Copyright The New York Times
At a secret gathering in May south of London, the head of Britain’s domestic security service asked Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, for help. British security officials rely on the bureau for high-tech surveillance tools — the kind they might need to monitor a new embassy that China wants to build near the Tower of London. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, asked Mr. Patel to protect the job of an F.B.I. agent based in London who dealt with that technology, according to several current and former U.S. officials with knowledge of the episode. Mr. Patel agreed to find funding to keep the posting, the officials said. But the job had already been slated to disappear as the White House moved to slash the F.B.I. budget. The agent moved to a different job back in the United States, saving the F.B.I. money but leaving MI5 officials incredulous. It was a jarring introduction to Mr. Patel’s leadership style for British officials. They had long forged personal ties with their U.S. counterparts, as well as with three other close allies, in an intelligence partnership known as the Five Eyes. The relationships among the organizations matter because many top national security officials view trust and reliability as paramount to sharing critical information with allies — vital for communication between agency directors, and hard to restore once lost. On the same day in 1946 that Winston Churchill delivered his Iron Curtain speech in the United States, Britain and the United States secretly signed the pact that formed the basis for their intelligence alliance. It was an outgrowth of their collaboration during World War II. The partnership expanded during the advent of the Cold War to include other countries — Australia, Canada and New Zealand — earning it the name Five Eyes. All rely heavily on American intelligence to help keep their countries safe. Though the F.B.I. is a criminal investigation agency, it is also a major part of the Western intelligence-gathering community. Alongside other U.S. agencies like the C.I.A., the F.B.I. has offices in embassies around the globe. Mr. Patel’s inexperience, his dismissals of top F.B.I. officials and his shift of bureau resources from thwarting spies and terrorism have heightened concerns among the other Five Eyes nations that the bureau is adrift, according to the former U.S. officials and other people familiar with allies’ reactions to the bureau changes. Five Eyes officials have watched with alarm as Mr. Patel has fired agents who investigated President Trump and invoked his powers to investigate the president’s perceived enemies. The officials and others spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The shift under Mr. Patel has struck directly at the Five Eyes relationship through the removal of senior agents who spent years fighting Islamic extremists or blunting counterintelligence threats alongside operatives from allied countries. The F.B.I. declined to comment on the director’s discussions with Mr. McCallum. A representative of the British home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, whom Mr. McCallum reports to, said her office does not comment on intelligence matters. “In all of my life — 32 years in the business — I have never seen a law enforcement or intelligence organization like the bureau be directed to go after people purely on political, vindictive reasons,” said Phil Gurski, a former analyst with Canada’s intelligence and cryptologic agencies. “In a Western democracy, that’s unheard of. It’s every day in Russia and China.” Mr. Patel, who lacked the deep experience of his predecessors and is unabashedly partisan, has had a rocky introduction to his Five Eyes allies. “To ensure compliance with firearms laws, I instructed police to retain and destroy them,” New Zealand’s police commissioner, Richard Chambers, told The Associated Press, which previously reported on the episode. Mr. Patel had gone to Wellington to open a new F.B.I. office, an initiative that former agents had questioned as the bureau faces budget deficits. Mr. Patel also visited Australia, where he had suspended the bureau’s top representative in that country because she had taken a knee during racial justice protests in 2020. He later fired her. The F.B.I.’s relationship with MI5 is arguably the most important in Five Eyes, a bond that dates back to at least 1938, when the two agencies investigated a hairdresser from Glasgow for providing military secrets to the Germans. The two agencies work closely on many operations. Mr. Patel’s trip to Britain in May was the kind of gathering that top national security officials regularly attend, a conference with other Trump administration officials and their Five Eyes peers to discuss such issues as counterterrorism and cybersecurity. Organizers also set aside time for the principals to meet to discuss specific investigations and to get acquainted. Held at South Lodge, a luxury hotel in the Sussex countryside that boasts Michelin-starred cuisine, the event was code-named “Gold Sycamore” by British officials. Mr. Patel’s visit started awkwardly even before he arrived. Slated to land at Stansted Airport outside London, he sought to fly to an airport closer to the hotel. British officials denied the request, making clear that dignitaries must use Stansted for security reasons, according to one of the former officials and another person familiar with the interactions. They said that during the trip, the Royalty and Specialist Protection Command of the Metropolitan Police told the F.B.I. that Mr. Patel’s security detail could not be armed. Britain has strict gun-control laws, and the police limit armed details based on risk assessments. The police assessment on Mr. Patel found he didn’t meet the threshold for an exemption. The details for the heads of the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency were armed, another U.S. official said. That discrepancy prompted an emergency meeting between the F.B.I. and British security officials. The British officials held firm. An F.B.I. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, denied that there had been a dispute over arming Mr. Patel’s detail. He acknowledged that the director had in the past pressed people on why F.B.I. details weren’t always granted allowances that other agencies got, but that he was seeking equal treatment for them, not for himself. The official also said the discussions about flying into Gatwick involved a scheduling issue. The conference had a detailed agenda. Mr. Patel complained about the number of meetings, one of the former officials said, a well-known gripe of his. The F.B.I. official said Mr. Patel did not object to meetings but rather was trying to figure out which ones were essential so he could fit in other important work. The gathering was relatively informal, but even so, Mr. Patel surprised other attendees when he arrived wearing a trucker hat and a green hooded sweatshirt, the former U.S. official said. Mr. Patel frequently attends official events without wearing a suit, breaking with F.B.I. tradition. Mr. McCallum, a Scot known for his discretion and mild manner who was close to Mr. Patel’s predecessor, Christopher A. Wray, was waiting. When Mr. McCallum asked Mr. Patel to keep the agent’s key position in London, Mr. Patel told him that it would not go away, and that money would be found to keep the agent in London, according to two of the former U.S. officials familiar with the episode.
