Bipartisan leaders of the House Judiciary Committee called for the Justice Department’s inspector general to open an investigation into allegations of discrimination against women at the FBI Academy earlier this week following a federal lawsuit alleging that Quantico is run like a “good old boy network.”
Sixteen former female trainees at the FBI filed a lawsuit in late May claiming that they and dozens of other women had been sexually harassed, subjected to a hostile work environment and outdated gender stereotypes, wrongly kicked out of the training program, unfairly forced to resign or made to think that the continuing the training would be futile, suffered retaliation, and more.
And top members of the congressional committee tasked with overseeing the FBI called the allegations “disturbing” and said that, if true, “such conduct cannot be tolerated.”
The letter, signed this week by two Democrats and two Republicans — Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York and ranking member Doug Collins of Georgia as well as Karen Bass of California and John Ratcliffe of Texas — said they believed America’s diversity should be reflected by the FBI’s agents, emphasized that the FBI’s selection process should be free from bias, and called on DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to look into it.
“We must ensure potential agents not be deterred from applying because they fear the possibility of such treatment,” they wrote. “We believe these detailed allegations require an investigation into the FBI’s training and selection prices for new agents.”
A representative for the FBI told the Washington Examiner that the bureau is “unable to comment on litigation” but that “the FBI is committed to fostering a work environment where all of our employees are valued and respected.”
“Diversity is one of our core values, and to effectively accomplish our mission of protecting the American people we need people of different genders, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives,” the representative said.
The federal lawsuit filed by female former trainees in May is directed at the training policies at the FBI and the conduct of its instructors at its agent training facility in Quantico, Virginia. The lawsuit claims FBI training guidelines are “highly subjective” and that “the uneven power dynamic at the FBI Academy puts female trainees at a distinct disadvantage.” And the lawsuit claims the subjective guidelines lets instructors misrepresent scenarios and fail women.
The complaint also alleges that when one of the women told former FBI Director James Comey of the allegations, Comey denied that discriminatory behavior was occurring and “instead suggested she use her ‘pain’ to reflect on her strengths and weaknesses.”
Mark Morgan, a former deputy assistant director at the FBI and the new acting chief of Customs and Border Protection, is also mentioned in the lawsuit.
David Shaffer, the attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Washington Examiner the FBI Academy relies upon “a completely subjective system that allows instructors to give rise to their own biases and beliefs with no accountability and oversight.”
Shaffer said that a common dynamic is that when a female trainee explains or defends her actions to an instructor, she is viewed being argumentative while when a male trainee does he is seen as standing up for himself.
Statistics provided by the FBI show that 20% of the special agents who are brought into the FBI are female. For the 2019 cycle, the FBI says that women made up 32% of those in the special agent basic field training course and 36% of those who had applied to be special agents. The FBI says that its 2019 target for female applications had been 33%, and the numbers reflect improvements from the 26% of special agent applications in the 2018 cycle and 22% in the 2017 cycle.
The FBI says that the total number of those who make it through the entire FBI special agent process — including application, training, and graduation — has held steady at just 6%.
If the DOJ inspector takes up the issue of discrimination at Quantico, it wouldn’t be the first time. A 2003 inspector general report which looked into allegations of disciplinary double standards at the FBI uncovered instances of instructors making inappropriate comments towards some trainees.
When asked by the Washington Examiner whether the DOJ inspector general would be launching an inquiry following the request from congressional leaders, the watchdog office declined to say.
Shaffer said that an inspector general investigation “should be done of course,” but he said that Congress needed to take action too.
“They need to be doing their oversight of the agency and asking the hard questions — and not relying on the FBI to investigate themselves,” Shaffer said.
