Washington: FBI agents are on the front lines of the fight to protect the United States from terrorists, Russian hackers and Chinese spies.
Now they have something far more personal to worry about: their waists.
For the first time in 16 years, the FBI is requiring its agents pass a fitness test.
“The lives of your colleagues and those you protect may well depend upon your ability to run, fight and shoot, no matter what job you hold,” James B. Comey, the FBI director, said in October in an internal memo to agents.
The agents, Comey said, are symbols to Americans of what is “right and good” about the country.
“I want you to look like the squared-away object of that reverence. I want the American people to be able to take one glance at you and think, ‘THERE is a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’.”
The fitness tests, which started at the end of last year, are a return to a tradition begun by the FBI’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover, who obsessed about his agents’ weight, as well his own considerable girth.
The tests are also a response to concerns throughout the bureau about how its transformation after the September 11, 2001, attacks, has put more stress on the agents and given them less time for fitness.
After the attacks, many agents who had spent their entire careers investigating crimes like gang violence or drugs — work that took them into the field to make arrests — began working 20-hour days from their offices as the FBI changed its primary mission to fighting terrorism.
Around the same time, the bureau drastically expanded its efforts in two other areas that emphasised long desk hours: cybersecurity and intelligence. The Tommy-gun-toting agent of the Hoover-era who chased after gangsters had evolved to become a creature of the office.
“You could see that health and fitness was not the priority it used to be,” said Zachary Lowe junior, head of the training division at the FBI’s academy in Quantico, Virginia, which created the test.
The FBI’s 13,500 agents worldwide have until October to take it and the results will be included on their annual performance reviews. The test is primarily designed to ensure that agents can move quickly during a mass shooting, chase suspects and restrain them if they resist arrest. There are no weight limits, but agents have to achieve certain requirements in four different exercises depending on their age and gender. The threshold to pass is not nearly as high as it is for military commandos or hostage rescue-team members.
Comey got the idea for it when he visited all of the FBI’s field offices after becoming the director in 2013. Morale was low, and Comey began asking his deputies about the types of fitness requirements the agents had to meet. They said that fitness standards were strictly enforced for new agents, but that the same was not done for current agents. Comey believed that reinstituting the test would send the message about the importance of fitness and personal care. He doesn’t have to take the test because he is not an agent.
The bureau began formally training its agents in the 1920s, but it is not clear how much of that included physical fitness, according to John Fox, the FBI’s chief historian.
But by the 1950s, Hoover began agitating about his weight and the weight of his agents. According to “Hoover’s FBI: The Inside Story by Hoover’s Trusted Lieutenant,” by Cartha D. DeLoach, Hoover was getting dressed for a dinner at the White House when he noticed his tuxedo pants were tight. The next day, he began a diet, eliminating starches and desserts but continuing to drink alcohol.
The same day he started his diet — apparently believing that his own weight problems were a sign that his agents needed to get in shape — he sent out a dispatch to agents across the country, telling them that they would face surprise weigh-ins.
“Most agents were in excellent physical condition and well within the prescribed limits,” wrote DeLoach, the Hoover lieutenant. “But many agents — particularly former college or professional athletes who had not stayed in condition — found it tough going.”
At headquarters, Hoover took it upon himself to weigh in the bureau’s top executives, including on at least one occasion DeLoach.
“All of us were overweight,” DeLoach said. “Hoover watched the weigh-in, glowering at us in disgust.”
But Hoover, he said, “never got on a scale for anyone, and we noticed that he didn’t seem to get any smaller around the waist either.”
Even in his final years as director, Hoover would not let the issue go, according to “The Real J. Edgar Hoover: For the Record” by another one of his longtime deputies, Ray Wannall. At a banquet for retired agents in 1971, Hoover was honoured and he gave some remarks.
“Taking note somewhat obliquely of his weight programme, he looked over the audience of ex-agent no longer burdened by the program and said, ‘I recognise the faces but the bodies are not familiar.’”
BOX
For instance, male agents ages 30 to 39 must perform 24 push-ups without stopping and 35 sit-ups in a minute. They have to sprint almost 1,000 feet in less than 1 minute, 19 seconds and run a mile and a half in 12 minutes, 53 seconds.
The most challenging part of the test, agents said, is that they get only a five-minute break between exercises. Men are typically better at the push-ups than sit-ups, but it is the reverse for women. Everyone struggles with the sprint.
So far, there has not been a stampede to take the test, including at the Washington office, where only 75 of 800 agents have subjected themselves to it (all passed). Although the FBI has never had the kind of fitness culture of, say, the Marines, the agents are competitive, and many who have put off the test are working for higher scores.
“It’s really not that hard,” said Jennifer Schick, a public corruption agent at the FBI’s Washington field office who also oversees fitness training and tests. “Most agents wouldn’t be satisfied in just coming out and making the minimum. They would be embarrassed by that, and that is why they’re waiting.”
To help them prepare, the FBI is offering training sessions like one on the National Mall at sunrise Friday, when Schick stood over a dozen agents who did push-ups until their bodies collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. They did lunges to build leg strength and ran wind sprints.
“Unfortunately, some people told me they are embarrassed to come and show other people how out of shape they are, and that’s a shame because they are the ones who really need it,” Schick said.
Agents faced mandatory tests in the 1980s and 1990s, amid concerns that law enforcement officers faced additional health issues because of the stresses of their jobs. The bureau stopped making the test mandatory in 1999, as it begun a study of its effectiveness. In the years after the 2001 attacks, it was pretty hard to get anyone at headquarters to give much attention to an issue like fitness.
