FBI counterintelligence squads—specialized units dedicated to tracking and ferreting out foreign spies—have been hit with deep cuts across the country, even as the U.S. faces a growing array of adversaries intent on stealing the nation's secrets, according to five people familiar with the matter.
The staffing shortages are so significant that in many of the FBI's 56 field offices, counterintelligence squads only have 50% to 60% of positions filled. In multiple field offices, the number of squads doing such work has been reduced by half.
The cuts come as the U.S. is mired in a war with Iran, and as China—a geopolitical strategic rival—wages what American officials say is a relentless campaign to steal U.S. government secrets as well as cutting-edge research and technology. Russia also remains a formidable adversary with highly capable and aggressive intelligence services.
NPR spoke with five people familiar with the FBI's reduced focus on counterintelligence work. They all spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic and for fear of retribution.
"It's terrifying, honestly," one of the people said. "Threats are growing and we're facing it with less and less. Not a recipe for success."
The cuts to the FBI's counterintelligence squads aren't the result of a specific directive from Director Kash Patel to reduce such work or close down dedicated squads. Instead, it's a consequence of the current leadership's focus on violent crime and immigration, the people familiar with the matter say.
Bureau leaders have made clear that resources need to be dedicated to combatting violent crime, gangs and illegal immigration—top campaign issues for President Trump. Counterintelligence has dropped down the ladder of FBI priorities.
As a result, field offices have pulled agents and analysts from counterintelligence and put them on the administration's priority issues. And special agents in charge of field offices aren't backfilling those spots, but instead putting new agents or analysts on violent crime or immigration work.
FBI touts arrest record
In response to questions about the manpower shortages, an FBI spokesperson said: "This is false—the FBI maintains a robust counterintelligence operation across the enterprise."
The spokesperson said the bureau has expanded its counterintelligence task forces to more than 1,500 personnel, including from partner agencies and state and local law enforcement.
"Anonymous sources who criticize our counterintelligence capabilities are disconnected from reality," the spokesperson said.
The FBI also touted as successes the security at recent major events, including America's 250th anniversary celebrations and the FIFA World Cup.
In recent testimony before Congress, Patel said the FBI under his leadership has arrested more spies from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea "than any FBI in history." NPR was not able to independently verify those assertions.
While arrest numbers are one measure, experts say it isn't the most important metric of success in counterintelligence work.
"I want to know things like how many people were kicked out of the country because of an investigation, or how many networks were completely exposed and halted," said Emily Harding, an ex-CIA analyst and former deputy director of the Senate Intelligence Committee under Republicans.
"Sometimes the win is not the prosecution and the arrest. Sometimes the win is being able to trace a network all the way back to its source, and then being able to wrap up that network and perhaps trade them for something you want even more."
Push outside D.C.
The manpower shortages are also a ripple effect of Patel's push to get analysts out of the FBI's headquarters in Washington, D.C., and into the field—an effort that some former bureau officials say has merit.
But that effort comes with side effects. When analysts who focused on counterintelligence were moved from headquarters to field offices, many were shifted off of counterespionage work and toward work on violent crime and gangs.
Losing those analysts has made it harder to start new investigations, according to the people familiar with the matter. Even if agents are able to open an investigation, a lack of analysts has made it harder to make sense of the evidence and provide direction for investigators.
It is also the result of the significant exodus of experienced FBI agents and analysts from the bureau over the past 18 months.
Some have been fired or forced out by Patel and his leadership team. That includes five special agents and a supervisor, all of whom worked Iranian counterintelligence threats, who were dismissed days before the Trump administration launched its war on Iran.
They were among several special agents who worked on counterintelligence, including in New York, who were fired for having been involved in investigations of President Trump.
Broader drain of personnel
Those departures are part of a broader manpower drain at the bureau under this administration.
In total, the FBI has lost more than 1,500 special agents since President Trump returned to office, according to two people familiar with the matter. Overall, the bureau is down more than 650 agents from January 2025 levels.
The agents who have left have taken their experience and institutional knowledge with them—both of which are in high demand for complex, nuanced counterintelligence work, where building sources and cases can take years.
"When you lose that knowledge, you don't just replace it with a brand new agent. You lose the experience and are starting from scratch," one person said. "There's a huge learning curve for this work."
Counterintelligence cases are notoriously complex and difficult. Often, the goal isn't even to bring a case for prosecution, but instead to learn as much as possible about what an adversary is up to.
"Counterintelligence cases frequently go on for years and years, and they result not so much in an arrest, but maybe in somebody getting kicked out of the country or something very quiet happening," said Harding, the former CIA analyst who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
It is slow, painstaking work that often involves long periods of time staring at a target.
"If you have somebody who you think is a potential Russian spy, you need 24/7 coverage of that person, and that's a lot of manpower to do 24/7 coverage," she added.
The FBI is still doing counterintelligence cases under this administration.
In May 2025, the FBI arrested a former computer specialist for the Defense Intelligence Agency for trying to provide classified information to a foreign power. He pleaded guilty this August. And last month, federal prosecutors brought charges against five suspected Russian intelligence operatives for allegedly planning attacks in Europe and the U.S., including a purported assassination plot in Washington, D.C.
But former officials say counterintelligence threats are silent by nature, which makes it hard to know when one is going undetected.
If the FBI misses a terrorist plot, then something is likely to explode. If the FBI misses a counterintelligence threat, the quiet theft of government secrets or cutting-edge technology just continues unimpeded.
"If the counterintelligence agents don't manage to shut down the networks, you lose everything from intellectual property to economic standings in the world, so even something as bad as real government secrets that are highly classified," Harding said.
The range of responsibilities that the FBI's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division handles is broad.
It runs the gamut from monitoring foreign spies working out of embassies and consulates to investigating what are known as non-traditional collectors—university researchers, academics, private sector workers—who are trying to steal U.S. technology and intellectual property.
It also involves investigating U.S. officials who may be selling secrets to a foreign power, such as the case against a State Department employee who was providing classified information to China.
The division is also responsible for combatting efforts by foreign governments to intimidate and, in some instances, even assassinate Americans or dissidents on U.S. soil, as well as preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
New China cases every 12 hours
Just on the economic espionage front, the scale of the threat from the Chinese government alone is daunting.
Former FBI Director Christopher Wray said in 2022 that the bureau had more than 2,000 investigations focused on Chinese efforts to steal U.S. information or technology.
"There's just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, innovation, and economic security than China," Wray said in a speech dedicated to the subject.
He added that the FBI opened a new case roughly every 12 hours to counter Chinese intelligence operations.
"The harm from the Chinese government's economic espionage isn't just that its companies pull ahead based on illegally gotten technology. While they pull ahead, they push our companies and workers behind," Wray said. "That harm — company failures, job losses — has been building for a decade to the crush we feel today."
Wray, who made combatting the threat from China a priority of his tenure at the bureau, stepped down in December 2024. President Trump picked Patel to replace him.
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