This comes under the category of “not good publicity for the bureau.”
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — Taxpayers were billed an average of $45,000 in overtime and extra pay for each FBI agent temporarily posted to Iraq over the course of four years, according to a new Justice Department report. In some cases, agents were paid to watch movies, exercise and attend parties.
In all, the audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found the FBI racked up $7.8 million in improper wages between 2003 and 2007.
Thursday’s report blamed a faulty FBI policy that allowed agents to claim the extra time and money. An FBI spokesman said that policy – which initially sought to enlist volunteers to go to dangerous war zones – is no longer in place.
“Several FBI employees noted that they periodically spent time during the work day washing clothes,” the report noted.
Yet another example of poor policy. Soldiers, who make considerably less than an FBI agent, don’t get paid overtime, and certainly are vulnerable to the same “dangerous” activities.
I have a friend who is an DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent who volunteered to serve in Iraq in 2003. ICE agents were the first Federal Agents in Iraq and were embedded with our troops during the invasion of Iraq. Their mission was to identify and open criminal investigations on US companies and persons who had done business with Iraq prior to the war. They worked 16 hour plus days and worked under the same conditions and hazards as their FBI counterparts. He told me the only special pay they received was hazard duty pay nothing else. Unlike the FBI agents who used to brag about all the money they were making being in Iraq. He showed me pictures of their living conditions compared to the FBI who lived across the street from them on the Military side of Baghdad International Airport. The FBI spent a small fortune remodeling two small palaces, one they lived and worked in and one for storage. The ICE Agents on the other hand lived in the same conditions our soldiers did and ate their meals with them.
My friend told me that when new FBI agents arrived in Iraq their supervisors sent them over to their quarters to see how they lived so they (FBI agents) would stop complaining about their living conditions.