Kash Patel Is Dismantling FBI Counterintelligence (w/ Derek Owen & R.M Schneiderman)

Summary

Bulwark Takes Podcast Summary

Episode: Kash Patel Is Dismantling FBI Counterintelligence
Date: December 27, 2025
Guests: Derek Owen, R.M. (Ross) Schneiderman
Host: Ben Parker

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles concerns about the future of FBI counterintelligence in the wake of reforms and leadership changes—especially the influence of Kash Patel, recently appointed as FBI director. Drawing on a major Bulwark article by Owen and Schneiderman, the hosts explore how a generation of hard-won advances in catching spies is now at risk. They discuss historical context, the reforms that modernized FBI intelligence work, the complicated interplay among policymakers, and current efforts (seen as politically charged) to dismantle what experts view as essential national security capabilities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. FBI Counterintelligence: A Brief History

• In the aftermath of the Cold War and especially 9/11, the FBI shifted from a reactive to a proactive counterintelligence posture — focusing on catching spies before they could cause damage.
• The agency’s past failures to address Chinese espionage, particularly nuclear secrets theft (e.g., the Wen Ho Lee scandal), spurred this evolution.

Quote:
“We're not doing like the cat and mouse game at the Soviet Union anymore... There are all these scandals about Chinese spies stealing all sorts of things, but especially American nuclear technology...”
— Ben Parker [03:26]

Quote:
“At the Albuquerque office, counterintelligence was number four in the priority list... So if things are slow to get going, you can miss things. Eventually they zeroed in on Wenho Lee... but there might have been other stuff going on. The key thing is we just don’t know.”
— Derek Owen [04:41]

2. The Impact of 9/11 & Bureaucratic Reform

• 9/11 forced the FBI to rethink its priorities, emphasizing proactive defense as much as prosecution.
• Figures like David Zaidy and Tom McQueenie drove internal reforms: centralizing authority, boosting inter-office communication, and raising counterintelligence’s priority inside the Bureau.
• Key tension: making counterintelligence “sexy” and prioritized, moving away from its “rubber gun squad” reputation.

Quote:
“FBI agents out on the streets enforcing immigration law... highly trained experts in Chinese spies off rounding people up... is not something the FBI has ever done.”
— Ben Parker [19:19]

Quote:
“Counterintelligence was considered the rubber gun squad... reverting back to that era would be a disaster for the FBI.”
— Ross Schneiderman [13:26]

3. Challenges: Defunding and Decentralizing the Mission

• Current political efforts, especially in the Trump/Patel era, reflect desires to move FBI agents "out of Washington" and downplay intelligence in favor of more traditional law enforcement.
• Congressional moves (led by Rep. Crawford) propose stripping the FBI of its counterintelligence function, shifting it to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), now headed by Tulsi Gabbard.
• Arguments for: Greater coordination across agencies. Arguments against: Added bureaucracy, reduced agility, and risk of civil liberties violations.
• The Bulwark article revealed that despite public rumors, Gabbard’s office denied supporting the shift, raising questions about political motives and transparency.

Quote:
“If you’re adding that extra thing or like removing the authority or, you know, in any way diminishing that capacity, you’re making what is already a very, very difficult job that much harder.”
— Derek Owen [20:35]

Quote:
“I don’t think that’s the direction that Crawford’s office or the DNI would want to go in. I just want to make that clear. But people are concerned about those civil liberties.”
— Ross Schneiderman [22:01]

4. Why the Stakes Are So High

• American adversaries (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba) are as aggressive as ever in trying to steal secrets.
• The expertise, institutional memory, and infrastructure built after 9/11 are in danger of being dismantled or neglected, putting national security at risk.
• The panel warns against a “Groundhog Day” cycle of reform, neglect, failure, and then reform again—at potentially catastrophic cost.

