CV NEWS FEED // Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) whistleblower Marcus Allen shared his incredible story of determination, steadfast pursuit of truth, and enduring Catholic faith in an interview with CatholicVote.
Allen made headlines late last month after he tearfully testified in front of House lawmakers that the FBI retaliated against him for asking questions regarding the Bureau’s alleged use of confidential informants on January 6, 2021.
Allen told members of Congress that the “FBI questioned my allegiance to the United States, suspended my security clearance, suspended my pay, and refused to allow me to obtain outside employment or even accept charity.” His suspension lasted for over two years.
Speaking with CatholicVote on Tuesday, Allen described how the period of trial began with his simple quest for more government transparency – and ended up bringing him closer to the Holy Spirit and the communion of saints.
The email that changed everything
The chain of events that led to the FBI’s retaliation against Allen began when the intelligence official sent a fateful email to fellow Bureau employees on September 29, 2021 – the Feast of the Archangels.
At the time, Allen, a Marine Corps veteran, was working as a staff operations specialist for the Bureau’s Field Office in Charlotte, North Carolina. He said that in this role, he assessed information from a variety of sources.
“All these different information sources, they can come together to help you form a picture of what’s going on in your particular area,” he explained. Allen noted that a lot of this information was unclassified.
Allen recounted that in the September 29 email, he “sent some open-source articles that essentially called into question the testimony of the director [Christopher Wray] in regards to sources affiliated with the Bureau and their conduct on January 6.”
He said that he simply sought to hold the FBI director accountable to his superiors and colleagues: “I didn’t believe his testimony was forthright, and so I called that out to my chain of command.”
“It’s not that I took it and ran to the press or anything,” he said. “I basically reported it to people who I should have reported it to and I provided my opinion on the matter. I didn’t think there was any issue with it.”
Almost immediately, his supervisors scheduled an urgent meeting with him.
Encounter with the Holy Spirit
“During the whole process, I had this pretty powerful experience with the Holy Spirit,” Allen continued. “It was almost like I was convicted in my action.”
He said that while he was drafting the September 29 email, “towards the end, I had this inkling like, ‘They might not be appreciative of my viewpoint.’”
“And I had this really powerful spiritual experience,” he detailed:
It’s kind of strange because, it’s like the Holy Spirit came down, but then he didn’t talk directly to me. It felt like my angel was on my left shoulder, or standing to my left, and he just said, “You need to do this or it’s not going to work out well on Judgement Day.”
I was like, “Okay, got it.”
“It very much was like the Holy Spirit came down, but then it was like he spoke through my angel,” he summarized. “It felt like something came in that was extremely powerful.”
Allen stressed that following the experience, he was “totally convicted” in sending the email.
On top of this, he added that he had had a dream about a week earlier.
Allen shared that he prays at least 90 minutes every day – and prior to deciding to send the email, he had been specifically praying the Chaplet of the Holy Spirit.
>> PRAY THE CHAPLET OF THE HOLY SPIRIT <<
“I try to do as many holy things as I can possibly do,” he emphasized. “I’m trying to align my will with God’s Will.”
“With that Holy Spirit Chaplet at times, I’ll have some pretty powerful dreams,” Allen noted:
So, I had a dream and it was obviously providential, that there was going to be a meeting with some of my management and it was over something serious. That was pretty much the end of the dream.
Then, there was another part of the dream where it’s like I saw my management, but it was like they were on the floor, and crying. It was like they were falling apart or something. And they couldn’t believe what was going on.
And then my direct supervisor was on my left and he was just kind of nodding his head knowingly – almost like I had said something, or I had figured something out that that nobody else believed – but then it had finally come to fruition.
And like people were falling apart because it was like, “Oh my gosh, we thought he was crazy and he was right the whole time.”
Allen explained that when he walked into the September 29 meeting a week later – right after sending the email – the scene looked exactly like his dream.
