A “significant number” of FBI agents — including two Assistant Special Agents in Charge and a legal advisor — cheated on a required bureau exam, the Justice Department Inspector General said in a report issued Monday.
The test — an exhaustive, open-book exam on the FBI’s guidelines for conducting investigations. — was given to all FBI agents, including FBI Director Robert Mueller himself, in 2009 and earlier this year. The exam’s instructions required that it be done individually and required agents to certify that they did not consult with other people on the exam.
For its report, the Inspector General’s office interviewed agents at four field offices around the country. The field offices are not identified in the report. The Inspector General’s office found that many agents consulted with each other on the exam in violation of the instructions. They also found that some agents brought answer keys to the test or exploited a programming flaw that allowed them to see the correct answer to each question.
“In our limited investigation, we found that a significant number of FBI employees engaged in some form of improper conduct or cheating on the DIOG exam, some in clear violation of FBI directives regarding the exam,” the report concluded. “Almost all of those who cheated falsely certified on Question 51 (the final question of the exam) that they had not consulted with others.”
The Inspector General recommended that the FBI discipline agents found to have cheated on the exam and draft and administer a new test.
Soon after the exam was administered in 2009, the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility launched an investigation into allegations that some FBI agents in the Washington Field Office allegedly took the exam together in violation of the rules.
In December, Joseph Persichini Jr., the head of the FBI’s Washington, D.C. office, retired after a controversy over the test. The FBI’s OPR had recommended Persichini receive administrative disciplinary action after the agent reportedly completed the exam in less than 20 minutes and earned a very high score. Persichini announced his retirement before the appeals process had been completed.
The FBI’s OPR found that the cheating might extend beyond the Washington Field Office, and Inspector General’s office opened a broader investigation in January 2010.
UPDATE:
In a statement, Mueller said the FBI would undertake disciplinary action for any agents found to have engaged in improper conduct.
“An uncompromising commitment to integrity remains the backbone of the FBI workforce. It guides us in every aspect of carrying out our mission to protect the American public. When allegations of misconduct relating to the DIOG testing first came to our attention, we moved quickly to investigate, bringing in the Office of Inspector General (OIG). In cases where misconduct has been determined, personnel actions were taken, and that process continues. We will follow-up in each of the 22 cases the IG has found for disciplinary action, as appropriate, as well as any other allegations of misconduct.
“The vast majority of FBI employees successfully completed the DIOG training and the open-book examination that followed, in accordance with the test-taking instructions. While the Office of Inspector General has identified a number of factors that contributed to problems with the test-taking, nothing excuses the conduct of those who chose not to comply when instructions were clear.”
We at Main Justice have filed 42 stories since May 2009 about the Obama Justice Department’s controversial decision to drop most of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.
Why? Because we’ve been around Washington long enough to recognize the conservative political machine’s windup to a curve ball pitch. And now we have it: Allegations splashed on the front page of Saturday’s Washington Post that the Obama administration is biased against white voters!
These allegations have been aired for months and months on Fox News and in the dwindling pages of the apparently bankrupt Washington Times. But the goal of the conservatives who nurtured this story – with help from conservatives inside the DOJ — was always to get them “validated” by a non-ideological respected mainstream outlet. Now they’ve done it, thanks to a deluge of calls to the Post’s ombudsman, who criticized the paper for not getting to the bottom of the story and apparently spurred the Post to action.
Meanwhile, the administration and its liberal defenders have done nothing to “make news” on this story, which means they are only reacting to a narrative the conservatives are driving. Admittedly, it’s tough: They are saddled by the odious Panthers, a hate group that no one wants to be seen as defending.
And the news on Friday was real: The DOJ’s former Voting Section chief, Christopher Coates, testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that that he observed a “deep-seated” opposition in the department to pursuing cases that protected the voting rights of whites. But as we’ll see later, Coates is hardly the non-political career lawyer his champions make him out to be.
