How to Fix the FBI

 As a retired FBI special agent, I worked to protect my family and the American people in a fair and apolitical way. I understood that the public perception of the agency directly impacted the success of our mission. Moreso, I took to heart the core of that public perception: trust in us by our fellow citizens.

After the Parkland shooting, where my daughter survived and I responded as a first responder, I was deeply disheartened by the FBI’s mishandling of critical leads that could have prevented the tragedy. One failure stemmed from an agent and their supervisor in the Jackson, Mississippi, FBI Office, while another involved a call-in tip that was mishandled by a contract call taker and their supervisor. The contract employee was fired, the Jackson agent was allowed to retire, yet both supervisors remained in their positions.

Our family has always embraced the concept of the “FBI Family,” a term that embodies the camaraderie, shared mission, and mutual support among agents, staff, and their loved ones. After the shooting, my closest FBI brothers and sisters immediately came to our aid, offering incredible support for which I am deeply and always grateful. However, despite the many years we cherished being part of this family, I found myself expecting more from the headquarters leadership in D.C. Was I disappointed? Yes, I was.

Sadly, I am not the only agent or American who feels this way. The trust the FBI took nearly a century to earn has eroded over the past several years as the Bureau has prioritized intelligence gathering and wading into politics over keeping Americans safe. This has critically damaged the Bureau and swift attention to regain and maintain the public’s trust is essential to its ability to accomplish its mission.

But it’s not just the public’s trust that is impacted by the Bureau’s behavior: the men and women putting their lives on the line for you, me, our families, friends, and neighbors, are devastated. Once revered as the world’s premiere law enforcement agency, many citizens now view the agency with disdain, believing it ineffective, corrupted, and weaponized. We are working to restore trust in the FBI by holding it to the highest standards, so that American families are safer, businesses can thrive, and the FBI returns to its status as the global model of justice and accountability — something my fellow special agents and I can be deeply proud of.

Driven by this goal, I have joined other retired FBI special agents to launch Reform the Bureau (RTB). RTB is a nationwide group of former FBI special agents who are committed to restoring the agency to its core mission: protecting the public, fighting crime, and upholding the rule of law. We believe that our nation’s law enforcement cannot maintain ordered liberty without a highly capable, nonpartisan, and legally compliant FBI, one that earns and maintains the public’s trust. Our mission is to educate policymakers and the public about what is necessary to reform the Bureau and return the FBI to a merit-based law enforcement agency focused on its core mission. We advocate for meaningful, nonpartisan reforms grounded in decades of law enforcement experience to better protect our nation through reestablishing an agency culture of meritocracy and mission-first accountability.

Reform in the FBI takes several steps. First, it is essential to streamline the administration to make the Bureau less top-heavy with its overabundance of support staff and senior executives. Next, we prioritize investigative integrity over metrics, then move to decentralizing the FBI decision-making to empower field operations and improve operational effectiveness and response time. In addition, it is necessary to reform the agency’s training to focus on merit and proficiency— best accomplished by eliminating things like the “up-and-out” policy prematurely removing supervisors from their roles. Another important step is to strengthen our intelligence functions to increase the Bureau’s effectiveness while restoring public trust and accountability in the agency by moving away from politicization. Finally, the Bureau must foster a culture of excellence that flies above the political fray and maintains its focus on merit, proficiency, efficiency, and its overall mission.

As we have seen over the past several years, trust in law enforcement has cratered, especially at the federal level. It’s been in front of our eyes, but the agency has done nothing to address it. A November 2022 McCourtney Institute for Democracy poll found that 67 percent of Republicans, 61 percent of independents, and 31 percent of Democrats trusted in the FBI to do the right thing only some of the time or hardly ever. A July 2023 NBC poll found 35% of Americans had a negative view of the agency amid the investigations into President Trump, and a March 2023 Rasmussen poll found that nearly two-thirds of voters viewed the agency as “politically weaponized.” Even in August of this year, the Pew Research Center saw only a downward slope in trust toward the DOJ across Republicans, independents, and Democrats, with only 33 percent of Americans having a favorable opinion of the agency, with 16 percent unsure.

We are at a pivotal moment to implement meaningful changes within the agency under the incoming Trump administration. President Trump's selection of Kash Patel to lead the FBI suggests a strong focus on reform. We anticipate his efforts to restore trust, transparency, and integrity back to an agency that has flown too close to the political sun, and he will work with our lawmakers to ensure that the FBI protects all Americans.

Richard Stout is a retired FBI Special Agent with 22 years of experience in the FBI Miami Office. He now directs Reform the Bureau (RTB), focusing on FBI reform. 

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2024/12/31/how_to_fix_the_fbi_1081799.html