“Where is this email? I will reply ‘resign’ right now.”
This was my visceral reaction to hearing about DOGE’s buyout offer, AKA “The Fork in the Road.” When the email arrived, I hesitated. Twenty years of public service, thirteen as an FBI intelligence analyst, is no small thing to throw away, and all that glittered within the “buyout” was not gold.
Two weeks later, I walked into a meeting with the head of the Los Angeles Field Office. I held back tears as I told him I was leaving. I told him I lacked faith in the office’s leadership to guide us through the darkness ahead.
He sat there quiet and meaningless; a shape without form. He asked for more time; a gesture without motion. I left his office and immediately replied ‘resign.’
Four months later, that lack of faith was vindicated. I watched the news in horror as FBI Police placed a United States Senator in handcuffs just down the hall from where we’d met. Standing at the head of the room, silent and compliant, was the same hollow man who had failed me months earlier.
The decay didn’t start with the election. It didn’t start with the transition team’s data calls or the anticipatory dismantling of the Diversity and Inclusion program. For me, the realization that the Bureau was too fragile to survive started much earlier, in the quiet, persistent failure to protect its own employees from retribution—especially the women.
I know what you’re thinking. What does a 40-year-old white guy know about the plight of women in the workplace? Very little. But I know cowardice when I see it.
During the pandemic, my wife—also an FBI intelligence analyst—and I shared our jobs, each alternating in the office biweekly. We also shared a manager. At one point, management decided we needed to work weekends—not because the mission required it, but because they said so. When my wife pushed back, they dismissed her concerns; they told her they would talk to her husband, me, instead. They thought I would bring her in line. We laughed uncomfortably over their naivety, but the underlying assumption was dark.
As time went on, the laughter stopped. My wife, a fighter, tackled the casual disrespect head-on. But through her experiences, my eyes opened to the broader landscape.
It all came to a head in the summer of 2023, when I stumbled into a dispute between two probationary employees where the male employee was littering the conversation with blatant sexism. I tried to de-escalate. I failed. I went to the supervisor, expecting a quick correction. They refused to intervene. They were afraid of how it would look. They wanted to be “one of the boys.”
I watched as this supervisor admitted they had been rating a female employee unfairly compared with her male counterparts. I watched as legitimate complaints from women were met not with support, but with retaliation. I watched as the leadership structure protected the status quo rather than the people doing the work.
That was the moment the illusion broke. I realized that if FBI leadership was afraid to rein in a probationary employee for fear of tarnishing their image, they would crumble instantly when faced with the genuine political pressure coming their way. And crumble they did.
By Election Day 2024, the writing was on the wall. When the transition team began peppering the FBI with data calls—looking for names, looking for non-citizens, looking for targets—the leadership that had failed the women in my office did exactly what I expected: they acquiesced.
The speed of the capitulation was breathtaking. The Bureau proactively closed its Diversity and Inclusion Office in December, doing the administration’s work for them before the inauguration even took place. The senior executives were clearly aware of what was coming. Then came the “Fork in the Road“ email.
While my colleagues speculated over the legitimacy of the buyout, I thought about the Deputy Attorney General’s demand for a list of employees who investigated the attack on the Capitol. I saw the newly sworn-in Attorney General stripping the Bureau of counterintelligence tools. I saw a lifetime of intelligence work being dismantled.
As the institution deteriorated, I recalled the departing words of a colleague years earlier. They felt like they could do more for the Bureau’s mission by not working there. I finally understood. My wife and I looked at our savings. We weighed the moral cost of staying. Just hours before a federal judge brought the first deferred resignation period to a halt, I walked into the hollow man’s office hoping for a reason to stay but expecting nothing.
He exceeded my expectations. He sat disinterested, unaware, and seemingly unbothered by the storm raging outside his door. I left his office, returned to my desk, and replied ‘resign.’
Since departing on March 3rd, the Bureau and the administration have consistently reassured me I made the right decision. No moment was more clarifying than June 12th, as I watched Senator Alex Padilla detained and put in handcuffs by FBI Police for having the audacity to ask Kristi Noem a question during a press conference held in the FBI Los Angeles Field Office’s Luis Flores Conference Room. The hollow man stood by silent, a paralyzed force, headpiece filled with straw, leaning together amongst the rest of the hollow men.
His silence was deafening; the irony suffocating. Luis Flores was a Salvadoran immigrant who grew up in a tough Chicago neighborhood, earned a law degree, and became an FBI agent at 26. The room was named to honor his memory. Yet, in that very room, while the Secretary of Homeland Security spoke, a U.S. Senator was handcuffed, and the memory of Luis Flores was desecrated. I couldn’t help but wonder how many future Luis’s were being rounded up by the deportation agenda the Bureau was so enthusiastically assisting.
Beginning in mid-2024, I attempted to fight the misogyny through a series of escalating whistleblower complaints, ultimately spurring retaliation and an investigation by DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility. After inauguration, OPR was embroiled in their own struggle. I sought counsel, but the message was clear: in this brave new world, accountability was an obscene fantasy. Confirmation came when OPR closed my investigation on my birthday—a final, petty end, not with a bang but a whimper.
So be it. For the first time in years, I have my voice. I, too, can do more for the Bureau’s mission from the outside.
On October 1st, my wife and I launched Forking Off, a podcast where we interview former federal employees who recently left government service. We’re giving silenced voices a platform to be heard while capturing the oral history of the degradation of public service for future generations. In a year when over 300,000 employees left federal service, it can feel a bit like The Star Thrower—tossing one sea star at a time amidst the wreckage and debris of life. There is solace in knowing we’re taking an active role in our strained democracy rather than idly watching its destruction. Maybe we’ll even inspire a few more throwers to join us at the foot of the receding rainbow.
We’re also building Ravenwood Intelligence Cooperative. If the government won’t fulfill its role in the public-private partnership, then we’ll do it for them. We’re building a space where intelligence services are democratized, owned by the members, and driven by ethics and civic virtue rather than shareholders or political agendas.
If there was one element of the “Fork in the Road” that felt real, it was that two paths diverged. One—a sunlit path crowded with hollow men—laid out clearly what would be expected, and the reward granted the compliant traveler. The other, vacant, bent into the undergrowth of uncertainty. I knew there would be no turning back. That was fine by me. I took the one less traveled.
I’m tired of merely watching the destruction. It’s time to build something new.
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If you are interested in being a guest writer for The Fed Up Features, you can email me (Jordan) at jordan@thefedupcommunity.com. I look forward to collaborating!
Until next time,
Jordan
Philip Fields is a former FBI intelligence analyst and Marine Corps veteran. For over a decade, he led offensive cyber operations and undercover dark web investigations to disrupt terrorist networks and state-sponsored threats. He resigned in 2025, after witnessing the erosion of institutional integrity from within. He is now the co-founder of Ravenwood Intelligence Cooperative, a decentralized intelligence firm, and the co-host of Forking Off, a podcast documenting the decline of the federal government.
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