Quote:
"It is definitely a warning lights are blinking red kind of piece."
— Ben Parker [32:37]

5. Anecdotes, Memorable Moments & Cutting Room Floor Stories

• Zaidy’s Pitch & the Counterintelligence Poster:
  “Terrorism will kill you in a second, like a heart attack. But there’s this other cancer...” (his speech to skeptical FBI brass) [14:57]
  Zaidy had a poster:
  “Burglaries affect individuals, bank robberies affect communities, counterintelligence affects the world—with a mushroom cloud in the background.” [27:07]

• Technology Woes:
  In the ‘90s, FBI agents struggled with email and digital communication, hampering counterintelligence just as threats were going high-tech. [25:43]

• The Halloween Story:
  Zaidy once walked across UC Berkeley’s campus on Halloween, dressed in an FBI suit, and students asked:
  “What’s your costume supposed to be?” He replied: “I’m dressed as an FBI agent.” [31:01]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• FBI’s historical failures and Wen Ho Lee scandal:
  [03:26]-[06:38]

• Shift to proactive counterintelligence post-9/11:
  [09:01]-[14:04]

• Internal resistance and Zaidy’s pivotal pitch:
  [14:57]-[15:49]

• Current legislative threats and the DNI takeover proposal:
  [18:38]-[24:54]

• Lessons from history; dangers of losing focus:
  [31:46]-[32:37]

---

Notable Quotes

• “I've seen him [Zaidy] give that pitch a thousand times, and he slays every time.”
  — Derek Owen [14:57]

• “If all this you’re talking about is true, why the fuck aren’t you in there pounding on Mueller’s desk asking for more resources?... You’re right. I should be.”
  — Agent Matthews & Zaidy, as recounted by Owen [15:49]

• “If you listen to Kash Patel... one of the things he says is, he wants to take FBI agents, send them out over the country, get them out of Washington, go be cops, forget about all this intelligence nonsense. So essentially, what he’s saying is all those reforms that... the Bureau did for like 20 years... Let’s get those out of here.”
  — Ross Schneiderman [31:04]

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Tone & Style

• The conversation is lively, candid, and deeply informed, with the guests blending serious warnings with self-deprecating humor and insider anecdotes.
• Themes of institutional memory, reform, and the importance of not “throwing out everything good” in a rush—politically or administratively—are woven throughout.
• The episode balances an alarmist edge (“warning lights are blinking red”) with a pragmatic, process-oriented perspective.

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Takeaway

This episode delivers a sobering look at how quickly vital national security capabilities can be dismantled under the pressures of political change and bureaucratic reshuffling. The guests remind listeners that progress in intelligence and counterespionage is hard-won but easily lost—and that the stakes are nothing less than global security.

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For more detail, see the full article “The FBI Spent a Generation Relearning How to Catch Spies, Then Came Kash Patel” at thebulwark.com.

Transcript

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[Ross Schneiderman]

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[Ben Parker]

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[Ross Schneiderman]

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[Ben Parker]

What went through your head on the last shot?

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[Ben Parker]

Hi, everybody. Ben Parker from the Bulwark. You may have seen this enormous, deeply reported, really interesting piece. We posted an article we posted on thebullwork.com, all about how the FBI spent a generation relearning how to catch spies, one of their primary jobs in the United States. And then came Cash Patel. And I'm so excited that Derek Owen and Ross Schneiderman are here. They are the people who dug deep in this story, talked to the people involved, wrote the whole history, found out what's going on, why we should all be pretty alarmed about it. And they're here to walk us through it. So, guys, we're going to do a deep dive. It's going to be real spy stuff and spy hunting stuff. So to start out, let's just set the basics, like top level, The FBI spent 20 years, according to the story you guys Tell in this piece doing.

[Derek Owen]

What A lot of this comes right after 911 in, in the aftermath of 9 11, where there was obviously, you know, I think there's been a lot of reporting, a lot of ink spilled about the changes in counterterrorism and, you know, all of that. What's. What's kind of less reported is about what's. What was happening in counterintelligence, which is, you know, just as important. And there was a lot of stuff happening there. And it was coming out of the Louis Free years where there have been a lot of issues, a lot of dysfunction they've been trying to solve and moving essentially kind of big picture. The Bureau was really trying to move from a sort of reactive stance to espionage. So, you know, finding spies that are already there and, you know, figuring out what they're doing and arresting them to a more proactive of, okay, we've got all these spies coming in. We need to find out what they're looking for, we need to set up trip wires, we need to set up these proactive means to deter them, to disrupt them before they even get going as much as possible. And this is a reason, and this.

