May 6, 2025
Dear Friends and Family,
The excerpts in this segment are written by Christopher Piehota who retired from the FBI as one of the organization’s eight most senior executives after serving 25 years. Since retiring, he has served as a subject matter expert, consultant, and speaker through his own consulting practice. He has a doctorate in the field of Human Performance improvement.
One always wonders about the credibility of such writers – is their perspective from logic or grievance? To answer that question, I went back to segment 6 written by J. Michael Waller a senior analyst at the Center for Security Policy and president of Georgetown Research. Here is what he had to say on the subject.
Dear Friends and Family,
The excerpts in this segment are written by Christopher Piehota who retired from the FBI as one of the organization’s eight most senior executives after serving 25 years. Since retiring, he has served as a subject matter expert, consultant, and speaker through his own consulting practice. He has a doctorate in the field of Human Performance improvement.
One always wonders about the credibility of such writers – is their perspective from logic or grievance? To answer that question, I went back to segment 6 written by J. Michael Waller a senior analyst at the Center for Security Policy and president of Georgetown Research. Here is what he had to say on the subject.
On July 5, 2001, President G. W. Bush designated Robert S. Muller III as the next FBI director. Mueller served for a full ten years plus a two-year extension at the request of the Obama administration – years in which Mueller showed visible cognitive decline and everything changed. Mueller crippled the bureau’s internal checks by centralizing the director’s power. He created two layers of bureaucracy at headquarters, swelling upper management to more than sixty senior executive positions, with the highest salaries in the entire federal government. Mueller cut communication between the director’s office and the now 56 field offices. That’s because consulting firms convinced Mueller to introduce a bounty system for the upper management to profit personally. The bounty system--imposed quotas that forced field agents to check as many boxes as possible as a means of statistically measuring productivity. The criteria were a synthetic construct, to assess the quantity of work not the quality. If every special agent checked as many boxes as possible, the special agent in charge would be rewarded, as would his supervisor back at headquarters. Promotions would depend on this system. The FBI top leadership would even collect annual cash bonuses for all the boxes their underlings checked, independent of connection to the ongoing logic of actual investigations. The system encourages employees to deploy their creative faculties to game the system for artificial statistical accomplishments instead of focusing on true case work.
In my judgment this indicates the attachment excepts are ones of logic not grievance. [NOTE: This Robert Mueller was also the subsequent leader (Special Counsel) of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation trying to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia]
Next: The Department of Defense is a huge business. Knowing little about it, I set out to learn its organizational structure, what it does, how it interacts with other agencies, its need and interactions with defense contractors, and its internal processes. The segment will summarize my resultant understanding via excerpts.
HELP: I have now passed my ten-year anniversary of developing and distributing these series. I am getting up in age, but I think I have the energy to do a few more. As you know, the topics I pick are based on what I am curious about and want to know more about. I am a bit stuck on what do to next. I have thought about researching the Palestinian/Israeli history and conflict, but since I am limited in how many more I do, I am also interested in what you might suggest I research. So, I am soliciting your ideas on topics both this week and next, then I will select one and begin my reading. Thanks in advance for your help.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Next: The Department of Defense is a huge business. Knowing little about it, I set out to learn its organizational structure, what it does, how it interacts with other agencies, its need and interactions with defense contractors, and its internal processes. The segment will summarize my resultant understanding via excerpts.
HELP: I have now passed my ten-year anniversary of developing and distributing these series. I am getting up in age, but I think I have the energy to do a few more. As you know, the topics I pick are based on what I am curious about and want to know more about. I am a bit stuck on what do to next. I have thought about researching the Palestinian/Israeli history and conflict, but since I am limited in how many more I do, I am also interested in what you might suggest I research. So, I am soliciting your ideas on topics both this week and next, then I will select one and begin my reading. Thanks in advance for your help.
