by John Nantz, Townhall:
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?
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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.
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.”
