During recent remarks at DOJ, FBI Director Kash Patel said, “We have a new FBI.” However, critics suggest that Patel’s statement is far too premature. How can an agency that many deemed irredeemable a few months ago be transformed so quickly? Shouldn’t the reformation of such a broken enterprise take years? Or decades, if at all?
Either Patel is sorely misinformed, or perhaps the FBI wasn’t so irredeemably corrupt. Many FBI hecklers have asked why FBI agents didn’t protest en masse during the implementation of Biden-Garland policies of politicized investigations and the weaponization of FBI resources against J6 protestors and Donald Trump.
The short answer is that smart people play the long game and don’t sacrifice the power of influence without considering complex factors.
On the Jocko Podcast, Jocko Willink references Oskar Schindler when asked a similar question, “head-on conflict is generally not the best way to solve problems. Most of the time, it is much smarter to maneuver and build allegiance and alliance with people so you can influence them and move them in the right direction.” He asks the question, how many people would Schindler have saved if he’d directly confronted the Nazis? Answer: none.
Willink goes on to cite another powerful example of influence. Major Richard Winters, most famously known by his depiction in the film Band of Brothers knew the value in preserving his power and his sphere of influence. “If you’re telling me, hey Jocko, go do the mission this way. And I’m like, I’m not doing it. And, you go, OK, you’re fired, and now you put some yes-man in my place…did I really help?” Willink goes on to say that even after influence fails, a leader still has the opportunity to mitigate risk. And that’s Major Winters’ example. When the war was over, for all intents and purposes, Winters was ordered to take his men out on an unnecessary mission and risk their lives. Instead, Winters allowed his soldiers to simply run out the clock and drink wine in a cellar. He mitigated the risk to his men. Had he not been there, they likely would not have survived.
Recommended
The efforts of the good men and women of the FBI who remained committed to their oaths, exerted influence up and down the chain of command, and mitigated the damage created by DEIA policies and a weaponized DOJ and FBI Senior Executive Service will likely never be known. It’s so much easier (and profitable) for lazy people to smear agents as a whole. Nuance doesn’t sell.
The swift turnaround that Patel has accomplished is a testament to the fact that most FBI agents are true to their oaths. No doubt, cultural matters still need to be addressed, but FBI weaponization and the culture that condoned politicized investigations is gone. The leadership cadre that made the Mar-a-Lago raid possible no longer exists.
Another proof of Patel’s swift cultural realignment comes from one of the FBI’s harshest critics. Now the FBI’s Deputy Director, Dan Bongino said during a September 2020 episode of The Dan Bongino Show, “I’ll say for the 10th or 20th time this week, this is why the FBI must be disbanded…You understand this is going to get worse; you’re not going to fix this. The organization needs to be disbanded.”
But, barely a week after being sworn into the FBI’s second highest office, Bongino said in an official X post, “The work going on inside the FBI is saving lives. Most of it is done in silence due to its sensitive nature, but it is laudable. I had high expectations for the good guys, and they’ve been surpassed.”
This is, to say the least, an astounding reversal. Beyond that, it’s a powerful testament to how badly Bongino and the American public have been gaslit about the nature and extent of FBI corruption. Before Bongino’s swearing-in, he was only privy to information about FBI personnel and investigations fed to him by allegedly credible insiders and former employees. Though some highly publicized instances of malfeasance were accurate, those misdeeds and bad actors only represented a small fraction of FBI work and personnel.
Bongino has seen behind the curtain, and the truth isn’t what he expected. He’s seen what I saw during my twenty-year career — a host of agents committed to their oaths, working daily to keep Americans safe.
I’m actually glad that a critic like Bongino has been placed in a position to know. We can be assured we’ll get the ground truth. I can’t help but wonder if this wasn’t Trump’s angle all along. If Bongino’s saying you’ve got a new FBI, then that’s a narrative impossible to honestly and rationally refute.
Only disingenuous cynics will attack the Deputy Director as a turncoat to the rage machine and ignore the explanation suggested by Occam’s Razor—we have, in fact, a new FBI remodeled with sound, already existing components. As Bongino said, “Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months, as we continue to work on the pressing issues, for more good news on the openness and transparency fronts.”
I know what’s coming because I know the FBI, and I know its capabilities unhindered by Democrat overlords. More Top Ten arrests, more thwarted acts of terrorism, more support of ICE operations, and an energized workforce unleashed to do what good cops do — collect the facts and follow the evidence.
Patel is working to restructure the FBI to prevent future missteps and enhance traditional operations. Pushing 1,500 agents into the field from HQ will take some time, but it will be gladly received by the majority of agents doing hard time in the HQ building. Executive rejiggering and reducing the purview of the Deputy Director may prove to be more problematic. But in the final analysis, Patel’s FBI isn’t so much a new creature as it is something unleashed.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member