James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said Monday the agency is "grappling with the question" of how to amend its hiring policies that exclude anyone who has smoked pot in the previous three years from being considered for a job.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Comey made the comments while discussing the agencies' growing battle against cyber criminals.
“I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” Comey said.
Congress has authorized the FBI to add 2,000 personnel to its rolls this year, and many of those new recruits will be assigned to tackle cyber crimes, a growing priority for the agency. And that’s a problem, Mr. Comey told the White Collar Crime Institute, an annual conference held at the New York City Bar Association in Manhattan. A lot of the nation’s top computer programmers and hacking gurus are also fond of marijuana.
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Mr. Comey said that the agency was “grappling with the question right now” of how to amend the agency’s marijuana policies, which excludes from consideration anyone who has smoked marijuana in the previous three years, according to the FBI’s Web site. One conference goer asked Mr. Comey about a friend who had shied away from applying because of the policy. “He should go ahead and apply,” despite the marijuana use, Mr. Comey said.
Comey's remarks on cyber crime came just after Justice Department officials announced the indictment of five members of the Chinese military on federal hacking charges. FBI officials also warned against malicious software called BlackShades on Monday, saying more than a half-million computers in over 100 countries were infected by sophisticated malware that lets cybercriminals remotely hijack a computer and its webcam.
Read more on Comey at the Wall Street Journal.
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