Agent Suing FBI Says ‘Bigots’ Are in Charge of Agency

A top Latino FBI official who is leading a class-action lawsuit accusing the FBI of racial discrimination charged Thursday that “bigots” are in power at the highest levels of the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

“There are administrators at the top levels of the FBI--at headquarters in Washington and in the field--and they are bigots,” said Agent Bernardo (Matt) Perez, former administrative agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles division and now the second-ranking official in the bureau’s El Paso office.

“We have great hopes for (FBI Director William S.) Sessions, but I believe he is insulated,” Perez added at a news conference after a $500-a-plate breakfast to raise funds for the lawsuit. “Some around him are bigots.”

The charge by Perez brought a swift response from FBI spokeswoman Sue Schnitzer in Washington, who quoted Sessions as saying “racism and discriminatory conduct have no place in the FBI and will not be tolerated.”

“Allegations of discrimination against Hispanic agents or other agents are a matter of continuing high priority to the director and will be thoroughly investigated,” Schnitzer said. “The director has seen no indication that he is insulated by his senior levels of management.”

Perez, transferred to El Paso in early 1984 after a two-year feud with the head of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, Richard T. Bretzing, filed his lawsuit in El Paso in early 1987 and it has since been certified as a class-action case for about 280 of the FBI’s 400 Latino agents.

‘Corruption in the Bureau’

“I believed this was just happening to me personally in the beginning,” he said Thursday. “I did not want to believe there was this much corruption in the bureau.”

About 60 Latino businessmen and political leaders, calling themselves Hispanics for the FBI, attended Thursday’s breakfast and raised almost $43,000, according to Joe Sanchez, an organizer of the event.

Among those addressing the group was City Councilman Richard Alatorre, who said it is a “sad commentary on an agency like the FBI” that it requires a lawsuit to protect the rights of Latino agents.

FBI Agent Rudolph Valadez, another Latino agent certified in the case, said the agents suing the bureau still feel a high degree of loyalty to the FBI.

“It was a long time coming for us to admit we were discriminated against because we did not want to face the fact that we could not rise to the top,” Valadez said. “We don’t have any shortcomings. We are up against institutional bigotry.”