It has become difficult, almost painful, to watch: the public diminution of James Comey’s #2 at the FBI, Andrew G. McCabe, eerily following the post-bureau reputational arc of his former boss. McCabe’s interview with “60 Minutes” on Sunday had been billed as must-see-TV. But for this retired agent whose career had crossed with McCabe’s almost 20 years ago, the figure on the screen who’d once enjoyed a meteoric ascension to the apex of the bureau food chain has transformed into a pitiable figure. It was difficult to believe this was the same man I had once defended .

The fired former FBI deputy director has a book to sell: The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. A widely anticipated televised interview would assuredly bolster book sales.

The sit-down with CBS’s Scott Pelley was conducted in far cozier confines than the ones McCabe was subjected to by the Department of Justice’s inspector general. In a blistering 35-page report released last year, McCabe was sanctioned for lying three times under oath, related to an unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information (media leak) predicated upon, as the IG asserts, making himself, not the FBI, “look good.” The IG made a recommendation to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions that McCabe be fired from the FBI for intentionally misleading internal FBI and inspector general investigators. Sessions fired McCabe on March 16, 2018 — just more than 24 hours before his scheduled retirement.

McCabe claimed to have been “confused” by the questions and “distracted” by all the events swirling around him at the time. It was “stressful,” he laments. This is pitiable, coming from a man in that position. Many of his responses to Pelley were self-serving and reminiscent of the feckless director he had served under and so openly and fawningly admires. To hear McCabe speak about Comey is not to witness respectful, professional appreciation, but something bordering on sycophancy and idolatry.

He argues there was adequate predication to authorize the opening of a counterintelligence investigation into potential Russian meddling in the 2016 election. No sane person can find fault with this decision. But speaking from the position of someone familiar with FBI executive decisions, his decision was seemingly infected by confirmation bias. Comey’s seventh floor at FBI headquarters wasn’t exactly Lincoln’s “team of rivals.” It was a gaggle of many promoted-before-their-time, callow, overly ambitious, like-minded acolytes and activists.

His assertion that he ordered the opening of an obstruction of justice investigation into Trump following Comey’s firing is laughable and lamentable. McCabe misguidedly argues that he had became “very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground, in an indelible fashion,” and that were he to be “removed quickly, or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace."

That sound you hear are the groans of countless FBI leaders who seemingly understand better than McCabe that innumerable levels of oversight by career professionals within the FBI and DOJ have always acted as a guardrail to prevent political interference into case investigations. Then again, it’s awfully rich that McCabe – rightly criticized for political influence in his own decision-making -- would be the one to argue this fear.

McCabe, who only spent a few years conducting investigative work in the field, had been hustled through the obligatory senior assignments in order to be brought back as deputy director after the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized email server case had been opened. He makes that point to Pelley. What he fails to mention is that he waited far too long to recuse himself from oversight of that case upon his return. He acknowledges that “I was a part of that team and those decisions.” Pelley curiously refuses to press on this point, gently reminding us that McCabe did recuse himself some months before the election.

The question is this: What ethical, experienced, mature, and sensitive-to-appearance-of-impropriety FBI senior executive in his right mind would not have steered clear of any perceived influence on a politically charged case when his spouse has decided to accept campaign funding from a governor with control of a political action committee and deep political ties to the Clintons? Answer: McCabe.

Pretending his decision here was not demonstrably reckless, selfish, and stupid makes you a partisan. His arguments that he acted “appropriately” only serve to further erode his credibility, cast more doubts on his other leadership decisions, and irrevocably tarnish the legacy of the FBI.

McCabe also exhibited poor judgment and a complete misunderstanding of his role as acting director while discussing that he had consulted with the Deputy Attorney General about invoking the 25th Amendment following Comey’s firing. The FBI is not part of the decision-making process that the amendment provides to the vice-president and Cabinet. McCabe had a bevy of FBI attorneys at his avail. Not one of them advised him this wasn’t his call to make, and that removal of a duly-elected president, via 25th Amendment means, must be related to death, resignation, impeachment, or incapacitation?

There was not one question from McCabe’s television interviewer about his relationship with the disgraced former deputy assistant director, Peter Strzok, and one of his FBI attorneys, Lisa Page, regarding private discussions in his office that Strzok and Page had discussed in private text message exchanges. Discovery of the partisan communications resulted in their removals from the special prosecutor’s Russian election interference team. It's hard not to view McCabe’s victim persona as pathetic, when explanations related to the “insurance policy” in the event Trump was elected have all fallen woefully short of passing the smell test.

McCabe still awaits notification of any criminal referral to the Justice Department on the IG’s findings, with no denials that he perjured himself by lying under oath — this is why he had to be fired . FBI agent trainees are warned that lying in an official capacity results in termination, as damning Giglio material will be generated. This witness-impeachment information is required to be turned over to defense attorneys in cases the agent would ordinarily testify in, rendering the agent incapable of doing the job.

So how should we take anything McCabe says now as truthful?

Politicians often misrepresent things. In reality, they lie. Trump (crowd size), Obama (keep your health plan), and Gillibrand/Klobuchar (serve out my term). But for a senior FBI executive to do so is egregious and intolerable. So when McCabe sharpens his axe to make second-hand claim that an FBI official at a meeting with Trump heard him reject a U.S. intelligence assessment on North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities and remark, “I don’t care. I believe Putin,” it’s not that we can’t necessarily imagine Trump saying this – it’s that it comes from McCabe.

His assertions that Rosenstein offered to wear a wire and record the president have been flatly denied by the deputy attorney general and resulted in a department spokesperson describing Rosenstein as having “never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references.”

In a more salacious section of his axe-grinding tome, McCabe alleges that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions made repugnant remarks about the composition of the FBI. “Back in the old days,” McCabe claims an openly racist Sessions confided in him, “you all only hired Irishmen. They were drunks, but they could be trusted.”

I served on various FBI protection details that required close travel and association with four Attorneys General – Janet Reno, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, and Michael Mukasey. It defies credulity that any modern AG would ever utter such blatantly racist remarks around anyone – much less the acting director of the FBI.

I don’t believe Andy McCabe, especially since the most prominent targets in his book are Trump, Sessions, and Rosenstein; three men who had a direct impact on the termination of his FBI career.

What I do believe is that a president who currently lives under an impeachment sword of Damocles appears to have been injudiciously targeted by a small group of supposedly apolitical public servants who panicked during a time of gravity-defying populism and ignored time-tested processes, protocols, and prohibitions for law enforcement intersection with the political process.

Andy McCabe has only served to convince me further of this abomination.

James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John's University.