President Donald Trump’s nominee for the FBI director, Kash Patel, on Thursday, said the U.S. SEAL Team Six spent only 60 seconds in rescuing a kidnapped American citizen who had been kept hostage in northern Nigeria.

Mr Patel stated this during his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate on January 30, 2025. 

He was grilled about his role in the secret operation to rescue Philip Walton, a 27-year-old son of American missionaries who had been kidnapped by armed bandits from the neighbouring Niger and moved to northern Nigeria for ransom.

“The operation lasted for 60 seconds,” Mr Patel told the U.S. Congress on Thursday.

He was further grilled about his alleged carelessness in parroting a false approval that the Nigerian government had given the SEAL Team Six clearance to use the Nigerian airspace. Mr Patel was the brain behind the rescue operation, having obtained intelligence on the location where Mr Walton was being held.

He saw the opportunity for the Seal Team Six to strike given the bandits could move Mr Walton to a new location.

It was while the aircraft was aboard with agents mid-air that the U.S. senior officials learnt that the Nigerian government had not yet granted the Navy SEALs clearance to use their airspace, let alone land.

Then-Defence Secretary, Mark Esper, in his memoir, noted it was one of Mr Patel’s  numerous slip-ups and that he was highly concerned for the SEALs, particularly whether they would get shot down from the unauthorised mission.

“I was concerned that being packed in an aircraft burning holes in the sky for an extra hour or so would wear on the special operators, that it might affect their readiness somehow,” ABC cited Mr Esper’s memoir recounting the op.

Mr Esper said the SEALs had their suspicions that Mr Patel fabricated the clearance he said the Nigerian government gave them.

“My team suspected Patel made the approval story up, but they didn’t have all the facts,” Mr Esper wrote.

Mr Patel refuted the allegations in his own book “Government Gangsters” claiming there were persons who tried to undermine the president’s agenda by raising roadblocks to counterterrorism missions in Africa and the Middle East. 

The operation was eventually a success after the State Department intervened and acted swiftly to obtain airspace permission from the Nigerian authorities before the Navy SEALs landed.

Mr Patel has faced significant opposition in his quest to become FBI director and it is yet unclear whether he answered the queries satisfactorily.