Eight oh five, the fifty five KRCD Talk station. A very happy Friday to you, Brian Thomas, wishing everyone very happy Friday and happy as I can be to welcome with the fifty five KRC Morning Show Chris Pihote. And what an impressive resume Chris is got. He served as a chief executive for FBI Science and Technology Programs. In his earlier career, he was with the US government senior executive service official. Retired from the FBI after twenty five years.
And I just mentioned part of the FBI Science and Technology program he was a one point director of the US government twenty four hour Global Terrorist Screening Center, also Special Agent in charge of the FBI's Buffalo, New York Field office. In his early career, he worked on programs in areas regarding counter terrorism, counterintelligence, technical programs, physical and
informational security, weapons of mass destruction, intelligence collection. I could go on, we wouldn't be able to talk about his book Wanted the FBI. I once knew how to restore faith in the world's premier law enforcement agency. Chris pyhotame to the Morning Show. It's a pleasure to have you on.
Oh, it's a pleasure to be with you this morning, and thanks for the opportunity to visit with.
You and your audience.
Oh and I'm sure they are excited to hear from you. And the name of the book I think suggests it all how to restore faith, suggesting of course that a lot of us have lost faith in the FBI. And I'm going to get your impressions where you think it went wrong. But as I observe from the notes and information, somewhere after September eleventh, that's when the problems kicked in.
How do you connect September eleventh and how has the direction of the FBI deteriorated leading to you writing about this in the book Wanted the FBI.
I once knew.
Well after nine to eleven there are some obvious, of course, shortfalls that allowed that tragedy to happen. So the FBI made a very violent shift in its organizational operations, moving from a traditional law enforcement kind of the cops and robbers organization that it was into being a national security focused intelligence organization domestic security related function that it became.
And as all things in the government do, they start with good intention and then move into other areas of mission creep and then a lack of mission focus after a while, and what we saw was certain decisions were being made that led the FBI to becoming what we what I call corporatized. There were a lot of private sector, private sector approaches, private sector ideas brought into the FBI to change its culture after nine to eleven, and the corporatized FBI moved away from the beliefs and values and
practices that made the FBI legendary leading up to that point. Well, I think we threw out the baby with the bathwater.
Okay, I understand, and I guess you know, when I think a traditional FBI, you know, going back to you know, the television program and busting people for you know, RICO violations, organized crime and all those complex criminal investigations. The world has changed dramatically because of the Internet and cybersecurity, and you are an expert in cyber operations and security practices.
Is that part of the challenge the FBI faced in this culture shift, dealing with the realities of this mean, wide open and insecure systems that we have.
It was definitely a challenge.
Back when the Internet came online very quickly, we found that the Internet enhanced our lives, but it also made better bad guys and it gave them better opportunities to attack people from afar. And we saw a lot of the traditional criminal activities become enhanced and unlimited by geography and other logistics that used to limit the criminal activity and effectiveness.
So what we found and also.
Was that the national security threat environment changed with the Internet as well when it came to terrorism and counterintelligence activities. So the FBI had a lot of searching to do when it came to looking at how we're going to protect the American people while still upholding the constitutional freedoms that our society enjoys.
And it was a difficult transition.
Well, I guess it seemed to have become very politicized in you know, the the investigations of January sixth, for example, it seems to me that the entire resources of all the FBI we were turned on every single individual that happened to be in the area of the of the Capitol building during that riot. It would that have been the norm under earlier FBI times that they would spend so much time and effort to go after those folks.
No, what you saw there was the result of the last iteration of CI leadership allowing their own personal and political views to overly influence SBI operational decision making and resource allocation. Used to be where the FBI would have been very reluctant and almost unwilling to do something like that, But we've seen that cultural decline and erosion over time where the leadership was either amenable to it or unable to resist the maybe the influence of the last administration.