First, though, it’s unclear that there are massive numbers of white voters in America who are being kept from the polls – at least not in the way Southern states once used poll taxes, literacy tests and other gimmicks to disenfranchise black voters, spurring the 1957 Civil Rights Act that established the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
What’s true is that a 2005 voting case the Bush DOJ brought against black Democratic Party officials in Noxubee County, Miss., met strong opposition from the mostly liberal career Voting Section lawyers then in place at the DOJ. And it’s also true that Attorney General Eric Holder last year said the division was returning to its “historical mission” of protecting minority rights after Bush political appointees caused turmoil in the Civil Rights Division.
From these thin reeds, conservatives have managed to gain traction with this extraordinary narrative: The first black U.S. president, under the first black Attorney General, don’t believe in enforcing anti-discrimination laws when the victims are white.
The Obama administration is yet again caught in a familiar racial trap. But unlike the Shirley Sherrod incident, this one didn’t sneak up on them. You would think they’d have devised more effective response.
What’s masterful about the conservative narrative is that no white voters – or any voters at all – have come forward to complain they were intimidated by two members of a racist fringe group called the New Black Panther Party, who stood outside a majority black Philadelphia polling place in 2008 wearing black berets and fatigues. (more…)
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Former Justice Department officials, Obama administration members and dozens of past and present government lawyers on Friday paid tribute at DOJ headquarters to the longest serving federal prosecutor who is retiring next week.
Senior DOJ officials at a ceremony praised Deputy Assistant Attorney General John “Jack” Keeney for his 59 years of service. Keeney, 88, will leave the DOJ on Sept. 30.
“You will continue to be a role model and you will always be a legend to lawyers, paralegals, support staff and Attorneys General who served our nation’s Department of Justice,” said Attorney General Eric Holder as more than 100 people looked on. He added that it was a “privilege” to work with and learn from the veteran prosecutor, who started at the DOJ during the Dwight Eisenhower administration.
Holder and several of Keeney’s colleagues described him as one of the most revered and trusted career prosecutors at the DOJ. He served under dozens of Deputy Attorneys General and more than 20 Attorneys General, including George W. Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who attended the ceremony.
Keeney joined the DOJ Criminal Division in 1951. Three years later, he ascended to chief of the unit that prosecuted Smith Act cases, involving conspiracies to overthrow the U.S. government.
He moved to Organized Crime and Racketeering Section in 1960, serving as Deputy Chief. The prosecutor then served as chief of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section from 1969 to 1973, before becoming Deputy Assistant Attorney General.
Keeney was a member of the U.S. team that negotiated the mutual legal assistance treaty in criminal matters with Switzerland. He also served as acting Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division on several occasions.
He has received numerous honors for his service, including a building named for him. At the ceremony, he was given a commemorative plaque from the Criminal Division, a letter of gratitude from President Barack Obama, a framed copy of a statement in the Congressional Record honoring him and the Claudia J. Flynn Award for Professional Responsibility, which was handed out for the first time on Friday. Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer also unveiled a photograph of Keeney that will be on permanent display in the Criminal Division.
“Throughout his long tenure, Mr. Keeney has passed judgment on some of the most sensitive and high-profile prosecutions by this department,” Breuer said. “And for the last 59 years no one – no reporter, no op-ed writer, no defense attorney, no politician – has ever been able to credibly claim that any decision by Mr. Keeney was based on anything but the facts and the law.”
Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis joked about Keeney, a close friend, who interviewed him for a job at DOJ in 1969. Margolis said he and Keeney were recently sitting on a bench in DOJ chatting when someone had an observation to share with the two.
“You two guys look like you would be more at home sitting on a bench in front of the building feeding the pigeons,” the man said, according to Margolis. “At least, I think that’s what he said. Jack’s hearing aid and my hearing aid [had problems].”
Keeney smiled from a seat behind the podium as his colleagues shared their stories and paid tribute to him. He said he was “overwhelmed” by the praise.
“All I can say to you is thanks for everything you have done for me and thanks for coming,” Keeney said.
Todd McCall has been named an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Memphis office, the Memphis Daily New reported Friday.
For the past five years, McCall has been senior supervisory resident agent in the Jackson, Tenn. bureau office. He is a 20-year veteran of the bureau and has worked on cases including the Waco standoff and the Oklahoma City bombing.
Amy Hess was named special agent in charge of the Memphis office in June. – LN
