FBI hiring as the Obama Era nears end
13th September 2016 · 0 Comments
By Allen Johnson Jr.
Contributing Writer
The New Orleans office of the FBI is on a statewide hiring blitz. It will likely be the Bureau’s last major recruiting drive under the nation’s first Black president.
On October 12, President Obama will have 100 days left in office.
That same day, New Orleans-based FBI recruiter Sidney J. Reed is scheduled to wrap up a six-week canvass of Louisiana colleges and universities at historically Black Grambling State.
Reed’s mission is to find hundreds of applicants for job openings on the Bureau’s $8.7 billion dollar payroll requested for the 2017 federal fiscal year, which also starts in October. The 34,768 proposed positions at the FBI includes 12,892 special agents, 2,999 intelligence analysts and 18,877 professional staff – who don’t carry a gun or a badge but require a security clearance.
Professional staff positions include: auto mechanics, carpenters, file clerks, nurses, librarians, plumbers, laborers, linguists, writers and editors.
“There’s much more to the Bureau than the agent with a gun and a badge,” says Agent Reed, who has been recruiting for the bureau since 1986.
The bureau also offers paid internships for college students, he says.
The New Orleans office of the FBI – the statewide headquarters for the Bureau and one of 56 field offices nationwide — has never had Black or a woman in the top management position, known as the Special-Agent-In-Charge (S.A.C.)
By the end of August, according to statistics the FBI prepared at the request of The Louisiana Weekly, there were a total of eight minority S.A.Cs leading Bureau offices in Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Albany, New York City, and Seattle. Those eight minority S.A.C.s were comprised of four African Americans, one Asian-American and three Hispanics.
There are also seven female SACs in the following field offices: Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Little Rock, New Haven, Sacramento, and Los Angeles.
“The organization is heavily focused on diversity recruiting,” Jeffrey S. Sallet, who FBI Director James B. Comey tapped last November as Special Agent-in-Charge (S.A.C) of the New Orleans field office. “Director Comey has repeatedly emphasized that.”
In a new FBI recruiting video released September 2, Director Comey says: “We want people who want to do good… Old and young, Black and white, Latino and Asian — it doesn’t matter. If you care about doing good for your country, (the FBI) is a place you ought to think about.”
In 2013, President Obama successfully nominated Comey to lead the Bureau for next 10 years. Then U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder added an enthusiastic endorsement for Comey, a federal prosecutor in Virginia, who served as a deputy attorney general under Republican President George W. Bush, from December 2003 to August 2005. “I’ve known Jim for almost 20 years, and have always found him to be willing to try new methods…while adhering to our most treasured values – in keeping the American people safe,” Holder said in 2013.
In 2015, with tensions rising between police and African Americans nationwide, FBI Director Comey delivered an address entitled: “Hard Truths: Law Enforcement and Race,” which the Bureau hoped would move the ongoing national debate over race and policing to “more productive footing.”
“There is a reason that I require all new agents and analysts to study the FBI’s interaction with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to visit his memorial in Washington as part of their training. And there is a reason I keep on my desk a copy of Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s approval of J. Edgar Hoover’s request to wiretap Dr. King. It is a single page. The entire application is five sentences long, it is without fact or substance, and is predicated on the naked assertion that there is ‘communist influence in the racial situation.’ The reason I do those things is to ensure that we remember our mistakes and that we learn from them.” https://www.fbi.gov/news/-speeches/hard-truths-law-enforcement-and-race.
New Orleanians who want to learn “hard truths” about race and law enforcement inside J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI; the old “dirty tricks” campaign against Black leaders known as “Operation COINTELPRO” and Neil Welch, the white S.A.C. who defied Hoover – may want to read: The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI,by Betty Medsger, (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2014).
“Corruption and Civil Rights”
“There is diversity among the executives,” says S.A.C Sallet, in an interview with The Louisiana Weekly at the FBI-New Orleans office. “The way they send our folks out is based on where the needs are. New Orleans is a major corruption and civil rights place…. I’m a corruption and civil rights guy. That’s why I am in New Orleans.”
A certified public accountant, Mr. Sallet was the case agent on the FBI La Cosa Nostra investigation of Joseph Massino, “the last Don” of the Bonanno crime family in New York City. The investigation led to the indictment and conviction of more than 100 members and associates of organized crime and the solving of more than 30 “cold case” murders.
As the New York-FBI’s co-lead financial investigator for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Sallet was “responsible for financially tracking Al-Qaeda assets and identifying funding for the terrorist attacks” according to an FBI press release announcing Comey’s appointment of Sallet as New Orleans S.A.C.
Since arriving in New Orleans late last year, Sallet’s duties include overseeing an FBI investigation into the St. Bernard Parish’s Sheriff’s Office handling of the in-custody death of a woman in the parish jail.
Sallet, who joined the FBI in 1997, says it’s not too early for many youngsters to consider a career with the bureau.
“Being an FBI employee is a life decision,” Sallet says. “You need to be thinking about it when you are 15 years old.”
He says candidates for special agent cannot have used marijuana for 3 years prior to applying at the FBI – even if marijuana is legal in the applicant’s home state. The “use of marijuana in its various forms for medical reasons…cannot be used as a mitigating factor,” according to the Bureau’s drug policy.
Candidates who lie about drug use will be disqualified.
“This is a position of trust,” Agent Sallet says. “We will polygraph you.”
Agent Reed says applicants can also expect a thorough background check. “I tell people Uncle Sam is going to get into your business,” he says, adding. “We’re not looking for perfect people.”
The FBI that President Obama will soon leave behind after eight years in office promises to emphasize a diverse team of qualified law enforcement and support personnel to keep Americans safe.
“One team, one fight,” S.A.C Sallet says.
For more hiring information, visit the FBI website: https://www.fbijobs.gov/working-at-FBI/eligibility
This article originally published in the September 12, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
