When an Investigative Service Becomes the Crime Scene

There was a time when serving in the Coast Guard Investigative Service carried weight. Not just statutory authority or a badge backed by federal law—but pride. Pride in protecting the institution from corruption, safeguarding service members, and standing as the Coast Guard’s conscience when things went wrong. That pride is gone.

What remains inside CGIS today is not an elite federal law enforcement organization, but a study in toxicity—manufactured, enabled, and sustained by senior executive leadership that has confused control with competence and optics with integrity.

The rot is not subtle. It is systemic.

At the center of it sit a Director and Deputy Director who govern not through policy, fairness, or trust, but through fear, manipulation, and selective enforcement. They speak endlessly of reform, innovation, and progress, yet their most consistent product has been dysfunction, despair, and departure.

What makes this failure unforgivable is not merely that it exists—but that this type of conduct would never be tolerated anywhere else in the Coast Guard.

A Commanding Officer who presided over years of collapsing morale, ignored documented harm to their people, selectively enforced policy, retaliated against subordinates, or treated mental health as a liability instead of a responsibility would be removed without hesitation. Relief for cause would be swift. Careers would end. Accountability would follow.

Yet within CGIS, that standard inexplicably vanishes.

Policy as a Weapon, Not a Promise

Again, few examples better capture the duplicity of CGIS leadership than the Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) program.

On paper—published through ICON messages and policy-by-email memoranda—the program was sold as voluntary, flexible, and fair. No forced transfers. The ability to remove oneself from the SSA list at any time. The right to decline up to three SSA placement offers before automatic removal. These were not informal assurances; they were written, distributed, and relied upon.

Until they became inconvenient.

When leadership needed buy-in, the policy mattered.
When leadership needed bodies, it did not.

The same executives who demanded strict compliance with ICON-published guidance discarded it wholesale when it conflicted with their objectives. Policy ceased to function as a safeguard for employees and instead became a blunt instrument—applied selectively, enforced unevenly, and weaponized against those with the least leverage.

That behavior would be unacceptable at the unit, sector, or district level. Inside CGIS, it is normalized.

Equal Rights—Until They Aren’t

Nowhere is this breakdown more visible than in the disparate treatment of Spanish-speaking agents.

Under the guise of “mission needs,” native Spanish speakers were targeted and presented with a false choice: accept assignment to Puerto Rico under the SSA program or retire. When those agents exercised their documented right to decline—explicitly permitted by policy—they were told retirement was their only remaining option, and their retirement letters were formally endorsed.

Performance did not matter.
Years of service did not matter.
Awards did not matter.
Service history did not matter.

One of these agents was named Agent of the Year in 2025.
By mid 2026, he will be gone.

Meanwhile, similarly situated Caucasian agents who declined Puerto Rico assignments faced no retaliation. They were not forced to retire. They were not threatened. The policy that suddenly became “mandatory” for one group remained optional for another.

This is not leadership.
This is not management.
This is disparate treatment—plain, indefensible, and incompatible with Coast Guard values.

And it is occurring inside a federal investigative service tasked with enforcing the law impartially.

Failure Sold as Success

The SSA program—briefed upward as a modernization success—has hollowed out CGIS from the inside.

Experienced leaders were removed. Junior, unsupported personnel were placed into supervisory roles without authority, training, or institutional backing. Vacancies were left unfilled for years while headquarters focused on reorganizing charts instead of fixing operational failures.

The results were entirely predictable:

morale collapse
case delays
loss of prosecutorial confidence
mass attrition

Yet leadership is celebrated. Laudatory briefings continue. Flag Officers are told this represents progress.

This is the most dangerous deception of all: success declared by those insulated from its consequences, while the workforce absorbs the damage.

Retention Rhetoric, Reality Betrayed

At the same time CGIS hemorrhages talent, senior Coast Guard leadership speaks publicly of retention and “people first.” The disconnect is impossible to ignore.

Agents are retiring early.
Others are leaving for the FBI, HSI, DEA—anywhere but here.
Those who remain often do so not out of commitment, but inertia.

CGIS has become a paycheck agency.
A place people endure, not believe in.

Across offices nationwide, the same sentence is heard—quietly, repeatedly:
“The Coast Guard doesn’t care.”

It is said after DEOCS surveys go ignored.
After warnings are raised to Captains and Admirals.
After years of documented hostility, retaliation, and executive abuse.

The Human Cost

This is not rhetorical harm. It is clinical.

Agents have been driven into depression.
Others into anxiety disorders.
Some into PTSD—not from criminals, but from navigating headquarters.

Medications are prescribed.
Weapons and credentials are pulled.
Careers are derailed under the banner of “wellness,” while the conditions causing the harm remain untouched.

Suicidal ideation is no longer rare.
It is whispered.
Then normalized.
Then forgotten.

And when tragedy occurs, leadership expresses surprise. They should not.

No Coast Guard commander would be permitted to preside over this level of harm to their people. The only reason it persists inside CGIS is because flag officers have shifted from caring for people to protecting the institution at all costs—a reflex so deeply ingrained that accountability becomes an afterthought.

When Values Die, Followership Dies

CGIS agents once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with federal partners. Today, many avoid saying where they work. Heads down. Voices quiet. Trust gone.

When an organization stops practicing its own core values, its people stop following them.

This is the reality inside CGIS:

a hostile work environment
executives who cannot be trusted
policies enforced only when convenient
misconduct rewarded, integrity punished

The good is pushed out.
The harmful remains.
And the institution charged with protecting others can no longer protect its own.

That is not merely a leadership failure.
It is an institutional collapse.