ABC News: Kash Patel Facing 'New' Controversy Over Snorkeling Excursion at Most Hallowed Site

ABC News reports that FBI Director Kash Patel is facing a new controversy. The old controversy, where anonymous sources told Atlantic reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick that Patel would get blackout drunk on the job, is still going strong, as Sen. Chris Van Hollen proved this week with repeated claims that Patel is a liar and challenges to take an alcohol test. It seems the media has chosen Patel to pile on.

This new controversy involved a snorkeling excursion Patel took "to one of the most hallowed places in the United States."

FBI Director Kash Patel is facing a new controversy over a snorkeling excursion he took to one of the most hallowed places in the United States. https://t.co/fpeCramoqS
— ABC News (@ABC) May 16, 2026

Kash Patel's "VIP Snorkel" with 9 guests, accompanied by Navy Seals, over the tomb of 900 sailors at Pearl Harbor: "[A]s disrespectful as playing kickball on top of the graves at Arlington."https://t.co/oNwsCXBigJ
— Roger Parloff (@rparloff) May 16, 2026

What luck! Just like Nicholas Kristof's Israeli dog-rape story, they're giving this one away as a gift article so everyone can read it.

Elizabeth Williamson and Adam Goldman report on the "new" controversy:

Last summer, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, capped a whirlwind South Pacific trip with a snorkel trip in Hawaii.
There, Navy SEALs used two boats to transport and escort Mr. Patel and nine other people on what a Defense Department email called a “V.I.P. Snorkel” next to one of the military’s most sacred sites, the underwater tomb of the U.S.S. Arizona that holds the remains of more than 900 Navy sailors and Marines who died at Pearl Harbor.
Mr. Patel swam in the vicinity of the tomb for 30 minutes, according to the Navy.

"The tomb." Last summer. New controversy.

The idea of a high-ranking government official receiving an escort from the SEALs for a recreational swim near the tomb is “horrifying,” said William M. McBride, a Navy veteran and professor emeritus of history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
“This is a war grave with the same legal status as Arlington National Cemetery,” Mr. McBride said in an interview. “Snorkeling around Arizona is as disrespectful as playing kickball on top of the graves at Arlington.”