Well, as a lawyer, I viewed the law as the law. You know, as long as it's equally applied, it says what it is. There are crimes on the book. You go after people regardless of political stride. But is this politization that seems to have gone on, is that because of the hiring practices. Did they actually seek out and seek to hire and hire people who were of a particular political mindsets that they would embrace this.
Kind of.
I'm not I don't think it's the recruitment of new people. It was the promotion of people inside the organization who showed a I guess you can call it a likeness to the senior leadership's political views. So what you saw was all those people of like mind rising into very senior and influential positions that then pushed those ideas and practices down into the workforce.
And I suppose a frontline agent who was interested in the old school idea of just finding criminals and prosecuting bad guys. They were told and instructed by their politicized seniors that you do the job that I'm telling you to do, and they probably had no say in the matter.
Then, yeah, you have very.
Little say in what you can actually do. You accept direction and order.
And this is what I tried to explain to somebody the other day.
If you're given an order or direction that's not illegal or unsafe, you know, causing bodily harm, I mean, you're you're obligated to do what you're told on a certain level. And I said, there's a difference between being an independent investigator versus being an insubordinate investigator.
So it's a fine.
Line you walk, and people will voice their displeasure and their disagreement, but ultimately, if it's a lawful, legal order that comes from the White House to the Attorney General, from the director of the FBI, the folks are going to grit their teeth and still do their best to you know, conduct a mission and protect the American people.
And my recollection is the FBI was at least on some level involved with and sometimes inside social media suppressing speech of the certain viewpoints. Your reaction to that even happening, it seems to me to be something that should be way beyond and outside of the FBI's job to tell people what they can and cannot say on social media or direct social media companies to suppress certain types of speech or messages.
Absolutely, there was no there was no place for that. I think the relationship that the FBI has with social media is a cooperative one to identify potential threats to public safety and then work with social media to you know, to to put messaging out to people on how they can remain safe and then take care of themselves, not to suppress speech, not to target certain types of speech, whether conservative or liberal, or whatever your your flavor is.
But the FBI, and it's in its last iteration again, allowed its own personal at the leadership level, allowed its own personal ideas and beliefs to form some of those relationships that were to me unhealthy and took took us down a bad path toward that I would call almost you know, a certain level of censorship.
Now, with Cash Mattel being confirmed as the new FBI director, your reaction to the confirmation to Cash Hotel generally, and do you think he's in a position and can sort of right the ship if I can use that term again.
Sure, Well, first of all, I'd like to offer congratulations to Director Patel. I'm glad he made it through the confirmation.
Process as he did. I saw it was a It was a.
Pretty close vote, but these days, I think we received voting on these matters that roll along.
You know, political lines, So it wasn't unexpected.
As far as mister Patel's future goes, I think, you know, he's the right guy.
For right now.
He has the confidence of the Chief Executive and the Attorney General, and I think he actually wants to be part of a foundational change of the FBI, and he wants to be part of that return of the FBI to being that trusted and dependable organization that so many people counted on for decades. And you know, he wants to return the FBI to the trust of the American people.
So I think he has a good background. He understands the threat environment, that the FBI will be working in with him, and I think he's got a form a senior leadership team around him to help him make some.
Of those foundational changes. Those are one of his first orders of business.
He's got to figure out where his command and control is going to come from in the organization.
What kind of reminds me of, in some parallels with Pete Hegseth, trying to return the military to its core mission of as I boil it down, kill people, and break things the military ethos as opposed to DEI and expanding you know what, wolf policies and the like, and to that end, do you think that had a deleterious effect on the FBI those types of policies, the DEI and and focusing on things that seem totally unrelated to law enforcement.
Yeah, absolutely terribly damaging to the FBI. The FBI, in its core mission set is or to protect us from national security threats and crime problems.
That's what the FBI does.
And they're good at it when they're allowed to do it and they're given.
The proper leadership environment.
What we saw over the past four years was a series of distractions from the core mission set and we also saw again the substitution of some of the senior leadership's personal political ideas and ideologies and personal preferences versus the objective, apolitical, skilled investigative work that the FBI was known for.
