Take apart the FBI piece by piece. Here’s how.

Take an antitrust approach to the FBI. The Bureau has value. But it has become predatory, abusive, and dangerous to the public. So it must be taken apart in favor of something new. Here’s an action plan for what to do with the FBI, drawn from chapter 37 of my book, Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains (Regnery, 2024).

The plan examines the anatomy of the FBI and proposes what to do with each part. The plan leaves room for creating better efficiencies in federal investigations, counterintelligence, law enforcement, and other essential functions. For now, we look at the FBI’s structure and functions.

FBI is only a bureaucracy, not created by any law

Like the Bureau of Engraving and Printing or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the FBI, as its name states, is only a bureaucracy. J. Edgar Hoover built that bureaucracy’s brand. Once we get over the brand name and stop thinking of the Bureau as “sacred,” we see the emperor has no clothes.

No statutory basis exists for the FBI. The FBI has no legal charter. The FBI traces its founding to a one-page attorney general memorandum from 1908.

Therefore, the FBI can be abolished by an attorney general memorandum.

So how would we protect ourselves as a country without an FBI?

Take a critical look at the FBI and its components, and it’s easy to see how.

FBI’s basic structure

The FBI has six branches, each of which is divided into units called divisions.

The six branches are:

1. National Security Branch
2. Intelligence Branch
3. Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch
4. Science and Technology Branch
5. Information and Technology Branch
6. Human Resources Branch

These branches awkwardly make the FBI a domestic intelligence agency with police powers – a threat to our constitutional system. No other major democracy has a domestic intelligence agency with police powers.

Many FBI functions duplicate what other agencies already do. So in the interests of curbing the FBI, we have to take the imperfect approach of transferring duplicative functions to other agencies.

That approach risks empowering other problematic agencies, which we will have to deal with later.

National Security Branch

This politicized and compromised FBI branch must be broken apart, division by division, with relevant personnel, authority, equipment, and budgets transferred to other agencies and, where feasible, removed from federal authority completely and handed back to the 50 states.

Counterintelligence Division. Made notorious by its head, Peter Strzok, the Counterintelligence Division doesn’t do as much spy-hunting as the FBI wants people to think. It has a poor track record. It goes after the low-hanging fruit, and is not a strategic tool to penetrate and disrupt hostile intelligence organizations from within.

Counterintelligence should be moved out of the FBI, with the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, moved out of DHS. This will be difficult, because NCSC is flaccid and politicized.

Both should be combined into an independent Counterintelligence Service (CIS) with its own ethos as a spy-hunting organization, similar to what the short-lived National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) was designed to have been.

The CIS – which does not exist – would inherit all the personnel, data, technology, and other resources of the FBI Counterintelligence Division and NCSC, retain the most capable and promising personnel, and hunt foreign spies. It would not answer to the Justice Department. DOJ would be responsible solely for prosecuting spies as CIS finds necessary.

Counterterrorism Division. Create a stand-alone counterterrorism agency that has no law-enforcement functions. Remove the Counterterrorism Division, the Terrorist Screening Center, and related elements from the FBI. At the same time, remove the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. NCTC has its own problems to be addressed.

Merge the FBI’s former counterterrorism functions and resources with the NCTC into a new, small, stand-alone counterterrorist agency. The proper leadership will transform the agency ethos, cull incompetent and inefficient personnel, and build a small CT service with no law enforcement powers. At the same time, dispense with the “domestic violent extremist” approach and focus on real terrorism.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. The FBI’s WMDD already duplicates the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives of DHS. ATF is already a significant problem. As with counterintelligence and counterterrorism, remove WMDD from the FBI, remove ATF from DHS, cull the personnel, and create a new, small, independent unit dealing with weapons of mass destruction inside the United States. The new service will have no law enforcement powers and will not answer to DOJ.

The FBI National Security Branch is thus dissolved.

Intelligence Branch

The FBI Intelligence Branch collects information and synthesizes it into analytical products and coordination with other agencies. Such a branch, with entirely different standards of evidence from a law enforcement agency, has no place in the Department of Justice at all.

Divide the Intelligence Branch and its personnel along topical and functional lines. Parcel them out to other agencies with the legal authority and obligation to perform those varied work functions. This includes the new independent counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and WMD services.

The FBI intelligence branch is thus dissolved.

Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch

This FBI branch is a mishmash of functions patchworked together since 9/11. It performs important duties, though, and does not have the reputation of being as politicized as the rest of the Bureau.

The Trump Administration can take apart this branch without public danger.

Criminal Investigation Division. This division combats organized crime, international crime, certain violent crimes under federal statute, and certain crimes against children. It also investigates public corruption, financial crimes, and violations of civil rights laws.

