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?”
R&I – TP
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