The FBI has reportedly stepped up its use of polygraph lie-detector tests on bureau staff, as Director Kash Patel allegedly hunts for agents who have criticized his leadership or leaked to the news media.
Sources told The New York Times that dozens of FBI personnel had been questioned. That includes a senior employee, asked if they had said anything negative about Patel, and another who was subject to an interview as the bureau sought to discover who told journalists about Patel’s unusual request for a service weapon.
The lie detector tests, the sources said, marked a break from precedent at the FBI, where such tests were more commonly used against those thought to have betrayed the country or to have committed major offenses.
Michael Feinberg, who was a former top agent at the FBI office in Norfolk, Virginia, until the spring, claimed he was threatened with a polygraph over his friendship with Peter Strzok, a counterintelligence official involved in the FBI’s probe into the Trump-Russia allegations and who was later fired for sending negative messages about Trump.
Feinberg resigned and never took the polygraph test.
Referring to the FBI director and his deputy, Feinberg wrote in Lawfare: “Under Patel and Bongino, subject matter expertise and operational competence are readily sacrificed for ideological purity and the ceaseless politicization of the work force.”
The FBI declined to comment on the Times report, given that it involved “personnel matters and internal deliberations.”
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Critics of Patel, whose book Government Gangsters featured an appendix containing an “enemies list,” feared he could politicize the agency, which was a frequent target of criticism from President Donald Trump.
The FBI has also reportedly launched a criminal investigations into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey after a referral from current CIA chief John Ratcliffe, thought to be tied to the Obama-and Trump-era officials’ involvement in investigations into the president.