“It was like a déjà vu experience,” he said. “When it occurred, it was not a surprise at all.”
Management has a problem
“It seemed like management had a problem with me questioning the director’s testimony,” Allen told CatholicVote, describing the impromptu post-email meeting.
Allen simply responded that the email was based on his own “analytical opinion and my viewpoint. And I stood on that.”
The whistleblower said that at the end of the initial meeting, his manager appeared to understand his point of view and told Allen it was likely going to be no problem.
However, a higher-ranking official in the Bureau – who was one of the email’s recipients – disagreed.
To complicate matters, a COVID shot mandate for FBI personnel was in place at the time – to which Allen objected.
“I conveyed to my supervisor that I didn’t intend on taking the shots, and there was a deadline coming up in November that year,” he said. “So, I pretty much told him I wasn’t going along with the shot program and they had created internally, a database for people to input all their information into. And, I wasn’t going along with that either.”
Allen said the FBI soon began to indirectly incentivize its employees to get the shots by giving “terrible assignments” to those who chose otherwise.
“It was from on high, word of mouth, ‘You better comply or there’s going to be problems,’” he said. “But, I don’t remember any specific memos stating that.”
Natural and supernatural
“There just was a lot of unconstitutional trampling over of rights,” Allen continued, referring to the FBI’s internal database of its employees. “And then, in a spiritual sense, I sensed something evil or sinister with the whole scheme.”
“It was very much like the supernatural and the natural were overlapping,” he said.
Allen told his supervisor multiple times that he had no plans to get the COVID shots.
He noted that around Thanksgiving, an email went out warning FBI employees that if they chose not to get the shots or take part in the database, they were no longer welcome “on Bureau property.”
Still, Allen remained firm and decided not to comply. He said that his supervisor was “stunned that I was taking that kind of a principled stance.”
Allen was told that the FBI was first going to put him on leave for a few weeks, and then he would transition to what he described as “sort of an AWOL status.”
“So, that’s what happened,” he said. “I went on leave for like a week or two, and then my pay got cut off once I went into this AWOL status.”
‘Conspiratorial views’
In January 2022, Allen said he was contacted by his direct supervisor to “set up an off-site meeting.” Initially, he had the impression that the meeting was being called to discuss his “vaccination status.”
“The day before the meeting, I had a signal grace just talking to my wife in the kitchen, just over the whole situation,” he recalled. He sensed that the FBI had a problem with him speaking up, but was unsure what was really going on.
The following day, Allen traveled to an off-site location for the planned meeting.
“My direct supervisor is not there, and the Chief Security Officer for the building, and one of the Assistant Special Agents in Charge, they are there,” he noted.
The two high-ranking Bureau officials told Allen that he was “being suspended from the FBI for having conspiratorial views in regards to January 6.”
“Therefore my allegiance to the United States is also being called into question,” he recounted, adding that from that point on his security clearance was suspended pending further review.
Allen soon obtained legal representation, and his attorneys helped him secure 30 days of pay – pursuant to an FBI rule. He said this marked the first time he had been paid by the Bureau in months.
Reaching out to Congress
“Eventually we reached out to Congress,” Allen said. “I think it was late April, early May of 2022.”
He was soon in correspondence with the office of then-House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, R-OH.
Allen noted that in early May, Jordan “issued some kind of a statement, or a press release, saying that the Bureau was purging members with conservative views.”
“Well, interestingly enough, as soon as that release came out,” Allen added, “literally that same day my attorneys got a call.”
He and his legal team had a laugh about the timing, joking that the FBI is “so transparent they only move if they get bad press.”
Allen was called into DC for an interview with the Bureau’s Security Division that he called a “total fishing expedition.”
He pointed out that he and his attorney were confused by the FBI interview: “Everything they went over with me was all First Amendment-protected activity, or activity that you would assess someone in an analytical role for the FBI would naturally be looking at.”
Faith at work
Allen indicated that one of the FBI investigators “made a point to say that he was Irish Catholic but he didn’t bring his faith to work.”
