A person who has been affiliated with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and a former aide to one of the FBI’s toughest congressional critics are working as advisers to the bureau’s director, four current and former FBI officials told NBC News.
The two are among at least four people who have been brought into the FBI to advise its director, the current and former officials said. At least two of the new advisers are retired FBI agents, one of whom, Tom Ferguson, was an aide to Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a staunch Trump ally and vocal FBI critic.
The arrival of the person who has been affiliated with Space X has not been previously reported. NBC News has not confirmed the person’s name. A spokesperson for SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s not clear who facilitated the arrival of the new advisers or what areas they are focusing on. A spokesperson for Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick for FBI director, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the FBI. Patel’s Senate confirmation hearing is Thursday.
Former FBI officials said the new advisers have sparked concerns that people with ties to partisan political figures will be helping run the country’s most powerful law enforcement agency. While some FBI officials briefed on the arrangement are hopeful that it could result in needed reforms, others fear a compromise of the bureau’s decades-old tradition of distancing itself from politics.
Unlike the Justice Department, the FBI has no political appointees other than its director, whom the president picks for what is supposed to be a 10-year term. Much as is the case at the CIA, nearly everyone else who works at the FBI is a career civil servant.
That structure was created after the death in 1972 of longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who had agents meddle in politics for decades, covertly surveilling and smearing political leaders and groups — from the far-right John Birch Society to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Rob D’Amico, a former FBI agent who served on the bureau’s hostage rescue team and in Afghanistan, said he has been told the outsiders are there to advise the FBI on how to reform itself, including sending headquarters employees out into the field.
“That’s absolutely needed,” he said. “Things have gotten too headquarters-centric, and when headquarters is in D.C., the natural thing that happens in D.C. is that things get political.”
However, D’Amico said, it is not normal to have people with ties to partisan political figures on the seventh floor, as FBI employees call the director’s office.
“This will have to be done very carefully,” D’Amico said. “How does that chain of command work? You have to be very careful that it doesn’t become like the Russian political officer on a Russian nuclear sub, enforcing party discipline.”
Kash Patel in Washington on Dec. 9.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images fileNew advisers to FBI director
Gregory Mentzer, another former FBI agent, is working in the FBI director’s office, according to his LinkedIn profile.