U.S. President Donald Trump looks at U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Ferris Pirro as FBI Director Kash Patel stands next to them during a press conference about deploying federal law enforcement agents in Washington to bolster the local police presence, in the Press Briefing Room at the White House, in Washington D.C., U.S., August 11, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

President Donald Trump's administration is now rolling out noticeably lower standards for FBI agents, and one former official at the bureau is sounding the alarm.

The New York Times reported Thursday that FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino are now announcing that the bureau will no longer require potential FBI agents to have a bachelor's degree. Additionally, the length of the training program at the FBI's academy in Quantico, Virginia is being shortened from 12 weeks to eight weeks. Neither Patel nor Bongino offered any explanation for the changes.

Former FBI counterterrorism official Chris O'Leary tore into Patel and Bongino over the new standards, and accused them of carrying out "generational destruction" of the bureau.

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"[If Patel and Bongino] knew anything about leading organizations,” O'Leary told the Times, “they would know that when you lower the standards, your mission effectiveness goes down with that, because not only does the capability of each individual agent decline, but your reputation, both domestically and globally, takes a hit."

The new changes may be an effort to restore the bureau's ranks, as the administration has fired numerous agents who worked on cases involving defendants who took part in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The bureau is also on track to lose roughly 5,000 agents should they accept buyouts and early retirement offers as part of budget-cutting efforts. And according to the Times, the number of special agents at the bureau may shrink from 13,000 to approximately 11,000.

O'Leary suggested that the recent addition of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as a co-deputy director of the FBI to serve alongside Bongino – the first such hire in the FBI's history — shows that the bureau's current management is ill-equipped to carry out their duties. He added that it appears to signal that the FBI's newe primary function is to "do the bidding of the administration, no matter what it is."

Click here to read the Times' report in its entirety (subscription required).

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