“Like almost that he put his faith on the shelf before he came to work,” Allen added. “Which I thought was really odd.”
Allen said the investigator was likely attempting to build rapport with him, “but it just came off really flat.”
“You don’t just hang up your faith when you come to work,” he emphasized. “It just came off as disingenuous.”
He said that sometime before, there was another self-professed Catholic in the FBI who also spoke to him about “bringing faith to work.”
Allen also noted he found it odd that the FBI investigators had instructed him not to sue them.
The jig is up
“At that point, to me, the jig was up,” he summarized:
I was like, “They don’t have anything.” They literally canceled me because I either didn’t go along with the jab program or they were just ticked off that I would dare question the director’s testimony.
And so, they were just going to cancel me because, “Who was this little peon worker at this medium-sized field office to speak up and then not go along with our program.
So, I think that’s probably the real reason I got canceled, because the conservative values, the faith, the questioning of management’s forthrightness, not going along with this program that they essentially did a pressure campaign to get people to comply with.
Allen said he told himself at the time, “God convicted us on the front end of this thing, He told us it was going to work out, so we’re just going to trust in God and see how far this takes us.”
He noticed there was a common theme with the people, like himself, whom the FBI canceled: strongly Christian military veterans.
“And just about everybody had some issue with the vaccine mandate program,” he added.
Later in the interview, Allen said that high-ranking FBI official Jeffrey Veltri had called him “delusional” for stating that he was guided by the Holy Spirit.
Veltri is the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami Field Office, which is currently investigating the September 15 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
Light at the end of the tunnel
In December 2022, the legal advocacy group Judicial Watch agreed to join Allen’s case and sued the FBI on his behalf for viewpoint discrimination.
Allen explained that in the ensuing weeks, the FBI got bad press and things “started moving” in his case.
He said along the process, he was carefully discerning his every decision, asking in prayer if it was in accord with God’s plan.
“God has me on mission here so we just have to make sure we’re praying and discerning along the way what’s the best course of action,” he stressed.
“And then we eventually got to this year and my attorneys were shocked – I think it was in the spring of this year – that they said the Bureau was interested in settling,” Allen stated. “Which they conveyed never happens.”
Allen and his wife discerned and decided to hold off on settling.
“And by God’s grace, the Bureau actually upped their offer,” he pointed out.
The FBI even stunningly agreed to reinstate Allen’s security clearance, which he said “shocked everybody because that had never happened as well.”
“And so we ended up settling,” he stated. “And we prayed about it. And it was kind of like God told us, ‘You’ve done what I needed you to do in this phase. It’s time to move on.’”
“It never happens,” Allen reiterated in reference to his security clearance being officially reinstated. “The FBI never goes back on a clearance decision. But in my case they did.”
Inside Allen’s prayer life
Finally, Allen shared with CatholicVote how his unceasing prayer life kept him grounded during his few years of great trials.
He noted that he often read scripture, went to Eucharistic adoration, and prayed for at least an hour and a half a day.
Allen also named two books that he said “greatly helped” him during this time: “The American Catholic Almanac: A Daily Reader” by CatholicVote President Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman; and “Lives of The Saints: For Every Day in the Year” by Fr. Alban Butler, published by TAN Books.
Allen said the pair of books “really fortified” him.
He stressed the importance of reading about saints, stating that they are “holy men and women who have walked the path before me.”
“They followed in the footsteps of Jesus and this is how you get it done,” he said.
“You can always go to the foot of the Cross, you can always be with Jesus,” Allen noted. “But for me when you read the lives of the saints, it kind of takes it down a notch.”
“They’re doing Christ-like things,” he said. “But this is a regular person. You look at the story of their life and you’re just like, wow, this very seemingly ordinary person has this great mission given to them by God that they carried out in their life.”
Readers can find the Chaplet of the Holy Spirit Allen prayed here.
