Though often targeted for retaliation, rank-and-file FBI agents nationwide are exposing corruption in a bureau that is "out of control," a report said.
Management at FBI field offices in Miami, Salt Lake City, Buffalo, New York, and Newark are among those facing whistleblower complaints, The Washington Times reported on Aug. 22.
The complaints were turned over to House Judiciary Committee Republicans and likely will be part of a broader examination of conduct at the Department of, one of the whistleblowers’ attorneys told the Washington Times.
The report cited one FBI agent as saying superiors, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, ignored her accusations of sexual harassment. The agent said the bureau suffers from a “mob-like mentality.”
“The FBI is completely out of control and its culture and structure needs to change. Not only is the political bias completely out of control and disgustingly obvious, the FBI knows they will not be held accountable for their illegal behavior and misconduct,” the agent said in a letter to Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert.
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
Among the complaints against higher ups at the field offices:
• Agents were forced or coerced to sign false affidavits.
• Terrorism cases were fabricated to pump up performance statistics.
• A female agent was sexually harassed and stalked.
• Management engaged in sexual acts with a subordinate in a government vehicle and crashed the vehicle.
A former employee who worked for the FBI office in Buffalo told the Washington Times that FBI brass in Washington focus on the volume of cases to evaluate the special agent in charge (SAC) who runs a field office, leading some office supervisors to inflate the numbers.
“It’s basically a report card for him, so at the end of his two-year term as a SAC, he gets moved to a better position down in Washington. And everything focuses around his metrics,” the employee said. “You have to have so many terrorism cases per year in your office, or else you fail. So they would come to us and say things like ‘Open up a case. I don’t care if it’s got merit or not. Just open it up. We only have nine, and we need 10 for me to pass.’ ”
Kurt Siuzdak, a former FBI agent and former whistleblower who now serves as a legal counsel for FBI employees who call out corruption at the bureau, said the problem is found in FBI field offices nationwide.
“Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, there’s a number of field offices, and the SAC picks somebody for everybody to follow because it helps them with their metrics,” Siuzdak said. “So they pick somebody to scrutinize, often without merit from wherever, and that’s the bad guy you need to follow and put your assets on.”
Siuzdak said field offices have names for these holiday operations, such as “Turkey Day Terrorist” or “Thanksgiving Day Terrorist.”
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