FBI agents cheated in terrorism exam

A US government investigation has uncovered evidence of widespread cheating by FBI agents in an internal exam.

The exam was designed to test their knowledge of terrorism investigations and foreign intelligence gathering.

The Department of Justice found that FBI field agents had cheated by conferring and using crib sheets and computers to look up answers.

The report found that "a significant number of FBI employees engaged in some form of improper conduct or cheating" on the test.

Suspicions were raised after 200 FBI staff completed the 90-minute exam in under 20 minutes.

All employees were required to take the 51-question computerised exam after undergoing 16 and a half hours of tuition about controversial new guidelines for domestic terrorism investigations.

After interviewing staff, investigators found that many people taking the exam had conferred, workers in one office exploited a programming flaw to call up the answers and in another office, of 11 workers interviewed, three supervisors and four agents said that they had used answer sheets.

Some tried to justify the usage on the basis that these were "notes". They also found that tutors were "training to the test", indicating which part of lessons would be on the exam by stamping their feet loudly during the relevant sections.

The Office of the Inspector General recommended that those who directly cheated should be disciplined and that there should be a wider investigation. "We believe there was more cheating and improper conduct than we identified through our limited interviews and investigation" the report's authors said.

FBI director Robert Mueller expressed disappointment at his employees' conduct and vowed to investigate the scale of the cheating and take appropriate action.

The report is the latest of a series critical of the federal law enforcement agency, which has been accused of violating civil liberties in the course of its terrorism investigation. 

The guidelines tested in the exam have been widely criticised by civil liberties groups as infringing on the rights of ordinary Americans.

The cheating scandal is petty compared with some of the historic controversies that the FBI has been embroiled in.

While J. Edgar Hoover, who founded the bureau in 1935, was credited with building it into an elite crime fighting agency, he also used it to harass political dissenters and activists, most famously in his anti-communist Cointelpro programme.

Hoover was also accused of failing to deploy the FBI against Mafia bosses and his long and controversial reign led to the practice of restricting FBI directors to one 10-year term.
The Australian

SOURCE/LINK:  THE WEST, ISLAM AND SHARIA