Government emails obtained by The show that FBI Director Kash Patel took part in a military-coordinated "VIP snorkel" around the USS Arizona during a trip to Hawaii last summer, a stop the bureau had said was not a vacation.
The outing, which was not disclosed in FBI news releases, placed Patel near the memorial that entombs more than 900 sailors and Marines at Pearl Harbor. The bureau also did not reveal that he returned to Hawaii for two days after his initial stopover on the island.
The reported on Patel's Hawaii visit last summer, but the newly obtained emails add detail to a trip that the FBI has tried to frame as official travel. Regional commanders hosted Patel at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam "as they commonly do with US government officials on official travel," according to the records, and an FBI spokesman did not answer questions about the snorkeling session, the said.
The Hawaii disclosure lands as Patel is already facing criticism over his use of the FBI plane and over a pattern of travel that has mixed work and leisure. A year ago this month, he attended a secret conference of U.S. intelligence allies, and before that meeting his staff said he was unhappy with office-style gatherings and wanted social events, Premier soccer games, a jet skiing outing and a helicopter tour.
Stacey Young said the episode "fits a pattern of Director Patel getting tangled up in unseemly distractions — this time at a site commemorating the second deadliest attack in U.S. history — instead of staying laser-focused on keeping Americans safe."
What the emails make clear is that the Hawaii trip was more than the bureau initially described, and the missing snorkeling session is now the central gap in Patel's account. If the FBI wants the public to accept that the visit was official business, it will have to explain why a military-arranged swim at one of the country's most solemn military memorials was left out.
