The FBI ­ Managing Disaster?
By Gary Aldrich

[ED. NOTE: Former FBI Agent Gary Aldrich authored “Unlimited Access” and blew the lid off the Clinton White House with serious accounts and allegations of unethical acts, breaches of security, and outright wrongdoing. Following are his thoughts on FBI management.]

In times past, the FBI enjoyed the high regard of a public that had been excited, reassured and entertained by reports of kidnapped victims rescued, bank robbers shot down or drug dealers and their assets arrested and seized.

Even when there were lulls in the "real" FBI action, there were sufficient TV shows and movies endlessly glorifying the agents and the agency. Hollywood producers gave us agents who had not even graduated from the FBI Academy, but were placed in charge of major investigations ­ Jodie Foster in "Silence of the Lambs" for example ­ and agents walking through foggy, wooded areas looking for alien space ships.

Having joined the bureau at the same time Efraim Zimbalist, Jr. had made the FBI seem absolutely brilliant and flawless in his TV series, “The FBI,” I was constantly kidded about not being the glamorous, stereotypical agent portrayed on the show.

I had no personal helicopter. I drove one of the oldest cars in the fleet. I was not tall, nor was I handsome. I bought my suits off the rack, and I could never solve a crime by looking at a few numbers on the back of a matchbook like he could. But I certainly enjoyed the goodwill the series generated and imagined how much fun the job could be if only my FBI work resembled the fantasy being dished up by the networks to a hungry and grateful public.

In the meantime, we, the employees of the country's most admired police agency, basked in the glory of the endless praise drummed up by these shows, and of course the real successful cases that we enjoyed.

Applicants lined up to join the FBI, some actually believing that there really was an X-Files unit. They wanted a piece of the glamorized action and the glory that seemed to go with it.

I spent 26 years as an FBI agent and served in major field offices around the country.

The agents that worked alongside me were some of the finest men and women I have ever met. But, along the way, there were also many incompetent agents who were tolerated by the management, dragging down the entire group.

For example, the FBI’s first spy to be caught was agent Richard Miller who was assigned to Los Angeles. After decades of substandard work, Miller was finally caught passing documents to a Soviet agent he had apparently fallen in love with. He obtained sexual favors, and some cash, in return for FBI training manuals.

Most agents assigned to Los Angeles during that time who knew Miller would probably agree that he should never have been hired in the first place. How he even got through the FBI Academy was a big mystery. But how Miller avoided losing his job for being one of the dumbest, most unkempt, most unpopular misfits the agency had ever hired was not a mystery. The management should have watched Miller more carefully.

What was the management doing if it was not catching internal spies? Well, they weren't in the business of managing FBI investigations. The prosecutors did that. The work of FBI agents was carefully reviewed by the U.S. Attorneys' offices prior to rendering an opinion to prosecute. Naturally, the US Attornies wanted to win their cases, so they would not accept shoddy work from any agents, FBI or otherwise. Federal grand juries, judges and defense attorneys were all check-points through which FBI agents’ work had to successfully pass.

FBI management clearly wasn't managing their personnel because Miller's poor work, poor people skills, stupid mistakes, disgusting personal hygiene, selling Amway products from the trunk of his FBI vehicle, and on and on, should have tipped off management from the beginning. Most of us learned in a very short time that management was not in the business of punishing agents who could not measure up.

When the agency came under heavy criticism for not uncovering this spy in their midst, senior officials expressed surprise and appeared baffled about how such a thing could have ever happened.

The street agents knew exactly how it had happened. Management was totally out of touch with the mission of the agency. And where did this all begin?

During training, agents are constantly reminded that 10,000 applicants sought the position of Special Agent, and one only was chosen. Some have implied that this teaches arrogance.

Whether they are told they are one of a “special few” in order to inspire them to train harder, or whether it's designed to instill confidence, I would submit that it has a detrimental effect. It is the start of a process that grooms FBI agents to think that they are invincible, untouchable ­ members of a small group of elite warriors chosen to wage war against crime in an agency that has no equal.

This, in turn, distances the group from society as a whole, and, I think, from much of the rest of the law enforcement and national security community. This can never be considered a good thing. The complexity of wide-ranging investigations require FBI agents to depend on the assistance of average citizens, as well as state and local officers, and other federal agents working for the dozens of competing federal law enforcement agencies.

Imagine, if the agents think of themselves as "above" the rest, how much more would management, chosen from an already select few, consider themselves as superior and beyond reproach?

The failure of management to recognize their own weaknesses caused the systematic breakdown which contributed to the Miller catastrophe.

Here we find ourselves today with an agency that has failed to learn from the past, allowing yet another spy, Richard Hanssen, to infiltrate their ranks. Not surprisingly, he shares some of the same characteristics as their first spy, Richard Miller. He was an odd ball, and so was Hanssen. The management was told numerous times in each case that the odd agents’ behavior was worth an inquiry, but they gave little attention to the warnings.

These two agents went on to cause massive damage to the FBI and to our nation because of a failure of management to properly react to warnings given to them by FBI agents themselves!

If these two examples of a breakdown of FBI management are not enough, then one only needs to review the latest report on the failure of the FBI to turn over documents in the Oklahoma City Bombing case. After a lengthy review, an independent panel has concluded that it was not computer “glitches” that caused this embarrassing debacle. It was incompetent and sloppy FBI management.

Are there still unsuitable street agents who ought to be removed from the rolls of the FBI? Of course! There may be a dozen Richard Millers and Richard Hanssens out there waiting to betray the agency and our nation.

Whose job is it to find them and remove them? The other street agents? NO! It’s the responsibility of FBI management.

In spite of the enormous evidence that would support a need for significant management overhaul at the FBI, two recent blue ribbon commissions suggest tinkering with this process here, and establishing new regulations there. But, unless real reform takes place at the FBI, significant failures will continue.

Effective FBI management, focused on the real mission of the FBI, will go a long way to preventing future disasters of this kind. Director Mueller will need to get rid of the "deadwood" in the mid- and high- level management ranks. This would be contrary to blue ribbon commission recommendations that suggest the FBI’s problems stem from a lack of articulated guidelines that if only written down and distributed to the general FBI agent population, will fix what’s broken at the FBI. Isn't it obvious that a mere booklet of new rules and regulations will not be enough to get rid of the Millers and Hanssens?

Somewhere along the way the mission of the agency ­ to fight crime and find spies _ became bifurcated. In an effort to continue the real mission of the agency, so-called “street agents,” who held a fairly good-sized dislike for “empty suit” managers, went in one direction while the FBI management, continuing on the road of careerism, traveled in another direction.

The "career" mission of the FBI manager trumped all others, but not because the individual managers were evil or lazy or stupid. Rather, the FBI management system made them that way.

To expect a new FBI director ­ no matter how talented ­ to change the management culture without reforming the role of FBI management, would assume a level of genius not seen since J. Edgar Hoover. Perhaps the new director is that genius able to reform the FBI.

The street agents can do their jobs quite well. Will the FBI management be up to the task? The answer is “no,” unless Director Mueller gets the support he needs to perform a radical overhaul of the management system that now serves only to hobble the FBI.

The FBI management failed to learn important lessons from the mistakes that allowed for their first spy. In the aftermath of the second, they are striving to again find the breakdown in the agency. Will they be willing to put aside the superior attitudes long enough to evaluate their own faults and make changes at the very core of their own agency? A nation under threat from the most significant group of dedicated radical terrorists awaits the answer.

During training, agents are constantly reminded that 10,000 applicants sought the position of Special Agent, and one only was chosen.