Inside Kash Patel’s F.B.I.

What It Covers

NYT reporters Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser interviewed 45 current and former FBI employees to document how Kash Patel and deputy Dan Bongino have transformed the bureau since early 2025, shifting its priorities from independent law enforcement toward political optics, immigration enforcement, and purging agents tied to Trump-era investigations.

Key Questions Answered

• •Leadership without institutional knowledge: Patel arrived with no FBI experience and immediately relocated hundreds of Washington field agents to regional offices without logistical planning, creating operational chaos on day one. Insiders describe a consistent pattern of decisions-first, implementation-later that signals disregard for how headquarters functions and what institutional expertise the bureau actually requires to operate.
• •Optics over operations: During the Charlie Kirk shooting manhunt, Patel commandeered a 200-agent coordination call to script social media posts and dictate tweets, causing factual errors to enter public circulation. Agents were separately instructed to photograph raids for social media content, which compromised operational security. This pattern reflects pressure from Trump, who monitors FBI imagery on television.
• •Immigration enforcement diversion: FBI analysts with no immigration background were reassigned from violent crime, cybercrime, public corruption, and terrorism work to support deportation operations. One Los Angeles analyst, Jill Fields, was ordered to open a criminal pre-assessment on anti-ICE protesters despite her team determining the protesters were exercising First Amendment rights, with supervisors explicitly acknowledging the order was legally questionable.
• •Political purge of experienced personnel: Agents who previously worked on January 6 investigations or any of the four Trump criminal cases now face career jeopardy for that prior assignment. Senior intelligence director Tanya Ugoritz was placed on administrative leave, polygraphed, cleared of misconduct, then still demoted and ultimately resigned after being falsely named in documents sent to Senator Chuck Grassley's oversight inquiry.
• •Institutional self-censorship as a security risk: The ongoing firings have created a documented culture of fear where agents avoid pursuing leads involving administration-aligned figures. Experienced agents who previously never spoke to media are now doing so because internal watchdog channels are non-functional. The practical consequence is that specific threat categories go uninvestigated, creating national security gaps that cannot be publicly quantified.