Happy Learning,
Harley
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH – SEGMENT 8
THE FBI: 2001 to CURRENT – EXCERPTS
INTRODUCTION: Starting with a cycle of cultural changes after the events of September 11, 2001, the FBI was transformed from a reactive crime fighting organization to a domestic intelligence and security organization. During this sometimes-heavy-handed process, many of the organization’s more tenured members became confused and disenfranchised. Some changes planted the seeds for various problems and challenges that are eroding the FBI’s standing with the American public. That said, I believe the FBI can recover and regain the trust, confidence, and faith of the American public. I am confident that a return to the FBI’s previous stature can occur with an assertive return to proper mission dedication and operational focus on every level. This recovery will take humility and an unshakeable organizational will to do better and to be better at everything.
To make this recovery a reality, the FBI must have leaders who can conduct its mission without having to political hedging, social engineering and spin doctoring, careerism, organizational distractions, and a weakening corporate character. The return will also require an unshakeable will by our national leaders to place the right people in top leadership roles and to support them while they urgently create a renewed sense of mission, dedication, and obligation. The FBI must redevelop and sustain the endurance and warriorship it once had to outlast the political pressure and resist giving in to emotional influences. We need our FBI to be an objective, highly competent investigative organization that is free from political maneuvering or personal agenda. The FBI must aggressively return to its sacred mission where it will be known again as objective, honest, and high performing as it “protects the American people and upholds the Constitution.” The United States needs it, and the American people deserve it.
THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS: History has shown us that the right leaders with the right attributes who are leading the right teams can accomplish almost anything. History has also shown that bad leadership can derail even the most capable organizations from being successful.
Over the years, many people saw the FBI as an incorruptible, monolithic organization that represented the highest levels of honor, trustworthiness, and competence. Government agents in dark suits, the descendants of a lineage of achievement and lore, built the FBI’s reputation into nearly mythical proportions.
Yet, at the time of this writing, the FBI has been subjected to bouts of withering critique on its priorities and practices. Serious questions have been posed about the bureau’s political leanings based upon its internal intelligence reporting (leaked to the public) and its perceived treatment of people who are considered “more conservative.” The organization’s leadership environment has been strongly questioned in formal channels by official whistleblower testimonies and informally through the networks of active and retired FBI personnel. There have even been allegations of reductions in hiring standards and a deterioration in the quality of special agent recruits to fit organizational preferences under so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” goals. These types of revelations are devastating, and all of these spell trouble for what was once seen as the “World’s Premier Law Enforcement Agency.” The FBI has not been successful in resisting certain political and social factors that have led to the current state of affairs.
Since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the FBI has been forced to evolve, but it has not always properly kept its focus on what it should be and what it should be doing. Since that time, the bureau has worked to be faster in its activities but may not always have focused on being better. The FBI mandated a change in its organizational culture after 9/11 as a means of survival and may have done so at the expense of its soul. It wanted to become a “leadership factory” in the words of one FBI director. Instead, it focused on metrics, climate surveys, flowery new leadership approaches, and colorful slide deck presentations rather than prioritizing true applications of leadership and warriorship – both of which seem to have become elusive if not absent over time.
A NEW KIND OF TERRORISM – WE GOT BEAT: After September 11, 2001, it was never the same. The FBI had been bested by a terrorist adversary that was different from any we had seen in the past. This new adversary, al-Qaeda, was led by a relatively unknown actor named Osama bin Laden. This new adversary was not interested in ransom, hostages, or other previously seen terror practices. Members of al-Qaeda were willing to die to achieve their objectives.
Contrary to what some people might believe, the FBI was not a highly technology-driven organization at that time. Leading up to 2001, the bureau did not even have widespread deployment of televisions and cable communications services throughout its offices to support situational awareness. There was no broad use of cellular telephones by field personnel. Internet-based communications and services had not yet graduated from dial-up modems and had not yet come into their own. There was no Wi-Fi for common use. Just before 9/11 the FBI Newark Division had finally received an office-wide public branch exchange voice mail system. Prior to the arrival of this system, Newark agents had to purchase their own cassette tape answering machines to catch missed telephone calls at their desks. Teletypes and fax machines were still being used as primary means of moving priority expedited communications. My counterterrorism squad was considered fortunate in that we had just received pagers with onboard text messaging capability, which was considered “high tech” at the time. The main problem was that we could only communicate by text with each other because most agents in other programs still had older pagers that operated on numerical communications data only.
