Internal docs and court records: the FBI made a push in late 2020 and H1 2021 to deploy Pegasus in its criminal investigations but dropped the plan in July 2021
Context & Ripple Effects
When the New York Times first mapped Pegasus' global spread in January, the striking detail was that the FBI had bought the spyware but never used it (the investigation found widespread use by the CIA, UAE, Mexico and Saudi Arabia). This follow-up fills in the missing chapter: internal docs and court records show the Bureau wasn't just holding the tool — it ran an active program through late 2020 and the first half of 2021 to put Pegasus into criminal casework.
The July 2021 abandonment now reads as a decision point rather than inertia, and it matters because the demand didn't disappear: subsequent reporting shows the DEA secretly deploying Graphite spyware even under US sanctions on NSO (government spyware use booming despite sanctions), while Mexico keeps using Pegasus after promising to stop (Mexico remains its most prolific user).
First-order effects
- For the FBI, the records confirm the Bureau moved past evaluation into deployment planning for criminal investigations — meaning the US nearly became a direct Pegasus operator domestically, not just a purchaser studying the tool.
- For NSO Group, losing the FBI track removed what would have been its most valuable endorsement — a Western law-enforcement anchor — just as sanctions were cutting off its government client base.
Second-order effects
- Other US agencies routed around the NSO problem instead of dropping the capability: the DEA's secret Graphite deployment shows demand migrating to alternative vendors once one supplier became politically toxic.
- Competing spyware makers gain a proven playbook — sell to US agencies that still want phone-hacking tools, since the FBI episode demonstrates the appetite survived even a high-profile vendor's collapse.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US sanctions function as vendor rotation rather than suppression: targeting one firm redirects procurement to the next supplier while the underlying agency demand stays intact, weakening sanctions as a policy instrument against commercial spyware.
- The near-miss also sets up a domestic accountability question — whether Congress and oversight bodies treat law-enforcement spyware use as a procurement issue per agency or a single national policy, a line the FBI's quiet reversal suggests doesn't yet exist.
The trend: US law enforcement's demand for phone-hacking spyware is outliving individual vendor scandals, with sanctions reshaping who supplies the tools rather than whether agencies deploy them.