The Empty Suit
Shortly after the mass shootings at Brown University, an admired MIT professor was murdered not 50 miles away. Were the incidents connected? That question immediately screamed out to me, as a retired FBI agent whose long career was centered on the supervision and evaluation of such investigations. Now the question is sharper: Could the murder of Professor Nuno Loureiro have been avoided?
If I were an after-the-fact supervisor assigned to evaluate the FBI’s performance in this case, that would be my overriding question. I’d start by asking: What did FBI managers know, and when did they know it? On the late afternoon of December 13, after the murders of Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and the shooting of nine others in Providence, Rhode Island, the authorities were on notice that a killer was at large. We now know that two days later the same killer was responsible for the murder of Professor Loureiro. We also know that in the early morning hours of December 14, FBI agents raided a motel not far from Brown and detained a person that FBI Director Kash Patel soon identified, with a post on his personal X account, as a prime “person of interest.” The impression was clear: Rhode Island residents could breathe a little easier. Whether residents did so or not, the FBI’s law enforcement partners seemed ready to believe that the legendary Bureau had its man. The pressure eased.
It was not true. The motel suspect was quickly cleared and released, never having been charged. Patel’s intrusive announcement, by any measure, was premature. It very likely gave the actual shooter the reassurance he needed to lie in wait and make his escape to the scene of his next murder. The director of the FBI had made a crucial mistake.
It is not certain that this early FBI-orchestrated misdirection led directly to the subsequent murder, but any supervising evaluator of this investigation would be bound to ask if it did. And to ask, therefore, if the fatal error emanated from FBI headquarters itself—or from Patel.
I retired in 1996 as the associate special agent in charge of the Chicago FBI Office, the culmination of a 27-year career that made me an expert in major case management. I was often an on-the-scene commander of such cases, and eventually, at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, I closely examined the records of many significant FBI investigations, inquiries that formed the basis for courses I taught to current and up-and-coming FBI managers. I emphasized again and again what I came to call the five simple rules of major case management. How would they apply in the case of the murders at Brown and Brookline? How would they apply, in particular, to the performance of Director Patel?
Rule one is simple: Stay in your lane. When investigators deviate from their assigned and expected roles, the roles of partners are undercut. In order to evaluate progress being made in investigations, managers must be able to assess and control the separate interests and obligations of the investigators—from the most senior level down. Patel’s premature social media post from far-off Washington pre-empted the field commander’s responsibility for any public pronouncement at that stage in the investigation—a violation of this first simple rule.
The second rule is related: All law enforcement is local. That applies less to on-the-scene investigators than to senior FBI managers, decidedly including those based at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. State attorneys general, US attorneys, local police chiefs, and other federal investigative agencies have investigatory roles that are unique to them and must be respected. As much as FBI HQ may like to control or pre-empt such colleagues, it can’t be done and should not be attempted. Investigative priorities must be protected at the local level, and that especially applies to the release of information. Public interventions about unfolding developments emanating from FBI HQ can not only insult law enforcement partners, but can diminish the supervisory capacity of the on-scene FBI agents in charge. Patel, in ignoring this rule, showed that he does not understand the first requirement of a proper investigation.
To emphasize the point, I repeated it in my third rule, centering exclusively on the dissemination of case-related information. It can be summarized as: Be very careful here. Stay with the facts that have already been verified. Do not succumb to pressure—whether from the public or the press or competing law enforcement agencies—to be the first to deliver information, especially if it is incomplete. This rule primarily applies to those on the scene because they are best able to determine what particulars need to be released, and when. The spotlight must remain fixed upon the local scene until the case is resolved. Again, the question goes to Patel: Was he interested in advancing the case or in hogging that spotlight?
The fourth rule is also simple, but comes with complications: Don’t give partners reason to mistrust the Bureau. The on-scene FBI agent in charge needs to tread carefully in establishing the team’s role in the investigation, because not all cases require the FBI to be the lead agency. But once reasons emerged to suspect connections between the Brown University shootings and the murder of the MIT professor, FBI dominance was essential and obvious. Multiple jurisdictions for events occurring in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts required the close coordination that defines the function of the FBI.