[Ben Parker]

Is where you guys really start out, which is like, the Cold War ends, the Berlin Wall comes down, we're not doing like the cat and mouse game at the Soviet Union anymore. And you talk about the years when Louis Free Said was director of the FBI, and he says we got to get back to chasing criminals, putting guys behind bars. And you talk about more, you know, the more aggressive spies that are coming in, and a lot of the ones you focus on in the piece are from China. And there are all these scandals about Chinese spies stealing all sorts of things, but especially American nuclear technology as a nuclear weapons technology. So, Derek? Yeah. If you could talk a little bit more about that. What were some of the big scandals that happened in the 90s about stolen nuclear tech?

[Derek Owen]

Well, I think, you know, the one that everybody springs to mind and is very familiar to most people who at least lived at that time is, is, is the, all of the controversy around Wen Ho Lee. But what was, I think, the most interesting to us in talking to the people who lived through that, and, you know, what they, you know, the, the concerns in Congress, what they were trying to do to address it is that was actually a small piece of a larger puzzle.

[Ben Parker]

So Wenho Lee was the, was the guy who worked at the Los Alamos labs. He was deeply involved in researching nuclear technology, and he was a tiny Taiwanese born American. Is that right? And he Got accused of espionage. And then what happened?

[Derek Owen]

Well, there was, you know, they had a, they had some indications, some intelligence that the Chinese might have gotten some key information about the W88, which is the most sophisticated US warhead. It's the one that they. It's, it's. The significant thing of it is really small, so you can put it on a Trident missile and go on a submarine. And so this is like one of the critical legs of nuclear deterrence. So this was a big deal. And that was developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. And really, that investigation took a long time to get going. And one of the reasons that it took a long time is there wasn't this whole idea of national priorities and sort of a FBI that was driven, at least for national security matters from a kind of centralized command and control from headquarters. So while, hey, we might be losing our nukes here, like, that's a big deal, like from a national level. At the Albuquerque office, counterintelligence was number four in the priority list. So they'd send reinforcements in and these agents would be, you know, having to chase crimes on tribal lands and that sort of thing. So it was really slow to get going. And if you, and if things are slow to get going, you can, you can miss things. You know, eventually they zeroed in on when Hill lead, like we mentioned, but there might have been other stuff going on. And that's really the kind of. The key thing is we just don't know. They lost the opportunity to find out and we don't know what happened.

[Ben Parker]

And Wenho Lee was eventually, I think he pled guilty to like a misdemeanor or something, and he wasn't really convicted of espionage. And, you know, we promised we'd talk a little bit about Cash Patel, but we got it. This is what we're setting the groundwork. So Ross, you know, Derek talked about this a little bit, but this wasn't just an issue with espionage. It was an issue with how the FBI was thinking about its role. And that's a lot of what you get into in the piece. So it wasn't just the Wen Ho Le issue. It was a whole bunch of Chinese nuclear espionage and other embarrassments for the FBI. So, so what happened inside the FBI where they looked at this problem, said we got to fix something.

[Ross Schneiderman]

The biggest thing to understand is, you know, we're, we're coming out of the Cold War. So at the time, it was all about, you know, Russian spies, Soviet spies, these one on one spy games. China was not seen as the type of sophisticated adversary that they are today. And so in this exact time period in which the FBI is decentralized, kind of behind the curve in terms of their approach to counterintelligence, China is rising. China is figuring out. They're getting a lot more sophisticated. They're figuring out how to steal what they want, both in terms of, like the. These nuclear secrets that Derek was talking about, but also in terms of economic espionage. So it was sort of the worst possible time for the US to be stuck in this Cold War mindset. And you could see that in the, not only the Wen Ho Lee case, but the broader investigation into what had been stolen out of the lab. And so Wenho Lee was. That investigation was a very small piece of a larger puzzle. And the FBI completely botched that as well. And Wen Ho Lee, ultimately, he ultimately was convicted of like, a misdemeanor. He accused the bureau of racially profiling him, and he actually ended up suing various publications and the FBI and received, you know, giant sum of money as a result, saying that, you know, the FBI had leaked his name and conducted the investigation improperly. So there was this whole imbroglio in this, which was just an absolute disaster. And then we start getting into 9 11, basically.

