Do dictators hold their cabinet ministers responsible for policy failures? While prior research emphasizes ministerial appointments in dictatorships as tools for co-opting opposition and rewarding loyalists, these posts also carry responsibilities tied to their portfolios. Failure in critical portfolio areas, such as internal security, can threaten regime survival and endanger the patron dictator. This study explores the conditions under which dictators prioritize elite performance over political considerations. Using an original dataset on the retention of interior ministers in dictatorships around the world from 1966 to 2015, we examine whether these ministers – tasked with maintaining internal security – are held professionally accountable for terrorist attacks. Our results show that dictators are more likely to dismiss interior ministers after attacks when they result in human casualties. This manuscript makes important theoretical and empirical contributions to the scholarship on autocratic governance, domestic security, and ministerial performance in non-democratic regimes