This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 27 episode of “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
I can tell you from my time in government that there are very few U.S. intelligence operations as sensitive as those around negotiations involving Americans detained overseas. A very small group of people from the national security team and the closest advisers to the president are typically in the know. That’s it.
That’s for good reason. Any leak or reporting could prompt public pressure on those holding the Americans. It could make them ask for more or delay it altogether. Even the smallest misstep could cause those Americans to be held by their captors for months or years longer.
It could have been an incredibly costly mistake. One that could have prevented these Americans from coming home.
It’s why everyone in the know lets out a sigh of relief when the detained Americans are confirmed to be back in friendly territory.
Now, with that in mind, consider this headline from The Wall Street Journal from October 2020: “Two Americans Held Hostage by Iran-Backed Forces in Yemen Freed in Trade.”
Follow MSNBC’s live blog coverage of Kash Patel’s and Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation hearings.
In that report, published on the morning of Oct. 14, a little-known National Security Council staffer named Kash Patel publicly confirmed that the two American captives and the remains of a third were exchanged for 200 Houthi fighters who were being held in Saudi Arabia.
Patel is now President Donald Trump’s pick to be director of the FBI and, ahead of his confirmation hearing, that episode from 2020 is coming under some very intense scrutiny.
In a new letter released on Monday by the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, the Democrat alleges he received what he calls “highly credible information” about Patel’s role in breaking protocol during the “in-progress retrieval of two Americans held captive by Iranian-backed militants.”
That’s not just a rookie mistake. It could have been an incredibly costly mistake. One that could have prevented these Americans from coming home.
If these stories are true, he’s also someone who in two separate instances put very sensitive operations at risk.
According to this whistleblower, Patel had no role in the planning, negotiations or execution of the hostage recovery mission. And yet, he allegedly confirmed the details of the exchange to The Wall Street Journal before the U.S. government knew the Americans were safe.
On Tuesday, Patel shared a post on X featuring various Republicans defending his hostage recovery efforts, including a former Trump White House official who called the allegations against Patel “simply absurd.”
But, as Durbin pointed out in his letter, this is the second known instance of Patel allegedly breaking hostage recovery protocol. Back in August, The Atlantic reported on an incident that took place just two weeks after that hostage deal detailed by the whistleblower.
According to multiple reported accounts told to The Atlantic, SEAL Team 6 was waiting on the Pentagon to greenlight a rescue mission after it had learned where gunmen were holding Philip Walton, a 27-year-old American who had been kidnapped that week from his farm near Niger’s border with Nigeria by a group of armed men.
As multiple agencies coordinated the final details of the operation, the State Department worked to resolve one outstanding task — securing airspace permission from Nigerian officials. According to The Atlantic, “Around noon, Kash Patel called the Pentagon with an update: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he said, had gotten the approval. The mission was a go.”
The SEALs were close to landing in Nigeria when Defense Secretary Mark Esper discovered that the State Department had not secured overflight clearance. The Atlantic reports: The aircraft were quickly diverted, flying in circles for the next hour as officials scrambled to alert the Nigerian government to their position. With the operation window narrowing, Esper and Pompeo called the Situation Room to put the decision to the president: Either they abort the mission and risk their hostage being killed, or they proceed into foreign airspace and risk their soldiers being shot down.
But then, suddenly and thankfully, they got notice that the airspace had been cleared. More from The Atlantic: Celebratory feelings gave way to anger as officials tried to make sense of Patel’s bad report. According to Esper, Pompeo claimed that at no point had he even spoken with Patel about the mission, much less told him he’d received the airspace rights. Esper wrote that his team suspected that Patel had simply ‘made the approval story up.’
When confronted about it, Patel allegedly responded, according to two people familiar with what he said who spoke to The Atlantic, that “If nobody got hurt, who the f— cares?” For the record, Patel denies saying that or making up the approval story. His spokesperson told The Atlantic that Patel “would never jeopardize an operation, American hostages, or our soldiers … In every situation, including this one, I followed the chain of command.” And look, Patel is a lot of things. He’s a QAnon sympathizer. He’s the author of children’s books in which he’s a wizard and Trump is a king. But if these stories are true, he’s also someone who in two separate instances put very sensitive operations at risk. Again, this is the guy Trump wants to run the FBI. If confirmed, he will serve a 10-year term. Patel’s confirmation hearing is Thursday and hopefully, he’s come up with something better than “Who the f— cares?” And hopefully, more than just the Democrats on the committee will care about his response. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Allison Detzel contributed.
Jen Psaki is the host of "The Briefing with Jen Psaki" airing Tuesdays through Fridays at 9 p.m. EST. She is the former White House press secretary for President Joe Biden.
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