerges from McCabe’s enlightening portrait is how isolated each man felt amid some of the worst pressures of their careers.

Midyear Exam

Much of the middle of McCabe’s book recounts the Clinton email investigation, codenamed MIDYEAR EXAM. (McCabe jokes that given his role at the time as the FBI’s third in command, a position that entailed numerous midyear reviews of the FBI’s 56 field offices, the only more confusing codename “would have been ‘Lunch.’”) McCabe clearly wishes he could put the case behind him: “For the rest of our lifetimes, everyone involved will be asked about Midyear, the zombie apocalypse of counterintelligence cases,” he writes.

McCabe makes clear how he felt about the case as it unfolded, saying the Justice Department’s leadership was “half-in, half-out, and all confused.” He labels the choices made by Comey and the DOJ about handling the matter as “feckless” and “fatal.”

McCabe’s book wrestles more deeply than Comey’s book did with the conun­drums that faced the FBI.

Amid the pre-election letter “reopening” the Clinton email investigation, Comey—according to McCabe—was more deeply concerned that prominent Clinton associates had donated money to McCabe’s wife’s state senate race than he had initially let on. McCabe, meanwhile, disagreed with Comey’s decision to send Congress a letter announcing that the investigation had been reopened—which didn’t much matter, because Comey cut McCabe out of the decisionmaking around the letter anyway. “I think it was a mistake to send that letter,” McCabe writes. “Sometimes the riskier choice is the more responsible one.”

McCabe’s book wrestles more deeply than Comey’s book did with the conundrums that faced the FBI amid that investi­gation, and McCabe—unlike Comey—is willing to state outright that the FBI’s attempt to be apolitical actually had the opposite effect. “The FBI does everything possible not to influence elections,” McCabe writes. “In 2016, it seems we did.”

'The End of His Rope'

As the book unfolds, McCabe moves through the equally confounding Michael Flynn investigation, in the opening days of the Trump White House, and how he remains confused to this day about why the national security advisor lied to interviewing FBI agents. According to McCabe, Flynn even admitted on the phone to him that the FBI surely knew the content of his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.