While we thought the FBI was doing a reasonably good job in the counterterrorism realm, I learned first-hand that we, in fact, suffered from the lack of imagination, an inadequate sense of investigative curiosity, and an absence of a sense of urgency. These factors and others converged to provide a permissive operating environment that our al-Qaeda adversaries were able to successfully exploit. After all of the excuses and reasons for why some things happened and others did not, the bottom line was that we had our asses kicked. The FBI, as an institution, lacked the operational vision, organizational leadership, and warrior spirit that were needed to proactively identify and directly engage the al-Qaeda threat. We didn’t create a hostile operating environment for the terrorists. We did not engage terrorist assertively, domestically or abroad, and force them to change their behaviors. As a result, the FBI would soon find itself enveloped in a hurricane of doubt, blame, and change that would dominate its existence over the next decade.
The FBI, like many high-functioning, highly successful organizations, had carved out its niche and had become the standard in crime fighting. In becoming the pinnacle of the law enforcement community, it also fell victim to a deadly organizational disease called complacency. The FBI did not look forward into the threat environment. Instead, it fell back on its past success and crime fighting prowess and found itself out-maneuvered by a dedicated, effective adversary. The lesson is that an accomplished organization that becomes complacent can and will be beaten by organizations that are agile, hungry, and motivated.
COUNTERTERRORISM: In the post-September 11th world, the FBI was overextended, overwhelmed, and overmatched, and it was conducting business in a survival mode every day. The FBIHQ senior leadership apparently believed that making the program atmosphere less demanding would attract more workers to fill crucial, unfilled positions. The FBI transitioned to updated, more modern leadership models (meaning softer, kinder, and more in touch with people’s feelings). I believe that the bureau would have done better in the long run if it had promoted more leaders like Patton, who taught us how to be tough, resilient, unflappable, competent, and accountable. The general softening of the FBI’s leadership approaches and requirements through the early to mid-2000s led to the adoption of a less effective program management environment. This development became poisonous and led to significant cultural changes and bad stopgap staffing measures once word got out to the field about how bad things could be at headquarters.
For example, the Criminal Investigation Division’s (CID) programs were unceremoniously deprioritized. There would be no more FBI drug programs, truck-hijacking squads, or warrant squads. Bank robberies, once the domain of elite FBI investigations, were deprioritized and moved to state and local partners. Criminal investigative programs had to be reassessed and reformed to make do with the resources that were left. The bureau saw its violent crime programs fall from being a top-tier priority to the number eight organizational priority. While some of these organizational changes may have been necessary to cope with the prevailing national security threat environment, the FBI’s criminal investigative cadre became demoralized and resentful.
ANOTHER COMPOUNDING FACTOR: The Strategic Execution Team (SET): To make matters worse, at Director Robert S. Mueller’s instruction, a combined change management team, which included the consultant’s representatives and hand-picked FBI personnel, was dubbed the Strategic Execution Team (SET) and foisted upon FBI field offices and investigative programs.
SET was chartered to drive the FBI’s move away from its reactive law enforcement culture and toward new intelligence-led, preventive domestic security operations. In hindsight, the SET approach and its related culture change rollout were poorly formed and hastily executed. As such, the approach was initially met with cynicism, anxiety, and resentment among many FBIHQ and field personnel. It was met with hostility and was generally considered a train wreck.
During the SET process, a cadre of agents, analysts, and professional staff members gained favor with FBIHQ senior leaders by supporting Director Mueller’s objectives and SET party line. Certain SET FBI personnel and consultants (who were hired as FBI employees) would ascend into influential roles that further changed the bureau’s culture and moved it further from its roots.
Ultimately, the SET process produced questionable results that might not have enhanced FBI foundational practices but laid the early groundwork for some of the bureau’s current challenges.
I watched my FBI go from an organization with pride to being a prideful organization. Egos and turf battles had taken priority over mission focus and good business. It was time for me to do something else. Every retired special agent I had previously spoken with told me that I would know when it was time to retire. They were right. At the end of January 2020, I retired from the FBI after nearly twenty-five years of service.
