Former top CIA official pleads guilty to acting as foreign agent, lobbyist

A former CIA official pleaded guilty on Wednesday to acting as an unauthorized foreign agent during his time in the spy agency.

According to information from the plea agreement, Dale Britt Bendler, 68, of Miami, had retired as a member of the Senior Intelligence Service in 2014, and began working as a full-time contractor at the CIA with a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance.

Beginning in 2017 and continuing through 2020, while a full-time CIA contractor and TS/SCI clearance holder, Bendler worked with a U.S. lobbying firm and engaged in unauthorized and hidden lobbying and public-relations activities on behalf of foreign national clients.

The lobbying activities, according to the plea agreement, included an attempt to use his position and access at the CIA to influence a foreign government’s embezzlement investigation of one of Bendler’s foreign national clients and a separate attempt to use his position and access at the CIA to influence the U.S. government’s decision as to whether to grant a U.S. visa to another of Bendler’s clients, who was alleged to be associated with terrorism financing.

In exchange for his unauthorized outside activities, Bendler was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The CIA terminated Bendler’s contract and access in 2020, at which point he launched a Miami-based private security company.

A search of the Google machine comes up with an Oct. 30, 2024, op-ed penned by Bendler congratulating Trump on his “imminent re-election” and a post on LinkedIn from two months ago complaining about being “despised” by “DEI leadership” at the CIA.

What this suggests: yeah, he’s a candidate for a pardon in the near-future.

In the here and now, Bendler, in his plea agreement, consented to the forfeiture of $85,000 from the money he made from his unauthorized activities.

He also faces a maximum penalty of seven years in prison – two years for acting as a foreign agent while being a public official and five years for mishandling classified material.

Bendler is scheduled to be sentenced on July 16.