Kash Patel, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, threatens not just to disrupt the status quo but to fundamentally change the agency he now leads and, perhaps, the country. Kashyap Pramod Vinod Patel was confirmed as the FBI director on Thursday, February 10, by a 51-49 vote in the US Senate. President Trump signed the commission shortly afterward, making him the ninth director of the agency. Patel promised to devote himself to remaking the FBI into a highly regarded protector of Americans rather than an establishment goon squad. He commented via a newly formed Twitter account: @FBIDirectorKash:
“The FBI has a storied legacy—from the ‘G-Men’ to safeguarding our nation in the wake of 9/11. The American people deserve an FBI that is transparent, accountable, and committed to justice. The politicalization of our justice system has eroded public trust—but that ends today.
“My mission as Director is clear: let good cops be cops—and rebuild trust in the FBI.”
In an appearance on Shawn Ryan’s self-titled show, Patel said: “I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’” It’s a remarkable statement to come from the man now heading the agency. For conservatarians and true liberals, Patel’s appointment should give cause for great optimism. While he served Trump’s first administration in various intelligence and national security roles, his earlier work history is somewhat shocking for an FBI director: Mr. Patel spent nearly a decade as a public defender.
FBI: Weaponized Justice for Generations
Patel will have to turn the clock back pretty far to a time when the bureau didn’t regularly violate the rights of the people it was instituted to protect. J. Edgar Hoover, the agency’s first director, held the position for 37 years. G. Gordon Liddy, the infamous Watergate burglar, claims to have learned his illegal breaking-and-entering skills as an FBI agent in the 1950s. In his autobiography, Will, he confesses that a disregard for the law was institutionalized then and that “black-bag” illegal break-ins were a regular and approved method of operation.
Liddy also detailed the “extensive files he [Hoover] had on anyone with political power.” And that “anyone with any kind of power or national celebrity was represented and the quality of detail was remarkable.” Some of the bureau’s low-lights in the political world include a devoted effort to induce Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide and the running of COINTELPRO, a series of programs undertaken between 1956 and 1971 devoted to damaging Hoover’s political enemies and including all manner of official crimes.
Not Their Kind of Minority
Mr. Patel is a first-generation American whose federal service started as a DOJ attorney during the Obama administration. He followed that with a job working for Devin Nunes, a House member from California, when Nunes, a Republican, chaired the House Intelligence Committee. Patel was the primary author of the 2018 Nunes memo detailing FBI lies to the FISA court in service of surveilling Donald Trump’s campaign. He told Shawn Ryan: “My version of accountability is a little different than maybe what most people would think. I don’t have a hitlist, I don’t have a revenge march I’m on. I simply want the Constitution to be applied to everybody, in government, and outside government.”
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