It was customary for any departing EAD to have an outgoing discussion with the FBI director. During what would be my last official visit with Director Wray, I said that the director was the primary protector and champion of the FBI brand and that I had begun to see a decline in some areas of that brand. The director listened politely but said little. When I could tell that the meeting was over, I did not think he truly heard a word I said. He politely wished me well.
THE DECLINE OF THE FBI: WHAT WENT WRONG? I saw the FBI senior leadership environment changing as I departed. From what I have been told by some of my former colleagues who remained with the bureau or in touch with the bureau, I am not sure that much of anything has improved. FBI special agents in charge have been subjected to a lack of support from FBIHQ, and a growing number have felt that the bureau was becoming overly politicized in how it addressed polarizing issues. FBI whistleblowers have gained national exposure in telling their stories before congressional committees, and others have gained a presence in the media due to their resignations in protest over what they felt were questionable practices. Anecdotally, I received informal accounts of excessive egos, micromanagement, bad decision-making, inconsistent leadership, mission distraction, and other factors that could have caused some of the bureau’s emergent challenges.
In addition to the aforementioned factors, the FBI has been publicly accused of losing its investigative objectivity and political impartiality in the questionable handling of certain laptops, reported surveillance of school parents, and perceived treatment of former US presidents. In various open-source media and social media channels, some parties have felt that the FBI has adopted heavy-handed tactics against conservative-leaning individuals. Some examples:
1. Parkland, Florida Shooting The FBI discovered that it had previously received contact from a family member of the shooter through its public access tip line. The FBI personnel involved in processing the tip line did not take action on the call
2. The FBI’s Handling of the Olympic Gymnast Sexual Abuse Case The Indianapolis Field Office spectacularly failed to properly manage numerous allegations of sexual abuse by former Gymnastics physician Lawrence Nassar.
3. The Durham Report – Summary AssessmentThe Durham Report, provided by Special Counsel John H. Durham in May 2023, provided an assessment of one of the FBI’s most well-known investigations, Crossfire Hurricane (hereafter Crossfire).
THE CHANGING WORLD OF THE SPECIAL AGENT: While moving into its new strategic and leadership approach, FBI senior leadership became distracted by trying to be more like private sector America. The bureau became interested in diversity matters (before the advent of current diversity, equity, and inclusion trends) It became fixated on selecting leaders who were popular, and the selection process focused on workplace climate surveys and candidate diversity as opposed to leadership attributes such as leadership maturity, operational achievement, and business acumen. The FBI began producing groups of timid yet likable leaders who seemed overly concerned with special emphases on cultural programs, corporate metrics, and risk scores. These organizational factors were much easier to deal with than the tough, sometimes unpopular business or maintaining excellence and achievement in leadership practices and investigative operations (as in the Olympic athlete abuse case). What the FBI received instead was a leadership environment that prioritized being easy-going and well-liked. Director Comey made the survey scores a primary assessment tool, and Deputy Director McCabe (and his successor) further heightened the impact of survey scores by requiring their use in performance appraisals and inclusion in promotion packages.
This situation was disappointing evidence that the people of the FBI had been effectively sedated by the threat of getting into trouble or by hurting their future chances for promotion. The bureau had firmly moved into a place of “going along to get along” instead of taking the right path that might not be in line with certain administrative policies.
CLOSING THOUGHTS: The FBI has to take a critical look at itself and, with a profound sense of organizational humility, reconnect with its core values, and refocus its mission priorities. The FBI must reestablish the unquestionable character, common sense, and unbreakable backbone that once defined the organization.
Source: WANTED The FBI I Once Knew by Christopher M. Piehota, FBI Special Agent, Retired (2024)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
THE FBI: 2001 to CURRENT – EXCERPTS
INTRODUCTION: Starting with a cycle of cultural changes after the events of September 11, 2001, the FBI was transformed from a reactive crime fighting organization to a domestic intelligence and security organization. During this sometimes-heavy-handed process, many of the organization’s more tenured members became confused and disenfranchised. Some changes planted the seeds for various problems and challenges that are eroding the FBI’s standing with the American public. That said, I believe the FBI can recover and regain the trust, confidence, and faith of the American public. I am confident that a return to the FBI’s previous stature can occur with an assertive return to proper mission dedication and operational focus on every level. This recovery will take humility and an unshakeable organizational will to do better and to be better at everything.
