FBI Director Kash Patel has been caught in yet another eyebrow-raising side quest: a snorkeling excursion to a sunken battleship in Hawaii entombing hundreds of sailors and Marines.
The controversial official’s strange trip was almost a year ago, but leaked now amid mounting scrutiny of his activities in office.
When Patel flew to Hawaii last July, FBI news releases framed the visit as part of his “ongoing commitment to supporting frontline efforts and strengthening interagency partnerships,” noting meetings with local law enforcement and a walking tour of the Honolulu field office. He then went on to Australia and New Zealand.
But the FBI director returned to the island just days later for what government officials described in internal emails as a “VIP snorkel” around the USS Arizona, the Associated Press reports. The battleship was sunk during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and serves as a memorial and a war grave for more than 900 crew members.
The snorkeling session—which the FBI did not disclose—will add to the mounting scrutiny over Patel’s use of the FBI’s jet fleet and his leisure-tinged global work trips.
Snorkeling and diving around the memorial is typically prohibited, but the Navy and the National Park Service have quietly permitted select dignitaries to enter the water at the site.
No FBI directors have gone snorkeling at the battleship since at least 1993, the AP reports, citing people familiar with their activities and a former government diver. The diver told the AP that it’s unusual for anyone unrelated to the memorial to be allowed in the water, given the risks involved and the security and logistical demands.
When reached for comment, an FBI spokesperson told the Daily Beast in a statement, “The engagement was a part of the official trip the Director did back in July.”
“As part of our engagements in the Indo-Pacific theater, the IndoPacom Commander graciously offered to host the Director and team at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, as they commonly do with US government officials on official travel,” the spokesperson said. “This was part of the Director’s public national security engagements last August with counterparts in New Zealand, Australia, our Honolulu Field Office, and the Department of War.”
Meanwhile, Patel’s spokesperson Ben Williamson attacked the AP on X, writing, “The AP is attempting to spin an invitation from the Commanding General of Indo Pacom to a military base as a party or vacation, which is so stupid.”
He claimed that the Defense Department “routinely does these engagements with interagency partners,” and said that “Patel offered the same event” when he was chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller for two months during the waning days of the first Trump administration.
Miller, however, told the AP that he went snorkeling at the USS Arizona on an official visit to the base—without Patel being present.
A Navy spokesperson told the AP that Patel’s outing was “not an anomaly.” The Navy did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
But Hack Albertson, a Marine veteran and member of a dive team of Paralyzed Veterans of America that inspects the condition of the USS Arizona’s wreck annually, saw it differently.
“It’s like having a bachelor party at a church. It’s hallowed ground,” Albertson told the AP. “It needs to be treated with the solemnity it deserves.”
Patel has repeatedly come under fire for blurring the line between bureau business and personal leisure.
After reportedly using agency jets for date nights with his girlfriend, Patel flew to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy for what his spokespeople described as official work, but was then filmed in the U.S. men’s hockey team’s locker room throwing back booze.
Even his time in New Zealand before the snorkeling went off the rails, when he gifted 3-D printed guns to police and intelligence officials in the country, which were in fact illegal under local law, and had to be removed.