The public corruption unit tends to attract some of the most politicized elements of the FBI. DOJ must transfer as many criminal investigative functions as possible to the states that wish to assume them. Those states can receive federal block grants for the purpose of improving their own capabilities, free of federal interference.

FBI’s financial crimes unit should be transferred to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has robust financial crimes capabilities.

The remainder of the Criminal Investigation Division should go to the United States Marshals Service, which is the only federal law enforcement entity created by America’s Founding Fathers. All FBI personnel going to the Marshals would be screened for adequacy and retrained under the Marshals ethos.

Cyber Division. Cyber is an increasingly important criminal and national security domain. Because of cyber’s growing politicization, often to extremist ends, the solutions offered here are only interim.

Transfer the Cyber Division’s security functions to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), while moving the very politicized CISA out of the Department of Homeland Security. The merger between CD and CISA, under proper leadership, would result in a professional, stand-alone cyber security agency. Cyber Division’s intelligence functions and resources will go to the new Counterintelligence Service (CIS) created from the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division and DHS’s NCSC.

Cyber Division’s law enforcement functions should be transferred out of DOJ to the independent U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Critical Incident Response Group. The Response portion of the branch is a crisis management unit. It should be transferred to FEMA, which itself needs a complete overhaul.

Services. The Services section of the branch assists victims of terrorism and crime. Its duties should go to FEMA and the Department of Health and Human Services. The budget for this unit can go to disaster-prone states as block grants, which the states can spend on disaster relief as they see fit.

A separate unit, International Operations, coordinates federal law enforcement abroad to investigate transnational crimes and to assist foreign countries in assisting American investigators. These experienced personnel can be placed in the service of other federal agencies that presently perform law enforcement/counterterrorism/counter-WMD work abroad, or which would do so under the proposed changes.

The FBI Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch is thus dissolved.

Science and Technology Branch

This small FBI branch creates new scientific and technological methods, products, and training for the rest of the FBI’s operations, and provides important support support to state and local law enforcement. Private companies already create these products and services, such as forensic sciences (fingerprint, DNA, and other biometric analysis), other scientific analysis, computer forensics, safe transport of evidence and hazardous materials. The branch also runs the FBI Crime Lab, FBI information services, and the National Crime Information Center.

In Big Intel, I proposed handing the Science and Technology Branch over to FEMA, or establishing it as a stand-alone entity under rotating governors, but after consideration, many functions of the branch should be privatized, with the Crime Lab and National Crime Information Center transferred to the US Marshals.

The FBI Science and Technology Branch is thus dissolved.

Information and Technology Branch

The purpose of this branch is to manage FBI information and maintain and upgrade the Bureau’s information systems. With the FBI being dismembered, the need for this branch is mooted, though the experienced personnel, with their specialized training can be transferred to other agencies along with related FBI components.

The FBI Information and Technology Branch is thus dissolved.

Human Resources Branch

This branch will not be transferred anywhere. Its personnel will leave the federal workforce. The exception is the FBI Academy, which resides in this branch. Since the FBI Academy offers basic training for special agents and other law enforcement, it can be transferred to the US Marshals.

The FBI Human Resources Branch is thus dissolved.

Field Offices

The FBI has 56 field offices and smaller offices across the United States. These offices have secure facilities and other resources that the Marshals, the SEC, the Postal Inspector, the new independent Counterintelligence Service, the new counterterrorism and counter-WMD services, and so forth, can use without disruption, independently and out of their own budgets. Many field offices can be shut down for good.

Unnecessary secrecy

FBI abuses of power, and threats to the Constitution, have been possible because of excessive secrecy. This unnecessary secrecy must be undone and exposed.

FBI abuses of power, and threats to the Constitution, have been possible because of excessive secrecy. This unnecessary secrecy must be undone and exposed. All citizens should have the right to any FBI files – unredacted – on them, with pending criminal or national security investigations, reviewed by judges, as the sole exceptions.

Conclusion

With these steps, the FBI is dismembered, its essential components scattered, in an orderly fashion without disruption to legitimate federal investigations, law enforcement, and national security functions.

Abolish all Special Agent in Charge and SES-level FBI positions prior to dismemberment. Sell FBI headquarters at the J. Edgar Hoover Building to developers and demolish it.

Surplus and sell the planned FBI campus in Prince George’s County, Maryland, that is twice the size of the Pentagon building.

Complexities in the dismantling of the FBI, especially concerning the Bureau’s colossal and extremely sensitive data systems, are to be expected. But these complexities are unacceptable excuses for not dismembering the Bureau quickly.

After this, we can proceed to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security.