[Ben Parker]

Yeah, so we get 9 11. And part of that is, you know, as Derek said, it's a little bit of a more well known story that Robert Mueller is less than a month into his tenure as FBI director, and all of a sudden the world changes. Right? It's not about going after the mob. It's not about the white collar criminals. It's about national security and national security first. And it's not about just investigating and punishing crimes. It's about proactively protecting the country from these threats. And the story you guys tell is one of people like Zaidie, like McQueenie, like others whose names aren't really well known, but these are the people who transformed the way the FBI protects America from foreign spies. So how did that internal process in the FBI get started, Ross? Because that's a lot of what's in the piece that you guys reported.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Well, I'll let Derek take that part, but there's one aspect that I wanted to make is that if you read all the great histories about this time period, you know, Tim Weiner's Enemies, which is a fantastic book, you also have another one by, by Ronald Kessler called Secrets of the FBI. This period is basically omitted. Like counterintelligence is sort of an afterthought, which is somewhat telling in Terms of, in some ways, in terms of how much counterterrorism dominated the landscape. But as, as we found out, these two sort of aspects of what the FBI does and the reform that. The reforms that were made were completely intertwined and interconnected. And so we tried to tell the counterintelligence side of the story and just a little backstory for viewers how we got the story. Derek and I wrote a piece for Politico magazine about the mystery of the Fourth man, which is sort of America's greatest espionage mystery. We didn't solve it, so no spoilers there, but it was basically about whether there was a high level CIA spy or a high level Soviet spy or spies inside the CIA at this time period. And one of the people that we talked to about that investigation was the assistant director for counterintelligence at the time, David Zaidy. And in that conversation that Derek had with him, he started talking about these reforms and we were like, huh? What reforms? Tell us more, please. So, Derek, I'll let you take it from here.

[Derek Owen]

Yeah, no, I'll just, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll pivot back into your question then. But it was really interesting because, yeah, we, you know, it took quite a long time to work through a bunch of sources in the Bureau even to get to Zaidy and get enough sort of kind of trust to talk to him. But in the middle of that, he, he basically, this is very Zady. He took pictures of this brochure, this internal document from 2005 about the program on his phone and emailed those to me and said, hey, this will be helpful for our next discussion. And I'm like, this is interesting. This is outside of what we're doing.

[Ben Parker]

So wait a minute. This guy, you were asking him questions about the, about FBI counterintelligence. This is pretty closely guarded stuff. And he goes, here, let me take out my phone camera, take pictures of this FBI internal document from 20 years ago.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Right.

[Derek Owen]

Not classified.

[Ben Parker]

Well, let me just pull this off the shelf. Right? And it's from 20 years ago. And like, here's what we said 20 years ago about counterintelligence.

[Derek Owen]

Yes. And I was like, holy cow, this is interesting. This guy's got a story to tell. And whatever that is, we're going to dig into it. Right? And so one of the. And so I went out to Montana, I met with Zadi. I talked to him, I interviewed him, you know, a little bit about the other story, but mainly about this. And he gave me a name. He's like, you got to talk to this guy, Tom McQueenie. I've never heard of this person.

[Ben Parker]

I want to pause on Zadie just a little bit, because one of the things that you guys hint at, he's such a character. It sounds like one of the things you guys hint at in the piece is that we're talking about a lot of the things the Trump administration is doing and a lot of the things that are happening in the FBI because of the mass deportations and a lot of the internal battles between the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence, between Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, all these sort of Trump world people. But a lot of people you talk to, they're Trump fans, they're Trump voters. Right. Some of these FBI people. Tell us more about that.

[Derek Owen]

Well, I mean, Zadie is a, you know, big proponent of Trump. He likes him. You know, he likes a lot of the stuff that he's doing. I think, in a way, I mean, Zadie's such an iconoclast. You know, he's such a unique individual. He. He probably kind of. There's a little bit of. Kind of sees a little bit of that. You know, it's somebody who cuts against the grain. But I think the thing that, you know, is of concern. I mean, when you get to some of these matter, things that really matter for national security. Right. You know, we're not talking about some of these, like, loopy things that Patel might be doing or whether they matter or don't matter. I mean, this is like, you know, life and death, you know, war winning, war stopping stuff.

[Ross Schneiderman]

We're not talking about pull ups here, you know.

