How the FBI Became the Face of Deprofessionalization

What research tells us about national security under authoritarianism

A 2020 paper published in the American Journal of Political Science studied who works for secret police organizations under authoritarian governments. The authors, Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf, argued that those willing to do the dirty work for non-democratic regimes were not typically sadists or psychopaths, but simply responding to careerists incentives. Using personnel data from the Argentinian secret service, they found that their recruits had underperformed early in their career. They were typically mediocre men, for whom the dark demands of abusing citizens offered an opportunity to lift themselves to a better career.

We are at a moment when a study on the motivations of authoritarian secret police have become painfully relevant, illuminating what is happening to large chunks of the American government.

Organizations like ICE or CBP are being dramatically expanded, but find that they must offer large bonuses and lower recruiting standards to find enough employees who won’t have a problem turning guns on their fellow citizens.

Organizations with high professional standards have the furthest to fall. Lets focus on the FBI. As James Q. Wilson details in Bureaucracy, the founding father of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, built an organizational culture around the ethos of professionalism.¹ Agents wore suits, not uniforms. For decades they avoided undercover work that might sully their reputation and appearance. They put a premium on recruiting well-educated agents. If it is a cliche of police procedurals that FBI agents clash with state and local police, it reflects an underlying reality that the agency thinks of itself as being better.

In short, the FBI is a high capacity, highly professional public organization. But its standards and professionalism are being undermined.

The process of FBI deprofessionalization underlines some important points about the direction American government is going under Trump: loyalty matters more than merit; retribution trumps performance; control is more important than accountability.

You might think this would be obvious by now, but the President and his underlings will insist their actions are done in the name of merit, performance and accountability. They make this argument both in the court of public opinion, and in actual courts to justify illegal actions. These claims defy not just reams of research, but the actual and inescapable record of what Trump is doing to state capacity as he builds his personalist regime.

The FBI Purges

A key claim behind Trump’s firing of public officials is that he needs flexibility to remove poor performers. FBI Director Patel has justified the removal of 50 senior FBI officials under Article II of the constitution, the standard Trump administration claim that the President has some vast and previously unknown right to fire any federal employee for whatever reason he sees fit. So why are people really being fired?

• Worked on the January 6 investigations

• Investigated Trump for his connection to January 6th, or corrupt practices. Some agents working on corruption investigations were fired, rehired, and then fired again.

• Having a rainbow flag on their desk during the Biden administration.

• Taking a knee during a 2020 George Floyd protest

• Enforcement of FBI Covid policies

• Refusing to illegally fire other FBI employees

• Being in charge of the FBI jet after people figured out Patel was using it to see his girlfriend.

Only in Trumpworld would these be considered performance-based firings, because only in Trumpworld are people fired for minor culture war grievances, or because they were performing their assigned tasks which involved investigating illegal or unethical behavior, or for refusing to engage in acts of political retribution.

These are just some of the firings reported publicly, or being challenged in lawsuits. They are exactly as bad as they sound. Lets look at a couple in a little more detail.

Unease about the abuse of the jet is not new. For example, a former FBI leader, William Sessions, was fired by President Clinton when it was adjudged he had used the jet for personal use. And yet: Patel has used the jet for recreational purposes, including golfing and hunting trips with friends. His multiple trips to Nashville, where his girlfriend resides, has drawn the most coverage.

Patel is required to reimburse the agency the cost of a commercial ticket for the route, but that is considerably less than the costs of a operating a private jet with FBI staff and accompanying security. For example, tickets between Washington DC to Nashville are between $200-$300. As Patel himself said when criticizing his predecessor: “Chris Wray doesn’t need a government-funded G5 jet to go on vacation. Maybe we ground that plane. Fifteen thousand dollars every time it takes off.” In other words, the public are heavily subsidizing Patel’s jet travel.

