Mr. Patel: Congratulations on your nomination to become the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where I spent nearly two decades serving our nation.
Running history’s most advanced law-enforcement and intelligence organization would be a herculean task under ideal conditions. Years of mismanagement, scandal, and political attacks make it much harder. Recent failures, from the terrorist attack in New Orleans to the bureau’s investigation of “radical” Catholics to high-profile sexual misconduct, have further tarnished the bureau’s reputation.
You are an unconventional pick, and many of my FBI friends, former colleagues, and I are concerned about what you might do with such broad operational powers and list of vendettas. But the bureau stands at a turning point. If you approach your task thoughtfully, you could be exactly the kind of outsider that the FBI needs now.
As you know, the FBI employs nearly 14,000 agents and 23,000 professional support staff across the United States and around the world and maintains a $11.4 billion budget. At its best, the bureau workforce is driven by a shared commitment to integrity. As director, you would have tremendous power over personnel and priorities.
At present, however, the institution is broken. The rank-and-file are grossly underpaid. Morale has cratered. New special agents, many recruited from lucrative careers in other industries, are often sent from the FBI Academy in Quantico to expensive and crime-ridden cities, where their families live below the poverty line. Agents frequently room together and endure long commutes for a job that gets little respect and loads of administrative burden.
As agents struggle, the public’s trust has receded. Prior Directors’ choice to wade into the political fray—starting with the epic mismanagement of the Steele Dossier controversy, and continuing with the ongoing weaponization of the bureau—has raised serious questions for many Americans about our commitment to a nonpartisan mission.
My own FBI career began shortly after 9/11. I was inspired to fight terrorists after a classmate died on Flight 93. My time at the bureau was marked by rewarding international adventures and a clear mission to seek justice for victims. I deployed to war zones in Afghanistan and Somalia, worked with the CIA and military, ran informants into terrorist groups, and helped stop attacks. I pursued terrorists and criminals who targeted our most vulnerable, often children, and never doubted that my work made a difference.
But my time in the field, including my seven years on the National Executive Board of the FBI Agents Association, revealed to me that the bureau had lost its way. Executive mismanagement, administrative hassle, arcane policies, and obsolete technology quickly drain most agents’ inspiration. The bureau is top-heavy and risk-averse, subjecting cases big and small to countless rounds of oversight by management who often lack the knowledge, judgment, or operational experience of actual investigators.
Sound leadership can correct these problems. Respect your people, acknowledge their financial burdens, and don’t shirk the responsibility to secure them better pay. Reinstate the climate survey, which hasn’t been done for years, to gauge morale and identify issues inside the organization. Put an end to needless red tape.
The more crucial changes, from the public’s perspective, must come to the FBI’s focus. As director, you should reorient the bureau away from its post-9/11 intelligence function and toward crime-fighting. Use your leadership role to advocate for hiring more special agents, whose ranks haven’t grown in decades. Reduce the number of intelligence analysts (who do finished intel) and add staff operational specialists (who research tactical information for cases). Agents should be the bureau’s cornerstone, and they need SOS-provided “tactical intel” on subjects and cases. Intelligence analysts’ formal products, briefings, and reports are often useless.
Finally, and perhaps most important: don’t allow the FBI to be used as a political weapon. This is the surest path to the bureau’s collapse. While the public may think otherwise, I am certain that the rank-and-file aren’t partisan. They can’t, and won’t, investigate based on politics, and they want to follow the law. Zealously guard against mission creep and defy political pressure. Avoid the mistakes of your predecessors, under whose watch special agents—untrained in riot control—were sent to guard D.C.’s monuments and insert themselves in protests around the country during the summer of 2020. (My own squad was directed to do so in Seattle; one of my agents was assaulted and sent to the ER.)
Mr. Patel, if you are confirmed, protect the FBI—and in so doing, protect our country. Take the fight to criminals. Restore the bureau’s image and crime-fighting mission and improve the work and lives of your people. These goals should be consistent with those of the incoming administration. FBI director is a huge job: you have a chance to transform the bureau. You start with a clean slate, the president’s ear, and a supportive Congress.
Godspeed, and good luck.
Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images