[Derek Owen]

Right, right. So, yeah, they care a lot about it. They want to. They want to spotlight on it. And like, you know, with this question of priorities, which was such an issue in terms of the dysfunction in the 90s, you know, do we have the same priorities now? You know, is. Is counterintelligence still a top priority for the Bureau because it was, you know, forever counterterrorism number one, counterintelligence number two.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Are we returning to the years, you know, the pre 911 years where, you know, as Frank Montoya, one of our sources told us counterintelligence was considered the rubber gun squad. You know, that was the place they were great, obviously, counterintelligence agents, but it was kind of seen as less sexy. Was a place where you sent the new guys or the guys you didn't know what to do with, and that was the reputation that had to be transformed and reverting Back to that era would be a disaster for the FBI. So when. When Derek was talking about this story with me, it was kind of. It was kind of a difficult story because it's a process story and process and reform. And honestly, they can be kind of boring sometimes, but they're really important.

[Ben Parker]

And you guys made it exciting. Yeah, you guys made it exciting. Like, you have this. You have this great story. So Zaidi and a bunch of the other guys, you could read about it in this piece on the Bulwark. You can go into all the details they sell the director of the FBI and their plan. We're going to re. Centralize. We're going to create a hub in headquarters in Washington, D.C. to coordinate these spy cases so that as these people are moving from state to state, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, we can cooperate with the whole government. We can cooperate between field offices. That's their whole plan. And they have to sell it to the people who actually implement it, which is the heads of the 56 FBI field offices around the country. So this is just such a great quote that you guys highlight in there. They call in not their biggest allies in the Bureau, but the people they expect to be their biggest opponents, right? And Zadie's up there, and he's making his pitch. And what is their biggest opponent? And especially agent named Matthews? What does he say? Because I just love this moment.

[Derek Owen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Zady, he's got the pitch. He's winding up. He's talking about terrorism. Now, that'll kill you in a second, like a heart attack. But there's this other cancer. And, you know, he's a. You know, people like Favreau's associates says that. He says, like, I've. I've seen him give that pitch, you know, a thousand times, and he slays every time. You know, that. That was kind of part of Zadie's thing is he could really communicate this stuff, right? And so at the. At the end of it, he's starting to say, okay, this is the stuff we're going to do. And Matthews is like. And everybody's like, oh, boy, here's this crusty old guy who thinks counterintelligence is just a bunch of eggheads and losers and never gets anything done, and we don't even need it. What's it for? And he says, you know, hey, Dave, if all this you're talking about is true, why the. Are you. Aren't you in there pounding on Mueller's desk asking for more resources? And Z's like, you're right. I should be.

[Ben Parker]

That's a good point.

[Ross Schneiderman]

And then, and then, and then he did, and, and, and he got it. And, and, you know, it's like the old, you know, cliche. You get what you pay for. Right. And I think what's important about watching this process and the sausage being made is, like, so often we look at the institutions in our government, and we're at this point where, you know, people are, like, clamoring for this radical change. Both, you know, on the right, what you're seeing with Trump is very radical. And then you have some people on the far left who are looking for a radical change in different ways. And I think a lot of people are like, folks at the Bulwark are kind of stuck being the institutionalists. And it's like, how do you, how do you argue for things to be better while being like. But we're not saying this. Everything to say exactly the same. Like, that's not what we're saying. We're saying, like, let's not throw out every good thing about the American government as we try to make these changes. And this story to us was like a perfect bulwark story because it's a window into that, into those changes and into that process and, like, how to create important changes while, like, not throwing out all the things that are already working. And we're at this inflection point right now with what's happening in the FBI. Like, it's almost like all our sources were like, it's like Groundhog Day all over again. Because what Zani had to go up against after he was able to sell this plan to the FBI is they have to go and sell it to Congress.

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[Ross Schneiderman]

Honey, this is it.

[Ben Parker]

Shot clock winding down, trailing by two.

[Ross Schneiderman]

When you can't miss the last shot and neither can he. Don't take slow for an answer.

[Derek Owen]

If Esprello shoots, switch. Good to see it, Charlie.

[Ross Schneiderman]

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[Ben Parker]

What went through your head on the last shot?

