There is a long tradition at the FBI of keeping a low profile. For decades after J. Edgar Hoover — who once handed out souvenir fingerprint cards with his own name on them — the directors who followed made a point of staying out of the spotlight. No branded merchandise, no personality cults, no swag. Just quiet, serious leadership of the country's top law enforcement agency.
That tradition appears to be over.
Kash Patel, the current FBI director appointed by President Trump, has built something of a personal brand empire around himself — and at the center of it sits a custom-engraved bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon with his name and title pressed right into the glass.
The Bottle Heard Around the Bureau
The bottles are not hard to describe. Each one is a 750-milliliter bottle from the well-known Kentucky distillery Woodford Reserve. Engraved on the bottle are the words "Kash Patel FBI Director," along with an FBI shield gripped in an eagle's talons. Circling the shield is text that includes his director title and his own preferred stylized spelling of his first name: Ka$h. The number 9 appears as well — a reference, it seems, to his place in the line of FBI directors. Some bottles also carry Patel's actual signature, with "#9" written beneath it.
These bottles are not collector's items sold in a gift shop. Patel gives them away.
According to eight people — including current and former FBI and Department of Justice employees — Patel has handed out his personalized bourbon to FBI staff, to civilians he meets through his official duties, and at various events. Most of these sources asked not to be named, citing fears of professional retaliation.
The Atlantic obtained one of these bottles after it appeared on an online auction site shortly after reporter Tim Alberta published an earlier story about Patel's alleged erratic behavior and excessive drinking. The person who sold it said the bottle came as a gift from Patel at an event in Las Vegas.
Swag Has Always Been His Thing
To understand the bourbon bottles, it helps to understand that Kash Patel has been doing this kind of thing for years. Long before he was confirmed as FBI director, he was already building out a personal merchandise operation.
The website he co-founded still sells beanies for 35, T-shirts for the same price, orange camo hoodies for $65, trucker caps for $25, "government gangsters" playing cards marked down to $10, and a Fight With Kash Punisher scarf for $25. Before his confirmation, he reportedly sent out Ka
h-branded merchandise boxes containing hats, socks, and items featuring the Punisher — a Marvel comic book character that has become something of a symbol in certain law enforcement and military circles.
He previously sold "Justice for All" T-shirts honoring those arrested in connection with the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. He has been photographed wearing his own merchandise on podcasts. He handed out an unusually large challenge coin — inscribed "Director" at the top and "Ka$h Patel" at the bottom — to a former senior FBI official in his own conference room.
"He is known as being very merch forward," one Department of Justice employee told The Atlantic.
One DOJ employee put it plainly. One former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst went a step further: "When you degrade the office like that, you degrade the impact."
Bourbon on the Government Plane
What sets the whiskey apart from the hats and scarves is how it has reportedly been transported and distributed.
According to multiple sources, Patel and his team have used a Department of Justice aircraft to move cases of the bourbon — including on a trip to Milan during the Winter Olympics in February. During that trip, Patel was filmed drinking beer with the U.S. men's hockey team after they won gold. That moment reportedly did not go over well with President Trump, who does not drink. Patel defended himself publicly, saying he was just celebrating with his "friends" on the team.
Also during that Olympic trip, one of Patel's personalized bourbon bottles was left behind in a locker room, according to a person who was present. The Atlantic reviewed a photograph of the bottle.
The use of a government plane to move alcohol has been a topic of discussion among FBI staff, according to sources.
Then, in March, Patel and his team brought at least one case of bourbon to the FBI's training facility in Quantico, Virginia. The occasion was described as a "training seminar" that featured mixed-martial-arts instruction from Ultimate Fighting Championship athletes. At some point during that event, at least one bottle went missing — and what followed was, by multiple accounts, a significant overreaction.
Kurt Siuzdak, a retired FBI agent who provides legal counsel to current bureau employees including whistleblowers, told The Atlantic that Patel "lost his mind" over the missing bottle and began threatening to polygraph and prosecute his own staff. Multiple agents reached out to Siuzdak seeking legal guidance after those threats were made. "It turned into a shitshow," Siuzdak said.
Other attorneys reported receiving similar calls from FBI employees rattled by the episode.
A Culture Problem With Deep Roots
The FBI has long maintained a strict internal culture around alcohol. Unauthorized drinking on the job or misuse of alcohol off-duty has historically been treated as a serious professional matter. That standard, according to one former agent, is being quietly eroded under Patel's leadership.
"It is so weird and uncomfortable," this person told The Atlantic.
