Keystone Kash Paranoid About Being Fired

On Friday, April 10, as FBI Director Kash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend, he struggled to log into an internal computer system. He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he 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.”  News of his emotional outburst ricocheted through the bureau, prompting chatter among officials and, in some corners of the building, expressions of relief. The White House fielded calls from the bureau and from members of Congress asking who was now in charge of the FBI.  It turned out that the answer was Patel-- he had not been fired. The access problem, two people familiar with the matter said, appears to have been a technical error, and it was quickly resolved. “It was all ultimately bullshit,” according to one FBI official who spoke with the Atlantic.

But Patel, according to multiple current officials, is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy. And he has good reasons to think so—

Meanwhile, Back at the Office . . .

Dozens of Sloths Die at Shady Roadside Zoo Operation

On a busy tourist strip in Orlando, behind noisy bars and souvenir shops, 21 sloths in crates arrived at a warehouse at the end of a grueling international trip.  Soon, they would all be dead.

The new home of the tree-dwelling mammals was the off-site facility of a new roadside attraction called “Sloth World,” a $49 animal encounter marketed as a conservation-focused center scheduled to open soon.   Nothing could have prepared the sloths for this. Until recently, they lived wild in the forest canopies of Guyana.  The animals' new home wasn't ready to receive them.  There was no running water. No electricity. The space heaters meant to keep them warm were plugged in with extension cords running from another building, according to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission incident report that Inside Climate News obtained through an open-records request. But the heaters repeatedly tripped the fuse and shut off. At least one night in December 2024, the agency said, the sloths were left alone in the cold warehouse without heat.   One by one, they died. 

List of Missing/Dead Scientists Linked to American Secrets Grows

The ominous web of U.S. scientists and lab employees who have died or gone missing continues to grow as two more cases have been linked to the disturbing trend. 

NASA scientist Frank Maiwald died on July 4, 2024 in Los Angeles at the age of 61, but the cause of death has never been made public and officials confirmed that an autopsy was never performed.  Maiwald had been a prominent researcher at the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) since 1999 and worked on multiple projects tied to advanced satellite technology that could scan Earth and other planets.

In June 2023, just 13 months before his death, Maiwald was the lead researcher on a breakthrough that could help future space missions detect clear signs of life on other worlds, including Jupiter's moon Europa, Saturn’s moon Enceladus, or the dwarf planet Ceres.  Despite Maiwald being a JPL Principal, an award given to scientists 'making outstanding individual contributions' in their fields, NASA has never commented publicly on the scientist's death, and the only public record marking his passing was an obituary posted online.  The online obituary set up for Maiwald did not mention any health issues before the 61-year-old's death, and NASA JPL would neither confirm nor deny that Maiwald had been employed there for decades despite records of his achievements listed on their website. 

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O Holy Doctor!

DUI Hire Pete Kegsbreath Targeting Women and Minorities in DOD

Despite the conflict with Iran and other recent military activity overseas, the Pentagon seems focused on purging minorities and women. Last week, NBC News reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had intervened to block or delay the promotions of more than a dozen Black and female senior officers. 

The process within the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines is structured to ensure the most qualified officers get promoted. Hegseth’s decision to intervene in the process has raised concerns among some officials within those military branches and the White House, the nine U.S. officials familiar with the situation said.  “There is not a single service that has been immune to this level of involvement by Hegseth,” one of the U.S. officials said. 

According to both NBC and The New York Times, some officials are concerned that officers are being targeted because of their race, gender, or perceived political affiliation. In one instance last year, Hegseth’s chief of staff, Ricky Buria, bluntly stated that “President Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events,” the Times reported.

Two officials said that among the attributes Hegseth has cited for removing officers from promotions are past support for Covid vaccines or mask mandates for troops, or whether officers were affiliated with DEI programs, or assigned to worke on such initiatives. Those same officials said an officer’s association with former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley (whom Trump still views as a political enemy) can also make an officer who is up for a promotion susceptible to scrutiny from Hegseth’s office.  “There is not consistency being applied to the standards” for promotions, another of the U.S. officials said.

Hegseth blocked three Marine officers (two women and a Black man) who were expected to be promoted or appointed to new roles, despite being recommended by Marine leadership. None of the three Marines were the subjects of internal investigations that might raise concerns about moving forward with their promotions, according to two of the officials.  

Army chief of staff, General Randy George had recently asked to meet with Hegseth to discuss Hegseth's blocking of promotions for some Army officers, which seemed to focus on women and Black men, but Hegseth refused to meet or discuss his decisions, according to two additional U.S. officials.  Soon thereafter, Hegseth fired George instead.  George's term was expected to serve in his position an additional year and a half,  George, the Army’s top officer, was senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during the Biden administration.  Also during Hegseth’s tenure, several top military officers have been removed, including former Joint Chiefs Chairman CQ Brown Jr., a Black man, and former Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti, a white woman.

A retired senior military officer described the promotion process as rigorous and said any meddling by the defense secretary could diminish trust in it.  “Our officer corps trusts our promotion process,” the retired officer said, adding that intervention in the process without an explanation “will certainly cast a shadow across our officer corps that everything they have said, done and written about during their careers could be politicized in a career-ending manner with the stroke of a pen.”