[Ross Schneiderman]

It all happened so fast. Optimum. Don't take slow for an answer. Turn to ply seeoptimum.com for details. @ a time where counterintelligence was not really trusted in Washington and was also seen as like, you know, you know, not the brightest bulbs, so to speak, at the FBI. And similar things are going on today right now with how Congress, particularly Representative Crawford, is championing a bill to basically strip the FBI of its counterintelligence function, which is the exact same thing that happened in this time period that we're talking about. So the parallels are very.

[Ben Parker]

Clear. Yeah. So let's talk about this. There are basically two patterns you get to in the piece about sort of problems from the past coming back. And one of them we talked about is that the FBI just isn't focused on this mission. It's not focused on counterintelligence anymore. We know not only the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Cubans, and even some of our allies are spying in America as feverishly and intensely as they ever have before. And instead, for the first time ever, you have FBI agents out on the streets enforcing immigration law, which is not something the FBI has ever done. You have these guys who are highly trained experts in how Chinese spies operate, how Russian spies operate, and they're off like on the streets rounding people up. The other issue you guys bring up is that the FBI has always been America's premier counterintelligence agency. Right. The rest of the intelligence community, all the other agencies have the sort of internal counterintelligence shops, but the FBI's are the ones who actually put the handcuffs on the bad guy. And now the proposal is to take that responsibility and place it under the Director of National Intelligence. So, Derek, if you could talk a little bit about why people think that's a good idea and why people think that's a bad idea, what are the arguments for and against.

[Derek Owen]

That? Yeah, I mean, you kind of Broke it down. I think there's a little bit more nuance to like, a lot of these things, right? You know, even in terms of like the immigration thing, it's like, well, you know, as far as what the actual man hours or resources or how that breaks down, like, we don't know. But certainly if, if, if, if some of this data from Warner's office or if some of these things that we've heard talking to people who recently left the Bureau or if people have contact with people in the Bureau are true. Well, it is really important that we ask the questions, right? I mean, that's, you know, as far as the, the DNI piece, I probably couldn't speak too well to the argument for it, but I think the argument is against it is like you're taking something. So counterintelligence. Domestically is the FBI's purview, foreign is, is a CIA. But domestically, if we're talking about moving that authority, you're adding an extra layer of bureaucracy and you're adding, you know, you're removing the actual decision making from the people that are on the ground that are doing it. And the point from these guys are making is you want to have that there in the Bureau, in the agency that does it because you want to be able to be tactical, strategic, you need to be agile. And if you're, and if you're adding that extra thing or like removing the authority or, you know, in any way sort of diminishing that capacity, you're making the, the what is already a very, very difficult, difficult job that much.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Harder. And I think the counter argument that, that Crawford's office would make is that, you know, you have all these different intelligence agencies and the DNI is already sort of like, I don't know, Derek, could you describe them as like the project manager of the intelligence agencies? You know, they're mostly doing like, coordination. They're not actually like hunting spies, but they're working with all the, the military and the CIA and others. So the, the idea would be not that they, they're suddenly out there necessarily making arrests and, but like, they would set the strategy for the FBI. They would be in charge of that sort of strategic and sort of implementation function of it. The FBI's counterargument would be like, well, that could be a slippery slope that adds another layer of bureaucracy. And do we want this intelligence agency that, you know, isn't really tied to the Justice Department at all and the, you know, the restrictions laid out by the Constitution, you know, more involved in our intelligence agencies? Like, there's a, you know, a long history of the FBI, you know, violating people's civil liberties, doing all these things. We, you know, remember the, The. The. The Palmer Raids and the, you know, from 1919, you know, into the 1920s, where, you know, leftist radicals were rounded up without evidence. You know, you. There's COINTELPRO in the 1960s in which anti war protesters and civil rights leaders were basically spied on and manipulated by the FBI. And that's pretty ugly history. And I think it's a history. It's a history that people in the Bureau today take very seriously, and they don't want a return to that. And so anything that feels like it could be, maybe even headed remotely in that direction, people are very wary of. And I don't think that's the direction that Crawford's office or the DNI would want to go in. I just want to make that clear. But people are concerned about those civil liberties.

