The Federal Bureau of Investigation is planning to test agents about their understanding of the bureau’s surveillance guidelines, a move coming more than a year after the Justice Department discovered widespread cheating on the exam.

Testing covering the recently amended Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide is to commence in the “coming weeks,” according to the Main Justice blog.

The Justice Department’s inspector general concluded last year that a “significant number” of the 14,000 agents cheated on the required, open-book test given in 2009.

“In our limited investigation, we found that a significant number of FBI employees engaged in some form of improper conduct or cheating on the DIOG exam, some in clear violation of FBI directives regarding the exam,” (.pdf) the inspector general’s report noted.

Robert Mueller, the bureau’s director, said at the time that the agency would discipline agents who cheated. The inspector general concluded that the cheating included agents falsely answering a question on the test that they “had not consulted with others” while taking the exam.

The FBI did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Joseph Persichini Jr. resigned his position in December 2009 as head of the FBI’s Washington, D.C. office. The Office of Professional Responsibility recommended he be disciplined after an investigation said he finished the test in 20 minutes and scored high.

The Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide has been amended to allow agents to search police and commercial databases to find information about targets without agents first having to open a formal inquiry.

Photo: egazelle/Flickr

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