Bad Guys: How the FBI Created the Enemy Within

The FBI built the most powerful—and least accountable—domestic intelligence operation in American history to hunt enemies of the state. In the post-9/11 era of surveillance and entrapment, that hunt bred a distrust that fueled the conspiracies now leaving the Bureau vulnerable to the authoritarian forces trying to weaponize it.

For decades, the FBI has been at the center of America’s response to extremism and political violence. But an institution that treats everyone as a threat will see enemies everywhere.

Investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson confronts a country where the enemies list never stops growing. Moving between stories that spiral closer together, he follows a convert whose search for belonging ends on the battlefield in Syria; an informant paid to set up his friend, then left to live with the consequences; agents who once believed in the FBI’s mission now watching it curdle; and Kash Patel, the outsider who captured the Bureau by pushing conspiracy theories.

Then Aaronson lands on the list too. A journalist who has covered the FBI for two decades becomes one more enemy in the story he’s trying to expose.

Bad Guys is a deeply reported, propulsive exploration of how Americans have drifted toward extremism and how federal agents tasked with stopping political violence can manufacture the very threats they’re hunting. The FBI, built to find enemies, finds one in itself.