A potentially dangerous feature of President Donald Trump’s drive to revamp the federal government is that it has stripped away many of the FBI and Justice Department officials with the most experience in protecting the nation against foreign terrorist and intelligence threats.
Many experts have been warning for more than a year that the dangers from abroad are increasing. Yet the new administration has been focused on removing those who supposedly “weaponized” Justice and the FBI against Trump in the past, rather than mobilizing to deal with future perils. Trump is expected to deliver a major speech later Friday at the Justice Department explaining his big changes there.
“By kneecapping that entire level of management and expertise, I have real, profound worry that [it] is going to translate into public safety and national security impacts,” warned Lisa Monaco, who served as deputy attorney general in the Biden administration and was a senior FBI official under President George W. Bush. Monaco spoke at a March 5 symposium organized by New York University’s law school.
The foreign threats include cyberattacks, terrorist plots and spy operations. Then-FBI director Christopher A. Wray said nearly a year ago, “I’m hard-pressed to come up with a time when I’ve seen so many different threats, all elevated, all at the same time.” Those threats remain in a world in turmoil.
Kash Patel, the new FBI director, said during his confirmation hearings that “the top areas, when it comes to national security … have remained unchanged, and the threat dynamic has increased. It’s thwarting terrorist activities and terrorist attacks here and overseas against our citizens and our allies.” He specifically mentioned dangers related to China and Iran.
Patel also said during his hearings that “all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.” Nonetheless, purges at Justice and the FBI have pushed out many prominent officials dealing with foreign threats. It’s a long list, but bear with me, because it shows how much national security experience the nation has lost.
At the Justice Department, most top leaders of the national security division have departed — through resignation, reassignment or dismissal. Devin DeBacker, the acting head of the division, was removed in February. George Toscas, a veteran counterintelligence official who was DeBacker’s deputy, was also moved, along with other top division officials Eun Young Choi, Brad Wiegmann, Melissa MacTough and Scott Damelin. A century of experience prosecuting terrorism and espionage cases is going unused.
The wipeout at the FBI has been even greater. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disclosed the firings in early February. They included Robert Wells, assistant director for counterintelligence; Michael Nordwall, assistant director for cyber investigations; Ryan Young, assistant director in charge of the intelligence branch; and Jacqueline Maguire, assistant director for science and technology.
The housecleaning has continued since that initial round. The directors of the New York, Washington, Miami and Las Vegas field offices have been dismissed. Though most of these firings weren’t explained publicly, press reports said many of these officials had been involved in FBI investigations of Trump.
James Dennehy, head of the New York office who has focused on counterintelligence for more than two decades, spoke for many colleagues when he said in an email, quoted by the New York Times, that he would hold tight to the FBI’s principles: “We will not bend. We will not falter. We will not sacrifice what is right for anyone or anything.”
What happens with the loss of so many experienced people? Obviously, it’s harder to coordinate the basic work of overseeing complex national security cases. A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant can stretch to 100 pages or more. Mistakes get made, as an egregious example from the FBI investigation of Trump adviser Carter Page during the 2016 campaign showed. Without enough experienced people, the risk of such errors will grow.
To monitor terrorism, top FBI officials met with their Justice Department colleagues each morning during the Biden administration for a “threat assessment.” That allowed them to coordinate operations to disrupt any plots disclosed by intelligence. When I asked an FBI spokesman if these daily top-level reviews were continuing, he referred me to Patel’s statement during his hearings about continuity. He did not address a question about when national security positions will be filled.
A hidden danger is that FBI agents will steer clear of issues that could be career-killers. Investigations of Russian espionage, public corruption, classified documents and other hot-button topics could offend current or future FBI leaders, so ambitious agents may avoid them. Inevitably, that will lead to a loss of morale and aggressiveness. The FBI’s counterintelligence staff was already struggling to field enough agents to perform surveillance and investigations, several FBI experts told me.
Political backlash will affect agents assigned to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. FBI officials, after initially resisting, provided their names to the bureau’s new leadership. FBI experts expect the agents on that list to be examined by the Office of Professional Responsibility. Even if they’re cleared of wrongdoing, their careers could be on hold for months or years.
The personnel shortage in national security investigations will probably worsen after Patel’s order to send 1,500 headquarters staff and agents to field offices around the country. Those transfers will include hundreds of field agents who had been helping with counterintelligence on a temporary basis. They’re known as HSIs, short for the FBI’s Headquarters Staffing Initiative. That will probably leave intelligence and terrorism cases with fewer staff.
Meanwhile, the need for aggressive counterintelligence operations will only grow, as Trump resets relations with Russia. Regaining contact with Russia might be politically sensible, but it probably will bring dozens more Russians to their embassy in Washington and other facilities in the United States — creating a surveillance headache. In recent years, the FBI has been able to vet Russia’s list of applicants for diplomatic visas to weed out spies. It isn’t clear whether the agency’s capacity to do such vetting in the future will be less effective.
Here’s the odd thing about the “America First” agenda. It targets drugs, migrants, criminal gangs. But so far, it doesn’t seem focused on traditional threats such as terrorism or spying. Protecting the nation from dangers posed by foreign adversaries should be at the top of any administration’s to-do list. If Trump gets this one wrong, history won’t be forgiving.