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Director Patel's Remarks at the Opening of the FBI Attaché Office in New Zealand, Jul. 31, 2025

August 4, 2025 · FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation · 0:03:27

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

At the opening of the FBI’s newest law enforcement attaché office in Wellington on July 31, 2025, Director Kash Patel said, as he stated it, that within months of taking the job he concluded through the Five Eyes partners that the alliance is the most important intelligence, law enforcement, and defense relationship the United States has, and that learning New Zealand had no legal attaché office — and that the Bureau had not opened a new one in several decades, as he stated it — prompted him to fix it.

Patel said, as he stated it, that co-locating intelligence, law enforcement, and defense partners is the only way to confront the threat of the Chinese Communist Party in the Indo-Pacific, that Pacific Island nations are vital to that effort, and that cases brought in America against the CCP — he cited, as he stated it, a guilty plea involving theft of trade secrets in an attempt to interfere with Department of Defense nuclear operations — were built through Five Eyes partnerships elsewhere and will now be built in New Zealand too, as he stated it.

He said, as he stated it, that the Wellington visit was his first trip outside the United States in the role, that he met Minister Peters at Parliament the day before, and that he promised the FBI would commit permanent resources to New Zealand and that the mission would endure rather than be a brief stop, as he stated it.

Why it matters

A first new FBI legal attaché office in decades is a concrete expansion of U.S. law enforcement presence in the Pacific, and Patel explicitly framed it as a move against Chinese Communist Party activity in the region.

Sources: FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Director Patel’s Remarks at Opening of Attaché Office in New Zealand”, 2025-08-04 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-08-04). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.