The fifth rule involves directing available resources: Don’t stop until the evidence is conclusive. An initial sense that authorities “have their man,” however welcome, can never be enough, especially if it turns out to be wrong. Lesser targets and leads of the investigation must be actively and continually pursued to their end points or until the case is absolutely and definitively concluded. A decisive proclamation from Washington, even if couched in less-than-absolute terms, can carry the weight of such conclusiveness—and in this case, for a crucial period, seems to have done just that. How can the ability of on-scene FBI commanders to maintain the focus and resolve needed to pursue unfinished leads not be undercut by the public posturing of an FBI director famous for firing subordinates who play by rules not written by him?
The five rules boil down to that first one: Stay in your lane. The case of the Brown University shooting and MIT professor’s assassination epitomizes the way in which this crucial note of FBI investigative culture has been subverted, and Patel’s irresponsible interventions via social media are prima facie evidence of that. But the rot is deeper, and is reflected in the major changes that have been made to the institution over the last year.
Unlike other federal law enforcement agencies, the FBI was extremely centralized in the overall management of its responsibilities. This did not mean that HQ ran field investigations—they supported them. The director of the FBI presided over the various HQ divisions that divided up the host of FBI responsibilities. But the bread and butter of the organization was always found in the field. Good HQ managers recognized their role as one of supporting field operations: “What do you need?” Washington would ask, and then would answer, “I’ll get it for you.” But now that’s been reversed, with Washington asking, in effect, “How can you help me burnish the reputation on which my hold on power depends?”
The latest incident bridging three states is evidence of that. When the FBI director moves out of role and becomes the FBI spokesperson, he puts the entire project of a crime solution at risk. Once a high-anxiety case is apparently “solved” by the arrest of a “person of interest,” what is the public to make of the revelation that that person (with a now sullied reputation) was of no interest whatsoever? What of FBI trustworthiness going forward?
Patel has presided over nothing less than the diminishment, if not destruction, of the FBI’s most precious resource.
But this is not a one-off with Patel. Recall his actions in the Charlie Kirk assassination. In that case, too, Patel made a social media post declaring that “the subject for the horrific shooting” of Kirk was “now in custody.” It was not true. For that matter, why did it fall to Patel to cryptically comment on reports of FBI agents searching former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s residence? Why did it fall to FBI headquarters to prematurely announce arrests of Michigan-based “terrorists”? Not to mention the confusion surrounding the Epstein files and what the FBI knows and doesn’t know? What happened to “The FBI in peace and war?”
When a manager, up to and including the FBI director, strays from the well-defined proper lane to intrude on another, it suggests a lack of confidence in the person whose role is being pre-empted. Yet how can this particular FBI director have confidence in his subordinates after his own purges of many of the Bureau’s most experienced and qualified personnel over the last year? Patel has presided over nothing less than the diminishment, if not destruction, of the FBI’s most precious resource: its credibility as an investigative agency worthy of the trust of the American people.
It is impossible to say that Patel’s premature intervention in the Brown University investigation led, even indirectly, to the murder of Professor Loureiro, but the upsetting question must linger. For me, indeed, it screams. It puts me in mind of an incident from a case I reviewed at Quantico years ago. Agents in a local field office felt strongly that, in the course of an important investigation, their supervising agent had crossed out of his proper lane and into theirs, leading to damaging consequences. In response, those agents carefully arranged on a coat hanger a business suit, jacket, and trousers, and they hung it on the agent’s office door. Their meaning was clear. No matter what he was wearing, the senior agent was “an empty suit.”
I believe that the FBI will weather the current crises. The organization is more than one person, and its mission is too important for the American public to let it be destroyed. But I also believe that Director Kash Patel has shown himself to be an empty suit.
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