So Embarrassing to the Bureau

No agency of the U.S. government has played a more important or dramatic role in enforcing the nation’s civil rights laws than the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s why it is ironic--and troubling--that the FBI is still trying to straighten out its own racial discrimination problems.

The latest step in the process was a decision by FBI officials to settle a lawsuit filed by black agent Leadell Lee, formerly of Chicago but now assigned to the bureau’s Riverside office. A 17-year veteran of the bureau, Lee accused his superiors of passing him over for promotion in favor of less-qualified white agents. While Lee still hasn’t been promoted, the bureau paid him an undisclosed amount of money in exchange for dropping his lawsuit.

The Lee case was only the most recent in a series of discrimination complaints that have embarrassed the bureau. Another black agent who served in the Chicago office has a complaint pending. Clerical workers in the FBI’s Washington bureau are involved in another, as is a female clerical employee in Omaha. But probably the most painful of all, from the FBI’s perspective, was the decision handed down last year by a federal judge in El Paso, Tex., who upheld a discrimination complaint filed by three Latino agents who once worked in the bureau’s Los Angeles office.

What drew so much attention to the Latino case was the fact that, by the time it had run its course, 300 other agents with Spanish surnames had joined the original trio of plaintiffs. That meant, in effect, that 60% of the FBI’s Latino agents were willing to state on the record that they felt discriminated against.

One result of the El Paso ruling was a court order that FBI Director William Sessions accelerate his efforts to rectify past discrimination. Among other things, Sessions set up new internal personnel procedures at the FBI, including a special review panel of top officials who make sure minority agents are not discriminated against in job assignments and promotions. So while bureau spokesmen officially insist that nothing special is to be read into the decision to settle agent Lee’s discrimination lawsuit, there seems little doubt that the settlement is the result of the bureau’s new sensitivity to its internal problems and its image.

The process is undoubtedly painful, but it’s necessary. Our top civil rights cops must hold themselves to the same anti-discrimination standard that they are expected to uphold for all Americans. Anything less would be unacceptable and hypocritical.