Just when you thought the once proud Federal Bureau of Investigation was utterly broken, it had to go out and completely humiliate itself in public by putting the woefully unprepared Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Nosering Uptalky out there to explain that the Muslim dude who everybody else had called a terrorist wasn’t a terrorist. Yeah, he was a terrorist. Let’s not even get into how they left all sorts of relevant evidence at his unsecured house after searching it. Great work from a garbage organization whose sole focus, besides pursuing the latest DEI fads, has been terrorizing parents going to school board meetings to complain about perverts, praying Catholics, and grandmothers taking selfies in the Capitol Rotunda. What a disgrace. Boy, does Kash Patel ever have his work cut out for him, but he can do it with the right combination of institutional savvy and utter ruthlessness in pursuit of excellence.
Kash must start by enforcing standards, something the FBI hasn’t had in a very long time.
Let’s be clear about the problem. It’s a problem for many once-venerated institutions. At one time, these institutions had respect, even awe. If you grew up as a kid in the 70s, you watched Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., as Inspector Erskine, chasing bank robbers, mobsters, and commies on “The FBI” every Sunday night. No, the FBI wasn’t perfect, but they had a standard then. When they showed up, they looked like professionals. They spoke like professionals, not like valley girls spewing irritating jargon (“That is my ask.”) They weren’t a bunch of gender studies majors recruited straight out of the University of College. Most were lawyers, veterans or had previously been in law enforcement. Right now, we have an FBI that’s hiring baristas. Seriously.
As the New York Post explains, the hiring policies of the FBI have hit rock bottom. They’re hiring fat people. They’re hiring drunk drivers. They’re hiring people with Tourette’s. What’s next? “You have the right to remain #$%!#@?”
And we all know the reason the garbage FBI leadership is hiring these losers. They all check some diversity box. Maybe they’re the right color du jour, or they have the right plumbing, or they’ve got the approved sexual preference. Healthy cis white male with relevant experience – nope! Three hundred-pound lesbian animists of color furry with a peg leg and bipolar disorder – here’s a gun, a badge, and a warrant to arrest an American for unlawful praying.
What the FBI is not hiring for is quality. They’re hiring specifically not to have quality because quality people ask questions and don’t want to participate in the kind of fascist pogroms the establishment has been launching against normal Americans. The current FBI is pretty good at busting Americans for daring to believe they have a right to participate in their governance. Of course, they’re not so good at stopping mass killers or terrorists. Every single time, it seems the guy is on their radar. Well, except for the guy in New Orleans, where the FBI was the last agency to figure out that the dude flying the ISIS flag was a terrorist. They didn’t see him coming. But of course, they never see them coming. And once they come, it’s off to the memory hole. So, what’s the story of the Las Vegas guy? No, not the one this week. The last one, the mass murderer one. What’s his story, and for that matter, what’s the story of the guy who took a shot at the President and clipped his ear? And what’s the story of the guy who’s waiting to shoot the President? We haven’t heard much of anything about them. We know more about Taylor Swift’s sex life than the guys who tried to whack Trump. And that’s just fine with the FBI.
The FBI was once badass. Now it's just bad. As always, the legendary @Iowahawk on X said it best. His legendary tweet about institutional capture and devolution, says it all:
1. Target a respected institution
2. Kill & clean it
3. Wear it as a skin suit, while demanding respect
This is a skin suit scenario. The FBI is living off the corpse of yesterday’s reputation while failing to perform adequately today. And speaking of skin suits, do you think maybe that they could show up wearing an actual suit? You had that ridiculous clown in New Orleans go on national television wearing a freaking windbreaker. An FBI agent’s default should be a suit and tie, and a gender-appropriate one at that, especially on TV. Looking like you’re running an errand to Safeway is clown show stuff. This isn’t about being nitpicky. This isn’t about being like uptight Dean Wormer. This is about basic leadership. Do you want to express yourself? Don’t be an FBI agent. You must enforce high standards of dress and appearance to demonstrate that your organization holds itself to a higher level. You can’t be professional if you don’t look professional. No, making agents dress like professionals is not the final answer to the problems with the FBI, but it is a first step toward rebuilding professionalism. And a fringe benefit is that it will drive out the weirdos even faster.
Kash Patel needs to go in there on day one and end all the DEI crap, reimpose uniform standards, reimpose physical fitness standards so that agents no longer look like spheres, and make it very clear that the FBI will once again be the number one law enforcement agency in the world. The problem is, as with so many other institutions, that we have the FBI wanting to be treated as the number one law-enforcement organization in the world but not wanting to do any of the hard things that come with earning and retaining that status. And the hard things that come with that include being competent and dressing like adults instead of refugees from the local Starbucks.
Oh, he’s going to face resistance, but the thing about Kash Patel is that he’s worked in these bureaucracies before and knows all the games. He knows the “I don’t understand what your intent is” game. He knows the “I’ll just nod my head and then wait until the appointee forgets and moves on to some other thing” game. And he knows the “I’ll just flat out lie to the boss” game. He cannot tolerate any of that. He needs to fire people, and contrary to legend, you can fire federal employees. And you can certainly transfer them to the new office in Buggery Gulch, New Mexico, where his problem children can chase cactus rustlers.
No quarter, no slack, and no tolerance for sub-par performance. The FBI, if it’s going to continue to exist – and my preference is that it does not, having so thoroughly disgraced itself over the last decade – then it must regain the respect of the American people. To do that is going to require the merciless enforcement of standards. No dishonesty. No equivocation. No more looking like you slept in your clothes and get that stud out of your nose, Special Agents Kayden and Ashley. We need Inspector Erskine.
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