New in SpyWeek: Drunk Patel Bombshell, Gabbard’s Gambit, Record Russia Subversion in Europe

Also this week: Gorka’s NCTC quest, Loomer's new ODNI target, FBI's new antifa unit, Iran war preps, China’s cable cutters, Wild thriller plot

FBI Director Kash Patel celebrating with US Olympic hockey team (CNN)

Kash Bar: Le tout Washington was rocked Friday by a deeply reported piece in The Atlantic describing FBI Director Kash Patel as a habitual drunk who’s often unfit for duty in the morning due to his late night carousing. “Several officials” told The Atlantic’s veteran investigative reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick that “Patel’s drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff. He is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room, in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends. Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights..” One morning, officials told Fitzpatrick, the FBI sent a SWAT-type team to bust down Patel’s apartment door because he wasn’t responding to calls and texts. The damning story follows on previous reports critical of Patel’s use of an FBI jet to visit his Nashville girlfriend and highly publicized misstatements on ongoing investigations. On April 10, a “paranoid” Patel, the story says, already believing his job was hanging by a thread, couldn’t log into his FBI account and “panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a ‘freak-out.’”

The persuasive report on Patel’s alleged alcohol problem comes, of course, amid escalating security challenges from Iran, Russia and China, a major responsibility of the FBI, which has lost several Iran experts due to Patel’s role in Trump’s retaliation campaign over his 2020 election loss.

White House mouthpiece Karoline Leavitt said Patel (who threatened to sue Fitzpatrick and The Atlantic) remains “a critical player on the Administration’s law and order team,” but Trump is reliably reported to be looking for a replacement.

Gabbard Gambit: Another top Trump intelligence official whose job is said to be in peril, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, made a move seemingly designed to bolster her fraught standing with Trump: She referred two former cogs in the first impeachment case against Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. One is the officially unnamed senior former U.S. intelligence expert on Russia and Ukraine who blew the whistle on Trump’s 2019 effort to pressure Volodymyr Zelensky into giving him dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, whom she named as Eric Ciaramella. The other is Michael Atkinson, then-Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, who informed Congress about the whistleblower complaint and oversaw its handling. Gabbard released documents in support of the referral that she asserted exposed a “conspiracy used by Congress to impeach President Trump.” CNN reported that “the documents include transcripts of Atkinson’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in 2019 and notes from interviews with the whistleblower.”

“At first glance,” X’d MAGA fanatic and Trump whisperer Laura Loomer, “it looks like Gabbard is going after the people behind the ‘Russia Collusion hoax’ and the Ukraine-related drama that led to President Trump’s first impeachment hearing. But there’s a big problem,” Loomer wrote: “one of Gabbard’s own recent hires appears to be directly tied to Russia-gate bad actors.” Loomer singled out for extinction Gabbard adviser Dan Caldwell, recently hired after he was ousted by “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth on suspicion of leaking to the media, because…well, you try to figure it out.

Counter-Terror Opening: Outspoken Islamophobe Sebastian Gorka is angling to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, a job open since MAGA believer Joe Kent’s March resignation in protest over Trump’s war-of-choice on Iran. “As the National Security Council’s director for counterterrorism, Gorka has led administration efforts to broaden the definition of terrorist threats to include far-left groups, a move that has raised concerns among civil liberties groups,” The Washington Post reported.

Conspiracyland: In September, Trump signed NSPM-7, an executive order designating antifa, a loose collection of anti-fascist groups, a “domestic terrorist organization,” even though the FBI official responsible for counterterrorism could not answer basic questions about its strength, leaders and location in a December 2025 congressional hearing. Now Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and national security official in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, says the new NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center, set up in the FBI to investigate “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” and so on, likely includes the participation of the CIA and NSA, for the purpose of “looking at...people who may just take a very different view on the world than the president.” (Video from Ken Klippenstein)

Tehran Intel: Iran planned for the elimination of its leaders and the devastation of its infrastructure by U.S.-Israeli air strikes, “according to Western military intelligence assessments — which also say it retains the ability to respond if the ceasefire fails,” Bloomberg News reported on Friday. The intelligence reports “provide a much more nuanced picture of the outcomes of the US-Israeli operation than that portrayed by President Donald Trump and U.S. administration officials,” it added. “The effectiveness of Iran’s earlier military planning also raises the prospect that it could use the current ceasefire to make preparations for any resumption of hostilities.”

The Usual Suspects: Iran arrested four suspected Israeli spies in the northwest of the country, state media reported Thursday. “The arrestees had provided Mossad intelligence officers with images and locations of some sensitive and critical military and security sites via the internet,” it said.

Very Active Measures: Estonia says it arrested “a record number” of spies and saboteurs linked to Russia’s intelligence services in 2025. “Sixteen people with links to the Russian security services–both FSB and GRU–were caught last year,” the Estonian Internal Security Service said in its annual report released Monday. “Our officials are very capable and catch them fairly quickly, so there is no need for concern at all,” an agency spokesperson said.

Very Active Measure (II): Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office uncovered over 300 acts of suspected Russian sabotage last year, according to a confidential paper generated by the agency. A total of “321 suspected cases of sabotage were registered in 2025, as reported by the regional public broadcasters NDR and WDR, which [got] access to the paper. Sabotage is said to have been particularly frequent in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.” (Euronews)

Chinese Cable Cutters: China has successfully tested a self-contained underwater vehicle that can function 11,483 feet (3.5 km) deep in the ocean—wherein lie many a U.S. military and commercial cable. “The vessel is touted as being designed for deep-sea engineering purposes. But like many technologies designed for civilian application, the vessel also has the potential to be used to sabotage subsea cables of nations that China views as hostile—such as the U.S.” (South China Morning Post via techradar)

Real to Reel: Britain’s ITV broadcaster is gearing up to produce Secret Service, a five-part “high-stakes drama … which delves into the shadowy world of espionage set against a backdrop of mounting tensions between the U.K and Russia.” Plot-line teaser: “Could a high-ranking British politician be working as a Russian asset? A covert investigation points to a chilling possibility at the heart of power.”

Wow. Hard to imagine.