Cancel Culture at the FBI Threatens Our Safety

The FBI should not impose ideological purity tests on its agents. The practice of canceling agents who don’t satisfy ideological purity undermines the FBI’s effectiveness and integrity. The recent resignation of former Assistant Special Agent in Charge Michael Feinberg highlights a pattern where experienced personnel are being driven out of the Bureau on mere suspicion of political unreliability. This cancel culture is being driven by Dan Bongino and Kash Patel. They are sacrificing subject matter expertise and operational competence for ideological purity by ceaselessly politicizing the workforce. Mr. Feinberg’s career with the FBI was canceled because he was friends with someone who had appeared on Kash Patel’s enemies list. He was told he would be given a polygraph exam about his friends and forced to submit to a struggle session where he would be expected to grovel, beg forgiveness, and pledge loyalty. Struggle sessions didn’t end well for the Red Chinese under Mao and they won’t fare any better under Patel. Feinberg was the principal investigative architect of the indictment of Huawei Technologies. The unit he oversaw contributed to the FCC's decision to bar China Mobile a license to operate in the United States. He also supervised a case against a Zoom executive who assisted China’s Ministry of Public Security in its campaign against Chinese political dissidents in the United States. His cancellation illustrates the cost of politically driven decisions. The FBI and, for the Department of Justice and intelligence community as a whole have been forcing out a wide range of experienced personnel needed to protect our nation. And we are consequently less safe. Operational focus is shifting from critical national security threats and being wasted on minor immigration status offenses and press release-ready roundups. The FBI should be focused on protecting our nation from genuine threats, not on enforcing political litmus tests or demanding ideological purity from its dedicated professionals. Investigate and halt these ideological purity tests within the FBI and other intelligence agencies. Stop the cancel culture. Our national security depends on an impartial, merit-based, and expert-driven law enforcement and intelligence community.