Following the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on “The Nomination of Kashyap Pramod Patel to be Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation” last week, it is with sincere desire and optimism that Alaska’s two senators vote to confirm Kash Patel.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, outlined the broader politically motivated problems the FBI suffers from in his opening statement. What was largely missed was the non-politically motivated and self-interested little ‘c’ corruption so endemic in the FBI’s management structure. 

That is, there are way too many FBI executives who put the acquisition of power, position, and control above their duties to uphold the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, and to protect the American people. 

This is nothing short of gross misconduct, at best.  

I provided multiple protected whistleblower disclosures in the past that were never addressed and were used as a predicate to retaliate against myself, and many other good, honest, hardworking, and constitutionally loyal FBI employees. 

These protected disclosures certainly reeked of policy violations at a minimum, and some of them may even have risen to the level of criminal activity; yet under the directorship of Christopher Wray and FBI Deputy Director (DD) Paul Abbate, and all the recently fired executive assistant directors, nothing of consequence was done to address and mitigate the problems.

Rather, between 2021 and 2023, FBI Anchorage executive management, doubled down and ensured most FBI Anchorage whistleblowers were put under internal investigation – me excluded, but not without trying.

So, when I urge our two senators to vote to confirm Patel, I do so from a deeply singular interest – returning the FBI to an apolitical and service minded federal law enforcement agency free of both the little ‘c’ and big ‘C’ corruption I have discussed in the past. 

Trust me when I say, I have lifelong friendships with current and former FBI employees, some of them fall on the left side of the political spectrum, others in the middle, and some others on the right. All of them are on the same page as me when it comes to this singular issue.

To get there, Kash Patel and company must ensure the expulsion of those who turned it into a political weapon, but also to professionally cull those executive managers whose self-interest has far outweighed their oath to the U.S. Constitution for far too long.

A vote in favor of Kash Patel is a vote against the FBI’s status quo. More locally, the status quo within FBI Anchorage corrupt fiefdom must change. 

Below are sample allegations I brought forth to my chain-of-command, the FBI’s Initial Processing Unit (IPU), Internal Affairs Section (IAS) of the Inspection Division (INSD), or to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) between 2021 – 2024. 

The below examples are described in a sufficiently broad enough manner to protect the subject(s) of the underlying allegations, and non-public case related information only. 

I include this because I remain under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that prohibits me from releasing case specific information, and to protect any current cases and potential future cases and subjects that may arise.  If given the opportunity, I will disclose all details in an appropriate and legal venue.

Importantly, they also exhibit to Senator Lisa Murkowski (R – Alaska) and Senator Dan Sullivan (R – Alaska) the Potemkin Village that FBI Anchorage has been over the past several years, and the only remedy at this point is to confirm Kash Patel as the new director of the FBI. 

Example No. 1:

I was the primary case agent on a public corruption case with a deeply significant financial impact on every Alaskan resident. During the investigation, a member of the team chose to leave federal service with full knowledge of the investigation. This person willfully engaged in a professional relationship with a named subject of the case. 

At the time, I still believed the now fictitious concept that ALL FBI employees MUST report allegations of wrongdoing. I disclosed what occurred to the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section prosecutor jointly working the case, as well as through my chain-of-command, and ultimately to the DOJ OIG.

Contrary to what I believed would happen, FBI Anchorage executive management insisted the former team member was “a scout” and “would never” disclose internal case information to the subject. 

I can assure everyone reading this column, if you or me, or any other regular person put themselves in a similar situation as the former team member, you and I both would be investigated as subjects, and potentially charged.

I was removed as the case agent, and my former supervisor reportedly saved me from the Special Agent in Charge’s (SAC) order to transfer me to the hinterland of Oklahoma. It is not surprising nobody has heard about this case.

The actions of the former team member, in part, resulted in the case being closed with no action. And every Alaskan has suffered as a result.

Example No. 2:

I was the primary case agent on another high-profile public corruption case that garnered a significant amount of attention from DOJ and FBI HQ. After several months of conducting a covert investigation, it came to my attention from another FBI employee that a target entity related to my case was formerly under investigation by the FBI’s national security personnel. 

Wanting to conduct thorough due diligence, I started asking about the past investigations.

As this process unfolded, an FBI employee alleged to me through email that another FBI employee purposely closed the prior investigations based on false information. 

It was alleged that the FBI employee conveyed to the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) that the FBI would close the case(s) due to a lack of personnel/resources. Yet, when the case closing documents were filed in Sentinel (the FBI’s case management system), it was closed because the USAO did not believe there was sufficient evidence to indict. Read that again. Both cannot be true.

If the allegations were true, this was a major problem for the FBI employee, but more broadly it was a major problem for the viability of my public corruption case. 

