Twelve Americans were injured during a peaceful pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado, when Mohamed Sabry Soliman — an Egyptian national who had overstayed his visa — launched a premeditated attack using Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower. This was not a protest gone wrong. It was a hate-fueled act of domestic terrorism.
The victims, ranging in age from 52 to 88, suffered burns of varying severity. One of them was a Holocaust survivor. Six were hospitalized, and at least two required airlift to specialized burn units. Soliman had planned the attack for over a year and carried 18 incendiary devices — intending mass harm.
And it was preventable.
Soliman had been planning the assault for over a year, targeting Jewish Americans under the guise of opposing Israel. But like too many modern-day terrorists, his motivations weren’t about geopolitics — they were about anti-Semitism. That should have triggered alarms across our federal law enforcement apparatus. But it didn’t. Instead, it exposed just how far off mission the FBI has drifted.
Let’s be clear about the root failure: the Bureau has become too bureaucratic, too centralized, and too distracted. Over the last two decades, successive administrations allowed headquarters to balloon while field offices were systematically depleted. Seasoned agents were pushed out of leadership or quietly encouraged to retire. Field office staffing shrank. And many of the best investigators in the world — the ones who used to run sources and preempt attacks — were left managing spreadsheets, responding to virtual compliance drills, or sitting through politically driven training mandates.
I saw the shift firsthand. In my early years at the Bureau, I was rarely in the office. I was in my community — meeting people, building trust, learning the streets. I was arresting dirty cops and getting kilos of drugs off the streets. When bad things were happening, members of the community talked to me. That kind of rapport is what stops crimes before they happen. Fast forward five years, and I was suddenly tasked with arbitrary headquarters deadlines and told to coordinate with the IRS — not to catch criminals, but so we could inflate our arrest stats with their cases. That’s not law enforcement. That’s optics.
As a result, radicalized individuals like Soliman — who displayed warning signs and violated immigration law — went undetected. Meanwhile, the FBI’s resources were diverted toward politically convenient targets: pro-life activists, devout Catholics, and concerned parents speaking at school board meetings.
This wasn’t just a case of looking the other way. It was institutional negligence born from a culture of political appeasement and operational drift. And it endangered Jewish Americans — not in Israel, not abroad, but here at home.
The good news? There’s a course correction underway.
FBI Director Kash Patel has done in months what his three predecessors refused to do over decades. He’s mandating decentralization — a rebalancing of the Bureau that shifts power and personnel back to the field. That includes transferring over 1,500 headquarters staff to regional posts, reinforcing offices in high-crime jurisdictions, and building out the Bureau’s capacity at its Huntsville, Alabama facility.
Decentralization is not a buzzword. It’s a return to mission.
When agents are embedded in the communities they serve — not tethered to Zoom meetings and compliance dashboards — they detect patterns, gather intelligence, and build trust. That’s how threats are identified before they materialize. It’s how the Bureau used to operate. And it's how it must again.
Yes, decentralization will ruffle feathers. It disrupts comfortable D.C. career paths and exposes the top-heavy bloat that’s stifled the FBI for years. But it’s also the clearest signal yet that the Bureau is finally remembering who it works for: the American people.
To be clear, no structural change alone will stop the next Soliman. But putting more agents in the field, empowering them to act without political interference, and re-centering the Bureau on law enforcement — not ideology — is the right place to start.
We should also say plainly what too many still won’t: anti-Israel rhetoric has become a smokescreen for mainstreamed anti-Semitism. Whether from campus radicals or foreign nationals, the line between activism and hate speech has long since blurred. The terror groups these extremists echo don’t just want Israel gone — they want Jews gone. They want America weakened.
That’s why Boulder wasn’t just a hate crime. It was an act of domestic terrorism. And our federal government wasn’t ready.
There will be more. The question is whether the FBI will be watching the right threats — or chasing the wrong ones.
Boulder was a failure. But it doesn’t have to define the future. Director Patel’s reforms are an overdue first step. But more must follow — including support from Congress, the public, and retired agents who still care about the badge.
We need fewer administrators. We need more operators. The time to act — decisively, intelligently, locally — is now.
Richard F. Stout, Jr. is a retired FBI Special Agent and founder of Reform the Bureau, a national group of former and current agents advocating for integrity, oversight, and accountability in federal law enforcement.
