Intelligence agencies adopting FBI tactics to tackle worker misconduct
In a recent two-year stretch, 126 FBI agents or employees were disciplined for offences ranging from drinking and driving to sexual misconduct to misusing their government charge cards. Then their escapades – which represented a small fraction of the misconduct at the bureau – were broadcast for all their colleagues to see.
For years, the bureau has been sending out quarterly emails that describe, in fairly specific detail, individual incidents of employee misconduct and the penalties that followed. The tactic is now being embraced by other federal law enforcement agencies seeking to deter their workers from misbehaving.
A Secret Service spokesman said his agency publicises individual malfeasance reports internally.
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Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz told the National Law Journal that last year he began posting short summaries of some investigations online. Officials at the Drug Enforcement Administration recently chatted with their counterparts at the FBI about the bureau’s initiative and hoped to start sending their own quarterly misconduct email this year, a spokesman said.
Candice Will, an FBI assistant director who heads the Office of Professional Responsibility, said the email is “not intended to be a shaming document. It’s intended to be an instructive device”. But she concedes that fear of having one’s misdeeds publicised to co-workers could serve as a deterrent.
There are pitfalls. The reports periodically make their way outside of the bureau, leading to embarrassing news stories. In 2011, CNN reported on a host of misdeeds detailed in leaked reports, including an employee threatening to release a sex tape he had made with his girlfriend and a supervisor watching porn in his office while “satisfying himself”. The network obtained more reports a few years later and broke news of a “rash of sexting” cases at the bureau.
The employees are not named in the reports, and Will said other information that could lead to their identities is removed. Some within the bureau bristle at the reports’ wide dissemination, while others say they’re glad to learn about the penalties for various types of wrongdoing, Will and other FBI officials said.