Power & Market

The FBI Has Lowered Its Already Low Standards

The New York Post reports:

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 headline reads that the change in hiring standards puts the “country’s safety at risk.” The article goes on to recount in detail how new recruits are overweight and unable to run even 1.5 miles. But, according to the report, these people are hired anyway because they check a few DEI boxes. 

I get what the author, Miranda Devine, is trying to say. She’s trying to criticize the DEI ideology by saying that it leads to lower quality agents at the FBI. I agree with her that DEI is a bad thing. However, her attempt to portray the pre-DEI FBI as an agency of “the best and brightest,” or as an agency that’s key to the “country’s safety,” is nothing more than the official mythology.

If the DEI change means anything, it just means that the standards for hiring at the FBI have fallen even lower than they were before. Now, instead of just hiring tyrannical control freaks who robotically serve every whim of the regime, the FBI is now hiring tyrannical control freaks who are also fat and lazy. Some might claim that’s an improvement. At least the new recruits may take more time off from violating the basic human rights of Americans. 

Here are the questions that really matter for an FBI hiring manager:

If you can answer yes to all these questions, you would probably make a great FBI agent. Now, with new DEI guidelines implemented, you can do all these things and also be in horrible physical shape—so long as you are a black woman or trans man. 

Sadly, Devine at The New York Post has bought into the pro-regime propaganda that has long attempted to make FBI agents into consummate professionals who care deeply about their country and are “the best and the brightest.” This was never true. The FBI has always been a trash organization, an unconstitutional waste of money that has largely functioned as the nation’s secret police. Indeed, under J. Edgar Hoover, it employed tactics remarkably similar to those used by the KGB: it collected anything and everything it could on elected officials and other powerful Americans to use as leverage. The agency employed this illegally obtained data to ensure that few in Congress would ever be willing to go against the FBI.

The FBI has always been a cudgel used by the regime against peaceful Americans who oppose the regime’s pet projects, such as the Vietnam war.  The FBI was the agency at the center of COINTELPRO, an illegal spy effort designed to destroy antiwar activists in America. The FBI tried to get Martin Luther king to commit suicide. The FBI initiated the siege that led to the Waco massacre of dozens of women and children. 

Moreover, the idea that the FBI keeps America safe is pure fantasy. The FBI is unnecessary to enforce laws against violent crime. Violent crime is already illegal in every US state, and every US state has its own state police. Secondly, the FBI, more so than any other agency—with the possible exception of the CIA—let the 9/11 bombings occur right under its nose. And how could they not? The FBI’s “watchlist” includes the names of over a million Americans. While the FBI was busy hunting down people like Randy Weaver for petty gun crimes, it failed to notice real terrorists planting bombs under the World Trade Center—as occurred in 1993. 

Yet, the old myth of the highly professional, ultra-America-loving FBI agents endures, and The New York Post would have you believe that FBI agents were top notch until DEI came along. 

As a final note, it may be instructive to recall the case of FBI Agent Chase Bishop. Agent Bishop was dancing at a Denver night club in 2018. When he attempted a back flip, his gun fell out of his pocket, hit the ground, accidentally discharged, and wounded a bystander. Bishop pled to second-degree assault and avoided jail time. The regime’s faithful servants usually receive special treatment from the regime’s judges. Even though it is illegal in Colorado to carry a gun while intoxicated in Colorado, Bishop was never charged with any gun crimes, and he received his gun back shortly after his conviction. It appears Bishop is still employed by the Bureau.  This all occurred during the Trump years and was certainly before the new era of DEI. In other words, drunk guys dropping loaded guns while dancing is the FBI’s “best and brightest.” It’s nothing new, and the taxpayers will continue to fund these people’s assaults on liberty, their outsized salaries, and their grotesquely large pensions until the FBI is finally abolished.

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