To make this recovery a reality, the FBI must have leaders who can conduct its mission without having to political hedging, social engineering and spin doctoring, careerism, organizational distractions, and a weakening corporate character. The return will also require an unshakeable will by our national leaders to place the right people in top leadership roles and to support them while they urgently create a renewed sense of mission, dedication, and obligation. The FBI must redevelop and sustain the endurance and warriorship it once had to outlast the political pressure and resist giving in to emotional influences. We need our FBI to be an objective, highly competent investigative organization that is free from political maneuvering or personal agenda. The FBI must aggressively return to its sacred mission where it will be known again as objective, honest, and high performing as it “protects the American people and upholds the Constitution.” The United States needs it, and the American people deserve it.
THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS: History has shown us that the right leaders with the right attributes who are leading the right teams can accomplish almost anything. History has also shown that bad leadership can derail even the most capable organizations from being successful.
Over the years, many people saw the FBI as an incorruptible, monolithic organization that represented the highest levels of honor, trustworthiness, and competence. Government agents in dark suits, the descendants of a lineage of achievement and lore, built the FBI’s reputation into nearly mythical proportions.
Yet, at the time of this writing, the FBI has been subjected to bouts of withering critique on its priorities and practices. Serious questions have been posed about the bureau’s political leanings based upon its internal intelligence reporting (leaked to the public) and its perceived treatment of people who are considered “more conservative.” The organization’s leadership environment has been strongly questioned in formal channels by official whistleblower testimonies and informally through the networks of active and retired FBI personnel. There have even been allegations of reductions in hiring standards and a deterioration in the quality of special agent recruits to fit organizational preferences under so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” goals. These types of revelations are devastating, and all of these spell trouble for what was once seen as the “World’s Premier Law Enforcement Agency.” The FBI has not been successful in resisting certain political and social factors that have led to the current state of affairs.
Since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the FBI has been forced to evolve, but it has not always properly kept its focus on what it should be and what it should be doing. Since that time, the bureau has worked to be faster in its activities but may not always have focused on being better. The FBI mandated a change in its organizational culture after 9/11 as a means of survival and may have done so at the expense of its soul. It wanted to become a “leadership factory” in the words of one FBI director. Instead, it focused on metrics, climate surveys, flowery new leadership approaches, and colorful slide deck presentations rather than prioritizing true applications of leadership and warriorship – both of which seem to have become elusive if not absent over time.
A NEW KIND OF TERRORISM – WE GOT BEAT: After September 11, 2001, it was never the same. The FBI had been bested by a terrorist adversary that was different from any we had seen in the past. This new adversary, al-Qaeda, was led by a relatively unknown actor named Osama bin Laden. This new adversary was not interested in ransom, hostages, or other previously seen terror practices. Members of al-Qaeda were willing to die to achieve their objectives.
Contrary to what some people might believe, the FBI was not a highly technology-driven organization at that time. Leading up to 2001, the bureau did not even have widespread deployment of televisions and cable communications services throughout its offices to support situational awareness. There was no broad use of cellular telephones by field personnel. Internet-based communications and services had not yet graduated from dial-up modems and had not yet come into their own. There was no Wi-Fi for common use. Just before 9/11 the FBI Newark Division had finally received an office-wide public branch exchange voice mail system. Prior to the arrival of this system, Newark agents had to purchase their own cassette tape answering machines to catch missed telephone calls at their desks. Teletypes and fax machines were still being used as primary means of moving priority expedited communications. My counterterrorism squad was considered fortunate in that we had just received pagers with onboard text messaging capability, which was considered “high tech” at the time. The main problem was that we could only communicate by text with each other because most agents in other programs still had older pagers that operated on numerical communications data only.