Patel has now assigned an FBI security detail and even a SWAT team for public events for his girlfriend. He has also reportedly directed FBI agents to chauffeur his girlfriend’s friends home when they are too drunk to drive. Hey, why spend money on Uber when you know the guy who runs the FBI?

When the story of his use of the FBI jet broke, Patel weirdly claimed it was an attack on his girlfriend:

The disgustingly baseless attacks against Alexis—a true patriot and the woman I’m proud to call my partner in life—are beyond pathetic. She is a rock-solid conservative and a country music sensation who has done more for this nation than most will in ten lifetimes. I’m so blessed she’s in my life.

Patel blamed and fired Steven Palmer, a 27-year FBI veteran in charge of the critical incident response group which oversees the use of the jet. But Patel should have blamed himself: his flight schedule was publicly available and he reposted images of himself with his girlfriend at a wrestling event.

Palmer’s predecessor was Brian Driscoll. If Patel exemplified the mediocrity of the FBI he seeks to create, the Drizz embodies its reputation for excellence. He won decorations for working in an elite tactical unit involved in daring raids, including killing a top Islamic State militant leader in Syria. He led a task force focused on child exploitation and trafficking, and one focused on counter-terrorism in North Africa. In short, Driscoll was the kind of guy that a lot of MAGA blowhards pretend to be.

Driscoll had something that Patel lacked: integrity. He was promoted to acting head of the FBI at the start of the Trump administration, despite refusing to answer questions from Trump’s transition team, such as who he had voted for. Driscoll told the White House he would not fire FBI agents without cause. When the Trump administration demanded the names of FBI agents who investigated the January 6th insurrection, Driscoll refused. He held fast to the idea of the FBI as a non-partisan agency: it would soon cost him his job.

It is important to note at this point that while FBI employees are not civil servants in the classic sense, senior FBI employees enjoy “for cause” protection, i.e. they can only be fired for “misconduct, neglect of duty, malfeasance, or failure to accept a directed reassignment or to accompany a position in a transfer of function.” (See Peyton Baker for a longer discussion of the unusual and opaque nature of FBI personnel processes). And Patel promised Senators in confirmation hearings that he would not politicize the FBI, saying: “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI.” He also testified that “personnel decisions should be based on performance and adherence to the law.”

When Patel was challenged about the firings of decorated and accomplished agents he insisted it was because employees “failed to meet the needs of the FBI and uphold their constitutional duties.” Rather than provide actual justifications for the firings in the Senate, he labeled Dick Durbin, the questioner, as “disgraceful.”

Driscoll and two other senior officials (Spencer Evans and Scott Jensen, detailed below) are suing Patel. Their lawsuit has such extraordinary detail that I encourage you to read in full. It reveals, for example, that the White House, the Department of Justice and even online commentators are directing personnel decisions determining whether career FBI agents are allowed to keep their jobs.

Driscoll said that he was told by a DOJ appointee, at the direction of Stephen Miller, to engage in politicization of the FBI such as the firings and reassignments that had been happening in DOJ. While Driscoll said he would be willing to look into allegations of specific misconduct, he was told that subjective assessments that someone was not committed to Trump’s agenda was enough to justify firing.

Emil Bove, the DOJ appointee in question, told Driscoll that the the creation of panic and anxiety among public employees “was the intent” of early Trump personnel policies across government. When FBI employees rallied around Driscoll for resisting the politicization of their agency, Bove was “angry that, in parody videos apparently created by FBI employees, Bove was portrayed as the Batman villain “Bane,” while Driscoll was portrayed as “Batman.””

Bove has also been the subject of a whistleblower allegation that he directed DOJ prosecutors to “tell courts ‘fuck you’” and ignore their direction when it came to illegal deportations. Bove was recently promoted to a lifetime federal judgeship, confirmed by 50 Republican Senators.

