Tuesday, April 06, 2004 3:02:38 AM
Low pay squeezes FBI agents — and perhaps U.S. security
By Kevin Johnson and Toni Locy, USA TODAY
FRANKLIN PARK, N.J. — He is a law school graduate and a former Marine captain who seems to be living his career dream: to be an FBI agent, protecting the United States from terrorists and other criminals.
An FBI agent assigned to New York City lives in a rented room 42 miles away in New Jersey.
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
But when the 34-year-old Long Island native leaves his New York City office, he returns to a life he says he never bargained for: a spartan rented room here, 42 miles south of the city. Assigned to one of the world's most expensive cities with a salary of just $48,000 — and with more than $106,000 in student loans to pay off and credit-card debts near $10,000 — he says it's all he can afford.
"I took an oath when I joined the FBI," says the agent, who has been with the FBI for four years and who asked not to be identified. "I never thought it would also include a vow of poverty."
His story is similar to those of dozens of FBI agents whose dire financial situations have created what bureau officials acknowledge is a growing threat to national security.
Advocates for FBI agents have long complained to Congress that agents aren't paid enough. But now there are signs that an increasing number of agents assigned to the bureau's most critical counterterrorism divisions — in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and San Diego — are racking up debts that FBI officials say could make them vulnerable to corruption, including cash offers to spy against the United States.
It's a situation that has raised questions about whether the FBI is adequately screening agents' finances at a time when the bureau is expanding rapidly to try to prevent terrorism. It also has led FBI officials to reassess their practice of frequently assigning the bureau's newest and lowest-paid agents to big-city offices where the cost of living is high — and where agents often handle some of the government's most sensitive intelligence reports.
The base salary for new FBI agents is about $39,700, plus overtime. Agents in big cities get a few thousand dollars more. With several years' experience, agents can make a little more than $90,000. Supervisors' pay ranges from about $72,000 to about $106,000.
Aside from minor cost-of-living increases, agents' salaries have been roughly the same for more than a decade. During that time, two former counterintelligence agents who had worked in the New York office and who had complained about their finances, Earl Pitts and Robert Hanssen, were convicted of selling secrets to the Russians.
FBI officials acknowledge that concerns over agents' financial problems have increased as the bureau has hired more than 2,200 agents since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Many of the new agents have given up more lucrative jobs in the private sector to heed the call of public service, often without fully understanding the financial strains they could face. Unlike young cops or federal agents in high-cost cities who often room together to save money at the start of their careers, many of the new FBI agents have been in the workforce for several years and have families.
In a survey of 10 major bureau offices late last year, the FBI Agents Association, a group that represents about 7,700 of the bureau's 11,000 agents, received testimonials from more than 80 agents who said their financial situations were dangerously unstable.
Like the New York agent who lives in Franklin Park, none of the agents agreed to be identified by name for this story. Several cited their sensitive assignments; others said they feared increased scrutiny from supervisors if their financial problems became well-known.
But the association's survey and interviews with six agents assigned to New York, Washington and San Diego suggest that agents' increasing anxiety over their families' welfare is affecting their work:
• After a year on the job, a Los Angeles agent says he is considering whether to quit the bureau. The agent, who makes $49,000 a year, says he and his wife have faced "overwhelming" financial stress since they moved to the Los Angeles area from Minnesota, where the median home price is roughly half that of the $382,000 median in Los Angeles County.
Like other agents, he says his family's situation has been made worse by his spouse's inability to find work. The agent says his family has used up savings to meet expenses.
"My wife and I are struggling," he says.
• In Boston, an agent who makes $46,800 a year says she has fallen behind on mortgage payments, and says her unemployed husband is considering filing for public assistance. She says that several of her FBI colleagues, desperate to trim debts, have cashed out of their retirement accounts.
• An agent in the New York office says that when she was transferred there after graduating from the FBI Academy in Virginia in September 2002, it quickly became apparent that she would not be able to afford to take her 14-year-old daughter with her. The agent, 33, says the girl is staying with grandparents in Virginia.
• A married San Diego agent with three children says that relatives have been supplementing his $57,000 salary to help keep his family afloat. The agent, 31, who left an $80,000-a-year job in Miami to join the FBI nearly two years ago, says he knew he would have to take a pay cut. But he says he did not realize that he would be sent to a city where the cost of living is so much higher.
(Salary-comparison formulas used by real estate firms indicate that someone making $80,000 in Miami would need to make about $127,000 in San Diego to have roughly the same lifestyle.)
Despite the help from relatives, the agent says, his family has resorted to paying for everyday expenses with credit cards. He says he's not sure how much longer he can stay with the FBI.