[Ben Parker]

Matters. Yeah. You guys broke a little bit of news in this story, which is mostly history, but there had been reporting over the last couple of months that the office of the dni, Tulsi Gabbard's office, was sort of pushing this reform and saying, like, hey, we should really be in charge of counterintelligence. It shouldn't be located in the FBI. We should be overseeing it. And when you guys contacted her and said, hey, what do you think of this bill that does exactly that? It's just past the committee in the House, they said, oh, no, we don't. We don't support that. We're actually. We're actually not in favor of this at all. So we'll see if that ends up going.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Anywhere. But it's. I don't know if that's breaking news so much as, like, being gaslit. It's unclear to.

[Derek Owen]

Me. We'll have to.

[Ross Schneiderman]

See. But, yeah, but we were very. We were very surprised by that response. And when I asked Gabbard's spokesperson to point me to examples in the media in which they said, have said from the beginning that we are against this, you know, because the Trump administration is apparently against this, I did not receive a response. So I think that's also very.

[Ben Parker]

Telling. This article you guys wrote is super long and super detailed. You know, I just. I want to mention that there's another great spy story that we don't even have time to get into here, which is Chi Mac. And you guys tell the story of this Chinese spy who's selling secrets.

[Derek Owen]

That.

[Ben Parker]

Selling. He was sending secrets back to Beijing. And, and how the FBI sneaked into his house in the middle of the night and found little slips of paper where he had been writing down secrets and nailed him. I mean, they convicted him. It was great. But I also know there's a ton of stuff that did not make it into the piece that got lost in the cutting room floor. So if you guys could each just share one thing you learned, one thing you heard that didn't make.

[Ross Schneiderman]

It.

[Ben Parker]

What are the little tidbits that you wish had made it into the piece? Ross, we can start with.

[Ross Schneiderman]

You. Oh man. Well, you know, it's funny. I think I got really obsessed with the sort of 90s era technological bungles that the FBI made. I mean, Derek had to like keep cutting this out every time I tried to keep adding it in before we even filed. But you know, Tim Weiner has all these great anecdotes in his book about like how many different steps you needed to send an email when you were at the FBI pre 9 11. It was like, it was like something like this said like you couldn't get like external Internet, like people were buying their own computers and using them in the office. It was just, it was, it was the most hilarious stuff if it wasn't so, you know, fucking serious considering, you know, the importance of technology at the time. So we kind of cut a lot of that and consolidated it. Just kind of noting that at the time that technology and digital technology was becoming so important when, when Louis Free was the head of the FBI, the FBI was not moving ahead the way it should have been. It was sort of ant. It was sort of like, you know, a bunch of Luddites basically. So that's one thing that I found kind of fascinating, hilarious, alarming, that didn't quite get the detailed treatment. But if you want to read more about it, Tim Weiner's book is a great place to start. It's called.

[Ben Parker]

Enemies. Yeah, I hope it's a lot better now. I hope they can send emails. Geez, Derek, what about.

[Derek Owen]

You? If you'll admit, I got two.

[Ben Parker]

Things. Yeah, sure, let's.

[Derek Owen]

Get. The first one is Sadie talked about this poster that he had. And I think this goes to the whole kind of like a lot of the rhetoric about like, you know, the FBI, like oh, you know, let's go be cops and we need to, you know, focus on crime. And, and he had this poster and it basically said, you know, burglaries affect individuals, bank robberies affects communities, counterintelligence affects the world. And it's like a Mushroom cloud, right? This is like this speaks to the stakes. And so when we were, you know, kind of trying to visualize that, that's kind of how we started working with this opening and this whole layered attack and all this stuff. There's a guy named Paul Joyle who's done a lot of work in terms of drones, very involved in the Ukraine thing. There's a link to his, one of his 22, 2022 article about the weaponization of commercial drones. So that it was, you know, that whole thing and then kind of some of the stuff from the Rand report was, hey, what is this kind of like worst case scenario look like, what are we talking about? What are the stakes? I mean, I think I wish we had a chance to include that poster because it's just so great. But you know, we, we wanted to do the updated version for 2025. The other thing which is, you know, was always interesting to me was how, you know, you, a lot of it talked about this intelligence reform, you know, in 2004 in the wake of the 911 Commission. And there was a lot of emphasis on, you know, we need the FBI to do better, better intelligence there. We need them to become a member of the intelligence community. They need to become essentially an intelligence agency. And what Zadian company and even before that, McQueenie and Bryant and that's, you know, was all putting into place were kind of the, some of the groundwork for that was already being laid. And one of the things that Favro talks about is like this is like a big battleship and it takes a while to turn it. But certainly I think one of the things that was, you know, the FBI set up an intelligence directorate when they started getting like after the IRTPA came out, Favreau was named the head of that. And what was interesting is he didn't, in his view, he wasn't really a guy that would have been considered to be an assistant director. But because he had been so involved in this domain idea that Mahler picked him because that was the key stuff. Everything that they were doing in domain flowed right into them. The intelligence director. These are some of the missing pieces of history that I think just beginning to kind of like peel apart.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Here. Wait, but Derek, are you going to tell the Halloween story or what? I mean, you gotta tell the Halloween.

