紐時賞析／FBI準備降低招募門檻 探員憂心

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FBI Plans to Lower Recruiting Standards, Alarming Agents

FBI準備降低招募門檻 探員憂心

The Trump administration is preparing to lower the recruitment standards for FBI agents, eliciting alarm from many agents who worry that the move will undermine the agency’s primary mission of conducting complex investigations and tracking threats to national security.

川普政府正準備降低聯邦調查局探員招募標準，引發許多探員擔憂。他們憂心，此舉將損害聯邦調查局進行復雜調查，及追蹤國家安全威脅的首要任務。

Under a plan pushed by the director, Kash Patel, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, the FBI will start welcoming new classes of recruits who will receive less training and no longer be required to have a college degree, according to people familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe it.

熟悉相關計劃的人士匿名描述，計劃由局長巴特爾和副局長邦吉諾推行，FBI將開始招收一批新成員，他們的受訓時數減少、也不再被要求要具備大學學歷。

The shift comes as the agency anticipates losing more than 5,000 employees by September, largely as a result of agents, analysts and others taking severance or early retirement packages offered by the Trump administration to try to reduce the budget.

這項轉變正值該機構預估至9月將流失逾5000名員工之際，主要原因是探員、分析師及其他人員接受川普政府提供的遣散或提前退休方案，以求縮減預算。

Instead of spending about 18 weeks training at the academy in Quantico, Virginia, the group of agents, tentatively scheduled to start in October, will receive eight weeks, according to the people. And the agents will no longer need to fulfill a long-standing requisite for joining the bureau: a bachelor’s degree.

根據消息人士指出，10月在維吉尼亞州匡提科FBI學院的新訓約18周，將縮減爲8周。且新探員將不再需要滿足長久以來加入聯邦調查局的必要條件：學士學位。

Lowering recruiting standards will allow the FBI to draw deeper from the ranks of other federal law enforcement agencies, specifically a category of criminal investigators classified in the federal system as 1811s. Investigators with that designation work at dozens of agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, inspector general offices and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

降低招募標準將使FBI能更深入從各層級其他聯邦執法機構招募人員，特別是從在聯邦體系中被歸類爲1811類別的刑事調查員。擁有該職稱的調查人員在數十個機構工作，包括美國移民和海關執法局、總稽覈辦公室，以及美國菸酒槍炮及爆裂物管理局等。

The new plan, current and former agents say, seems to be part of a larger effort by Patel to have the bureau focus more on street crime, rather than on complicated cases touching on financial fraud, public corruption and national security. Doing so, they added, will erode the bureau’s reputation as an elite law enforcement agency, known for its selectiveness about its recruits.

現、前任探員表示，新計劃似乎是巴特爾更大圖謀的一部分，旨在讓聯邦調查局更關注街頭犯罪，而非涉及金融詐欺、公共貪腐和國家安全等複雜案件。他們補充，這麼做將侵蝕聯邦調查局菁英執法機構的名聲，該機構以嚴格篩選新成員聞名。

The FBI declined to comment, leaving its reason for the drastic changes unclear, particularly given that Patel has repeatedly promoted the agency’s record recruiting numbers.

FBI拒迴應，導致這些劇烈改變的原因仍不明，特別是考慮到巴特爾過去屢屢強調FBI招募人數創新紀錄。

文／Devlin Barrett and Adam Goldman　譯／羅方妤