Redeployment plan
Top FBI officials in Washington say they are troubled by such reports, which have led them to begin developing a multimillion-dollar plan to redeploy agents. The plan, which could be in place in 2006, would divert new agents to more affordable postings among the bureau's 56 U.S. field offices.
FBI vs. police pay
How FBI agents' annual salaries compare with those of police officers in selected big-city departments:
Agency Pay
FBI Agents start at about $39,700 plus overtime. After five years, agents can make about $72,000 plus overtime; more experienced agents can make a little more than $90,000. Base pay for supervisors ranges from about $72,000 to about $106,000.
New York City police Rookie cops make about $44,000 with overtime, shift differentials and holiday pay. After five years, officers typically make about $70,000.
Los Angeles police Rookies start at $47,710. After a year, they make $51,573. Officers with more experience can make up to $71,451 in base pay. Most detectives' and supervisors' salaries range from $67,588 to $149,459. Figures do not include overtime.
Chicago police Rookies make about $37,000; that increases to nearly $48,000 after one year and to $50,538 six months later. Figures do not include overtime.
Houston police Rookies make $28,169. After one year, that rises to $31,439. Officers with more experience make up to $43,672. Supervisors' salaries range from $43,800 to $72,248. Figures do not include overtime.
The officials say they want to try to reduce the financial trauma for young agents, guard against potential security risks and give agents more work experience before they are assigned to larger offices.
Assistant FBI Director Mark Bullock, who oversees administrative functions, says the plan probably would cause upheaval throughout the FBI. He says hundreds of agents would be transferred at the same time to make sure that larger offices remain adequately staffed.
"This is a serious concern for the FBI," Bullock says. "This ultimately impacts investigations."
Before he joined the FBI, the San Diego agent managed a household appliance store in Miami.
The agent, who works on public-corruption and drug cases, says he knew his FBI salary would be at least 30% less than the $80,000 he made in Miami. But he was drawn to public service, and he believed that with his wife's salary as a teacher, the family could get by.
But the financial formula the agent devised for his family was shattered when he was assigned to San Diego after graduating from the FBI Academy. After a long search for an affordable house, the family — with a healthy down payment from the sale of their Miami home — bought a $379,000 house that is nearly a two-hour drive from the FBI's office in San Diego.
Then it took almost a year for the agent's wife to find work. By then, the family's savings were gone, and their credit cards were nearly maxed out. With his family's debts approaching $20,000 last year, the agent cashed out of his FBI retirement plan for $8,000 and accepted $6,000 from his parents.
"Nobody forced me to take this job; I'm still here because I want to be here," the agent says. But "it's not fair to put my family through this much longer. Right now, I'm paying to be part of the bureau."
The agent says he could not fathom resorting to corruption to get more money. But other agents say that many of their co-workers are increasingly desperate.
"There is a saying that money makes the blind man see and the cripple walk," says a colleague of the Franklin Park agent who works in counterterrorism in the FBI's New York office.
Getting out early
For decades, it has been rare for FBI agents to leave the bureau before they were eligible for retirement, at 20 years of service or age 57. Now, Bullock says, talk of resigning is becoming more common among agents.
The last significant pay increase for FBI agents was in 1988, when Congress approved raises that included extra pay for agents in high-cost, urban areas. Agents in New York City, where the bureau was having trouble filling vacancies, got a 25% increase.
Even so, 2003 government salary tables show that some FBI agents who make $47,222 in New York aren't paid much more than the $44,617 their peers make in Richmond, Va., where housing costs are less than half what they are in the New York area.
Some local police agencies near New York City pay rookie officers more than the FBI pays its new agents. In the Suffolk County Police Department, on Long Island, new cops make $50,000.
"I dread going up to the New York office," says Glenn Kelly, executive director of the FBI Agents Association. "They are in dire straits."
The association has no authority to enter into labor agreements on salary issues, but it has long campaigned for higher salaries. It supports a plan before Congress that would eliminate caps on overtime pay for agents and on the extra pay given to agents in high-cost areas.
The FBI backs the plan but has not lobbied for it. The bureau is awaiting a report by the Office of Personnel Management, which is examining pay scales for federal law enforcement officers.
During the Cold War, most agents who betrayed the United States did so "for philosophical reasons," says Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Our most recent cases, such as Hanssen, have been for money. I'm aware and concerned."
Dale Watson, a former director of counterterrorism for the FBI, agrees that agents' low salaries pose a security risk.
"We signed up knowing we weren't gonna get rich," says Watson, an executive at a security company. "But it used to be the FBI was a career that nobody left. It ain't that way any more."
