There are times in the Trump era where you sort of know something, intuitively, but then when an actual report comes out putting in black and white, it’s especially jarring because it’s even worse than you thought. That’s how I felt reading Sarah Fitzpatrick’s report in The Atlantic of panic within the FBI resulting from Director Kash Patel’s alleged drinking habits. Drawing from interviews with over two dozen people – not only current and former FBI agents, but staff at other intelligence agencies, members of Congress, and “hospitality industry workers” (!), among others – Fitzpatrick paints a picture of an agency literally passed out at the wheel. It did not take long for Patel to fire back against Fitzpatrick and The Atlantic with a defamation lawsuit, an attempt to protect his job as much as his reputation. The lawsuit is unlikely to prevail, but that won’t change the bigger concern: The claims in the article, if true, pose an alarming national security threat to the United States.
I won’t rehash Fitzpatrick’s article in too much detail (it is definitely worth the read if you haven’t already done so), but it suggests a level of incompetence and negligence that is astounding, even for this administration. For instance, the article claims that early in his tenure meetings would have to be pushed to later in the day because of Patel’s “alcohol-fueled nights” and that he is “known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication” at some very specific establishments in D.C. The detail that became most viral was the report that Patel’s security detail had to request “breaching equipment” (in my mind I have a battering ram, but there are other ways to breach a door) because the director was allegedly nonresponsive behind locked doors. Needless to say, the article notes alarm of people across the government, considering that the FBI is understaffed as it responds to numerous domestic and international threats, not to mention a war. (The attrition of agents, of course, is due to the firings and resignations that have happened in the wake of Patel becoming the director.)
The lawsuit against The Atlantic, in which Patel is claiming $250 million in damages, faces an uphill battle. Because Patel is a public figure, he must show 1) that the statements in the article are false, and 2) that the magazine acted with “actual malice,” which is defined as acting with a “reckless disregard for the truth.” You might remember that Fox News, which repeatedly aired false claims about Dominion Voting Systems in the aftermath of the 2020 election despite knowing they were false, met this high bar. But Fitzpatrick’s article is a far (far) cry from Fox News. Not only does she rely on a large number of sources, she also used standard journalistic practice to reach out to Patel himself for comment, and published his denial. (“Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court—bring your checkbook.”) As for falsity, Fitzpatrick says that she’s been “inundated” with even more corroboration since Patel filed his lawsuit, and The Intercept just published Patel’s own letters to the Florida state bar addressing episodes of excessive drinking from college and law school. And, of course, we’ve all seen the footage of Patel chugging brewskies with the U.S. hockey team. Discovery could be really fun, though the suit will probably get tossed before then.
The suit against The Atlantic isn’t Patel’s first defamation rodeo. Last June, he sued former FBI agent and MSNOW contributor Frank Figliuzzi, for stating on air that Patel had “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building.” Patel claimed that Figliuzzi had “fabricated a specific lie” about him, but the judge in that case disagreed. Just last week, Judge George Hanks of the U.S. district court for the Southern District of Texas dismissed the lawsuit, stating that Figliuzzi’s comments were “rhetorical hyperbole” and that his “statement, when taken in context, cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel.” (I.e., that no reasonable person would actually believe that Patel literally spent more time at nightclubs than at the office. I mean true, but then again….)
Whatever happens in the courts is really secondary, though, to the larger problem. Those of you who have been reading my work for a while know that I often invoke the mnemonic used by the FBI when it conducts background checks: CARLA F. BAD. To recap, this stands for: Character; Associates; Reputation; Loyalty; Ability; Finances; Bias; Alcohol/Addictions; and Drugs. The FBI’s Adjudicative Desk Reference, which agents use to assess what kinds of behaviors might make someone unsuitable for a position of public trust, has this to say about alcohol abuse (which it distinguishes from the equally problematic alcohol dependence): “Alcohol abuse may be part of a pattern of impulsive, immature, sensation-seeking, hostile, or antisocial behavior that raises serious concern about a subject’s reliability, trustworthiness, or judgment.” Hmmm. It also states that alcohol (ab)use is a serious security concern when it creates “work problems such as absences, reduced productivity, unreliability, carelessness, or unsafe habits.” Hmmm.
The desk reference also notes a correlation between alcohol abuse and national security vulnerabilities. It observes that that alcohol abuse is disproportionately represented among convicted spies than among the general population: Out of 24 American spies convicted of espionage (including Aldrich Ames, which it includes as a case study), twenty had been drinkers, eleven were heavy drinkers, and nine increased their drinking once they began their espionage activities. Obviously, just because someone abuses alcohol doesn’t mean they will become a spy. However, because excessive drinking reflects “irresponsibility and a lack of control” and also may cause excess and poor judgment in other areas adversaries may look to exploit – like finances (i.e. debt) – it is precisely the kind of behavior that can, standing alone, be the basis for denying access to sensitive information or a position of public trust.
These concerns are, of course, exponentially greater when we are talking about the Director of the FBI, who has access to the most sensitive information across the entire intelligence community, especially during a time of war. But perhaps that won’t be a concern for too much longer. President Trump is not a drinker – his older brother, Fred, died at a young age after struggling with alcoholism. Fitzpatrick writes that Trump was already displeased with Patel’s beer-chugging spectacle at the Olympics, and called to tell him so – which might be why Patel reportedly thinks he is on thin ice. One of the incidents detailed in The Atlantic article is when Patel was temporarily locked out of a government system – according to Fitzpatrick, he had a “freak out,” believing he had lost access because he had been fired, suggesting that he knows he is on thin ice. Patel’s effort to fight back so vehemently against the claims made by The Atlantic may not only be an effort to save his reputation, but also his job.
