FBI Director Says New Agents Must Visit MLK Memorial

FBI Director James Comey told the Anti-Defamation League on Monday that he will require new FBI agents to visit the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, just as they must tour the Holocaust Museum as part of their training.

“Like you,” Comey told the ADL, the FBI “must always, always side with the good.

“That is why all new agents tour the Holocaust Museum, so that they can see and hear and feel–in a palpable, nauseating, and gut-wrenching way–the consequences of the abuse of power on a massive scale. I will continue this practice as we resume new agent classes at Quantico. For just as we must never forget the atrocities of the Holocaust, we must never forget the responsibilities we hold as a law enforcement and national security organization.

“But I will also have our new agents visit the Martin Luther King memorial. I think it will serve as a different kind of reminder–one more personal to the Bureau–of the need for fidelity to the rule of law and the dangers in becoming untethered to oversight and accountability.”

In the 1960s under the late J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI spied on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wiretapping his phone among other surveillance measures, in an attempt to discredit him.

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Comey noted that since 2010, FBI employees have participated in more than 105 training sessions sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League on extremism, terrorism, and hate crimes. And he said every one of the FBI’s 56 field offices is “reaching out to communities where there may be feelings of suspicion or mistrust.”

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