Top FBI official in L.A. silent about his and mom’s connection to Tom Girardi, a former FBI agent.
FBI officials in the Los Angeles field office didn’t know about Tom Girardi and his wife, Barbara, until a whistleblower raised questions about them in the spring of 2005, according to newly released documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The documents show that Girardi was a longtime FBI informant and that one of the FBI agents in the field office, Michael Quirin, had a history of improper conduct with one of the Girardis’ businesses.
The latest reporting in the investigation of Girardi, the former FBI agent who helped investigate a former CIA agent for passing secrets to the terrorist group Osama bin Laden, began when the Los Angeles Times published an investigative report on Sunday that detailed an affair between Girardi and his wife, Barbara, that began in the late 1970s.
As with past stories in Los Angeles Times by the paper’s investigative team, the new story by its reporters in the FBI field office, Jim Ryan, Michael Baehr and Stephen Labaton, does not name Girardi.
Instead, the report focuses on a more recent episode involving Girardi and Quirin.
In 2004, Girardi asked Quirin to help him file a false police report in connection with a dispute with one of Girardi’s businesses, Labaton, Ryan, Baehr and Labaton reported.
The report does not identify Girardi by name but said the dispute stemmed from an investigation into false billing by the owner of the business, Mark Davis, of another business, a landscaping company, called D and G Landscaping. The report said Quirin advised Girardi that he did not have a case, and Quirin’s suggestion that Girardi file a police report was rejected.
Girardi told Ryan, Baehr and Labaton that the disagreement with Davis began in the 1970s, and that Davis, who is not named in the report, “got involved with Barbara in the early 1980s.” Davis was not a part of the dispute, Girardi told Ryan, Baehr and Labaton, and Davis did not file a police report about his dispute with Girardi.