Another former agent described the branded bottles as "demoralizing." The reasoning is straightforward: it implies that there is one rulebook for the director and another for everyone else. That agent also raised a chilling concern about the political dynamics the bottles create within the bureau — that an agent who doesn't enthusiastically accept a bottle from the director might find themselves suspected of disloyalty. "You aren't on board on receiving it enthusiastically, you are getting polygraphed for loyalty," this person suggested.
That fear of retaliation has reportedly stopped some agents from filing formal complaints or using whistleblower channels to raise concerns.
Siuzdak, who spent more than two decades in the FBI and also served in the military, says he has been giving current agents unusual advice: "I tell people to run from him."
He put the situation in stark terms. FBI agents have a legal duty to report wrongdoing, but reporting concerns about Patel puts them in professional jeopardy. Siuzdak said agents are especially worried about being associated with conduct that falls outside bureau norms, because that association could damage their credibility as witnesses in court. "Street agents know that integrity is the most important thing for their jobs," he said. "Without integrity, you can't testify."
The FBI's Response
When The Atlantic submitted a detailed list of questions to the FBI about the bourbon bottles, a spokesperson did not deny that Patel distributes personalized whiskey. Instead, the response framed the practice as normal and within established bureau traditions.
The spokesperson said that "the bottles in question are part of a tradition in the FBI that started well over a decade ago, long before Director Patel arrived. Senior Bureau officials have long exchanged commemorative items in formal gift settings consistent with ethics rules. Director Patel has followed all applicable ethical guidelines and pays for any personal gift himself."
The FBI did not clarify which specific ethics rules applied, did not say when the bottles were engraved with Patel's name, and did not confirm whether any bottles had actually been logged or reimbursed as personal gifts. The bureau also declined to provide photographs of commemorative bottles from previous directors.
When a former longtime senior FBI official was asked whether he had ever seen personally branded liquor distributed by a previous director, his reaction said more than any statement could. He burst out laughing.
An International Incident, Fake Guns, and a Pattern
The bourbon is just one part of a larger pattern that has drawn criticism and, in at least one case, created a diplomatic problem overseas.
In July of last year, Patel gave 3-D-printed replica revolvers to two cabinet members from New Zealand, along with members of that country's police and intelligence services, according to a report from the Associated Press. New Zealand security officials had to destroy the items because they were illegal under local law. A spokesperson for Patel later clarified that the replicas were "specially designed to be incapable of firing ammunition," but the damage to the relationship had already been done.
In a separate wrongful-termination lawsuit, former FBI Washington Field Office Assistant Director in Charge Steven Jensen described a meeting in Patel's conference room where the director handed him an oversized challenge coin. During that same visit, Jensen reportedly noticed a collection of whiskey bottles and cigars on Patel's desk. According to the complaint, Patel mentioned that he used to produce his own brand of cigars but that they were no longer in production.
Jensen, who had overseen parts of the investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack, was fired in August. His attorney, Margaret Donovan, issued a pointed statement: "There are line agents out there spending their nights and weekends trying to finish warrants, write reports, plan arrests. Yet the FBI Director apparently has the time to design logos, go to hockey games, sit for multi-hour podcast interviews. This is one of the most serious jobs in the country, not a vehicle for self-promotion and branding."
What It All Adds Up To
Patel's connection to bourbon is not new. During the first Trump administration, when he served as the National Security Council's senior director for counterterrorism, he and colleagues reportedly kept a barrel of bourbon on hand to mark successful hostage rescues and negotiations. It has clearly been part of his world for a long time.
But there is a significant difference between a barrel shared privately among colleagues celebrating a mission and a director of the FBI flying government-branded bottles across the country on a DOJ plane and handing them to civilians, staff, and foreign officials.
George Hill, a former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst who worked under multiple directors, framed it in terms that cut to the core of what the bureau is supposed to stand for. "Handing out bottles of liquor at the premier law-enforcement agency — it makes me frightened for the country," he told The Atlantic. "Standards apply to everything and everyone — especially the boss."
Hill described an organization working hard to maintain its mission while losing experienced staff to purges and operating under distracted leadership. The branding, the merchandise, the personal bottles — for Hill, it all points to the same failure. "It's a failure to lead," he said.
The FBI director holds one of the most consequential jobs in American government. The agency investigates terrorism, public corruption, organized crime, and threats to national security. The culture of the bureau — built on rules, discipline, and institutional integrity — is not just internal policy. It is the foundation that makes the FBI's work credible and its agents trusted in courtrooms across the country.
Whether a bottle of personalized bourbon is a minor perk or a symbol of something larger is a question people inside the bureau are already asking themselves — and the answer, based on what agents are telling their lawyers, seems to be pointing in one uncomfortable direction.