While we thought the FBI was doing a reasonably good job in the counterterrorism realm, I learned first-hand that we, in fact, suffered from the lack of imagination, an inadequate sense of investigative curiosity, and an absence of a sense of urgency. These factors and others converged to provide a permissive operating environment that our al-Qaeda adversaries were able to successfully exploit. After all of the excuses and reasons for why some things happened and others did not, the bottom line was that we had our asses kicked. The FBI, as an institution, lacked the operational vision, organizational leadership, and warrior spirit that were needed to proactively identify and directly engage the al-Qaeda threat. We didn’t create a hostile operating environment for the terrorists. We did not engage terrorist assertively, domestically or abroad, and force them to change their behaviors. As a result, the FBI would soon find itself enveloped in a hurricane of doubt, blame, and change that would dominate its existence over the next decade.
The FBI, like many high-functioning, highly successful organizations, had carved out its niche and had become the standard in crime fighting. In becoming the pinnacle of the law enforcement community, it also fell victim to a deadly organizational disease called complacency. The FBI did not look forward into the threat environment. Instead, it fell back on its past success and crime fighting prowess and found itself out-maneuvered by a dedicated, effective adversary. The lesson is that an accomplished organization that becomes complacent can and will be beaten by organizations that are agile, hungry, and motivated.
COUNTERTERRORISM: In the post-September 11th world, the FBI was overextended, overwhelmed, and overmatched, and it was conducting business in a survival mode every day. The FBIHQ senior leadership apparently believed that making the program atmosphere less demanding would attract more workers to fill crucial, unfilled positions. The FBI transitioned to updated, more modern leadership models (meaning softer, kinder, and more in touch with people’s feelings). I believe that the bureau would have done better in the long run if it had promoted more leaders like Patton, who taught us how to be tough, resilient, unflappable, competent, and accountable. The general softening of the FBI’s leadership approaches and requirements through the early to mid-2000s led to the adoption of a less effective program management environment. This development became poisonous and led to significant cultural changes and bad stopgap staffing measures once word got out to the field about how bad things could be at headquarters.
For example, the Criminal Investigation Division’s (CID) programs were unceremoniously deprioritized. There would be no more FBI drug programs, truck-hijacking squads, or warrant squads. Bank robberies, once the domain of elite FBI investigations, were deprioritized and moved to state and local partners. Criminal investigative programs had to be reassessed and reformed to make do with the resources that were left. The bureau saw its violent crime programs fall from being a top-tier priority to the number eight organizational priority. While some of these organizational changes may have been necessary to cope with the prevailing national security threat environment, the FBI’s criminal investigative cadre became demoralized and resentful.
ANOTHER COMPOUNDING FACTOR: The Strategic Execution Team (SET): To make matters worse, at Director Robert S. Mueller’s instruction, a combined change management team, which included the consultant’s representatives and hand-picked FBI personnel, was dubbed the Strategic Execution Team (SET) and foisted upon FBI field offices and investigative programs.
SET was chartered to drive the FBI’s move away from its reactive law enforcement culture and toward new intelligence-led, preventive domestic security operations. In hindsight, the SET approach and its related culture change rollout were poorly formed and hastily executed. As such, the approach was initially met with cynicism, anxiety, and resentment among many FBIHQ and field personnel. It was met with hostility and was generally considered a train wreck.
During the SET process, a cadre of agents, analysts, and professional staff members gained favor with FBIHQ senior leaders by supporting Director Mueller’s objectives and SET party line. Certain SET FBI personnel and consultants (who were hired as FBI employees) would ascend into influential roles that further changed the bureau’s culture and moved it further from its roots.
Ultimately, the SET process produced questionable results that might not have enhanced FBI foundational practices but laid the early groundwork for some of the bureau’s current challenges.
- Role ambiguity: People were not clear on who was supposed to do what.
- Lack of mid-level manager stakeholder buy-in.
- Poorly executed change project roll-out.
- Forced change without proper orientation. Many people did not understand what was going on with the SET initiative or why it was being implemented.
- Lack of Performance Consultant Credibility. The consultants were seen as inexperienced interlopers. Many of them appeared to be younger (in their mid-to-late twenties or early thirties at best) with degrees from notable academic institutions. They were immediately disliked among the tenured FBI personnel who felt that they were being told what to do by younger people with zero investigative experience and no credibility.
