On Thursday morning, a day after hastily suggesting the person who gunned down Charlie Kirk was in custody, Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, convened an online meeting with 200 agents around the country to discuss the manhunt. It was a tense affair.
Mr. Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, made it clear they were under intense pressure to catch the killer of Mr. Kirk. They expressed themselves with such fierce urgency that, in the view of some participants, it hinted at another motive: to prove they were up to the task.
The director wasted no time before calling out subordinates that he said failed to give him timely information and was incensed that agents in Salt Lake City waited nearly 12 hours to show him a photo of the suspected killer, according to three people familiar on the exchange.
Mr. Patel said he would not tolerate any more “Mickey Mouse operations,” an official on the call recounted. It was one of his few utterances without profanity, the person added.
The killing of Mr. Kirk on Wednesday not only poses a challenge to agents racing to find the shooter, it also represents a grave leadership test for Mr. Patel. His swift pronouncements about the inquiry have revived concerns about his lack of experience, obsession with social media and purge of some of the bureau’s most experienced investigators, according to current and former officials, most of whom spoke on the sensitive matter on the condition of anonymity.
Whether Mr. Patel’s personal presence can overcome his embarrassing early stumble in posts online about the Kirk investigation remains to be seen. The F.B.I. director’s actions have already invited scorn and scrutiny from the bureau’s work force, and some senior officials at the Justice Department, who think his behavior has eroded public confidence in the F.B.I.
Mr. Patel’s critics have also expressed concern that a wave of firings and forced retirements, which started before Mr. Patel was confirmed in February and continued after he took over, could hamper the bureau’s ability to manage complex investigations like the Kirk case.
Hours before a single gunshot hit Mr. Kirk in the neck at Utah Valley University, three former top F.B.I. officials — Brian J. Driscoll Jr., Steven J. Jensen and Spencer L. Evans — filed a lawsuit against Mr. Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi accusing them of illegally firing them.
The departure of Mr. Driscoll, who served as interim director until Mr. Patel was confirmed, has been a particularly significant blow. Mr. Driscoll was not only one of the F.B.I.’s most experienced career agents, he has been a morale booster and source of organizational stability, often defending rank-and-file agents targeted for firings or demotions by Trump appointees.
Another departure had an even more direct bearing on the Kirk investigation. Over the summer, Mr. Patel’s team forced the retirement of Mehtab Syed, a highly regarded former counterterrorism agent appointed in February to run the Salt Lake City field office, for reasons that remain unclear, according to former officials. (The move was earlier reported by MSNBC.)
Mr. Kirk’s shooting “highlights the urgent need for experienced steady leadership in moments of political violence,” said Lauren C. Anderson, a former F.B.I. agent who occupied senior leadership posts in the New York field office and supervised Ms. Syed early in her career.
“She had unparalleled expertise in exactly these kinds of investigations,” Ms. Anderson added. “Losing her leadership at this critical moment is a serious blow to the community and the bureau.”
A person close to Mr. Patel said that his actions have been geared at fostering better coordination and that he is appreciative of the work of agents on the case and determined to succeed.
As if to prove that point, Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino traveled on Thursday to Utah to personally oversee the investigation, according to officials.
On Wednesday evening, as word of Mr. Kirk’s killing reverberated around the nation, Mr. Patel, a former podcaster, posted welcome but fleeting news on his official X account.
“The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody,” he wrote to his 1.8 million followers. “Thank you to the local and state authorities in Utah for your partnership with @fbi.”
Mr. Patel wrote the message after speaking with agents working the case, and quickly posted it himself without consulting his leadership team, according to two people with knowledge of his actions.
It was highly unusual for the director of the F.B.I., known for its button-down messaging and a longstanding reluctance to compromise investigations by freely sharing information with the public. It was even more unusual that he did so minutes before Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah and other officials had scheduled their first on-air briefing in the case.
Moments later, Beau Mason, the commissioner of Utah’s Department of Public Safety, told reporters that his agency and the F.B.I. would be working together “to find this killer,” suggesting the search was continuing.
Mr. Cox spoke next, saying that the authorities had “a person of interest in custody,” but also that the police would find whoever had committed the crime.
The reason for the mismatch would soon become apparent. After the briefing, Mr. Patel took to X again, this time to announce, “The subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement.”
He added, “Our investigation continues.”
There are no indications any of this has jeopardized Mr. Patel’s job. He is a close ally to a powerful Trump aide, Stephen Miller. For his part, Mr. Bongino appears to have weathered a crisis earlier this summer after he called on his boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi, to quit over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Yet there are unmistakable signs the White House thinks the bureau needs leadership help. Last month, the White House tapped Andrew Bailey, the attorney general of Missouri, to serve as deputy director of the F.B.I., forcing Mr. Bongino to share power with a far more experienced manager. Mr. Bailey started work this week.
On Thursday, about 22 hours after Mr. Kirk was shot, the investigation appeared to pick up momentum, when the police and the F.B.I. released security camera footage of a man in sunglasses and baseball cap believed to be the shooter, along with information about the bolt-action rifle and ammunition found near the campus.
Past investigations of high-profile incidents have also been plagued by missteps, including the 2013 inquiry after the deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon.
While there were multiple false starts as the public sought to identify the bombers, officials quickly zeroed in on two brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as the likely culprits after the F.B.I. published images and asked for the public’s help.
The appeal led to a frantic police chase and shootout.
Since then, law enforcement’s ability to take video clips and feed them through facial recognition software for possible matches has vastly improved.
“We are confident in our abilities to track that individual,” the F.B.I.’s special agent in charge in Salt Lake City, Robert Bohls, said Thursday morning. “If we’re unsuccessful in identifying them, immediately, we will reach out to the public.”
By afternoon, Mr. Patel posted another, more conventional message on his X account, one that might have been written by any of his predecessors — offering up to $100,000 “for information leading to the identification and arrest of the individual(s) responsible for the murder of Charlie Kirk.”