It appeared that the FBI employee may have closed criminal/national security cases against this particular entity for an unknown reason. Being a public corruption subject matter expert, there was enough information to predicate an investigation to determine 1) if the allegations were true, 2) and if true, what, if “any thing of value” did this FBI employee receive for protecting this entity from possibly being charged?

Upon receiving this information, I reported it through my chain-of-command, and to FBI HQ’s IPU-IAS-INSD. It is my firm belief then, and now, because this FBI employee was part of management, I had to be targeted for retaliatory measures. 

Not long after I filed the protected whistleblower disclosures, I was denied area specific subject matter expertise that would have greatly aided the ongoing case (i.e., FBI Anchorage management started sabotaging my public corruption case), removed me as the case agent of the case and put it on indefinite pause (i.e., it was dead), and then ultimately removed me from working public corruption matters all together. 

At this time, I was the only FBI special agent wholly assigned to work such matters in Alaska. 

In fact, on December 1, 2022, I was called into my former Assistant Special Agent in Charge’s (ASAC) office where I saw my then supervisory special agent seated. When the ASAC entered, he informed me that “we” were aware of the allegations I made (i.e., protected whistleblower allegations), and that I was “temporarily” being moved to another squad. The ASAC told me “If the allegations were not true, it would be a problem” for me. Which I took as a threat. 

This was textbook whistleblower retaliation according to 5 USC § 2302(a)(2)(A)(iv) – a detail, transfer, or reassignment; and 5 USC § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii) – any other significant change in duties, responsibilities, or working conditions. 

Understand, I was and remain a public corruption subject matter expert, having worked such violations for over a decade. I was selected as an FBI adjunct faculty expert authorized to teach public corruption in any sanctioned setting, to include the International Law Enforcement Academies around the world. 

Moreover, I received over a dozen awards related to prior public corruption case work and was nominated for the prestigious U.S. Attorney General’s award for investigative excellence for a police corruption case I was a co-case agent on while stationed in Puerto Rico in 2015 and 2016.

My point is simply this: FBI Anchorage executive management was willing to sideline an experienced and highly successful public corruption expert because I had the temerity to report allegations of FBI policy and/or criminal violations against their own.

I was then ordered not to talk about the case with anyone, including a partner federal law enforcement agency, and that the case was on an indefinite pause until FBI Anchorage executive management could investigate what, if anything I did wrong. Of course that was false. 

Because I meticulously documented everything, to include their misconduct, FBI Anchorage executive management was willing to do anything, to include obstructing justice, to close the case to avoid it from ever going to trial. (On a side note, if any enterprising person or government investigator would like to know the emails I reference throughout this document, please let me know).

But why go to such lengths? As you may or may not know, everything I documented about FBI Anchorage executive management’s misconduct related to this public corruption case would then be released to any defense team through discovery.

Management had the chutzpah to claim they were protecting me from being destroyed on the witness stand for documenting THEIR misconduct; when if the documents were to come to light through the discovery process, their own actions would be exposed and could destroy their own careers, if not more. 

When I earlier mentioned this case was high profile and demanded a significant amount of attention from the DOJ and FBI HQ, I was not exaggerating.

A couple months prior to me being removed from my public corruption duties, the former SAC was put in the awkward position to present me with the following Citation for Special Achievement and accompanying narrative signed by the then FBI Director Christopher Wray:

Example No. 3:

As discussed above in the award narrative, I was a handling agent for the FBI Anchorage’s “most significant, long-term…” confidential human source (CHS). This CHS provided information of intelligence value to other special agents in the past that ended up in high-profile documents, such as the Presidential Daily Brief. 

At a particular time, the CHS reported allegations of sexual assault by certain high-level officials against Alaskan Native girls/women to a different special agent and an FBI professional staff employee during a clandestine meeting.

After the meeting, the special agent allegedly failed to document and thus report the allegations of sexual assault to the appropriate law enforcement agency (i.e., state or local police). 

After about three-months of no action, the CHS provided a written complaint about his/her handling agent who failed to act on his/her prior allegations, among other things. Not surprisingly, the night the CHS’s written complaint was filed against the handling agent, the sexual assault allegations were documented in the FBI’s CHS management system, and a month later some of the allegations went public.

As I learned about these allegations, I thought to myself, “how is this scenario any different from the U.S.A. Women’s Gymnastics Team reporting their allegations of sexual assault against their team doctor, Larry Nassar, to the FBI Indianapolis Field Office, and the FBI failing to act?” I do not see any difference.

Of course, the CHS now made himself/herself a target of FBI Anchorage executive management because his/her allegations could lead to the same outcome for them that occurred to those who failed to act in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office – namely, their careers would be over and massive public scrutiny would follow. 

