Scores of FBI employees have been caught over the last five years engaging in unethical and illegal conduct such as driving drunk, stealing property, assaulting a child, mishandling classified documents, and losing their service weapons — but they often escaped being fired, according to internal disciplinary files provided to Just The News.
One agent left a highly lethal M4 carbine unsecured in his government car during a Starbucks run and had the weapon stolen, but even he received only a two-week suspension despite violating the bureau's protocols for weapons storage, the records show.
"Although there was a lockbox in the trunk for storage of weapons and sensitive items," the agent chose to store the rifle bag behind the car's front passenger seat, one report shows. "While Employee was in the Starbucks, the Bucar was burglarized. The rear passenger, rear driver, and tailgate windows were broken, and the rifle bag containing the M4 was stolen."
Sexual misconduct was also rampant in the reports dating to 2017, including inappropriate affairs with felons in prison, confidential sources and subordinate employees. The sexual transgressions, however, often resulted in firings, unlike the drunk driving and lost weapons offenses.
Typically emailed to all Bureau employees each calendar quarter, the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) reports provided to Just the News by a whistleblower afford an unprecedented look into the breadth of misconduct among the FBI's workforce of 35,000, including agents, intel analysts, lab scientists and crime scene technicians.
You can
read all of the reports here.
The reports emerge at a sensitive time for the FBI as it deals with a sprawling congressional probe into allegations by two dozen whistleblowers of political bias, misconduct and weaponization of law enforcement powers.
The extensive reports were in fact so impactful that the FBI suspended distributing them for seven months in 2021-2022, due to complaints that the "employees harmed by misconduct" might feel shamed. But in the end, the bureau resumed publishing them because of the belief it might sensitize workers in the future to avoid committing crimes or violations of conduct policies,
"OPR suspended sending our quarterly email that details employee misconduct and its consequences," the April 2022 email noted, explaining: "We wanted to weigh the value of publishing this information with the discomfort employees harmed by misconduct may feel at its having been published."
The bureau concluded most agents wanted the memo to continue as a reminder of the professional and ethical standards they are sworn to uphold.
"In the seven months since, we’ve spoken extensively with affected employees and consulted with several divisions, including the Victim Services Division," the email related. "After a great deal of deliberation, we have decided to resume the quarterly email. We made this decision as the vast majority of employees we spoke with indicated they wanted publication to resume."
The reports show there were at least 23 cases of agents and Bureau staff driving under the influence (DUI) but only five resulted in termination, while the others received suspensions or retired. There were several other incidents involving alcohol unrelated to driving that also drew short-term suspensions.
At least three dozen agents reported guns being lost, stolen or handled unsafely, including one agent who accidentally discharged his weapon and shot a hole through the floor of his hotel room.
A former senior FBI executive told Just the News that the OPR reports have been published privately inside the FBI for decades and are "always distressing, because you can't believe some of the behaviors that you're reading about."
He said the batch obtained by Just the News suggested the bureau was getting more serious about firing employees for some offenses, but he was concerned by the low penalties, especially for alcohol offenses, and believed the FBI might be "backsliding" on some punishments.
"I was seeing that in a lot of cases, particularly in the DUIs, there was not many dismissals," retired Assistant Director Kevin Brock said. "They were getting, you know, 20, 30, 40 days of suspension without pay. And that struck me as something a little bit of a divergence from the past. Louis Freeh, when he was director, drew a bright line. He said anybody who misuses alcohol and gets in a bureau car is going to be dismissed. And that stopped a lot of bad behavior."
Steve Friend, an FBI special agent who recently left the bureau after blowing the whistle on alleged civil liberty abuses in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot probe, provided the OPR reports to Just the News. He said the growth in alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct cases was a strong signal of a cultural problem inside the bureau.
"There's definitely a sense of entitlement that has seeped into the agency, and too many people are just content to have a gold badge and gun on their hip and not actually do the work that's required," Friend said in an interview Wednesday night on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show. "They're sitting on the shoulders of giants, people that investigated Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, terrorist networks, organized crime, and they need to uphold that reputation as opposed to just living on the exhaust fumes."
Friend said he decided to make the disciplinary reports public in hopes public pressure can encourage reform inside the bureau.
"I'm a believer in radical transparency," he said. "You get credentials in the FBI. You're not a secret agent. You're supposed to present those credentials to anybody upon request. So I think everybody should be held accountable."
