Kash Patel gutted FBI counterintelligence team tasked with tracking Iranian threats days before US strikes, sources say
Just days before the United States launched a major military operation in Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring...
The New York Sun first reported that employees from the CI-12 unit had been targeted in last week’s firings.
Iranian threats
In Trump’s first term, CI-12 was instrumental in tracking potential threats from the Iranian regime in retaliation for the 2020 drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, then-leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.
They were ousted for a simple reason: Each was involved in the investigation of President Donald Trump’s alleged retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
As a result, Patel hamstrung the Washington, DC-based FBI counterintelligence unit, known as CI-12, which handles cases ranging from mishandling of classified documents to tracking foreign spies operating on US soil.
The dismissals have added to concern inside the Justice Department and FBI that counterterrorism and intelligence investigations in the wake of the military operation in Iran could be hampered by a mass exodus of national security experts, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
And like the CI-12 unit, several senior officials were ousted or reassigned because of their involvement in Trump-related investigations, sources say. The removals have cost the Justice Department and FBI decades of combined experience in identifying the types of threats that sources say could appear in the wake of Operation Epic Fury.
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