Well, and you speak of national security threats and crime, I'm rather concerned, and of course I don't. I'm not alone in my concerns. With the last multiple years of open borders. We know of significant numbers of Chinese military age. Man not picking on the race of China, but we know if they're here and they got here, they probably
had the approval of the Chinese Communist Party. And therein as the challenge, we know that CCP has hacked into all kinds of our operations, both in private industry but also into the federal government. You're an expert in security matters like cyber operations and security practices. Do you view this as significant a threat? Is at least I perceive it to be, And if so, what can we possibly do about it?
It is an absolutely significant threat. I mean, we have allowed a threat environment to form and intensify over the past four years like we've never seen before. And you know, the last administration had certain I think ideological or political views that they allowed this to happen, and now the American people will suffer for it. The FBI has to
take a look at the current threat environment. We can't be fighting the last threat, the last threatn environment like the military gets accused of fighting.
The last war.
We can't be stuck in the last threat environment.
We have to look at what we have now.
When it comes to international adversaries and opponents versus the internal threat that is now within our borders. You said the unchecked migration of unvetted personnel. These people have come to the United States, some seeking a better life, some looking to be here for I would say, reasons that
are not good for our communities. And the FBI has to reallocate its resources, reprioritize its operations, and look at its current partnerships with other federal, state, and local law enforcement to go out and find these people and quantify the threats to our communities and keep everybody safe.
Indeed, and you know, it's just I sit here and I look at my watch, going, well, it's just a moment in time away for a sleeper cell to launch its nefarious activities, and I have to I mean, I feel just as confident as I can be that part of the illegal immigration population are here for the purposes of launching nefarious operations like terrorist actions. You're just waiting for the green light.
Yeah, I mean, I think you have a group of folks, you know, factions of people who may be here for something like that, but you also have factions of people who are here simply to commit crime, and they're here to damage the safety and security of our communities. The
United States is a relatively soft target. These people come from hard, hard lives, and they come from rough places, and the United States has always been a fairly high trust, high security community, and they come from different places that we're not used to certain behaviors and activities, and I think we're going to find that the American people are going to be subjected to increase crime, violence, and possible, as you said, terrorism, Not to mention the national security
counterintelligence espionage activities that largely go on quietly but also damage our national security and welfare.
Well be up to the FI maybe perhaps engage in more widespread use of RICO to go after some of these criminal enterprises, like the gangs, for example, if they're coordinating efforts two or more people and further and so of a criminal activity you're in rico and that's going to subject into some serious prosecutorial possibilities there.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And also the you know, the administration has just designated certain international crime international gangs as terrorist organizations, which opens up another avenue for use of certain investigative and legal tools. So the FBI's got to also make sure that it's not overly concerned, which it has been, about offending people. Oh, just like other organizations, they're worried about offending people and notwith keeping the American people safe.
And I think that was a mistake. Amen.
Christopher Plihotel, the name of the book wanted the FBI, I once knew how to restore faith in the world's premier law enforcement agency a guide to do that. So I gotta draw from the name of the book and our conversation today. You do have at least some measure of hope and this this thing can get turned around and they can get back to their core mission.
Absolutely, I think there are people, there are enough people.
With any FBI who will respond.
Very favorably to a proper principled leadership environment that focuses on upholding the Constitution, protecting the American people, and being the SBI of old. And there are enough people who are waiting for that environment to come back. They'll snap back into place, and they're going to give the people back the FBI that we all deserve and need.
Chris, I'm so happy we're able to end on a little dose of optimism at the end.
There.
Get a copy of the book.
You can get it.
I put your book up at fifty five KC dot com on my blog page so people can easily buy a copy of an all the courage them to do that. Chris, thanks for your time today, Thanks for writing the book, and I appreciate your, uh well, your work for the American people throughout your entire career.