Former senior FBI agents have accused James Comey of damaging the agency’s reputation and “playing a dangerous game” with the Russia investigations by going on the offensive with an explosive book and media interviews.

Those speaking out also say they have been contacted by multiple agents currently working for the FBI who are displeased and uncomfortable with Comey, their ex-director, getting into a fierce war of words with the president, who fired him last year.

Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth Lies, and Leadership, is being published on Tuesday and has been previewed in the Guardian and some other outlets. And in a lengthy interview with ABC on Sunday night, the former director of the FBI said Donald Trump was morally unfit to be president. But his high-profile commentary has upset former colleagues who had held him in high regard both personally and professionally.

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“It’s tasteless at best. There is a total lack of dignity. He, and a number of other FBI employees who worked directly for him, have damaged the agency,” Nancy Savage, executive director of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, said of Comey’s book and interview.

Savage, who was an agent for 30 years and was president of the FBI special agents association while serving, before she retired in 2011, told the Guardian it was highly inappropriate for Comey to talk about matters relating to the president that are currently under investigation.

In his interview with ABC on Sunday, Comey discussed topics such as whether Trump may have obstructed justice by pressing him, while he was still FBI director, to drop his inquiry into the former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s links to Russia. Comey repeated his assertion that Trump asked him for his loyalty, and he aired unconfirmed allegations that Russia has compromising personal material on the president.

These issues are among those under investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller and two Senate committees.

“Overall, I and most of our members don’t think it’s appropriate for him [Comey] to be publicly discussing things that are still being investigated and it’s inappropriate to be writing a book about it,” said Savage. She added: “If he is potentially going to be a witness, he needs to provide the information he has in a controlled fashion, not going on a book tour ... it’s bad protocol, it’s unprecedented and it’s ill-advised.”

She also criticized some Comey colleagues such as Andrew McCabe, who was fired last month over accusations of leaking to the press.

Serving agents generally shy away from speaking publicly about FBI matters or politics but there has been plenty of talk behind the scenes. Savage and other former agents said they had heard from FBI staff in the hours since Comey’s interview on ABC aired, and they were not happy.

Former senior agent Bobby Chacon said: “The majority of people I have spoken to since Sunday night think it’s unfortunate timing. They are rolling their eyes; it’s not good.”

Chacon retired in 2014 as head of the FBI underwater forensic dive team based in Los Angeles, after being an agent for 27 years. He said there were “still plenty of people” in the agency who supported Comey but many were upset at him “standing on a soapbox”.

Chacon is also concerned that Comey, by talking about issues involving Russia and the Trump administration and election campaign, is opening himself up to a tough cross examination if he appears as a witness in any criminal proceedings arising from the investigations.

“Comey knows these things, so he may have made the judgment that he’s being careful, but he is playing a dangerous game,” said Chacon, adding: “I worked for him. He did a lot of good things at the FBI. He was popular and I didn’t like the way the White House sacked him ... but he made mistakes and now has been overtaken by his emotions. I’m surprised he has been dragged down into street-fighting with Trump.”

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Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s criminal division, said he thought Comey had been out of the FBI for long enough that his public comments were less likely to compromise the work of Mueller or Congress. But he said that he believed, and had heard from serving agents, that Comey’s speaking out was only fuel to Trump’s criticism of the agency.



“I’m very confident that Robert Mueller knows how to conduct his investigation. But by talking like this Comey is not helping the FBI’s ability to fight back against the attacks on its reputation that have been coming from Trump,” he said.

He said it would exacerbate the rift between Trump and the FBI.

“I expect these wounds to remain open for a very long time,” he said.