- Inconsistent Information and Feedback
I watched my FBI go from an organization with pride to being a prideful organization. Egos and turf battles had taken priority over mission focus and good business. It was time for me to do something else. Every retired special agent I had previously spoken with told me that I would know when it was time to retire. They were right. At the end of January 2020, I retired from the FBI after nearly twenty-five years of service.
It was customary for any departing EAD to have an outgoing discussion with the FBI director. During what would be my last official visit with Director Wray, I said that the director was the primary protector and champion of the FBI brand and that I had begun to see a decline in some areas of that brand. The director listened politely but said little. When I could tell that the meeting was over, I did not think he truly heard a word I said. He politely wished me well.
THE DECLINE OF THE FBI: WHAT WENT WRONG? I saw the FBI senior leadership environment changing as I departed. From what I have been told by some of my former colleagues who remained with the bureau or in touch with the bureau, I am not sure that much of anything has improved. FBI special agents in charge have been subjected to a lack of support from FBIHQ, and a growing number have felt that the bureau was becoming overly politicized in how it addressed polarizing issues. FBI whistleblowers have gained national exposure in telling their stories before congressional committees, and others have gained a presence in the media due to their resignations in protest over what they felt were questionable practices. Anecdotally, I received informal accounts of excessive egos, micromanagement, bad decision-making, inconsistent leadership, mission distraction, and other factors that could have caused some of the bureau’s emergent challenges.
In addition to the aforementioned factors, the FBI has been publicly accused of losing its investigative objectivity and political impartiality in the questionable handling of certain laptops, reported surveillance of school parents, and perceived treatment of former US presidents. In various open-source media and social media channels, some parties have felt that the FBI has adopted heavy-handed tactics against conservative-leaning individuals. Some examples:
1. Parkland, Florida Shooting The FBI discovered that it had previously received contact from a family member of the shooter through its public access tip line. The FBI personnel involved in processing the tip line did not take action on the call
2. The FBI’s Handling of the Olympic Gymnast Sexual Abuse Case The Indianapolis Field Office spectacularly failed to properly manage numerous allegations of sexual abuse by former Gymnastics physician Lawrence Nassar.
3. The Durham Report – Summary AssessmentThe Durham Report, provided by Special Counsel John H. Durham in May 2023, provided an assessment of one of the FBI’s most well-known investigations, Crossfire Hurricane (hereafter Crossfire).
THE CHANGING WORLD OF THE SPECIAL AGENT: While moving into its new strategic and leadership approach, FBI senior leadership became distracted by trying to be more like private sector America. The bureau became interested in diversity matters (before the advent of current diversity, equity, and inclusion trends) It became fixated on selecting leaders who were popular, and the selection process focused on workplace climate surveys and candidate diversity as opposed to leadership attributes such as leadership maturity, operational achievement, and business acumen. The FBI began producing groups of timid yet likable leaders who seemed overly concerned with special emphases on cultural programs, corporate metrics, and risk scores. These organizational factors were much easier to deal with than the tough, sometimes unpopular business or maintaining excellence and achievement in leadership practices and investigative operations (as in the Olympic athlete abuse case). What the FBI received instead was a leadership environment that prioritized being easy-going and well-liked. Director Comey made the survey scores a primary assessment tool, and Deputy Director McCabe (and his successor) further heightened the impact of survey scores by requiring their use in performance appraisals and inclusion in promotion packages.
This situation was disappointing evidence that the people of the FBI had been effectively sedated by the threat of getting into trouble or by hurting their future chances for promotion. The bureau had firmly moved into a place of “going along to get along” instead of taking the right path that might not be in line with certain administrative policies.
CLOSING THOUGHTS: The FBI has to take a critical look at itself and, with a profound sense of organizational humility, reconnect with its core values, and refocus its mission priorities. The FBI must reestablish the unquestionable character, common sense, and unbreakable backbone that once defined the organization.
Source: WANTED The FBI I Once Knew by Christopher M. Piehota, FBI Special Agent, Retired (2024)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| exec_8l_the_fbi_2001_to_now_--_segment_8.pdf |