[Ben Parker]

Story. Someone's gonna tell the.

[Derek Owen]

Halloween. Okay, so, so, so yeah, the Halloween story. This is, this is, this was in the. When I was out in Montana, they told me this story and always stuck with me because, you know, one of the things I got to do with this domain program is, you know, it's all about sources and. And getting, you know, knowing the mind of the enemy. But a lot of that is we. We have to. We have to build awareness in our institutions and, you know, the DOD and contractors and academic institutions. Right, because, you know, these. This is where a lot of the. The technology that goes into our military comes from. So Dave, I guess he. He thinks it was about 2004. I mean, he's on the road a lot, you know, talking about this sort of stuff. So he's at UC Berkeley. Happens to be Halloween. He's. He's coming from this talk that he was given to the School of journalism just because he's just trying to get everybody's awareness up on the subject. And he's walking across, you know, campus, and it's, you know, FBI kind of off the rack suit. All the kids are like, you know, probably high on, like, whatever it is they're dosing or smoking or whatever, all dressed up in their Halloween. You know, it's UC Berkeley and all these kind of crazy liberal kids, and they're like, hey, what's. What's what. What's your costume supposed to be? And he's like, well, I'm dressed as an FBI agent. You know, just kind.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Of. It's an.

[Ben Parker]

Easy. It's an easy.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Costume. It's an easy costume. It didn't take a lot of work, you know, so that was a lot of the stuff that we sort of left on the cutting room floor. And I think what it really speaks to is, like, if you listen to Kash Patel, before he gets. Before he becomes FBI director, one of the things he says is, like, he wants to take FBI agents, send them out over the country, get them out of Washington, go be cops, forget about all this intelligence nonsense. So essentially, what he's saying is all those reforms that, like, the Bureau did for, like, 20 years, again, not saying that they're perfect, not saying that they shouldn't be changed. In fact, they need to be updated for the modern AI era. Let's get those out of here. And.

[Ben Parker]

That'S.

[Derek Owen]

Or. Or at least the rhetoric is we're not focused on.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Them. Right, right. Fair.

[Derek Owen]

Fair. You know, I mean, I mean, as to what's actually going on, I.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Think, yeah, they are still doing counterintelligence. It's just a question of how much time, how much focus are they spending on it, and what are their priorities. You know, like, Ben, if I were to tell you that every two weeks you were instead of, you know, editing 9,000 word stories for the Bulwark, you're gonna just go and deliver Amazon packages for a whole day. I think that's gonna affect your job in a serious way. So, you know, in our case, it just means somebody doesn't get a hot take. In the case of the Bureau, it might mean that you're not catching a spy or stopping America's enemies from stealing our.

[Ben Parker]

Secrets. Yeah, it is definitely a warning lights are blinking red kind of piece. Again, it's on the bulwark.com, the FBI spent a generation relearning how to catch spies. Then came Kash Patel by Derek Owen and Raj Schneiderman. Guys, thank you so much for writing the piece. Thanks for talking to me about it. And we are only able to bring you these deeply reported, really interesting deep dives because of the support of our Bulwark plus members. So if you're watching this and it's not your first Bulwark video or you're going to watch a bunch of other Bulwark videos and you like the Bulwark, consider going to bulwark+bulwark.com becoming a Bulwark+ member. Also, like the video, subscribe to the channel, all that good stuff. Derek Ross, thanks so much for chatting with.

[Ross Schneiderman]

Me. Thanks.

[Derek Owen]

Ben. Thank you.

[Ross Schneiderman]

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