High Stakes Treason, by Ian Trottier, is an open-source exposé aimed at a single target: John Owen Brennan, the fifth Director of the CIA. Its thesis is stated plainly up front: the book “serve[s] as an articulable predicate for the United States government to open an immediate investigation into John Owen Brennan,” alleging “probable cause that evidence of misuse of TS/SCI security protocols for personal gain... exist in codeword compartment files at NSA and NCTC” (ch00:177). In the book’s framing, that misuse of America’s most classified signals-intelligence machinery for private financial benefit is not mere corruption. It is treason, defined in the Constitution as “adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
The material carries an unusual provenance. Trottier writes that the research was compiled by a former eleven-year FBI veteran, named as John Donovan and referred to throughout as “the OSINT analyst,” who could not present it under his own name because of his prior employment (ch00:186).
The financial allegation
The heart of the accusation is financial. The book traces a company, TAC, which passed through “a number of name changes,” and a 401(k) account Brennan held in it. The argument: as the president’s national-security advisor and later CIA director, Brennan, “through decision, approval, recommendation... or otherwise,” influenced the value of shares he held in that TAC/Sotera account. His motive, the book says, “was to increase the value” of his own portfolio (ch07:292).
The payoff is quantified later: roughly $4.85 million for Brennan and $600,000 for associate Alexander Drew in “ill-gotten gains from the Sotera IPO and subsequent Ares Management purchase” (ch11:2453). That equation, financial gain at the price of national-security breaches, supplies the title: “in the high stakes considerations of the nature of that crime... would seem to equate to what would be identified as treason, done for financial gain” (ch05:79).
Events and intelligence claims
Around that core, the book assembles circumstantial casework spanning three attacks. It links an NCTC analyst, Michael Jones, to “three major terrorist incidents, Abdulmutallab in 2009, Breivik in 2011, and now Tsarnaev's attack on the Boston Marathon in May 2013” (ch11:2425). The mechanism is the NSA’s XKeyscore program, revealed by Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaks.
The book argues XKeyscore collected Google searches across the internet, including Katherine Russell Tsarnaev’s searches for “jihad” in January 2012 and Anders Breivik’s research into his car bomb. Those searches “should have aided the FBI in stopping the Boston Marathon Bombing,” but instead were “placed... into the TS/SCI codeword compartment that hid all the other Tsarnaev SIGINT data from the FBI” (ch11:1354). The book’s conclusion is stark: the only way the NSA could have failed to warn Norway or stop Boston is if someone “sequester[ed]” the incriminating intelligence, a role it assigns, in its own opinion, to Jones.
The Russia thread
A Russia thread runs through the book as well. It recounts how the FSB first tipped American authorities to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and argues Brennan “used his position to ensure the Russian FSB could not weigh in on the post-marathon bombing investigation and question why Tsarnaev was allowed to succeed” (ch11:2052). It details the failed “Fogle” recruitment operation against a Russian counterterrorism officer, Brennan’s unannounced Moscow visit in June 2013, and Snowden’s defection days later.
The forewords and conclusion
Three forewords set the tone before the argument begins. Roger Stone calls Brennan “the greatest villain of the 20th century” and rehearses the familiar charges: the “Five Eyes” surveillance list, the Steele Dossier, the FISA warrants, and the Hunter Biden laptop letter. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou recounts being prosecuted for espionage at Brennan’s insistence after exposing the torture program. Brooks Agnew frames the CIA itself as a criminal enterprise and Brennan as its architect.
The book ends where it began, with a question, not a verdict: “Will Brennan be brought to justice?” (ch00:73). Trottier is careful to present his work as findings and allegations rather than conviction, an “open-source exposure” meant to prompt an official investigation, with the stakes laid out in the Constitution’s definition of treason and its maximum penalty.