Birdnow's Aviary

February 28, 2025

Whining from the WSJ

Timothy Birdnow

The Wall Street Journal cries like a teenage girl whose boyfriend asked another girl to the dance in one of the whiniest pieces about Kash Patel and the FBI I have ever had the misfortune of seeing.

FTA (if I had to suffer through it you may as well do likewise):

His first week at the bureau has laid bare the extent to which his tenure could upend the tradition-bound agency and transform its culture, according to interviews with a dozen current and former FBI officials.

Soon after arriving, Patel cleared out all civil-service staff in the leadership suites and replaced them with political associates; ordered 1,500 employees relocated out of Washington without money in place to pay for the move; and broke a promise he made to agents to appoint a deputy from their ranks.
FBI headquarters in Washington.

He also got a second job running another law-enforcement agency, an unusual arrangement given that being FBI director is seen as one of the toughest jobs in government.

Patel’s partisan background as a surrogate for Trump during the 2024 election campaign and open criticism of the agency set him apart from previous FBI directors. Patel and the president share the view that the FBI must be purged of what they perceive as bias against Trump and other conservatives. His ascendance to the job after officials from Trump’s first administration found him unqualified and untrustworthy is a remarkable one.

I would remind everyone that while the Wall Street Journal has a conservative editorial board, by and large (they are Bush-style Republican internationalists who like making money but have always hated Trump's brand of patriotic conservatism) their news department is actually the most biased of all journalistic enterprises SLANTING TO THE LEFT.

The article continues:

"On Friday, his first day on the job, Patel ordered officials to relocate 1,500 employees from Washington to cities with high crime rates including Minneapolis, Detroit and Cleveland. Another FBI official piped in with a harsh reality, according to people familiar with the exchange: Each move could cost up to $100,000, and the bureau didn’t have the funds to cover such a restructuring, the official said. Government agencies generally aren’t allowed to spend money in ways not authorized by Congress, and often don’t have money for basic employee perks like office coffee. Patel was unmoved. Figure out how to do it anyway, and fast, he told them.
Current and former agents have said they support sending more personnel to field offices, but some said they were put off by what they saw as Patel’s insensitivity to the personal challenges and costs agents would face if forced to leave quickly.

I didn't know it was the job of the chief of the FBI to be "sensitive"; I thought it was to enforce laws! Silly me!

Patel is trying to get them to quit, dimbulbs! He wants to winnow the agency down to only those needed to do the job and he isn't allowed to just fire them due to the law, so he's seeing who is willing to fight to stay on. Those hanging around Quantico were probably unnecessary personnel in the first place.

So cry me a river. This has been a long time coming. And it has to be done, and ruthlessly and right now; this is the moment we have to accomplish a restoration of government. Wait until an election year and all the momentum is lost.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:42 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 578 words, total size 4 kb.

1 Aw, this almost made me weep into my bourbon -- the operative word being "almost." I should say (Tim knows this story) that a number of years ago, because of a job my wife was in, and because of the rather nefarious guy she was having to work for, a year after she finally left the company, one day our doorbell rang and when I answered it, two well-dressed gentlemen showed their FBI IDs and asked to see my wife.

We were totally caught off-guard, but there was nothing for it (as the Brits say) but to let them in and let them "interview" her. I stayed there and helped her when I could, and it wasn't a hostile situation: they wanted to know about someone her erstwhile boss had been dealing with, someone she had never met or been allowed to meet.

At the end of the interview they left their cards and asked her to call if she had anything more to tell them at any later date (standard operating procedure). She was rather rattled by the whole thing, but I got both of us calmed down; I think a couple glasses of wine helped. The two of them had been very professional throughout. I'd been helping her out with names that she'd forgotten -- I probably should have stayed out of it but just couldn't leave her hanging. As it was, I didn't do her any damage, apparently.

A year or so later, she did call the senior agent and told him that her former boss had died, which was news to them (anybody who tells you the FBI can always find you doesn't know what he's talking about). And on another occasion she had reason to call the senior agent on another related matter. He was a gentleman every time.

So: My wife and I are two "civilians" who might be said to have our own personal FBI agents, and we both hope these gentlemen (yes, they were) have not been caught up in any nastiness going on in the bureau. They were and are good guys, if you can believe that.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at March 01, 2025 01:03 AM (bP6Zo)

2 I remember that story Dana!

Yeah; a lot of the field agents ARE good guys, gentlemen. Sadly it's the bureaucrats and top brass that have been the problem at the Agency.

I wouldn't speak with one without a lawyer present, at least not since we've seen their weaponization.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at March 01, 2025 10:58 AM (GPHoo)

3 By the way tears in the bourbon water it down; that's alcohol abuse!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at March 02, 2025 10:27 AM (d4uhg)