An alarming deterioration in recruitment standards for the FBI has been exposed in a report delivered to the House Judiciary Committee by an alliance of retired and active-duty agents and analysts.
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) requirements pushed by FBI Director Chris Wray have degraded recruitment standards in all areas including “physical fitness, illicit drug use, financial irregularities, mental health, full-time work experience and integrity,” and pose a threat to the FBI’s ability to protect America from harm, say the authors.
The report cites cases of new agents who are so fat and unfit, they can’t even pass the new relaxed standards for fitness; who are illiterate and need remedial English lessons; who don’t want to work weekends or after hours; have serious disabilities or mental-health issues, and “create drama.”
The FBI is no longer recruiting the “best and brightest” to be special agents, but selecting candidates based on “race, gender and/or sexual orientation.”
The alliance of anonymous FBI reformers includes senior former executives and agents from the counterintelligence and counterterrorism branches who warn that today’s FBI “lacks the fortitude and skills warranted to defeat [existential] threats . . .
“And if the current trajectory of FBI Special Agent recruitment and selection continues — using DEI as the primary and sole measure — our homeland security efforts will be significantly hampered.”
An increasing number of “lower-quality candidates — described by one source as ‘breadcrumbs’ because they were rejected by other federal law-enforcement agencies” — are applying to become FBI special agents; and are being recruited because they “satisfy the FBI’s priority to meet Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mandates.”
‘Fewer applying’
Flying in the face of Wray’s boast to Congress last year that recruitment numbers are soaring, especially in red states, the report finds that FBI’s special-agent hiring numbers are down, “likely due to the decline in the nation’s trust in the FBI and a corresponding decrease in the number of individuals interested in applying to the FBI for employment.”
A former senior counterintelligence agent involved with writing the report said controversies engulfing the FBI in the Trump era have had the perverse effect of attracting recruits who want to be “agents of social change versus protecting the country.”
Recruitment has become “self-destructive” and is setting up the FBI for “generational failure.”
Another former agent who helped draft the report said: “Why are we funding a new FBI headquarters if you’re hiring second-rate people?”
The report is written as if it were an official FBI intelligence product, with code names given to sources and sub-sources who anonymously provided firsthand knowledge of FBI recruitment and selection practices.
They include instructors and counselors at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., application coordinators and assessors from FBI field offices across the country, and supervisors and executives from FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC.
They reveal a farcical situation with new recruits:
Veteran supervisor special agent SIERRA 72 disqualified a black female applicant because she was more than 50 pounds overweight using the FBI’s body-fat index and could not pass the physical fitness test.
But FBI HQ ordered SIERRA 72 to push the candidate through the recruitment process.
Other supervisors say a high percentage of candidates fail the mandatory fitness test, despite the fact that standards have been relaxed.
They “simply quit in the middle of the 1.5-mile run.”
One veteran agent who works as a recruitment coordinator, codenamed SIERRA 87, said the drug policy for new agents has been “liberalized to include applicants who had a lifestyle of using drugs.”
A candidate who “was arrested and fought with police officers” was not disqualified. Nor are candidates with driving-under-the-influence convictions, or people with “documented mental illness.”
Nor are candidates who lie during the recruitment process.
SIERRA 72 disqualified a special-agent applicant because their only work experience was “working two years as a coffee-shop barista and having a bachelor’s degree in art history.”
But FBI HQ ordered SIERRA 72 to push the applicant through.
SIERRA 23, a special agent for four years in counterterrorism, observed that most new agents “disappear during the day, go home early, or never want to work late for after-hours operations. SIERRA 23 does not trust most of the agents with his/her life since they have questionable competence, tactical abilities and work ethic.”
SIERRA 22 said one applicant recently rejected by a local police department and one who was a long-term unemployed “gamer” were pushed through by FBI HQ for non-special-agent positions despite objections from the field office.
Other recruits have to be given remedial English classes because they are not capable of writing basic reports “in a coherent manner [and] often fail to utilize proper capitalization, punctuation and sentence structure.”
In one case, training agent SIERRA 11 “advised a new agent that his/her writing skills needed improvement and that the new agent needed to pay attention to detail.”
The new agent complained to the supervisor that SIERRA 11 was “too difficult and expecting too much.”
A female minority recruit “could not compose a simple FD-302,” the standard FBI interview report,” said SIERRA 79, a criminal investigator of four decades.
“The agent never made a case or wrote an affidavit and had to be pulled along to support investigations [and] could not be trusted in court.”
During the agent’s probationary period, her supervisor went up the chain of command to request that her employment be terminated but was told “we need minority female agents.”
An FBI-agent recruit “stuttered and appeared to have Tourette syndrome or other tic disorder that hindered [his/her] ability to communicate,” said SIERRA 32, a veteran supervisor at the academy who wondered how this recruit “would function in a high-threat, hostile environment.”
Ivy League graduates were being hired fresh out of college and placed in high-level positions to do “strategic planning . . . responsible for establishing policy, procedures and goals with counterproductive results.”
Recruiters are required to host “Diversity Applicant Recruitment” events based on race, gender and sexual orientation.
“Straight white males may not attend. If a recruiter chose not to attend a Pride Parade or fly the Pride flag . . . the recruiter would most likely be removed immediately.”
The report urges the House Judiciary Committee to order a 90-day audit of the FBI’s recruitment practices, to introduce legislation to strengthen the oath of office for FBI special agents, and to call Director Wray to testify before Congress over whether he is “willfully lying to conceal significant deficiencies” in recruitment or has been misinformed by subordinates.
A spokesman for committee Chairman Jim Jordan said the panel was evaluating the report:
“We are thankful that these brave FBI officials have come forward with this report that described some of the ridiculous things happening at the bureau. We will continue to work with these officials . . . so we can further implement the proper legislative changes.”
The authors want to remain anonymous because those still serving know they will be “crushed” like whistleblowers before them, says one of the authors.
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Miranda Devine