Ultimately, FBI Anchorage executive management predicated the closing of this CHS using an outright lie. I know because I was standing next to the special agent when she was ordered to close the CHS in the FBI’s CHS management system under false pretenses.

I cannot emphasize enough how valuable this CHS was to our national security concerns.  FBI Anchorage executive management seemingly insisted this CHS be closed because he/she no longer provided relevant information, or something similar. That was an absolute and provable lie. 

In short, FBI Anchorage executive management, to protect their careers, their power, and their control, created a lie to justify closing this high-profile CHS to the serious detriment of U.S. National Security. 

Of course, I reported this multiple times to the DOJ OIG. In fact, after I was constructively discharged from the FBI, I continued filing complaints with DOJ OIG as recently as April 29, 2024. It is worth reading the below email chain for a clearer understanding of this and other related complaints (I have redacted certain information against to ensure compliance with my NDA, to protect identities of possible subjects of future investigations, and to protect ongoing or future cases):

I would like to highlight the response I received from the DOJ OIG attorney regarding the allegations of sexual assault against Alaskan Native women/girls that went undocumented and unreported by FBI Anchorage for months: “I hear you, but I’m not surprised. You wouldn’t believe the allegations we receive, and we can’t investigate everything…” (Emphasis Added). 

Please, read that again; “…we can’t investigate everything…”, as if DOJ OIG simply did not care about Alaskan Native women/girls, or they did not think it important enough to address, or what? 

For context, this email was sent to me during the DOJ’s settlement phase with the U.S.A. Women’s Gymnastics Team for the same allegations. In fact, the DOJ settled that case four days after this email for nearly $140 million. 

To be clear, the above examples are merely samples of the little ‘c’ corruption, and possible criminal activity that occurred within the FBI Anchorage management ranks between 2021 – 2023. There is a lot more.

It is not like I failed to reach out to the current FBI Anchorage SAC Rebecca Day to provide information when former DD Abbate visited Anchorage in July 2024:

Did I hear back from anyone? Of course not. Too many FBI executives (not all) are tone deaf, have no capability to self-reflect, will do anything to bury their heads in the sand to prevent bumps and delays in their own career progression, and have little to no interest in uncovering the truth, especially if the truth negatively impacts them or their fellow executives.

And rather than handle the obvious problems in her field office (i.e., hellishly low morale, distrust and outright hatred for management, the outrageous retaliation, and most importantly, the drastic drop in work product and case work, among other things) SAC Day seemingly ignored what occurred under the previous SACs and apparently holed up in her corner office with her head in the sand, protecting current individuals in FBI Anchorage management who were up to their eyeballs in the little ‘c’ corruption that occurred over the past several years. 

Well, I correct myself, apparently on January 14, 2025, SAC Day authorized the entry of emotional support dogs into the FBI Anchorage Field Office to help current employees handle the change in administrations.

Senator Murkowski and Senator Sullivan, a vote for Kash Patel is a vote against the corrupt behavior that has occurred, is occurring, and will likely continue to occur if the status quo in the FBI is allowed to continue. The opposite, in my view, is also true. A vote against Kash Patel is an explicit endorsement of the behavior outlined above. Your choice.

Senator Murkowski, it is well known how much you cherish your role in the Arctic, and truthfully the Arctic is better off with your contributions. I saw you firsthand in Reykjavik, Iceland last October advocating on behalf of Alaska’s interests and the overall strategic importance of the Arctic. 

I think you and Senator Sullivan would be shocked, disappointed, and outright disgusted by what FBI Anchorage executive management has chosen to withhold from our federal delegation over the last several years regarding Arctic matters. There are current FBI employees willing to share everything in an appropriate environment.

Believe me, there were many times when myself, and others were a hairsbreadth away from blowing the whistle directly to you and Senator Sullivan, but the chilling effect purposefully and outrageously implemented by FBI Anchorage executive management and supported by FBI HQ executives, successfully prevented disclosure to you both.

I, and many others chose to blow the whistle internally. Clearly that was a fool’s errand.

I implore you to take a chance on Kash Patel, vote to confirm him, and let Kash Patel handle the bad apples that remain in the FBI.

Tyler Vose is a seasoned professional with a diverse background in law enforcement, military intelligence, and private sector consulting. Currently, he is the owner of Denali Defense Solutions where he provides criminal and civil defense consulting, as well as services to help businesses and public entities protect themselves from fraud, corruption, and foreign malign influence while ensuring compliance with federal regulations. Prior to his entrepreneurial venture, Mr. Vose served as a Federal Law Enforcement Special Agent with the FBI for over 12 years, focusing on public corruption and white-collar criminal matters, and Army Criminal Investigative Division for one-year. His investigative work led to numerous high-profile convictions, including one of the largest public corruption cases in Michigan history.