The FBI's top public affairs official called recent media reports about staff firings and their impact on Iran work a "transparent spin job", and backed it up with numbers.
FBI Assistant Director of Public Affairs Ben Williamson took to X on Wednesday to dismantle reporting by CBS News and MS Now that claimed recent firings under Director Kash Patel had been "devastating" to the bureau's Iran program. Williamson called the coverage "total BS" and said his own sources, FBI executives and supervisors, told a very different story.
CBS News ran a report citing a source who described the firings as "devastating" to the FBI's Iran program. The timing was convenient. President Trump launched military action against Iran on Saturday, and critics seized the moment to frame the personnel moves as reckless.
Williamson wasn't having it. As he posted on X:
"I can play the 'sources' game too, the difference is mine know what they're talking about."
He said he spoke directly with FBI executives and supervisors who confirmed the Iran program remains fully operational. The bureau, he explained, can surge personnel nationwide for major threats. Three employees out of a dozen fired do not cripple a national security program, unless you want readers to think they do.
That's the game here.
While outlets fixated on the firings, they ignored the FBI's own performance data. Williamson wrote that the bureau had a "record year" in counterintelligence in 2025, with 35% more arrests than the year before. Agents also captured six fugitives from the Ten Most Wanted list.
Those numbers don't fit the "Patel is destroying the FBI" narrative. So they get buried. Meanwhile, anonymous sources with axes to grind get top billing at CBS News.
The broader threat environment involving Iran makes the media's recklessness even more galling. The country faces a real adversary. Undermining public confidence in the FBI's Iran capabilities, based on thin sourcing, doesn't serve national security. It serves a political agenda.
Not everyone lined up behind Williamson. The FBI Agents Association, which says it represents thousands of employees, condemned what it called the "unlawful termination of FBI Special Agents" on Feb. 25. The FBIAA stated:
"These actions weaken the Bureau by stripping away critical expertise and destabilizing the workforce, undermining trust in leadership and jeopardizing the Bureau's ability to meet its recruitment goals, ultimately putting the nation at greater risk."
Strong words. But the FBIAA is a union representing its members' interests. Its job is to fight firings. That doesn't make its claims true, especially when the FBI's own leadership says operations remain intact and results are up across the board.
The firings controversy also overlaps with a separate bombshell. Patel recently revealed that the Biden Department of Justice subpoenaed his phone records and those of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Both were private citizens at the time and known witnesses in the DOJ's investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents.
Two law enforcement sources told Fox News Digital that the FBI allegedly recorded a phone call between Wiles and her lawyer in 2023, with the lawyer's permission. A lawyer representing Wiles at the time disputed that claim, telling Axios he was unaware of any such recording. The subpoenaed documents have not been made public.
Fox News legal expert Kerri Urbahn said she was "shocked" and "angry" after the revelation. Given the ongoing Iran threat and its domestic security implications, the idea that the previous administration was surveilling Trump allies instead of focusing resources on real adversaries should alarm every American.
Fox News Digital sought comment from both MS Now and CBS News on Wednesday. Neither replied immediately. That silence speaks volumes.
The playbook is familiar. Anonymous sources feed damaging claims to sympathetic outlets. The stories drop at politically useful moments. Officials push back with on-the-record facts. The corrections never get the same play.
Williamson called it exactly what it is:
"transparent spin job by people mad about firings."
Patel fired about a dozen employees for allegedly violating their ethics and the bureau's mission. Some of those people, or their allies, apparently decided to fight back through the press. That's not whistleblowing. That's score-settling dressed up as national security concern.
With U.S. military operations against Iran underway, the FBI's counterintelligence work matters more than ever. Director Patel has every right, and duty, to remove employees who violate the bureau's standards. That three of the fired workers happened to touch Iran cases doesn't mean the program collapsed.
The FBI has 35,000 employees. It can backfill three positions.
What it cannot easily fix is the damage done when media outlets amplify disgruntled insiders over on-the-record officials with actual operational knowledge. Readers deserve better sourcing. The country deserves a press corps that doesn't treat every personnel decision at the FBI as a five-alarm crisis, but only when the wrong team is in charge.
When accountability looks like sabotage to the press, the problem isn't the accountability.