Locy reported from Washington, Johnson from Franklin Park before leaving for his current assignment in Baghdad.
By Kevin Johnson and Toni Locy, USA TODAY
FRANKLIN PARK, N.J. — He is a law school graduate and a former Marine captain who seems to be living his career dream: to be an FBI agent, protecting the United States from terrorists and other criminals.
An FBI agent assigned to New York City lives in a rented room 42 miles away in New Jersey.
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
But when the 34-year-old Long Island native leaves his New York City office, he returns to a life he says he never bargained for: a spartan rented room here, 42 miles south of the city. Assigned to one of the world's most expensive cities with a salary of just $48,000 — and with more than $106,000 in student loans to pay off and credit-card debts near $10,000 — he says it's all he can afford.
"I took an oath when I joined the FBI," says the agent, who has been with the FBI for four years and who asked not to be identified. "I never thought it would also include a vow of poverty."
His story is similar to those of dozens of FBI agents whose dire financial situations have created what bureau officials acknowledge is a growing threat to national security.
Advocates for FBI agents have long complained to Congress that agents aren't paid enough. But now there are signs that an increasing number of agents assigned to the bureau's most critical counterterrorism divisions — in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and San Diego — are racking up debts that FBI officials say could make them vulnerable to corruption, including cash offers to spy against the United States.
It's a situation that has raised questions about whether the FBI is adequately screening agents' finances at a time when the bureau is expanding rapidly to try to prevent terrorism. It also has led FBI officials to reassess their practice of frequently assigning the bureau's newest and lowest-paid agents to big-city offices where the cost of living is high — and where agents often handle some of the government's most sensitive intelligence reports.
The base salary for new FBI agents is about $39,700, plus overtime. Agents in big cities get a few thousand dollars more. With several years' experience, agents can make a little more than $90,000. Supervisors' pay ranges from about $72,000 to about $106,000.
Aside from minor cost-of-living increases, agents' salaries have been roughly the same for more than a decade. During that time, two former counterintelligence agents who had worked in the New York office and who had complained about their finances, Earl Pitts and Robert Hanssen, were convicted of selling secrets to the Russians.
FBI officials acknowledge that concerns over agents' financial problems have increased as the bureau has hired more than 2,200 agents since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Many of the new agents have given up more lucrative jobs in the private sector to heed the call of public service, often without fully understanding the financial strains they could face. Unlike young cops or federal agents in high-cost cities who often room together to save money at the start of their careers, many of the new FBI agents have been in the workforce for several years and have families.
In a survey of 10 major bureau offices late last year, the FBI Agents Association, a group that represents about 7,700 of the bureau's 11,000 agents, received testimonials from more than 80 agents who said their financial situations were dangerously unstable.
Like the New York agent who lives in Franklin Park, none of the agents agreed to be identified by name for this story. Several cited their sensitive assignments; others said they feared increased scrutiny from supervisors if their financial problems became well-known.
But the association's survey and interviews with six agents assigned to New York, Washington and San Diego suggest that agents' increasing anxiety over their families' welfare is affecting their work:
• After a year on the job, a Los Angeles agent says he is considering whether to quit the bureau. The agent, who makes $49,000 a year, says he and his wife have faced "overwhelming" financial stress since they moved to the Los Angeles area from Minnesota, where the median home price is roughly half that of the $382,000 median in Los Angeles County.
Like other agents, he says his family's situation has been made worse by his spouse's inability to find work. The agent says his family has used up savings to meet expenses.
"My wife and I are struggling," he says.
• In Boston, an agent who makes $46,800 a year says she has fallen behind on mortgage payments, and says her unemployed husband is considering filing for public assistance. She says that several of her FBI colleagues, desperate to trim debts, have cashed out of their retirement accounts.
• An agent in the New York office says that when she was transferred there after graduating from the FBI Academy in Virginia in September 2002, it quickly became apparent that she would not be able to afford to take her 14-year-old daughter with her. The agent, 33, says the girl is staying with grandparents in Virginia.
• A married San Diego agent with three children says that relatives have been supplementing his $57,000 salary to help keep his family afloat. The agent, 31, who left an $80,000-a-year job in Miami to join the FBI nearly two years ago, says he knew he would have to take a pay cut. But he says he did not realize that he would be sent to a city where the cost of living is so much higher.
(Salary-comparison formulas used by real estate firms indicate that someone making $80,000 in Miami would need to make about $127,000 in San Diego to have roughly the same lifestyle.)
Despite the help from relatives, the agent says, his family has resorted to paying for everyday expenses with credit cards. He says he's not sure how much longer he can stay with the FBI.
