During my law enforcement career—I haven’t worn a badge for a quarter century—every cop knew the FBI required a college degree for entry level agents, and not just any degree. They were looking for accountants, lawyers, people with specific language skills, in other words, potentially smart people with real skills. Those skills included not only physical fitness, competence with arms, bravery, personal integrity and a mission-oriented mindset but a willingness to do whatever was necessary to protect America.

Suffused with DEI, the FBI, like most federal agencies, has dramatically lowered its hiring standards in favor of race, gender and other woke quotas. It’s an issue I covered in January of 2024. Back then, the invaluable Miranda Devine also reported just how far the FBI had fallen. It’s worthwhile to see just how bad things have become before the hard work of making them better begins:

An alarming deterioration in recruitment standards for the FBI has been exposed in a report delivered to the House Judiciary Committee by an alliance of retired and active-duty agents and analysts. 

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) requirements pushed by FBI Director Chris Wray have degraded recruitment standards in all areas including “physical fitness, illicit drug use, financial irregularities, mental health, full-time work experience and integrity,” and pose a threat to the FBI’s ability to protect America from harm, say the authors. 

Graphic: Screenshot, House Committee Report. Public Domain.

The report cites cases of new agents who are so fat and unfit, they can’t even pass the new relaxed standards for fitness; who are illiterate and need remedial English lessons; who don’t want to work weekends or after hours; have serious disabilities or mental-health issues, and “create drama.” 

Graphic: Screenshot, House Committee Report. Public Domain.

This January, the invaluable Kurt Schlichter mercilessly skewers the FBI:

And we all know the reason the garbage FBI leadership is hiring these losers. They all check some diversity box. Maybe they’re the right color du jour, or they have the right plumbing, or they’ve got the approved sexual preference. Healthy cis white male with relevant experience – nope! Three hundred-pound lesbian animists of color furry with a peg leg and bipolar disorder – here’s a gun, a badge, and a warrant to arrest an American for unlawful praying.

The problem with incompetent, mentally ill, physically unfit agents must surely be a concern of soon to be former FBI Director Christoper Wray?  Not so much:

Graphic: Screenshot, House Committee Report. Public Domain.

Schlichter accurately observes this isn’t mere incompetence; it’s policy:

What the FBI is not hiring for is quality. They’re hiring specifically not to have quality because quality people ask questions and don’t want to participate in the kind of fascist pogroms the establishment has been launching against normal Americans. The current FBI is pretty good at busting Americans for daring to believe they have a right to participate in their governance. Of course, they’re not so good at stopping mass killers or terrorists. Every single time, it seems the guy is on their radar. Well, except for the guy in New Orleans, where the FBI was the last agency to figure out that the dude flying the ISIS flag was a terrorist. They didn’t see him coming. 

Unfortunately, the FBI has to this point been able to get away with this lunacy. They’ve been able to do it because their unqualified, unfit, nearly illiterate DEI hires haven’t been in real danger. Arresting grandmothers and ministers tends not to be a particularly dangerous affair. Physical fitness, situational awareness, martial and handgun skills tend not to matter. Likewise, spying on Catholic congregations, parents speaking at school board meetings upset about the political and sexual indoctrination of their children and avoiding arresting terrorists and foreign spies doesn’t tax their limited abilities nor put them in danger. Forced to actually do the job of a qualified FBI agent, however, DEI hires are going to get themselves, competent agents and others killed.

There are, however, positive signs on the horizon. Kash Patel seems certain to be confirmed as FBI Director, and he knows how government works and how it protects itself. Woke agents are reportedly threatening to resign in anticipation of being fired. Patel will surely say “your terms are acceptable.” Schlichter has a suggestion:

No quarter, no slack, and no tolerance for sub-par performance. The FBI, if it’s going to continue to exist – and my preference is that it does not, having so thoroughly disgraced itself over the last decade – then it must regain the respect of the American people. To do that is going to require the merciless enforcement of standards. No dishonesty. No equivocation. No more looking like you slept in your clothes and get that stud out of your nose, Special Agents Kayden and Ashley. We need Inspector Erskine. 

We do indeed, but Kash Patel will do even better than a fictional FBI icon. Restoring competence in the FBI from top to bottom will take time. Restoring public trust in the FBI will take even more, but at least it now appears the process will begin on January 20.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.