I clearly don't have any more knowledge of this woman than anyone else.

And, we've all seen people whose need for attention is so strong they can imagine, think, do and see almost anything. The explanations sometimes say things such as, "They don't ask you directly, they use codes, little signals, but you know."

It's interesting that she's worked for the agency only since September, and she was fired for "performance".

I suspect the pressure on the FBI to crank out information is such that they would keep anyone who didn't have to use their Farsi to English dictionary to look up "the".

I don't know that whistle-blowers get fired immediately. It's usually wise to keep them for a significant length of time. It may be that she had been given poor proficiency ratings, knew the axe was coming, and wanted to forestall it with whistle-blower protection.

I'd be curious to know what the people she had worked with at other jobs had to say, and to know what the other associates of the "recruiter" have experienced, too.

On balance, I'll bet the FBI "blew it" with this lady, but in their background checks of the whistle-blower.

And, might be wrong.