MAGA online influencers are also determining FBI personnel policy. This pattern is not unique to FBI. Laura Loomer appears to be making key decisions on intelligence positions. Chris Rufo had more than a hundred trans employees fired. Kyle Seraphin, a podcaster and former FBI agent suspended during the Biden administration identified agents for Patel to fire. These include:

• Christopher Meyer, an agent accused of being involved in the Mar-A-Lago document investigation. Brian Driscoll met with Patel to plead for Meyer’s job, pointing out that the accusations were false, and asking Patel about Seraphin: “Are you really listening to this guy? Are we really allowing him to influence decisions?” After Driscoll refused to fire Meyer, Driscoll himself was fired.

• Spencer Evans, who was involved in investigations of Covid violations. Seraphin posted that Patel had promised to fire Evans, who was still in place months later. Days later, Evans would be fired.

• Scott Jensen was initially promoted by Patel, and the subject of intense attacks by Seraphin and other Trump supporters for overseeing the January 6 investigations. Patel advised Jensen to sue Seraphin for defamation, but Patel would then fire Jensen in response to online MAGA pressure and Jensen’s refusal to fire another FBI agent under false pretense as his wife was dying from cancer.

Weirdly, Patel’s girlfriend, the one that he got so defensive about, is suing Seraphin, because he claimed she is a Mossad agent who is a honeypot for a foreign government. So just to recap: the same online conspiracy guy who accused Patel’s girlfriend of being a secret agent is also able to force Patel to fire agents he had promoted and praised.

Mediocrity and Deprofessionalization

The reality is that Patel is a weak leader, better at kissing up to Trump than inspiring those asked to follow him. A White House staffer who was forced to hire Patel at Trump’s insistence said: “Trump has supported him at every turn because he’s one-hundred-per-cent sycophant.” A New Yorker profile points to a man who has exaggerated his educational achievements and experiences, and is insecure about his position because he knows it is undeserved.

While Patel has never been an agent, he likes to pretend to be one: he routinely dresses in tactical gear, has sought a service weapon, and publicly displays a badge. After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Patel flew to Utah, but reportedly refused to disembark the plane until he could be provided with an FBI tactical jacket, and then further delayed his exit until appropriate velcro patches to attached to the medium-sized female jacket that was provided to him.

Patel does not actually run the FBI. The lawsuit against Patel alleges that Bove had made clear that Patel would report to him, and that: “Patel explained that he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President.” This is consistent with reporting from the New Yorker, where FBI agents recount Patel’s explanations of the firings: “He’s just telling everyone who’ll listen, ‘Yeah, I just did this to keep my job.’”

In this, and in many other respects, Patel is different from the type of agent he is purging: he would sacrifice them to save his own skin; they risked their jobs to protect colleagues who had done nothing wrong.

Patel’s insecurity and demands for slavish loyalty is destroying the agency, as employees see obvious double standards. The loyalists are exempted from basic professional standards, while career officials must prove their loyalty. For example, all FBI employees who receive top secret clearance must undertake a polygraph about issues like drug use, criminal history or foreign contacts. Patel exempted senior appointees like Dan Bongino from the polygraph. Senator Dick Durbin says because they “had disqualifying alerts on their initial polygraph exams.” Another appointee exempted, Marshall Yates, was previously the executive director of by Election Integrity, a group that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election. At the FBI, he has been tasked with finding agents who worked on Trump investigations, so they could be punished.

At the same time Patel is requiring new polygraphs from career officials to demonstrate loyalty. Patel has also proposed that FBI agents sign non-disclosure agreements, and that their phones and laptops be regularly scanned to stop them from talking to the media.

“Anybody who can retire is retiring because you don’t know when you’re going to be fired” one veteran agent told the New Yorker. Michael Feinberg was the head of the Norfolk Office when he resigned. In his resignation letter he wrote:

It should go without saying—to anyone who cares about the Constitution and rule of law—that this is not right. Our organization’s motto is “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity,” but over the past six months there have been too many signs that our current leadership does not understand the last of those words…as our organization began to decay, I made a vow that I would comport myself in a manner that would allow me to look my son in the eye as I raised him. It is now apparent that I can no longer both fulfill that vow and continue working for our current leadership.