Redeployment plan
Top FBI officials in Washington say they are troubled by such reports, which have led them to begin developing a multimillion-dollar plan to redeploy agents. The plan, which could be in place in 2006, would divert new agents to more affordable postings among the bureau's 56 U.S. field offices.
FBI vs. police pay
How FBI agents' annual salaries compare with those of police officers in selected big-city departments:
Agency Pay
FBI Agents start at about $39,700 plus overtime. After five years, agents can make about $72,000 plus overtime; more experienced agents can make a little more than $90,000. Base pay for supervisors ranges from about $72,000 to about $106,000.
New York City police Rookie cops make about $44,000 with overtime, shift differentials and holiday pay. After five years, officers typically make about $70,000.
Los Angeles police Rookies start at $47,710. After a year, they make $51,573. Officers with more experience can make up to $71,451 in base pay. Most detectives' and supervisors' salaries range from $67,588 to $149,459. Figures do not include overtime.
Chicago police Rookies make about $37,000; that increases to nearly $48,000 after one year and to $50,538 six months later. Figures do not include overtime.
Houston police Rookies make $28,169. After one year, that rises to $31,439. Officers with more experience make up to $43,672. Supervisors' salaries range from $43,800 to $72,248. Figures do not include overtime.
The officials say they want to try to reduce the financial trauma for young agents, guard against potential security risks and give agents more work experience before they are assigned to larger offices.
Assistant FBI Director Mark Bullock, who oversees administrative functions, says the plan probably would cause upheaval throughout the FBI. He says hundreds of agents would be transferred at the same time to make sure that larger offices remain adequately staffed.
"This is a serious concern for the FBI," Bullock says. "This ultimately impacts investigations."
Before he joined the FBI, the San Diego agent managed a household appliance store in Miami.
The agent, who works on public-corruption and drug cases, says he knew his FBI salary would be at least 30% less than the $80,000 he made in Miami. But he was drawn to public service, and he believed that with his wife's salary as a teacher, the family could get by.
But the financial formula the agent devised for his family was shattered when he was assigned to San Diego after graduating from the FBI Academy. After a long search for an affordable house, the family — with a healthy down payment from the sale of their Miami home — bought a $379,000 house that is nearly a two-hour drive from the FBI's office in San Diego.
Then it took almost a year for the agent's wife to find work. By then, the family's savings were gone, and their credit cards were nearly maxed out. With his family's debts approaching $20,000 last year, the agent cashed out of his FBI retirement plan for $8,000 and accepted $6,000 from his parents.
"Nobody forced me to take this job; I'm still here because I want to be here," the agent says. But "it's not fair to put my family through this much longer. Right now, I'm paying to be part of the bureau."
The agent says he could not fathom resorting to corruption to get more money. But other agents say that many of their co-workers are increasingly desperate.
"There is a saying that money makes the blind man see and the cripple walk," says a colleague of the Franklin Park agent who works in counterterrorism in the FBI's New York office.
Getting out early
For decades, it has been rare for FBI agents to leave the bureau before they were eligible for retirement, at 20 years of service or age 57. Now, Bullock says, talk of resigning is becoming more common among agents.
The last significant pay increase for FBI agents was in 1988, when Congress approved raises that included extra pay for agents in high-cost, urban areas. Agents in New York City, where the bureau was having trouble filling vacancies, got a 25% increase.
Even so, 2003 government salary tables show that some FBI agents who make $47,222 in New York aren't paid much more than the $44,617 their peers make in Richmond, Va., where housing costs are less than half what they are in the New York area.
Some local police agencies near New York City pay rookie officers more than the FBI pays its new agents. In the Suffolk County Police Department, on Long Island, new cops make $50,000.
"I dread going up to the New York office," says Glenn Kelly, executive director of the FBI Agents Association. "They are in dire straits."
The association has no authority to enter into labor agreements on salary issues, but it has long campaigned for higher salaries. It supports a plan before Congress that would eliminate caps on overtime pay for agents and on the extra pay given to agents in high-cost areas.
The FBI backs the plan but has not lobbied for it. The bureau is awaiting a report by the Office of Personnel Management, which is examining pay scales for federal law enforcement officers.
During the Cold War, most agents who betrayed the United States did so "for philosophical reasons," says Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Our most recent cases, such as Hanssen, have been for money. I'm aware and concerned."
Dale Watson, a former director of counterterrorism for the FBI, agrees that agents' low salaries pose a security risk.
"We signed up knowing we weren't gonna get rich," says Watson, an executive at a security company. "But it used to be the FBI was a career that nobody left. It ain't that way any more."
Locy reported from Washington, Johnson from Franklin Park before leaving for his current assignment in Baghdad.
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