Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 28, 2010

It takes a remarkable gift for dishonesty to cheat on an open-book test. Glenn Fine, Inspector General for the Justice Department, reports that a significant number of FBI agents ? including several supervisors ? cheated on open-book certification exams between May 2009 and January 2010.

Fine reports that agents either had obtained an answer key or improperly collaborated in taking the open-book exam. Most of them then falsely certified that they had done the work themselves, without the aid of others. Former FBI Assistant Director Joseph Persichini, who headed the Bureau?s Washington field office, was among those implicated in the scandal.

Significantly, the purpose of the test was to determine the extent to which FBI personnel understand the Bureau?s new guidelines concerning surveillance of U.S. citizens. The cheating scandal was made public shortly after it was disclosed that the FBI had misled Congress and the public by falsely claiming that evidence of terrorist connections justified surveillance of peaceful activist groups between 2001 and 2006.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.