Should Kash Patel Fix the FBI by ‘Sledgehammer’ or by ‘Scalpel’? Bureau Veterans Have Some Ideas

Kash Patel, federal public defender, erstwhile chief of staff to the secretary of defense, emphatic critic of the “Deep State,” and the Roald Dahl of Donald Trump-themed kids’ books, is officially the ninth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Mr. Patel was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday by a narrow vote of 51-49, overcoming fierce Democratic opposition due in large part to his fierce loyalty to the president and vocal opposition to the unsuccessful probes by the FBI into allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. Mr. Patel, who is 44 and has relatively limited law enforcement experience, will now oversee the FBI’s sophisticated intelligence apparatus, its 56 field offices and 38,000 employees, some of whom he previously accused of being “criminal gangsters” and whose headquarters he once said should be turned into a “museum of the deep state.” Mr. Patel was hailed as a “disruptor” and “trailblazer” who “will restore trust in the FBI” by Senate Republicans who voted him in, and criticized as “patently unqualified” and “totally unfit” by the Senate Democrats who uniformly tried, in vain, to keep him out.Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifies before the House Intelligence Committee about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in the Rayburn House Office Building July 24, 2019 at Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty ImagesHe inherits a Bureau that in the last month has been buffeted by a whirlwind of reprimands and unceremonious firings by the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice as it forces out FBI personnel who it says acted with “corrupt or partisan intent” during the Bureau’s twin investigations into the January 6 riots and the handling of classified documents at Mar-A-Lago.On X, formerly known as Twitter, Mr. Patel’s unlikely ascension to a role once held by Robert Mueller and Louis J. Freeh was met with cheers by NHL legend Theo Fleury and NFL bruiser Shawn Merriman. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino shared a celebratory video that superimposed Mr. Patel’s head onto a scene from the 2015 Bollywood epic “Bajirao Mastani,” showing him dancing to a song whose lyrics, according to YouTube translations, include “oh how in such a way, we have crushed the enemy!”In his own X statement on Thursday night, using his new handle “@FBIDirectorKash,” Mr. Patel declared that the “politicization of our justice system has eroded public trust — but that ends today.”He promised to work alongside the “dedicated men and women of the Bureau and our partners” and “rebuild an FBI the American people can be proud of.”Kash Patel, President Trump’s then-nominee for FBI Director, arrives to speak during an inauguration event at Capital One Arena on January 20, 2025 at Washington, DC. Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesThis raises the question, posed by several former FBI officials: Just how can, and must, Mr. Patel embark on his quest to rebuild a besieged and battle-weary bureau? “You have a new guy coming in who is very, very questionable, has his own agenda, and has no experience with the bureau,” said Raymond J. Batvinis, a historian, author of “The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence,” and former FBI Special Agent.“It’s just going to set morale back in the organization significantly,” he added.Will Mr. Patel go scorched earth on the bureau? The Sun spoke with several former FBI officials with varying opinions of Mr. Patel’s abilities about the new director and how he should lead their beloved Bureau.Senator Richard Blumenthal speaks at a press conference on February 20, 2025 at Washington, DC. Tasos Katopodis/Getty ImagesThe following selections have been edited for length and brevity.RICHARD STOUT, DIRECTOR, REFORM THE BUREAU (RTB), FORMER SPECIAL AGENT (1997 – 2019)“I think he’s going to bring a renewed focus to the mission. I think he has his eye on the internal problems and hopefully will address them. Sure, our goals are reform, and hopefully it will be in line with his goals, and we could just get back to the basics of what the FBI does, instead of getting caught up in these political games.”“He needs to decentralize headquarters, (which) was centralized following Bob Mueller’s role as director. Just because a top priority on the Eastern Coast may not be the same as a top priority on the West Coast or in the South. Those need to be interpreted by the 56 field offices.”Get rid of “arbitrary” metrics“(After the September 11 terror attacks) we needed to build up the intelligence apparatus of the FBI, but (Mr. Mueller) wanted to get away from it being a law enforcement organization and more of an intelligence organization. And so the metrics that we used in law enforcement — if it was an arrest, if it was a Title Three investigation… we were no longer emphasizing that. We were emphasizing some sort of statistical accomplishment that isn’t easily (explained) through an arrest.Videos and images urging the Senate to reject the nomination of Kash Patel as FBI Director claiming he is unqualified are projected in front of the U.S. Capitol on January 30, 2025 at Washington, DC. Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Public Citizen“He needs to take a good look at what’s happening, work with his team, and get his own assessment before doing anything immediate.”WARREN FLAGG, PRESIDENT, FLAGGMAN INC. AND FORMER SPECIAL AGENT (1970 – 1998)“I would hope he goes in with a scalpel and not with a sledgehammer. Not every agent is ‘bad.’ Not every agent is ‘good.’ But the majority of them don’t have a choice (of which case they work). We don’t prosecute, all we do is investigate.”“Take a step back and take a deep breath. You don’t want to destroy the most important law enforcement agency in the United States.”*Work with, not against the agents.*“(Current FBI agents) are nervous, their wives are nervous, their children are nervous, they don’t know where they’re going to be, and you can’t operate with that fear effectively.”The FBI Headquarters is seen before the Senate Democrats press conference opposing Kash Patel’s nomination on February 20, 2025 at Washington, DC. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images“There’s a method to doing this the right way.”JOHN NANTZ, COLUMNIST, TOWNHALL MEDIA, RET. SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT (2000 – 2022)“I think Director Patel’s first order of business should be to begin building a solid leadership team. People (with) broad and long law enforcement experience, who have demonstrated a commitment to the Constitution and the civil liberties secured by it. These should be individuals who have spent decades in law enforcement, preferably FBI agents who’ve spent most of their careers in the field working cases. He should specifically avoid individuals with less than ten years of investigative experience.”“Director Patel should reorient the FBI’s counterintelligence function around the criminal investigative model, and de-emphasize the production of intelligence products. Having a counterintelligence service with a law enforcement mission is actually a bulwark against the abuse of civil liberties.”“(He) should not take advice from outliers or cranks who’ve suggested inanities such as shutting down the FBI’s National Academy.”“This time next year, the FBI should be lean in terms of HQ staffing, and fully engaged in the work it does best – (bringing) criminals to justice and working with local and state law enforcement partners. The FBI’s current support of ICE arrests is a prime example of how things should look bureau-wide in a year’s time. The FBI should also maintain a robust counterintelligence service focused on the activities of foreign adversaries and close cooperation with intelligence community partners.”CORY McGOOKIN, RET. SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT AND FBI NATIONAL ACADEMY UNIT CHIEF (2002 – 2022)“I think this will be the first loyalist that will be installed (as Director), and it will probably significantly change the FBI, at least at the top level… This is a huge departure from (the FBI’s) role of being an independent arbiter of justice.”Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s choice to be director of the FBI. AP/J. Scott Applewhite“We can’t operate like we did (pre-9/11) because the world’s changed, Expectations changed. Everything’s changed.I think we started to drift towards more ‘business’ metrics. (Mueller) started bringing in people from the best MBA schools on the East Coast, and they’re going to come in and have every Special Agent in Charge (SAC) report these stats and run it like how a CEO would run a large corporation of 37,000 employees.When you’re an agent just trying to do your work or make an arrest, it becomes more of an administrative burden (writing reports) and documenting what I did rather than doing the work that I needed to do.”“Think about the situations where there’s corruption at the very top. The only institution in the US that can (investigate) that is the FBI. That only exists with people who are sticking to the Constitution, doing the right thing no matter what.Former FBI Director James Comey speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in December 2018. AP/J. Scott Applewhite, fileIt’s not possible that every person in the FBI who rolled through the ranks, who was respected along the way, suddenly got in the front office and decided they were going to be a corrupt liberal when they were (actually) lifelong conservative leaders.”CHRIS PIEHOTA, AUTHOR, ‘WANTED: THE FBI I ONCE KNEW’, BUREAU RET. CHIEF FBI SCIENCE AND TECH PROGRAMS, DIR. US TERRORIST SCREENING CENTER (1995 – 2020)“(Mr. Patel) should immediately form a senior leadership team that is going to help him move his objectives forward and hit the expectations of the attorney general and the White House. He can’t do that by himself. The organization is too big. It has too many competing interests and concurrent operations. If he tries to do it himself, he will struggle and he may fail. So he’s got to get that team together almost immediately so they can help him start reforming, resetting, and reforging the FBI.He can’t get bogged down in the minutiae and he can’t get himself into the lower-level organizational functions, or it’s going to be like quicksand for him.”“We had these cottage industries inside the FBI that were focused on only measuring things, collecting things, and we have organizations inside the bureau that did nothing but PowerPoint slide decks and everything else. My complaint was always, ‘How does this corporatizing of the FBI help the case agent who’s out in the street trying to combat national security threats and (crime)? It was more for headquarters rather than for the field agents who were out there actually doing the work.Kash Patel speaks to reporters in a park across the street from President Trump’s criminal trial at New York, Monday, May 20, 2024. AP Photo/Seth WenigBob Mueller did a lot of good things, but he allowed the corporatization of the FBI. It accelerated under (Former FBI Director James) Comey, and it kept moving under (former Director Christopher) Wray.Director Wray was more of a caretaker… he allowed other people to gain way too much influence in how the FBI was being operated.”“(Patel) will be received with very reserved professionalism, because the FBI, regardless of what people might think, is a professional organization, despite the jackassery that you’ve seen over the past couple of years.”“He’s the director, they’re going to give him the proper deference and the proper respect just for the title that he holds. So he’s not going to walk into any open hostility. But what he will run into, and what he should expect, are pockets of people who just disagree with what he’s looking to do with the Bureau, people who are disaffected by some of the recent dismissals of some of the senior executives and field office executives.”“You shouldn’t see the FBI, you know, taking up a political position on things. You should see a skilled, professional, investigative and operationally effective FBI, right? So when we’re taking people off the streets and we’re out there destroying gangs, and we’re out there taking (down) the national security threats that you know people aren’t aware of every day. That’s the FBI that you should see, not what we have now.”

Should Kash Patel Fix the FBI by ‘Sledgehammer’ or by ‘Scalpel’? Bureau Veterans Have Some Ideas

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