Patel has proposed lowered training standards (from 18 weeks to 8) and educational standards to include non-college graduates. He also wants the Ultimate Fighting Championship to have a formal role training FBI agents. FBI “attracts high performers, people who want to make it through this crucible” said the agent. Hires who clear a lower bar won’t “be accepted as peers in the F.B.I. Nobody wants to be mediocre.”

This is something of a pattern. Patel tells his employees one thing, then is forced to do another by the MAGAsphere. For example, Patel promised the FBI that he would delegate autonomy to the field offices, letting them prioritize their work. From the New Yorker profile:

According to a former F.B.I. official, he later said that the special agents in charge, the leaders of the field offices, would determine what kinds of crimes their staffs would investigate. Bureau leaders gave Patel “the benefit of the doubt,” a former senior F.B.I. official said. “But they quickly figured out that he wasn’t really in control.”

Instead, FBI agents were ordered to devote their time to immigration. Data obtained by Senator Mark Warner suggests that nearly half of FBI agents in major field offices are now working on immigration enforcement. Gregory Rosen, a former DOJ prosecutor who was fired for prosecuting the January 6th insurrection, describes the effect on criminal investigations.

The F.B.I. had to divest serious resources from investigations of violent crime, gun and drug trafficking and child exploitation. Agents were diverted from those cases because they had to be on the street doing immigration roundups.

The FBI Under Authoritarianism

At this point, let me remind you that the agency that Trump is politicizing has never been run by a Democrat. Before Patel, it was run by another Trump appointee. Prior to that, it was run by James Comey, a Republican whose actions helped Trump become President, but is now being prosecuted at Trump’s behest for being insufficiently loyal. Nevertheless, Patel accused the FBI of being on the Democratic Party “payroll” in an anti-FBI documentary funded by Russia-linked firm for which Patel was paid $25,000.

I don’t want to claim that American national security has become the equivalent of the Argentinian secret police. But I do think the dynamics to create an unaccountable and abusive coercive national security infrastructure are falling into place and we need to acknowledge and reverse this while we still can.

So, I reached out to Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf, the authors of the paper I mentioned at the top of this post, and a new book Making a Career in Dictatorship. It turns out they had already been writing about parallels between their work and what is happening now in America. Those parallels center on the structures of career incentives:

we argue that such dynamics create powerful incentives for opportunists within the security apparatus to demonstrate loyalty through extralegal repression. That is, repressive machines may evolve without strong ideological foundations or extremism but solely based on fueled career pressures — even in otherwise meritocratic environments.

Gläßel and Scharpf pointed to three mechanisms that reshape career incentives: purges, the erosion of legitimate accountability mechanisms, and signals of impunity for loyalists. These patterns that are clearly emerging in agencies like the FBI, and mirror other authoritarian settings they have studied. Once an agency is corrupted:

officers hope that the regime will reward them for shouldering the burden of the regime’s dirty work. The rationale is simple: extreme loyalty and repressive commitment offer a path to advancement otherwise unavailable to them.

Gläßel and Scharpf are now studying the Nazi regime’s capture of state power. They point to:

the institutional churn in Nazi Germany’s security architecture. The regime restructured organizations and the Nazi police state almost on a constant basis, gradually absorbing state police bodies into the SS system. This constant reshuffling obstructed old and created new career ladders, while eroding prior professional standards.

All government organizations drift toward bureaucratic habits over time and need reinvention. But there is a vast difference between reform and destruction. A personalist regime allowed a mediocrity like Patel to rise by being willing to sell out the honorable and the competent. As a result, the FBI is being weakened in its capacities to do anything except to serve as a loyalist organization.

1. To be clear, Hoover abused public confidence in multiple ways and became too powerful. My point about the culture he built does not excuse his corruption of public power.